Freedom

 Is God free? Has God got freewill? Or are His acts determined by His having a particular nature? Or, as I prefer to think about it, is Reality-as-is predetermined, or is it more radical freedom, a constant advance into novelty?

Often it seems that any answer we give to this whole question (i.e. do I have freewill) is simply determined by our own predisposed conditionings and beliefs. Our "answer" - yes or no - "justifies" us, it's suitable for purpose.

On another forum there has often been various discussions of this whole subject, with no conclusion ever being reached. One such thread began with these words (not mine), which I find bear repeating:-

The majority of human beings are mostly convinced that they are the author of their thoughts, choices and therefore their destiny. There is no doubt human beings make choices. The question is: Are those choices free choices or inevitable choices that are not free but predisposed by a limited context? If they are limited, then by definition, the choice is not free choice, but an inevitable choice that is bound or enslaved by ones present level of consciousness and the circumstances by which that event occurs.

I find that the whole subject of our "level of consciousness" is a better starting point for the subject of freewill. It seems to me that often the accidental conditions of our birth and up-bringing are what determine many of our choices. We certainly do experience "choice" and yet the parameters surrounding those choices are surely there - thus we are not radically free. The question then becomes, just how far, how wide, can we extend the parameters of our freedom?

This also involves what we find to be what can be willed and what not. We can will "knowledge" but not wisdom, and we cannot will happiness. Of what does radical freedom truly consist?

There are some words of Thomas Merton, found in "New Seeds of Contemplation" that speak of the Gift of Freedom:-

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

Words worth our own contemplation, and I see them as corresponding to some other words by the Zen Master Caoshan:-

When studying in this way, evils are manifest as a continuum of being ever not done. Inspired by this manifestation, seeing through to the fact that evils are not done, one settles it finally. At precisely such a time, as the beginning, middle, and end manifest as evils not done, evils are not born from conditions, they are only not done; evils do not perish through conditions, they are only not done.


Freedom seems to imply spontaneity, what in the East is called "wu wei", effortless action. Myself, I think such a state of being (or non-being!) can be known. It involves surrender of "self", more a realisation than an attainment. Grace, gift. Never "ours" as such.

The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart speaks our our "union" with God, obviously in theistic terms:-

In giving us His love God has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can love Him with the love wherewith He loves Himself.

D.T.Suzuki, the "zen man", translates this into Zen terms: “one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.”

It is my trust and faith that such a "union", and therefore such a "radical freedom", can be known. Meanwhile I simply seek to see my own chains. I find any "advance" is more a stripping of knowledge than an accumulation.