God and Human Freedom: A Philosophico-Theological Enquiry into the Nature of Human Free Will and the Problem of Evil in the World

By Rev Fr. Francis Iyke Agada

Anselm has an amazing thought pattern that captures attention, though very complex, yet one cannot resist his arguments to the next page, which is a joy to read.

Michael Ivan, PhD

Anselm writes with grace and wit about one of the fundamental issues of our time, drawn from the most ancient to recent research and arguments. He makes the science of old-aged issues on human freedom accessible and insightful to contemporary readers.

Iwueke Charles, B Phil

Could it be that God views our freedom as a threat to his own powers?

God and Human freedom

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504945486

Rev Fr. Francis Iyke Agada

Anselm C. ONUORAH hails from Umuoba Anam in Anambra State, Nigeria. He holds two bachelor degrees in philosophy. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in African philosophy at the famous Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, and master’s degree in project management at Walden University, USA. Anselm has written a wide range of articles in African philosophical thoughts, especially in Igbo traditions and cultures of the Eastern Nigeria. He lives in Anambra State, Nigeria, West Africa.

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© 2015 Anselm C. Onuorah. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 07/16/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4546-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4547-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-4548-6 (e)

All Scripture quotations are taken from The New Community Bible, (NCB) Catholic edition. St. Pauls Publication, Ibadan Nigeria. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Foreword

Interlude

Preface

Chapter 1 The Value Of Philosophy To Humanity

Chapter 2 The Problematic Nature Of Human Freedom

Chapter 3 The Autonomy Of Human Reason

Chapter 4 The Dilemma Of Freedom Between Grace And Reason

Chapter 5 The Absolute Goodness Of God And The Problem Of Evil In The World: The Soul Making Theodicy

Chapter 6 Free Choice As Principles Of Morality

Chapter 7 Freedom, Authority And Moral Conscience

Afterthought

Bibliography

Internet Sources

Endnotes

Dedication

To the greater glory of God, in honour of Blessed Mother Mary and in respect to:

Late Sir. James Chima Obieze (Ksm), in whom I saw the image and character of the forefathers.

Late Mrs. Florence Uchenna Agbata, who left us in a sudden and strange way, may God grant her perpetual rest in the Heaven.

Note of Thanks

Gratitude, French people would say, is the memory of the heart. I am most grateful to God for His mercies and kindness. To my Parents, siblings, uncles, nephews, cousins, niece, in-laws, friends and well wishers.

I am also indebted to Rt Rev. Monsignor Prof. Theophilus Okere, Fr. Prof. Josephant Obi Oguejiofor (Alusi), Fr. Prof. Philip Ogbonna Cmf, for writing the foreword, Prof. Ike Odimegwu, Fr. Prof. Izu M. Onyeocha Cmf, Fr. Dr. Ifeanyi Okoro, Fr Dr. Francis Igboanugo, Fr. Dr. Paul Nwanegbo, Fr. Dr. Anthony Ibegbunam, Fr. Dr. Valentine Iheanachor Msp, Fr. Cletus Ike Okoye, Fr. Nze Muoba, Fr. Noel C. Ugoagwu Msp, Fr. Daniel Udofia Msp, Fr. Francis Iyke Agada Msp, for reading through the manuscript despite your pastoral engagements and making critical suggestions.

To Dr. Anosike Romanus, Dr. Michael Ivan, Fabain Onwegbusi, Sylvester Obadiegwu and Mrs Ada Onyejekwe for reading through the manuscripts. To Michelle Mercer, my publishing consultant, Rebecca Carter, Mario Nielsen, Will Cerbone, editorial Associate and assistance to the Director, Fordham University Press, New York, Diane P Flynn, Ordo editor, Paulist press, Mahwah New Jessey, the Pilgrim Apostolate for their copyright permissions. I am profoundly grateful. To Mrs. Osinigwe Okwusogu, Nee, Onyeomadiuko, Philomina Anijah, Ugochukwu Agbata, Ngozi Osemena, Uju Onochie, Ngozi Okeke, Joy Akpa, Adachukwu Ezeobi, Vivian Adogeri, Lady Ngozi Okonkwor, Ngozi Okwusogu and Merly Delicano; Women uninferior to men, May God Bless you all.

INTRODUCTION

P ERHAPS, MORE THAN EVER BEFORE in the history of humanity are we faced with the problem of human existence and the place of human freedom in the mystery of creation than this age. We are challenged the more to take decisions in the concrete circumstances of our lives. Young people decide the purpose of their vocation in life and the elders confront the challenges and opportunities that arise from their chosen career.

