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Saturday, March 23, 2013

The remarkable thing that is free will

Posted on 12:09 AM by Unknown
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Christianity is based on, or perhaps more exactly based around, the reality of free will - the autonomous agency of each person.

This is a remarkable thing, one of the most remarkable of all things: its consequences are far deeper and further reaching than at first apparent.

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Because free will is ultimately independent not just of circumstances, but of God.

God created and sustains and influences so much - but human agency is absolutely and always free.

God either cannot or does not constrain Man's agency.

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So much is determined, so much unfolds according to laws, rules, predictable sequences - so much else is (so far as we can tell) chaotic, meaningless... yet free will stands apart from all this.

The universe waits on Man's choices - from each man's every choice the world is repatterned.

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And each Man has this entailed power; intrinsic, ineradicable - free will is necessarily being exercised, and the direction of the world is necessarily affected by each act of free will.

And all this is multiplied by the number of Men: all exercise this power willy nilly, knowing it, not knowing or denying it.

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What a remarkable thing! 

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