To understand Free Will, one needs to know that it came from God. God could not have created the Garden of Eden without Free Will. Free Will without sin is synonymous with Perfection. In other words, if we are without sin, our choices will always be perfect and we will be just like our Creator, God, and God is Perfection.
To the serpent in the Garden of Eden I gave the name "Free Choice". [2] Again, we all know what happened there: Free Choice tempted our distant relatives, Adam and Eve who exercised their free will and ate the forbidden apple from the Tree of Knowledge. That was the original sin and the consequent of that sin is death. That original sin is like an invisible DNA that is part of every single human being who cannot escape death. [3] Death therefore cannot be argued as God's preordained result of human life because death was a direct consequent of the exercise of Free Will. The dire consequence of this sin was and is still being passed from generation to generation.
With the seeming predestined death of humans out of the way, the discussion can return to one's free will in life. Let me assert that Free Will is without a doubt unpredestined, unbridled and absolutely free [4]. Understandably, this assertion raises a lot of questions. One of them might be: how can Jesus foretell his own death on a cross if it is not predestined? Another one might be: how was St. Malachy able to see in his vision future popes if they are not predestined? Stating the questions differently, how could Jesus and St. Malachy predict events when Free Will had not yet been exercised?
The answer is simple. Free Will is always exercised either in the past or in the present. Free Will does not exist in the future. The future can only exist after the exercise of Free Will. A prophesy or vision comes from Perfection. Perfection can tolerate no omission or error. To have perfection, one must be able to see clearly from infinity in the past to everything in the present and to infinity in the future. Since God is perfect, God can see all the free wills that have yet to be exercised, hence God was able to allow Jesus to foretell his death [5] and St. Malachy to call out the names of future popes. This is a good analogy:
"An illustration would be that I could arrange for my child to choose ice cream over something else and not violate his free will. For instance, I could put a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a bowl of dirt and rocks in front of my child and I know exactly which one the child will choose to eat. But my knowing does not violate my child's free will." [6]To drive the point home, the child could have opted for a slice of pizza and a soft drink or anything else that he could think of at the time (keys to the car and some gas money perhaps) but since the father on earth is not perfect, he really would not know what his child's free choice would be (assuming he is at an age when he is able to talk back). The Father in Heaven, however, being perfect and perfectly omniscient, can see what each person's free choices [7], [8] would be at any point in his/her future (including the free choices of those yet to be born) and can share that perfect knowledge with whomever. That divine knowledge is sometimes referred to by earthlings as a prophesy or a vision.
Accordingly, the belief that God has foreordained one's future is wrong. God's ability to see precisely what one's future will be like is rooted in God's perfection, being able to see the endlessness of time from its beginning to its end and all the choices that are yet to be freely willed.
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/predestination?s=t
[2] http://lemomentdepaix.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-perfection-of-eden.html
[3] Whether death of other living creatures is God's will or a consequent of an original is beyond the scope of this entry.
[4] Prior to one's birth one is a spirit among hordes of others wanting to be born to have have a chance at experiencing flesh. See also The Meaning of Life -- Part 1 and The Meaning Of Life -- Part 2. Therefore, one cannot say that one does not have absolute free choice in life because one was born, say with deformities due to genetics, since prior to birth, one's spirit exercised its free will to incarnate.
[5] Even though Jesus prayed to God in Gethsemane asking God to take away the cup (of pain and suffering) as if Jesus' crucifixion were preordained by His Father, it was ultimately Jesus' (the Son's) free will to obey God the Father to take up death on a cross and reject Sin and Evil by refusing to prostrate before Satan.
[6] http://carm.org/if-predestination-true-then-how-can-there-be-free-will
[7] An argument that one does not truly have Free Will can still be made because free choices are unlimited, including those that defy the laws of physics, like walking on water. The fact that one cannot will freely to walk on water, one does not have Free Will. The response to this argument is in Note [4] above. By choosing freely to incarnate, the spirit has agreed to live within the limits of the flesh and the challenges of original sin.
[8] Another argument that Free Will does not exist is based on the assertion that one never wills freely to be a victim of an accidental death. I do not think that is true. I believe that one does not consciously want to volunteer to be a victim of an accidental death or an assassination but I believe that one's subconscious or unconscious mind does freely choose an "unexpected" death. Why such a morbid state of subconsciousness or unconsciousness exists is beyond the scope of this blog. I wish someone would have the interest and the time to delve deep into the lives and minds (conscious, subconscious and unconscious from a Freudian perspective) as well as the spiritual natures of the victims of such "accidental" deaths. For the young ones who were not old enough to make their own choices, the researcher would look to their parents or guardians. Because I am a firm believer in Free Will, my fall back position in any situation where destiny, not free choice seems to be the logical conclusion is Note [4] which maintains that the choice that was made by the spirit prior to being incarnated comes with all of life's attendant risks. Remember, it is the experience of flesh, no matter the duration, that compels a spirit to choose incarnation.
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