Even more today are we living in an age of serious curiosity, with somber dichotomy between pro-life and pro-choice, amid republicans and democrats, among the sacred and the profane. Yet, there is something wonderful and unique that tells the tale of this Age; a uniqueness of curiosity among pagans and Christians, among philosophers and theologians in an attempt to unmask the big question of human freedom. It tells it either from the positive present condition of the world such as, the capacity of men to transcend some of the ecological problems by way of science and technology, or from its negative perspective of anguish, injustice, war and hurricane and the origin of evil in a world believed to be created by a God who is absolutely good and free from evil.

The question also arises when mentally disordered persons and deprived childhood are put into consideration, it generates question like, whether such individuals should be held responsible for their actions or not? In ascribing responsibility, we are concern with more than simply judging whether individuals are fully responsible. Rather in a deeper sense, we judge not only the moral quality of an individual’s action but also of the individual’s condition.

Notably, the issue of human freedom springs from three major Greek’s conception of the world. According to Greek Mythology, all things are subject to fate and an absolute being, superior to men, consciously or unconsciously determines every action of human beings. Because of this, men are definitively exempted from taking responsibility for their actions. Secondly, the Greeks taught that human beings are part of the components of nature and are subject to general laws of nature, by which they cannot behave differently except that dictated by nature. And because human beings are subject to the strong influence of history, which is conceived in Greek thought as a cyclical movement, in which everything repeats itself within a certain period of time, in this way, strong influence of history and not human beings determines the cause of human beings actions.

More blissful is Thomas Green’s own suggestion of three major idea of God among some people. Green portrays God in three distinctive personality namely as a watchmaker, a puppeteer and an adult’s father. According to Green, if God is seen as a watchmaker, it implies that He made the world like watchmaker produces a watch, but his involvement with his creation (the world) ends when he has finished making it. Green gave an example to enumerate his point:

I have a watch and if you ask me about the watchmaker, I would say he must have been a very skillful artisan. I am sure he existed, and I know he was good at his craft. But I have no idea of who he was, nor do I even know whether he is still living. He put something of himself into my watch, but once he had finished his work, and the watch left his shop, he no longer had any direct involvement with it.¹

Here God is seen as one who created the world and left the stamp of his skill and being on it, but has no longer any direct connection or communication with what He created; in other words, what He created is left to the mercy of the user. The second illustration is the puppeteer idea of God in which God is seen as the one in charge, who dedicates and commands human beings on what to do or what not to do. Here God is like an army commander who gives order to his troop which must be strictly carried out. This impression of puppeteer God, negates human freedom and responsibility. It turns human beings into robots awaiting commands from the control switch to carry out its functions. It has been emphasized and propagated more in predestination theories such as those of Calvin and John Knox. And has led to the development of the Lutheran tradition, to the idea that what is most unreasonable to human beings is more likely to be God’s will since God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

The problem of course is whether we take this to mean that God’s ways contradict our human understanding or rather transcends it. Thus Green asks if God can make a square circle? And thinkers like St Thomas of Aquinas, and those who feel that human intelligence is a created participation in the divine will, would simply say No, because what is contradictory for our created minds cannot be made truth or perfect by the mind in whose wisdom we participate.

The argument here is a bit profound and thoughtful – that is, the view that God can make a square circle or a square rectangle; that everything, even what is contradictory for us humans is perfect for God. This concept portrays God as monarch. The reaction is that others felt they can be truly free-truly human by eliminating God from their lives; a God who, Jean Paul Sartre felt, is a threat to mature humanity. While others, who do desire to be truly religious and God centered, feel they can do so only by losing their own personhood in submission to the so called will of God.

The former response views God as very demanding and antihuman that must be avoided if one wishes to be actually free. This has been popularized by Sartrean existentialism that God must die in history if men are to be fully human – that men can only be truly free and responsible if they reject a God who suffocates them and reduces them to a helpless children. But the question is: Is Sartrean notion of God true? Such a reaction is possible if only the God of religious people really make such demands on His devotees.

Even the idea of obedience has become institutionalized as a blind, unthinking, even robotized following of whatever authority decides in the name of God. St Ignatius of Loyola notes that true obedience must come through the process of dialogue. St. Teresa of Avila, suggests that obedience is the union of wills, a union of wills which she places at the heart of holiness, a union of the will of God with a dynamic, passionate, full, active human will. It is this passionate dynamic inwardness that Kierkegaard speaks of. From St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila and Søren Kierkegaard down to Nietzsche, one may not become a saint by becoming a robot, but by harnessing the fullness prospective of one’s abilities and channeling them to the all consuming goal of the love and service of God.

The third analysis is the idea of God as father of adult children. As time passed, people began to see their relationship with God in a new light. The fatalism of Puppeteer God gave way to a new sense of personal responsibility, and God came to be seen as a friend and a father –a father of adult children. People now meet God as adult and see their relation as such, thus, Jesus uses human fatherhood as an analogy for our mature relationship to God. God is still involve in history. He is not a watchmaker who fashions things and leave them to their own device and to the natural laws of their being. Though His personal involvement remains mysterious and obscure yet it leaves room for human freedom and it is manifest through human agents who can distort and confuse his message in the transmission.

