The debate over free will has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries. Much of the disagreement, however, begins with a failure to define what we mean by free.
We routinely speak of people making free choices. We choose what to eat, where to work, whom to marry, and what to believe. We deliberate, weigh alternatives, and act according to our desires.
But are any of these choices truly free?
That depends entirely on what we mean by freedom.
I want to approach the question from a common-sense perspective, beginning with a few definitions.
First, Define the Terms
Freedom: In its absolute sense, freedom is independence from external causal determination or ontological dependence. An absolutely free will originates and exercises volition without depending upon anything outside itself for its existence or capacity to act.
Will: The capacity of a personal agent to choose, intend, and act. We can understand the exercise of will as motivated action, whether that action is physical, intellectual, or volitional.
Agency: The capacity to act intentionally as the originating agent of one’s conduct. Agency does not necessarily imply independence from all influences or causes.
Contingency: Dependence upon something else for existence, circumstances, capacities, or operation. A contingent being exists and acts under conditions it did not ultimately establish.
Influence: A condition or consideration that affects a decision without necessarily determining its outcome.
Determination: A causal relationship in which antecedent conditions establish a particular outcome.
Coercion: The imposition of another’s will through force or constraint, overriding or substantially restricting an agent’s voluntary choice.
These distinctions matter because influence, determination, and coercion are not interchangeable.
A person may be influenced without being coerced. A decision may be voluntary while remaining dependent upon circumstances. And a person may possess genuine agency without possessing absolute freedom.
With those terms established, consider how we actually make decisions.
The Human Will Never Operates in Isolation
Suppose I decide to drink a glass of water.
Why?
Perhaps I am thirsty. Perhaps someone offered me water. Perhaps I know that I need to stay hydrated. Perhaps I simply prefer water to another beverage.
Whatever the explanation, my decision emerges from a combination of internal desires and external circumstances.
My thirst is physiological. My preferences have been shaped by experience. My knowledge comes from information I have acquired. Even the availability of water depends upon circumstances outside my control.
I genuinely choose to drink the water.
But can I reasonably claim that my choice was independent of every condition influencing it?
Of course not.
Consider a more consequential decision, such as choosing a career.
Our interests, abilities, upbringing, education, opportunities, financial circumstances, relationships, and personal aspirations all contribute to that decision.
We deliberate among alternatives, but our deliberation itself depends upon what we know, what we value, what we desire, and what options are available.
Even our capacity to reason is something we did not create for ourselves.
This is the fundamental observation:
Every exercise of human will occurs within conditions upon which the human agent depends.
That does not establish that every human decision is strictly determined by antecedent causes. It does establish that human willing is contingent.
And contingency has consequences for how we understand freedom.
Only God Is Non-Contingent
Christian theology identifies God as the uncreated, self-existent, necessary Being.
God does not derive His existence from something prior to Himself. He does not depend upon a surrounding environment, an external source of information, or a superior causal authority.
When God identifies Himself to Moses as “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14, ESV), He reveals something fundamental about His self-existence.
Likewise, Acts 17:24–25 describes God as the Creator who is not served by human hands as though He needed anything.
Everything created depends upon Him. He depends upon nothing created.
This is the classical distinction between necessary and contingent being.
God is the uncaused cause. Created reality is dependent upon Him.
And this distinction applies to the will.
God’s willing does not originate from some external authority or causal condition that determines Him. His will is consistent with His own eternal nature.
That does not mean God acts arbitrarily or contrary to His character.
Scripture tells us that God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). His inability to lie does not represent a deficiency in His freedom. It expresses the perfection and consistency of His nature.
Absolute freedom does not require the capacity to violate one’s own nature.
It requires independence from external causal determination and ontological dependence.
In this absolute sense, God’s will alone is free.
Our Will Is Real, but Contingent
Here is where I think the conventional free-will debate becomes unnecessarily confused.
People often assume that if human beings do not possess absolute freedom, their choices must somehow be imaginary.
That does not follow.
We make real choices. We deliberate. We form intentions. We act. We bear responsibility for what we do.
None of those realities requires us to be self-existent, uncaused beings.
Consider a simple example.
If I become angry and speak harshly to someone, my conduct may have been influenced by fatigue, frustration, previous experiences, and the circumstances of the encounter.
Those influences help explain my conduct.
They do not automatically excuse it.
I may still have acted intentionally, according to my own desires, and in violation of what I knew was right.
My conduct was genuinely mine.
This is why agency and absolute freedom must be distinguished.
Human agency is the capacity to act intentionally. Absolute freedom is independence from external causal determination and ontological dependence.
We possess the former. We do not possess the latter.
Our decisions express our desires, beliefs, character, and intentions. Those features of our agency are themselves situated within the contingent reality of our existence.
