2. Human Free will: the Glory

The man who wants to be loved does not desire the enslavement of the beloved. . . He does not want to possess an automaton, and if we want to humiliate him, we need try to only persuade him that the beloved's passion is the result of a psychological determinism. —Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness [p 54] [p 55] Freedom of will The assertions made at the end of the previous chapter raise an immediate question: if God is the authority behind the moral law and God created us, how does it come that we his creatures have the capacity to do moral evil? Where did we get this capacity from? From him? The answer is 'Yes, from him!' For when God created humankind, he bestowed on us, alone of his earthly creatures, the supreme dignity and privilege of freedom of will, and freedom of choice between good and evil. He gave humankind no permission to choose evil; indeed he flatly and sternly forbade it. But he made us in such a way, that if we decided to, we could choose evil (see the story in Genesis 2 and 3). This invites another question. Being God, did he not foresee that man would in fact misuse his power of choice, choose evil and introduce into the world an ever-widening and unstemmab...