ON FREE WILL: How We Exist in God's Breath

[Bogatyr 335]

It occurred to me in immediate hindsight of the publication of my previous thesis, On Innocence: the Necessity of Guilt (1981), that one’s personal inclination to beget sin in any capacity can be conflated to a culpability on God’s part, if we follow the basic doctrine of God’s Plan and ultimate predestination. This work serves thus to address and rectify said objection to my previous essay.

 

ON FREE WILL: HOW WE EXIST IN GOD’S BREATH

 

A depiction of a nursery of newborn babes in the cradle of God’s palm and forefingers,

in Akriti-Raevir style.

 

THUS THE LORD WAS WROTH WITH GODFREY AND HE SPOKE “LO, YOU HAVE BEEN PROUD AND CALLED MY WORK YOUR OWN. WHO CLOVE THE WATERS FROM THE EARTH, AND WHO CREATED THE SKIES AND THE VOID? WHO BREATHED BREATH INTO THE FIRST MAN, AND WHO NAMED YOU THE SON OF HOREN? WILL A POT REBUKE ITS MAKER? WILL A FATHER KNEEL BEFORE HIS SON? I HAVE MADE YOU AND YOUR KINGDOM.” SO GODFREY SAW HIS ERROR AND BEGGED FORGIVENESS.

—Gospel 7:20-26

 

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I. Explanation of God’s Will. Whence Cometh Action and Effect.

 

It is paramount in one’s self-surrender to the devotion of God that he or she acknowledges and concretely affirms the infinite potentiality of God’s will qua His ultimate predestination for Man and Nature, the object of which is His Goodness and succor. God alone is the first cause of movement1, and insomuch as God is unmoved, His will is unmoved. In willing Himself, God’s will thus freely extends into His creatures, from which the main doctrine of God’s Plan or a divine agenda emerges. God desires certain outcomes for his elect, and these outcomes are changeless, for His will is bound to Himself, and He is interminable. What God’s Plan for us is viz. what He intends for us in an ultimate providential sense, cannot be ascertained, but is made manifest to His creatures by reason and/or by revelation. Consider the seven epistles imparted unto the Exalted Owyn in the Scroll of Spirit, which are expressions of God’s will manifested or revealed to Owyn by revelation. Said epistles are also, however, manifested by reason, for it was Owyn’s to manifestly deliver them, and it is the peoples of the epistles to follow them or debase them. In the same token, consider also the canticles of the Scroll of Virtue, which are delivered to Horen relationally in the Seventh Sky by revelation, and reasoned by Horen and his people.

 

The Flexio root spir- is translated as breath, appearing throughout the Scrolls at several instances. Its use, however, is wholly and exclusively dedicated to narrating God’s creative activity. In the premier words dictated by God to Horen at his throne, in the Scroll of Virtue, God is introduced as having “breathed life into all the beasts of the earth” and “[breathed life] into [the elect]” (Virtue 1:4-5), with additional provisions Virtue 7. Likewise, in Spirit, the root’s usage is expended in Spirit 3:16 through 5:3-5 quod vide. God’s Breath is invoked exclusively as to signal his creative and intellective faculty, and since all creation is owed only to God, the word spiritus, or breath, spirit, as it appears in Spirit 5:6 “What breath among all the heavens is so sacred?” hence signals God’s infinite will. The Akritian theópneustos [theh-op’-nyoo-stos] can be traced to this explanation, meaning God-inspired and thus willed by God.

 

Understanding God’s Causality

 

From the prior doctrine, we may derive a basic understanding of God’s causality and its interaction with His will. Spirit affirms God and His will as the principal and exclusive cause when it poses the aphorism “What [creative will] among all the heavens is so sacred?” (Spirit 5:6), to which it is immediately appended, “There is none truly alike to him.” (Spirit 5:7). Creative power is equivalent to causal power, because God is the sole sovereign creator and thereby the sole causal agent. As such, we arrive at the understanding that there are no independently occurring agents in any causation viz. God alone, through His will, allows events to fall into motion. The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary and there exists no logical entailment between all traditionally accepted causes and effects, as this connection is a mere product of the prior decree, or will, of God, who creates them side by side and shoulder by shoulder. Consider the event that a flame makes contact with a length of timber and the resultant burning; while the flame alone is the “agent” of the burn, it is an agent by nature and not by choice and therefore does not hold the inherent power to burn. God wills the burning to occur when the preconditions are met. It is therefore that natural causes are themselves not intermediary causes, but instead mere occasions of God’s causation and will. Thus, God creates and recreates the world at every instance that the conditions for a causality occur, and the consistent and predictable patterns observable in nature are merely the regular ways in which God opts to will said events. God nullifies the notion that earthly causes as independent or even intermediary agents as their own in His fifth epistle imparted unto Owyn, “God is able to do all things. For His power is not parted among His many servants, but imitated, and in His multitude of ways, He is above them all.” (Spirit 5:18-19). In this way, God relegates said earthly causes to, at most, practical liaisons between His will and His creation, for God has “given to [Man] a theater of virtue, and [God has] ordered the estates of the world.” (Virtue 7:6), which was delivered at the dawn of Men.

 

If God alone mediates all events at every new moment of creation, however, what consequences does that have for human nature, and does that mean that God is therefore culpable for human activity and decisions? How can human actions and choice be reconciled with the immediacy of God’s breath?