There is nothing incoherent about that.
In fact, it describes ordinary human experience remarkably well.
What About the Ability to Choose Otherwise?
One familiar defense of free will is that a person must have been able to choose otherwise.
But what exactly does that mean?
Suppose I choose coffee instead of tea.
Someone might say I freely chose coffee because I could have chosen tea.
Fair enough, in the ordinary sense that both beverages were available and nobody forced my decision.
But why did I choose coffee?
Perhaps I preferred its taste. Perhaps I wanted caffeine. Perhaps I associate coffee with my morning routine.
If those desires and preferences had been different, perhaps I would have chosen tea.
Yet that observation simply brings us back to the conditions influencing the decision.
Even the act of resisting a desire involves another desire, judgment, commitment, or reason for doing so.
We do not escape motivated action merely by choosing against our strongest immediate impulse.
And appealing to randomness does not solve the problem.
If a decision were genuinely random, unrelated to the agent’s reasons, desires, or intentions, why would that make it more free?
Randomness does not establish responsible agency.
The important question is whether the action genuinely belongs to the agent, rather than whether the agent somehow escaped every condition associated with making it.
This does not settle every dispute between philosophical determinism and libertarian accounts of choice. It does show why the ordinary ability to choose between available alternatives should not be confused with absolute freedom.
Does Responsibility Require Absolute Freedom?
I see no reason to think so.
Scripture consistently treats human beings as responsible moral agents while simultaneously affirming God’s sovereignty over creation.
Joseph’s brothers intended evil against him, while God intended good through the same historical events (Genesis 50:20).
In Acts 2:23, Peter describes the crucifixion of Christ as occurring according to God’s definite plan and foreknowledge, while holding those who crucified Him responsible.
These passages present divine sovereignty and human responsibility operating together.
They do not provide a complete philosophical mechanism explaining every relationship between divine causation and human volition.
But they do establish that Scripture does not treat God’s sovereignty as eliminating human responsibility.
The Westminster Confession of Faith similarly affirms divine ordination while preserving the reality of creaturely wills and secondary causes (WCF 3.1).
Its treatment of free will also acknowledges that human willing operates according to the condition of human nature (WCF 9).
That is an important observation.
Human beings do what they will. What they will is connected to who they are.
Our choices reveal our desires, commitments, character, and moral condition.
Responsibility attaches to the agent who acts.
We do not need to establish that the agent is an independent, uncaused source of volition before recognizing that responsibility.
A Necessary Distinction
Someone may object that I have simply defined free will out of existence.
That objection would have merit if I were claiming that my definition is the only legitimate meaning of freedom.
I am making a more specific argument.
The word free is used in different senses.
A prisoner released from confinement is free from imprisonment.
A citizen exercising a legal right is free from certain forms of government restriction.
A person choosing voluntarily is free from immediate coercion.
These are meaningful forms of relative freedom.
But none establishes absolute independence from causal and ontological conditions.
The confusion begins when we move between these meanings without acknowledging the distinction.
If free will means voluntary action according to one’s desires and reasons, human beings can meaningfully possess it.
If free will means the capacity to originate volition independently of all external causal determination and ontological dependence, human beings cannot possess it.
Those are different propositions.
The first describes a form of creaturely agency.
The second describes a property that, within classical Christian theism, belongs uniquely to God.
The Common-Sense Conclusion
We did not choose to exist.
We did not choose the nature of our humanity, the initial conditions of our lives, or the fundamental capacities through which we reason and act.
We did not create the reality within which our decisions occur.
Even our ability to choose depends upon capacities and conditions we did not ultimately establish.
Nevertheless, we genuinely choose.
We reason, deliberate, desire, intend, and act. Our decisions have consequences, and we are accountable for them.
There is no contradiction here.
The contradiction emerges only when we insist that meaningful human agency requires the kind of absolute independence that belongs to a non-contingent Being.
God alone is self-existent.
God alone is the uncaused cause.
God alone possesses absolute freedom of will.
Human beings possess genuine, contingent, motivated agency.
And that is sufficient to account for the reality of human choice without attributing to the creature what belongs uniquely to the Creator.
The question, then, is straightforward:
Why should moral responsibility require a human being to possess a kind of freedom that only God can possess?
I see no compelling reason that it should.
References
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV): Exodus 3:14; Genesis 50:20; Acts 2:23; Acts 17:24–25; Titus 1:2.
Westminster Assembly (1646), Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapters 3 and 9.
Author’s Note
This argument concerns absolute freedom, ontological contingency, and responsible agency. It does not claim to demonstrate universal causal determinism or resolve every philosophical question concerning alternative possibilities. Its central contention is that the reality of responsible human volition does not depend upon absolute freedom from causal and ontological conditions.