I said in my post last week on Joseph Luzzi’s new book In A Dark Wood that I’d be writing more posts about his ideas. Here’s the first of those.
One of the most vexing topics we face, whether coming at it from a secular or a religious viewpoint, is the question of the limits, or even the possibility, of free will. Modern scientists have postulated that there is no such thing; that the existence and location of every particle in the universe is the result of random chance and is therefore (somewhat counter-intuitively) preordained. As I sit here writing this post, my ideas arise only from the purposeless chemical interactions that are occurring down there within my brain. (There’s a great discussion of this concept in the book I wrote about back in the very first post on this blog.)
Well, that’s clearly a problematic viewpoint. But if you swing the other direction and postulate a God who gives His creation no choices, then you end up with the same problem that you do with the secular scientists: I’m only sitting here typing this because (this version of) God made me do it. So what input do I have? Is there even such a thing as “I”?
Dante, as elucidated by Luzzi, gives a good explanation. I can’t do better than to quote from the book:
It’s very easy, in the midst of your grief and mourning, to think that you’ve lost your free will. After all, you’re a victim of fate . . . But part of the process of getting back on your feet again is to realize that there are in fact parts of your life that you must reclaim . . . For Dante, free will was an especially valuable quality because his world was one where God saw and knew all–and yet, Dante also believed, within this divine structure the individual still had the freedom to create his own life’s path. The dialogue between this individual freedom and a well-ordered Christian universe made free will into the ultimate gift–and burden–for humankind (144).
Isn’t that a great, clear explanation of this knotty subject? There is always room to choose, although the moment may be very brief in any one situation. No choice, no responsibility. I’ve just spent a little time trying to find the scene in Lord of the Rings in which Frodo feels an almost unbearable temptation to put on the Ring, but there is a moment when the opposing forces are in balance and there is just him, in the middle, as himself. He resists the temptation. (I thought this was the scene when he gets the stab wound from the Black Riders while they’re camped out, but he does put on the Ring on that scene.) That moment–that short moment–can go by so fast, and yet change a life. But we have it. We are not at the mercy of a merciless fate.