Created Freedom Is God's Square Circle

9/2/2024

Everyone is likely familiar with the square circle paradox — the idea that God cannot create a square circle because to do so would be to go against His nature and, in essence, deny Himself.

Of course, this is the same God most Christians assume to be omni-everything—capable of doing anything and everything He pleases, except go against His nature.

Hence, God can, in theory, create a square circle, but the very act of doing so would rend asunder the very fabric of Creation, the Logos; hence, God either refuses to or cannot break the laws of logic, which are the essence of God Himself.

Put another way, God cannot do anything that usurps Himself as God; he cannot do the logically impossible.

Yet, for reasons I still find inexplicable, God can create freedom from nothing, pass that freedom onto all the beings in Creation, and claim that that freedom is truly free.

If my freedom is nothing more than the freedom God created for me, then my freedom is not free.

Full stop.

The same goes for agency. If God created agency in me, then my agency is God’s agency, not mine.

Freedom is a square circle God cannot create. The only logical freedom is uncreated freedom.

God created all the Beings in Creation, but He did not create their freedom and agency.

The Beings in Creation brought that uncreated freedom into Creation when God made them, meaning that God created from "existing something" rather than from absolutely nothing.

Uncreated freedom is the source of good and evil. Beings in Creation can freely align themselves with God or against God. God has very limited or no influence over this freedom. Nor does he desire to impose upon this freedom because to do so would be to go against His nature and deny Himself.

God is God because He mastered uncreated freedom and is wholly Good. God is God because He yearns for other Beings to do the same.

God is not the source of evil in Creation because it arises from something He did not create.

Which begs the following question -- why did God allow uncreated freedom in Creation? Why didn’t He strip all beings of that freedom before creating them?

The answer to that question lies in the limits of God’s powers and, more significantly, in the overarching divine purposes of God’s Creation.

9 Comments

Laeth

9/3/2024 10:06:57

"Freedom is a square circle God cannot create."

i wish i could have come up with this one. very well done. and of course, agreed on the whole of it.

bruce g charlton

9/3/2024 16:52:56

I thought this was a very good piece. And it set me thinking.

All analogies are a simplified model of reality, or else they are of no use... At the same time, all analogies can mislead exactly because they are simplified models!

And after reading your essay, it came to me that one big problem in getting a valid discussion of "freedom", of the "agency" of Beings; is that of understanding *the nature* of freedom.

By my understanding, freedom is Not a property even potentially separable from an entity; as if we might have an entity that was unfree, and add freedom to it.

Regarding freedom as optional raises the misleading idea that there might be a reality without freedom, without agents, without Beings...

I have found that this (the normal) way of framing discussion, of setting up debate; strikes me as false from the beginning - and unsurprisingly, when rigorously-pursued it goes nowhere except into paradox.

It seems to me that the only way somebody can understand freedom is from the inside, from himself - by becoming aware of his own freedom. And then thinking about what kind of a thing this is.

My experience is that when thinking is really "free" (which is only sometimes) I know that it does not originate from anyone or anything else - it is not the *kind of thing* that can be given or bestowed or created.

It is part of being; and being is likewise a thing that just-is, the bottom line - not to be derived from or explained by anything else.

Francis Berger

9/4/2024 04:40:02

@ Bruce - Yes, I agree. Being and freedom are intrinsically linked. Even classical theology argue this.

However, there is, in my mind, a big difference between freedom that God automatically instills into a Being he creates from nothing and the pre-existent freedom of a pre-existent Being God creates into Creation.

Both define freedom as a part of being, yet the difference between the two in terms of origin and quality could not be more disparate.

Classical traditional theology cannot fathom freedom as originating anywhere but with God and cannot approach the idea of freedom existing anywhere prior to God, precisely because it regards God as the ultimate source of everyone and everything. Such assumptions have led to disastrous incoherence.

9/4/2024 04:27:49

@ Laeth - Coming from the master of "small talk", I take that as a high compliment.

9/4/2024 10:05:02

ahah, i am no master, always and only a disciple. but thank you :)

9/4/2024 10:19:47

@Frank, Bruce

the worst implication of the absolutist position, in my opinion, is not even that it means God in some way created evil but that it changes completely our understanding of this life, incarnation, why we're here - it makes it all futile, or some kind of punishment at best. and of course, it makes Jesus irrelevant as well.

but if we understand freedom as this germ that is uncreated, we can understand that we had to consent, in some form, to being incarnate, thus it is filled with meaning for ourselves personally, as individuals. and two, that when God gives us our bodies, the limits of incarnation are a way for us to learn how to use our freedom, as only limits can test it - much like meter in poetry, or harmony in music. in other words, the purpose of this life, with its limitations, is to be creative. and thus it also explains why Jesus himself had to go through it to open the next door, to initiate the next phase, itself a creative endeavor.

Karl

9/5/2024 12:17:06

This ties in with current debates about Universalism. If God saves everyone in the end, then what was the point of freedom? Why all the horror of earthly life, if all are eventually 'drawn irresistibly to his Love', as tends to be the Universalist line?

Jay

9/5/2024 18:52:46

Francis, as you know, I strongly dislike you on a personal level because of how you've behaved towards me and how I've seen you treat others. I do not expect you to ever acknowledge any fault and I accept that about you.

That said, this is a very good post. I wrote a very similar essay about twenty years ago, and I have always felt this is an important context that people do not discuss enough. Well done.

lea

9/6/2024 00:29:27

There are no limits to creation. Anselm got it right almost 800 years ago.

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

Created Freedom Is God's Square Circle

Leave a Reply.

Archives