Faith, in Christian theology, is not the greatest of virtues
– that is charity, or Christian love, but it is the most fundamental in the
root meaning of fundamental, that is to say, foundational. Faith is the foundation upon which the other
Christian theological virtues of hope and charity stand. (1) Indeed,
it is the foundation upon which all other Christian experience must be
built. It is the appointed means
whereby we receive the grace of God and no other step towards God can be taken apart
from the first step of faith. The Object
of faith is the True and Living God.
The content of faith can be articulated in more general or more specific
terms as the context of the discussion requires. At its most specific the content of the
Christian faith is the Gospel message, the Christian kerygma about God’s
ultimate revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. At its most general it is what is asserted
about God in the sixth verse of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, that “He is
and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”.
Whether articulated in its most general terms or its most
specific, the faith Christianity calls for us to place in God is a confidence
that presupposes His Goodness and His Omnipotence. This has led directly to a long-standing dilemma
that skeptics like to pose to Christian believers. It is known as the problem of evil. It is sometimes posed as a question, at
other times it is worded as a challenging assertion, but however formulated it
boils down to the idea that the presence of evil in a world created by and
ruled by God is inconsistent with God’s being both Good and Omnipotent. The challenge to the Christian apologist,
therefore, is to answer the question of how evil can be present in a world
created by and ruled by a Good and Omnipotent God. This dilemma has been raised so often that
there is even a special word for theological and philosophical answers to the
dilemma – theodicy.
Christian orthodoxy does have an answer to this
question. The answer is a complex one,
however, and we are living in an era that is impatient with complex
answers. For this reason, Christian
apologists now offer a simple answer to the question – free will. This is unfortunate in that this answer,
while not wrong, is incomplete and requires the context of the full, complex
answer, to make the most sense.
The fuller answer begins with an observation about how evil
is present in the world. In this world
there are things which exist in the fullest sense of the word – they exist in
themselves, with essences of their own.
There are also things which exist, not in themselves, but as properties
or qualities of things which exist in themselves. Take redness for example. It does not exist in itself, but as a
property of apples, strawberries, wagons, etc.
Christian orthodoxy tells us that while evil is present in the world, it
does not exist in either of these senses.
It has no essence of its own. Nor
does it exist as a created property of anything that does. God did not create evil, either as a thing in
itself, or as a property of anything else that He created. Just as a bruise is a defect in the redness
of an apple, so evil is present in the world as a defect in the goodness of
moral creatures.
If that defect is there, and it is, and God did not put it
there, which He did not, the only explanation of its presence that is
consistent with orthodoxy is that it is there due to the free will of moral
creatures. Free will, in this sense of
the expression, means the ability to make moral choices. Free will is itself good, rather than
evil, because without it, no creature could be a moral creature who chooses
rightly. The ability to choose
rightly, however, is also the ability to choose wrongly. The good end of a created world populated by
creatures that are morally good required that they be created with this
ability, good itself, but which carries with it the potential for evil.
One problem with the short answer is the expression “free
will” itself. It must be carefully explained,
as in the above theodicy, because it can be understood differently, and if it
is so understood differently, this merely raises new dilemmas rather than
resolving the old one. Anyone who is familiar with the history of
either theology or philosophy knows that “free will” is an expression that has
never been used without controversy. It
should be noted, though, that many of those controversies do not directly
affect what we have been discussing here.
Theological debates over free will, especially those that can be traced
back to the dispute between St. Augustine and Pelagius, have often been about
the degree to which the Fall has impaired the freedom of human moral agency. Since this pertains to the state of things
after evil entered into Creation it need not be brought into the discussion of
how evil entered in the first place although it often is.
One particular dilemma that the free will theodicy raises
when free will is not carefully explained is the one that appears in a common
follow-up challenge that certain skeptics often pose in response. “How can we say that God gave mankind free
will”, such skeptics ask us, “when He threatens to punish certain choices as
sin?”
Those who pose this dilemma confuse two different kind of
freedom that pertain to our will and our choices. When we speak of the freedom of our will in
a moral context we can mean one of two things.
We could be speaking of our agency – that we have the power and ability
when confronted with choices, to think rationally about them and make real
choices that are genuinely our own, instead of pre-programmed, automatic,
responses. We could also, however, be
speaking of our right to choose – that when confronted with certain types of
choices, we own our own decisions and upon choosing will face only whatever
consequences, positive or negative, necessarily follow from our choice by
nature and not punitive consequences imposed upon us by an authority that is
displeased with our choice. When
Christian apologists use free will in our answer to the problem of evil, it is
freedom in the former sense of agency that is intended. When skeptics respond by pointing to God’s
punishment of sin as being inconsistent with free will, they use freedom in the
latter sense of right. While it is
tempting to dismiss this as a dishonest bait-and-switch tactic, it may in many
cases reflect genuine confusion with regards to these categories of freedom. I have certainly encountered
many Christian apologists who in their articulation of the free will theodicy
have employed language that suggests that they are as confused about the matter as
these skeptics.