The whole trend of philosophical existentialism gives emphasis to individual existence, freedom, and choice. It began in the 19th century and denies the traditional notion that the universe has any intrinsic meaning or purpose on man. It urges people to take responsibility for their own actions and shape their own destiny. Existentialists concern themselves with individual concrete existence and experience and as a result, accentuate subjective freedom of choice. Initiated by Søren Kierkegaard as a reaction to the popular belief since the time of Plato that the highest ethical good is the same for everyone given that we approach moral perfection. Kierkegaard insists that the highest good for any individual is to find a personal unique vocation. Thus he wrote, I must find a truth that is true for me, the idea for which I can live or die.² In response to Hegel’s claim to have worked out a systematic absolute idealism of which a rational understanding of humanity and history could be based, Kierkegaard stresses the ambiguity of human nature of which no systematic idealism can account for. He suggests that individuals must respond to situations in their own way through personal commitments which is a valid way of life. Kierkegaard advocates a leap of faith in human existence, a leap into a religious way of life, which, although incomprehensible and full of risk, is the only way that can save men from despair.

Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an objective judgment of right and wrong, Kierkegaard opines that we must choose our own personal way of life without the support of universal objective standards. Thus, there is no objective and rational basis for moral decisions. Freedom of choice entails personal commitment and responsibility, and because we are free to choose our own path, we must therefore accept the risk and responsibility of following our choice wherever it leads us.

In a similar way, Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God and went on to reject the entire Judeo-Christian moral tradition in favour of a heroic pagan ideal. He contends that men must decide which situation is to be counted as a moral situation for them and that personal experience and acting on one’s own certainty is essential in arriving at the ultimate truth. He insists that direct understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached objective observer. Our uniqueness and primary distinction as human beings is our ability and the freedom to choose. We do not have a fixed nature as other animals – each of us makes choice that creates and re-creates our own nature.

However, the fact of human freedom remains a problem. The prime question is, is human being really free? Why do we humans do the things we do, and what moves us to act the way we act? On what ground does the idea and belief that human beings are free creatures based? These questions have fascinated intellectuals for centuries and provide variety of answers and have developed remarkable theories that continue to be of interest to contemporary scholars. While there is seemingly a common ground and understanding of human psychology, there is still nevertheless, an intellectual heritage of lively and divergent conversation and stands on the very nature of what constitutes and provides the basic rationale for the belief on the freedom of human beings. The basic tenet is whether free will is compatible with causal determinism, and the relationship between free will and moral responsibility.

The Middle age scholars did not ask the question of whether free will is compatible with causal determinism, not that they never understood the issue of cause and effect; they knew the regularities of the world and the implications of a mechanistic world-view; they were of the view that freedom of human action is incompatible with causal determinism because they believed that human beings act freely. They argued that human beings act freely because they posses rational faculty which enables them to act freely and this faculty is immaterial. But how will an immaterial faculty enables men, material subjects to act freely? Middle Age scholars would say that things in the world are made of matter, in other words, they are material things which are governed by particular laws and are determined to particular activities. If human beings are solely material, then their actions would also be determined and they would not act freely. But because the capacities that bring about action are immaterial in nature, and are not governed by physical laws, actions that come about as a result of those capacities will be free. Medieval opinion begged the question of relationship or interaction between the material and the immaterial faculty and how the final decision is taking.

Later theories grew highly structured with the postulation of the intellect and the will. The intellect is seen as the human capacity to reason or cognize while the will is the human motivational capacity which moves us to do what we do. The will depends upon the intellect to identify what actions are possible and desirable and it is on the basis of these intellectually cognized alternatives that the will makes final decision. It is by the virtue of the intellect and a will that human beings are able to do what they do.

While this debate centers on whether human beings act freely in virtue of the wills or in virtue of their intellects, a satisfying answer has to provide a balance in accordance with reason and faith, that is, show how to be rational as well as accepting faith, or put simply in our word- show an interface between faith and reason. In other words, answering moral questions should engage our rational powers to their limit in accordance with faith and reason because our freedom constitutes our essence and a means of unmasking the mysteries of our being towards a comprehensive understanding of ourselves.

The solutions offered here are not intended to put these problems to rest, rather our hope is more modest, to provide a new way of interpreting and understanding these age-long worries, one which, if successful, will provide some degree of relief from the problem of human freedom and responsibility which have long exercised scholars. Since the problem of human freedom has longer leg in philosophy, chapter one of this work deals with the general introduction of the value of philosophy to humanity. Chapter two is on the problematic nature of human freedom while chapter three is on the autonomy of human reason. Chapter four is on the dilemma of freedom between grace and reason, chapter five examines the popular Christian notion that God is good with the origin of evil in the world. Given that our concern is of a moderate stand, we sort theological opinions in chapter six on the bases of Free Choice as a principle of morality and finally in chapter seven, we discussed the essence of freedom, authority and moral conscience.

