Freedom Cannot Be Ontologically Violated

Traditional Christian “proofs” of God’s existence—be they ontological, cosmological, or teleological—do nothing for me. At best, I find them unnecessary; at worst, I think they are misguided, perhaps even harmful.

I will grant that such proofs may have served some positive purpose in the past when men chose a different mode of consciousness, but these positive purposes have since become insolvent.

My biggest issue with traditional proofs for God’s existence boils down to the assertion of divine sovereignty they contain—that God has absolute authority and total control over all of Creation because, after all is said and done, he is the ultimate source of all Creation.

Within the framework of such assumptions, the freedom God grants human beings (and other beings in Creation) is ontologically unfree. Suppose God is the source of freedom and controls all of Creation. In that case, the freedom he grants human beings and others is deterministic.

Now, philosophers and theologians have bent and continue to bend over backwards formulating a wide array of abstract word spells to explain how the freedom a divine sovereign God grants us is genuinely free rather than deterministic, but such philosophical wranglings and assertions have never led to any satisfying breakthroughs concerning the true nature of freedom. On the contrary, they tend to come off as obscurant rather than revelatory.

With that in mind, I must note that instigating prolonged and entirely useless theological/philosophical comment debates is not the chief aim of this post. If you assume God is the ultimate, absolute divine sovereign of everything and can somehow square this with authentic freedom, then knock yourself out.

As for me, I firmly believe that freedom is only authentically free if it is, always has been, and always will be something that God cannot ontologically violate .

And by cannot I mean precisely that.

God cannot infringe upon freedom because he is not its source .

​Freedom lies beyond the power of God’s “divine sovereignty,” and it is in this that the true purposes of Creation can be contemplated and approached. 

Note: Freedom here does not refer to the conventional Christian doctrine/concept of free will (God could not have made free creatures unless they were able to choose evil). Likewise for arguments that claim God cannot violate freedom or free will because he cannot violate his own omnipotence. Such assumptions still assert God to be the ultimate source of freedom, which is something I reject.