Eight revealing questions (continued with questions 5-8)
5. What factors determine or cause my choice? In answering this question I’ve decided to employ Aristotle’s “Four Causes”. I mentioned two types of causes in my earlier example: efficient and formal, and here I will provide further explanation of those causes. The four causes are these: material, efficient, formal, and final, and I will apply them to the example above wherein I chose to turn right. The material causes of my choice were things like, the road, my car, and me. The efficient causes of my choice to turn right were my destination, the “T” intersection, and the car-jacker. The formal cause of my choice was my motivation: my desire to turn right (born out of my affections) and my consideration of the efficiency of my travel; do I take the fastest route to my destination or the shortest route? And the final cause of my choice to turn right was God’s decree that I would in the future, most definitely turn right.
6. Thus another question arises, the one pertaining most to the topic at hand, could I actually have chosen differently? In answering this question it is helpful to consider the causes of my choice. Would the material causes of my choice to turn right prohibit me from turning left? The existence of the road wouldn’t prohibit my turning left. The fact that I was in a car would not prohibit me from turning left. My own existence would not preclude my turning left. So what about the efficient cause: by turning either left or right I might have reached my destination. Even if turning left was a dead-end, I could make a u-turn and finally get to my destination. The fact that I was at a “T” intersection when I turned right did not limit my choice to only going right. I still could have turned left. I even could have gone straight if I had been willing to run off the road. Even if a car-jacker demanding me to turn a direction other than I had intended, doesn’t necessitate that I make that choice. I may choose to go the direction I originally had intended, even if it is at my own peril. Next we explore the formal cause of my turning right. Primarily, the formal cause of my choice to turn right was my motivation, but the secondary formal cause was either, the fastest way to arrive at my destination or the shortest way to my destination. Even so, neither of these hindered my choice absolutely. So during the examination of all these different causes of my turning right we find that, from the human, temporal perspective I could have turned left but in hindsight we must agree that my choice was fixed and because I chose to turn right 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 right was not just my desire and affection to that direction but ultimately I could not have chosen otherwise because God decreed for it to happen. Yes, God knew it was going to happen. If He knew I might turn right but I actually ended up turning left then His knowledge would have been imperfect. So the answer to the question, could I actually have chosen differently is no. Because God’s knowledge of the future is perfect I could not have chosen differently. The final two questions are difficult to separate from the last one, and from one another, but I’ll give it a shot.
7. 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 knowledge. The nature of His decree is that it certainly comes to pass.
8. And the last question is this: was my choice determined? The answer is inevitably, if we’re honest, yes. If God knows what He knows perfectly and those things He knows includes my choices, then my choices necessarily are predetermined. But the reality that I can’t choose against God’s decree doesn’t mean that my choices aren’t real. My choices are real precisely because I don’t know God’s decree beforehand. In essence, if being a creature means in part, not knowing my own future and my freedom to choose is defined by my ignorance of that remote future choice and its consequences, then by definition all the choices I make as a creature are free—free from my own knowledge of their future occurrences, outcomes, consequences, effects and causalities. So it can be said, even with great confidence, that my finitude actually establishes my power to make real choices that are born out of genuine freedom. Though God knows and thus determines the future as a consequence of His knowledge, He neither sins nor is the author of sin because we, His creatures, make real choices motivated by our desires, thus we are culpable. I refer to this as covenantal determinism—God had determined that His creatures would disobey. All of us are in covenant relationship to God—the unbeliever stands condemned by the Law, assuming he can obtain eternal pleasure by his good works, and the believer stands just before God by the gracious application of Christ’s work to his account. But in both cases we are called to obey God’s Law because He has made us and stamped us with His image. But as His creatures, He has ordained that we have the ability and even the inclination to break His Law. So, even though God has determined beforehand that I will at various points in my life, break His Law, I am still censurable because my choice to do so is born out of genuine creaturely freedom—ergo, covenantal determinism.
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