Questions about the nature of God and Free Will

Apologetics
1

I’m having difficulties in understanding how “Free Will” to choose between God and the alternative is not coercion.

Analogies are often the best way for me to understand something abstract.

Analogy 1: A parent tells their 5 year old child not to go outside at night because there are animal predators that could cause harm and even ultimate demise. In this analogy the parent did not create the predators and does not control the predators. The predators are a part of the natural world and the parent neither created the natural world nor has ultimate control over the natural world.

Analogy 2: The parent wants their 5 year old child to choose to sit down and watch movies. The parent tells their child that if they choose NOT to watch movies with them, the child will not be welcome in the house any longer and moreover, the parent will no longer talk to or see the child for eternity. In this analogy, unlike in the first analogy, the parent does create the parameters and has the ability to alter them. This parent would be considered coercive, whereas the parent in analogy 1 would not be coercive.

What are arguments against God not being coercive if Analogy 2 describes the free will “choice” humans are given?

2

Your analogies are completely wrong from scratch.

  1. Freedom isn’t doing what you want but self-determination to goodness, God. For example, a drug addict, might feel he’s more free if he gets the drugs, but in fact he becomes more slave to his sin.
  2. Evil in this world is generated, not by God, but by choosing slavery instead of real freedom, starting with original sin.
  3. Every single person in hell didn’t really believe in hell and freely chose not to be with God at the moment of death by preferring un-repentance (a sin is an attachment to Satan) without any coersion.

Analogy: don’t stick your fingers in the socket/outlet or you’ll die. Which means: don’t commit a mortal sin (and leave your fingers in the socket by not repenting) or you’ll suffer eternal death (since God is eternal life).

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Don’t tread on Me, says … JESUS !

Eucharistic miracle proves we are ALL stepping on Jesus!

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https://www.catholic365.com/article/58312/tonguers-v-handers.html

On one hand, heretics deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic particles, with the false argument that they are too small, while on the other hand, they correctly believe in that a host can be consecrated with just one invisible atomic molecule of gluten (yet they don’t care about fake-consecration of so-callled “low-gluten hosts”, which have no gluten!):

Understanding parts per million. Low gluten Celiac hosts that are not capable of hosting Jesus:

https://www.catholic365.com/article/50945/vatican-error-low-gluten-hosts-that-cant-host-jesus.html

Bishops should have apologized after 2020 for denying Priests, Mass, Sacraments for no real reason: Johns Hopkins 18000-studies meta-analysis proved lockdowns useless, while Catholic epidemiologists had predicted the futility of quarantining the healthy (all falsely presumed to be asymptomatic with tainted PCR tests designed to give massive false positives by overcycling and calibration with non-prevalent MERS instead of the flu) and the lack of results was obvious because the curve never flattened after 2 weeks and the next 2 weeks and the next … year!

https://www.catholic365.com/article/26128/apologies-from-your-church.html

Vatican Bank Supports Abortion

https://www.catholic365.com/article/58469/vatican-endorses-satan-corp.html

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https://www.catholic365.com/article/38948/its-all-about-mary.html

Mary’s physical presence in the Eucharist

https://www.catholic365.com/article/30587/cat-ai-mary-is-physically-present-in-the-eucharist.html

Virgin Mary’s body found ?!

https://www.catholic365.com/article/30567/virgin-marys-body-found.html

Sign appeal to Pope Leo XIV about Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix

https://www.catholic365.com/article/57661/sign-appeal-to-pope-leo-xiv-about-co-redemptrix-and-mediatrix.html

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https://www.catholic365.com/article/30313/95-marriages-null-.html

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https://www.catholic365.com/article/11832/the-plan-to-destroy-marriage-and-family.html

Meaningful or meaningless? True marriage is a mirror of the Holy Trinity, where each of the spouses gives themselves completely to each other, through God’s love.

