Eight Revealing Questions: Questions #5, #6 & #7: Installment #6

Question number five, what factors cause or determine our choices?

The answer to this question lies in the explanation given of the types of causes by which we are influenced, but the final answer to question number five is two-fold: our affections and God's decree; our affections are the factors that determine the choices we make, thus causing us to choose what we want, and God's decree causes or determines our choices. But these conclusions raise other questions.

We have seen that there are many influences to be considered as we ponder why we have made certain choices, but the immediate cause of our choice is ultimately our affections. Our affections may be altered by our surroundings and the influence that other creatures have over us. We also established that if I do not have the capacity to make a certain choice, I have ultimately not been coerced into choosing against my strongest desire because it is a choice that I am not capable of making, thus it cannot be the object of my strongest affection. We also saw that one of the causes of my choices (which remain free because I choose according to my desires and affections) is God's decree of that choice. Therefore we must ask the sixth and seventh questions: could we actually have chosen differently; can I chose against the decree of God?

The manner in which question #6 is asked makes it seem innocent and to answer in the negative would make it appear to be a violation of the creature's freedom, but a closer look at that particular phrasing should cause one to dive deeper into the question and re-ask it in a manner similar to question #7.

Question #6 is completely legitimate, could I actually have chosen differently? In answering this question it is helpful to consider once again, the causes of my choice. Let's return to the example where I was "forced" to turn left in my car. Would the material causes of my choice to turn left annihilate my ability to turn right? The existence of the road wouldn’t prohibit my turning right. The fact that I was in a car would not prohibit me from turning right if I had wanted to. My own existence would not preclude my turning right. So what about the efficient causes: my thought processes were some of the efficient causes for my turning left but they were not a cause to the exclusion of turning right. Even though the threat to my life caused me to turn left, I still could have turned right in the face of that risk, so from that stand point alone I could have chosen differently. By turning left, I might have still reached my destination even though I was forced to turn left when I would have considered a right turn the more efficient path to my destination. Even if turning left had been a dead-end, I could eventually have make a u-turn and finally arrived at my destination. The fact that I was at a “T” intersection when I turned left did not limit my choice to only turning left; I still could have turned right if I didn't allow the car-jacker to influence my decision. I even could have gone straight if I had been willing to run off the road. So we find that none of the material or efficient causes would have destroyed my ability to choose otherwise.

Next we explore the formal cause of my decision to turn left. Officially, the formal causes of my choice to turn left were the motivating factors of the situation: the gunman, and my desire to preserve my life, but neither of these destroyed my capacity to chose to turn right. So during the examination of all these different causes of my choice to turn left we find that, from the human, temporal perspective I could have turned right. But in hindsight we must also agree that my choice was fixed and because I did finally chose to turn left, we must deduce that I could not have chosen otherwise because of the final cause of my choice.

The final cause of my choice to turn left was not just my desire and affection to that direction and my desire to preserve my life, but ultimately, the answer to question #6 is no, and question #7 is that I could not have chosen otherwise because God decreed for it to happen. God knew it was going to happen, and if He knew I might turn left but I actually ended up turning right, then His knowledge of my choice would have been imperfect. Because God’s knowledge of the future is perfect I could not have chosen differently. So, can I choose against the decree of God? Well, if I have argued effectively in the last several sentences then we will see that the answer to this question is also no, and for the very same reasons. If we are able to choose contrary to the decree of God then He would no longer be God because He would be rendered impotent and without perfect knowledge.