Christianity has never taught that God gave mankind the
second kind of freedom, freedom in the sense of right, in an absolute,
unlimited, manner. To say that He did
would be the equivalent of saying that God abdicated His Sovereignty as Ruler
over the world He created. Indeed, the
orthodox answer to the problem of evil dilemma is not complete without the
assertion that however much evil may be present in the world, God as the
Sovereign Omnipotent Ruler of all will ultimately judge and punish it. What
Christianity does teach is that God gave mankind the second kind of freedom subject
only to the limits of His Own Sovereign Rule.
Where God has not forbidden something as a sin – and, contrary to what
is often thought, these are few in number, largely common-sensical, and simple
to understand – or placed upon us a duty to do something – these are even fewer
- man is free to make his own choices in the second sense, that is to say,
without divinely-imposed punitive consequences.
Today, a different sort of controversy has arisen in which
the arguments of one side confuse freedom as agency with freedom as right. Whereas the skeptics alluded to above point
to rules God has imposed in His Sovereign Authority limiting man’s freedom as
right in order to counter an argument made about man’s freedom as agency, in this
new controversy man’s freedom as agency is being used to deny that government
tyranny is infringing upon man’s freedom as right.
Before looking at the specifics of this, let us note where
government authority fits in to the picture in Christian orthodoxy.
Human government, Christianity teaches, obtains its
authority from God. This, however, is
an argument for limited government, not for autocratic government that passes
whatever laws it likes. If God has
given the civil power a sword to punish evil, then it is authorized to wield
that sword in the punishment of what God says is evil not whatever it wants to
punish and is required, therefore, to respect the freedom that God has given to
mankind. Where the Modern Age went
wrong was in regarding the Divine Right of Kings as the opposite of
constitutional, limited, government, rather than its theological basis. Modern man has substituted secular
ideologies as that foundation and these, even liberalism with all of its social
contracts, natural rights, and individualism, eventually degenerate into
totalitarianism and tyranny.
Now let us look at the controversy of the day which has to
do with forced vaccination. As this
summer ends and we move into fall governments have been introducing measures
aimed at coercing and compelling people who have not yet been fully vaccinated
for the bat flu to get vaccinated.
These measures include mandates and vaccine passports. The former are decrees that say that
everyone working in a particular sector must either be fully vaccinated by a
certain date or submit to frequent testing.
Governments have been imposing these mandates on their own employees and
in some cases on private employers and have been encouraging other private
employers to impose such mandates on their own companies. Vaccine passports are certificates or smartphone
codes that governments are requiring that people show to prove that they have
been vaccinated to be able to travel by air or train or to gain access to
restaurants, museums, movie theatres, and many other places declared by the
government to be “non-essential”.
These mandates and passports are a form of coercive force. Through them, the government is telling
people that they must either agree to be vaccinated or be barred from full
participation in society. Governments,
and others who support these measures, respond to the objection that they are
violating people’s right to choose whether or not some foreign substance is
injected into their body by saying “it’s their choice, but there will be
consequences if they choose not be vaccinated”.
The consequences referred to are not the natural
consequences, whatever these may be, positive or negative, of the choice to
reject a vaccine, but punitive consequences imposed by the state. Since governments are essentially holding
people’s jobs, livelihoods, and most basic freedoms hostage until they agree to
be vaccinated, those who maintain that this is not a violation of the freedom
to accept or reject medical treatment would seem to be saying that unless the
government actually removes a person’s agency, by, for example, strapping
someone to a table and sticking a needle into him, it has not violated his
right to choose. This obviously confuses
freedom as agency with freedom as right and in a way that strips the latter of
any real meaning.
What makes this even worse is that the freedom/right that is
at stake in this controversy, each person’s ownership of the ultimate choice over
whether or not a medical treatment or procedure is administered to his body, is
not one that we have traditionally enjoyed merely by default due to the absence
of law limiting it. Rather it is a
right that has been positively stated and specifically acknowledged, and
enshrined both in constitutional law and international agreement. If government is allowed to pretend that it
has not violated this well-recognized right because its coercion has fallen
short of eliminating agency altogether then is no other right or freedom the
trampling over of which in pursuit of its ends it could not or would not
similarly excuse. This is tyranny, plain
and simple.
Whether in theology and philosophy or in politics, the
distinction between the different categories of freedom that apply to the human
will is an important one that should be recognized and respected. Agency should never be confused with right,
or vice versa.
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