Throughout this work, we have consulted and referred to various articles and materials as you would see in the references but our conclusions may be considered personal for we have not spoken for any ecclesiastical authority.

Anselm C. ONUORAH

FOREWORD

A S LONG AS WE LIVE IN THIS RELIGIOUSLY ambiguous world, (a world of religious experience) the existence of evil will continue to challenge faith in the reality of an all-loving and all-powerful Creator. The problem of evil cannot be completely described, understood, explained or controlled. If it is to be understood and solved, then it means that humans have completely penetrated into the intricacies and complicated nature of the divine and the mysteries of the divine plan. It seems therefore that the more we penetrate the infinite, the better we understand that it is beyond us, as our intellect can only attain a small fraction of what is to be known. This probably is the Kantian noumenon .

But human intellect and philosophical search neither destroys nor diminishes mysteries but serves to deepen it. The presence of evil in the universe has been and always will be a baffling and perturbing issue to philosophy. A problem which is as old as the history of humanity it’s self. This problem is perhaps the most persistent stumbling block to faith and theism. Simply put, if God is powerful, He must be able to prevent evil, and if he is all good He must want to prevent it. But evil exist. Therefore, God is either not all powerful or not all good. No amount of human wisdom or believing-faith may offer solution to the problem of evil.

God and Human Freedom; enquires into the nature of human freedom and the endless debates about the place of God in human actions. This work also examines the problem of evil in relation to the popular Christian notion of absolute goodness of God who is both Omnipotent and Omnipresent. If God is all powerful he will destroy evil and if He is absolutely good where then does evil emanate? Evil exist, therefore it is either that God is not all powerful and not absolutely good. The issues contained in this work provoke the thought and raises questions which cannot be over looked or given simplistic answers. They are fundamental questions that challenge our daily existence. The author; an enthusiastic philosopher, takes the question of human freedom into a divergent dimension, analyzing, synthesizing the various brands to the problem of human freedom and takes moderate stand of the issue.

This work provides insights into some existential concepts as, notion of authentic existence, choice, and the leap of faith.

I appreciate the effort of this upstart and agree in his line of thinking.

REV FR, PROF. PHILIP A. OGBONNA, c.m.f.

Faculty of Humanities

Department of Philosophy

Imo State University Owerri

INTERLUDE

T HE WORLD FROM IMMEMORIAL HAS BEEN characterized by uncertainties, irregularities, upheavals and better said, an evolutionary entity. Both the church and the civil societies have been challenged and perturbed by the issue of the problem of evil. Till this present age, there has never been any conclusive answer to this problem. And there may not be one, except to avoid sin (evil) and be saved.

Human freedom has always been the central issue of both the religious tenet and the civil governments. The scriptures in all epochs re-echo this urgent aspirations of mankind. The Messianic age began with the announcement of the liberation of the captives, slaves and the restoration of sight to the blind and the year of the lord. And Jesus’ ministry was a fulfillment of that prophecy in all respect.

The author of this book, God and Human freedom, in all sincerity means within this corpus re-emphasis, re-examine and re-establish that Messianic message. The whole world religions stress the issue of human freedom and they were also challenged with the problem of evil in the world. And it is in the bid to wrestle with these problems that the various religions, philosophies and system emanate to proffer solutions to these perennial problems.

No doubt our age, the jet age is challenged the more, hence the advancement has taken all round development. Adequate care should be taken so that humanity may not be doomed in foolishness in the pretext of knowing all. It is my pleasure to recommend this handy book from our younger philosopher and be enriched by the wealth of his knowledge.

DR. ANOSIKE ROMANUS. A

Lecture, Dept. of Philosophy

Seat of Wisdom Seminary

Owerri, Imo State.

PREFACE

S OME BOOKS ARE SIMPLY TO BE READ , but some must be studied, masticated and digested. This is based on the philosophical principle that whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. What you have in your hand now, is one of such intellectual quality products which must be masticated and digested by everyone.

God and Human Freedom, an outstanding material of the taste of our era, came about through the amazing wisdom and knowledge of the young philosopher, Anselm Chukwudi Onuorah. In this book, he has comprehensively dealt with the daily acts and consciousness of human yearnings towards life. Right from the Ionian epoch, man has always wondered over the startling variety of things in and above the universe: the idea of time, the constant changes going on in the world around him, the origin of evil, the reality of God, the heavenly bodies and their orderly motion, the seasons of the year and so on. All these phenomena have left us humans without any help in our quest to know.

The question then is: Where is human freedom in such a world of strangeness? With regard to this, the author has given, through this first-class research work, an in-depth analysis on these various issues of great concern to humanity over the ages. It is not just