 

Definition of Human Will

 

Not alike to God’s breath, human will is appetitive viz. bound to specific internal inclinations to that which is accordant with human nature, without knowledge as to why such a thing is appetible. It is inclined to the concretely useful and desirable, failing thus to penetrate to the reason for appetency. This is why we are often counseled to delegate worldly and spiritual stresses to God’s Plan, as it is a plan guided both by knowledge of the objective reality and which examines our role, relation, and outcomes—desirable or not—at the fundamental level, whereas our will tends and caters to the seeming, and, oftentimes, desultory, part of our needs. The human appetite is directed to things not possessed nor concretised by God’s objective reality and is therefore imperfect, a trait which cannot be likewise imputed to God’s will, which is complete and validated by justified true knowledge and predestination. It must not be neglected that, while human will is appetitive, it is rationally so, as it is guided by what we understand to be reason. What is more, it is practical; whereas, it cannot actualise itself insofar as God’s will can, it is aided by the natural faculties of Men to deliberate, to formulate, and to actuate only insomuch that God has allowed. Human will is potentiality moving and tending toward actualisation. 

 

But, if God is preeminently aware of a man’s decision before it occurs, how can it be maintained that the man makes a genuine and rational choice, since God is privy to what he will choose? It is often misconstrued by many that, while earthly affairs are predestined, existence is virtual and self-automated. To answer the seeming contradiction, it must be reminded that neither God nor His will can be thought to exist within the realm of time, and we are required to speak more on the nature of predestination. In the same way that, when we consider our past actions, we do not compel them to have happened in the first place, God’s foreknowledge of causal events does not compel them to happen. This is likewise how we address the common argument that God’s predestination of the occurrence of sin—sequences of events which act against the will of God—yet inaction to prevent it poses God as the Author of sin. It is for strict reason that God’s Plan is reasonably dubbed as a ‘plan,’ as it does not stamp the elect, and is simply a plan for the realm of what can occur. However;

 

OBJECTION: Since God’s Breath and predestination constitute a plan of what may or must occur, it neglects the relational events which can occur in between, that is, the realm of human decision. The misdirection of human choice against God’s Plan invalidates it, therefore it is imperfect.

 

I ANSWER THAT, this strand of theological thought is heretical, not only because it inherently imputes imperfection to God, but also because it undermines the nature and expanse of God’s foreknowledge and predestination. Predestination cannot be thought to constitute a singular sequence of casualities, as “[God] knows all things, in darkness, in light, in the din of the market, in the silence of the mind.” (Spirit 3:16), and therefore God’s Plan encompasses all contingencies of human choice and decision. God’s will and predestination likewise cannot be conflated to the self-automation of reality nor predecision, because it is not a deterministic stamping but a relational understanding of the realm of all freely-made decisions. God’s elect can make free choices which still accord with His plan, restoring Man’s culpability to his decisions, good and bad. A fish can swim against the current but still be within the river.

 

Us and God’s Causality

 

Since God’s Breath can encompass not only what must happen, but also what can and may happen, the physical nature of human free will is that it exists in a unique category of casualities separate from definite entities. Definite entities constitute the general rules and patterns within which the natural world proceeds in constant creation and recreation. When we make the decision to carry out an action, i.e., actuate the appetitive will by acting on a desire, the choice exists in and as a relational state viz. intentions or decisions are connections between appetite (will) and action. This supports the doctrine that human decisions are not so much predetermined by God’s Plan as they are foreknown and actualised. Man is a rational creature for this reason also, because he possesses the capacity to relate to and choose either to affirm or negate their appetite and will. Because God alone is the Author of causality and the sole Agent, these choices are actualised by God at creation and recreation across every instant, but this does not neglect nor forbid the ability to rationalise and make a genuine choice. 

 

Consider the example of a man who decides to sup or drink from a mug of water. Each individual part of the action itself is created by God at an indivisible moment, be that pouring the water from the pitcher and into the mug; grasping it; raising it; swallowing it and absorbing it into and throughout his body. The choice to perform is distinct from the action itself, and is merely something which connects the act, created by God constantly, and the desire, which resides in the appetitive human will. It is a rational, practical, and free will, true, but, given the nature of God’s causality and foreknowledge, constitutes an intention selecting a particular from a set of possible counterfactuals, e.g., not drinking the water.

 

It is recognised also that this is the case because not every desire is acted out, and the appetite is not always gratified. Therefore, there is something that selects the particular desire and decision from several others in order to be acted out, and this is either granted or denied by God, who may create the act we intend or not—and that is the human will.

 

Reaffirming the rationality, genuinity, and practicality of Man’s will, we arrive thus at the determination that, given God’s Causality, free will is redefined as a reasoned, rational, and genuine decision between several alternatives, and does not therefore contradict the immediacy and fullness of God’s Breath.

 

Appendix

 

[1] Unlike to His creatures, to whom His will is the cause of, God’s will originates only in itself. God’s goodness does not move him to create. God wills himself only out of necessity, though that is not to say that another force empowers or else-wise compels God to will himself. Simply said, God’s will is identified in himself alone (Spirit 5:6-7). God’s will is moved only by his intellect, or breath. See, Spirit 1:19-22.

 

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Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised, my Mercy, who didst create me and didst not forget me even when I forgot Thee. O true Light, to You I lift up my heart and mind lest it should teach me vanities. For in the restless misery of fallen spirits, which expose their darkness stripped of vesture of Your light, You clearly show how great You made the rational creature, since for its repose and beatitude nothing less than You suffices, and from Thee shall arise our vesture of light, and our darkness shall be as midday. 

 

Since he is the Alpha and the Omega, this thesis is ended thus with God, who is blessed throughout the ages.

 

Remaining the least of His children,

Rev. Sem. Adolpha Yohānāh