The sad thing is that most marry without God, and their marriages are null under His eyes:

This euthanasia will kill us all

https://www.catholic365.com/article/30553/euthanasia-links-to-abortion.html

Heretic evolution theories. Random-evolution theory is debunked by molecular biology, fossil records and the impossible hybrid, the platypus (half bird, half mamal). And of course, there’s no randomness in Divine Providence. We need a new model and a Catholic framework for really-scientific non-heretic evolution theories:

https://www.catholic365.com/article/14280/on-the-origin-of-species-by-means-of-artificial-selection.html

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https://www.catholic365.com/article/23051/if-you-find-an-et-run-.html

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https://www.catholic365.com/article/23066/carbon-climate-change-wrong.html

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3

Peace to all,

The Host is the Body, Blood, Souls and Divinity of the Holy Family becoming conceived alive and living “In The Christ” for all mankind becoming again for all Creation in One God in being.

Gods nature becomes flesh hypo-statically united through The Host “In One Christ Body” becoming again Transfigured in One Family.

Free will becomes timelessly statically undefiled statically dynamically pulsing forever in His Passion forever never failing forever loving only and loving with only the most love becoming again in One Family One God in being, OMNiLogically From the Faith of Abraham.

The Word becomes flesh “through The Host” “In The Christ.”

Holy Spirit Family Powers unite Transfiguring all Creation again from Creation becoming Immaculately Transformed Immortalized and Sanctified through the New Eve becoming Incorruptibly Glorified re-Sanctified Confirmed from Sacrifice through Penance in the New Adam for Jesus becoming “In The Christ” for all mankind becoming forgiven in both natures from the power of the spirit manifesting undefiled through the life immortalized becoming again unable to fail in all cases fulfilled re-imaged as The Father Transfigured in One Holy Spirit Family One God in being, OMNiLogically from the Faith of Abraham.

The OMNiLogical Undefiled Intelligence of the Mind of the Holy Family One God in being Preexisting is in the Host, from Baptized immortalized transformed into the New Eve becoming sanctified from spirit Incorruption in One Body for all becoming Brothers and Sisters through the New Eve for all becoming Into the Catholic Church. Transformed flesh from Holy Spirit Incorruption can now become forgiven from the Immaculate Conception transformed for Jesus the Eternal Priestly authority in the New Adam becoming hypo-statically united in One Christ Body, for all becoming from Sacrifice through Penance forgiven for all mankind becoming glorified Sons and Daughters of God becoming again for all Creation Transfigured in One Holy Spirit Family One God in being.

Peace always,
Stephen Andrew

4

To answer this in its true light would be to answer from Heaven and exactly why one is to trust God and He alone. Because surely only God can know all things about what is good for us and we cannot as humans know what it would be like to have taken heed and discerned God’s Will, intently, when this life is over.

Except God does give glimpses and very acutely set out paths for us to walk so that we can come to one-day live an eternity in Heaven, not leaving us to follow rules without there being some indication as to the reason.

To call God “coercive” would furthermore be to undermine the experience of Eternal Bliss and to not understand that God made humanity to love and…be Loved. To know you are fully loved into Eternity in the most unselfish way would be to understand why, when God says not to bite of the apple until He gives such an okay to do so, it is best to just do what He says.

5

Peace to all,

Saint Paul Struck by the Light of Faith Paul delivers faith to the faithless through the Pentecost to the Gentiles.

Stephen Andrew delivers the OMNiLogical Pentecost to the fatihful Catholics. Spirit Faith becomes Spirit and Life Logic becoming again One God in being a Family.

Jesus and Mary Christ become united “In The Christ” become again for all in One God in being a Family.

The Holy Spirit Family Transfiguration powers unite all from Created, Transformed and Golrified for all becoming through the Christ.

From the God from the Faith of Abraham, Mary and Jesus Christ are spirit and life God natures in one hypo-statically united Christ Body from the wedding of Cana.

Gods will is the Entire wisdom, The Sophia Intelligence from Gods preexisting in One Family. Undefiled logical intelligence existed before creation and manifests through Big Bang for logical finite minds to be able to understand God becoming again in two natures for One Family for all.

One cannot see God, be truly Catholic until one sees the Holy Spirit as the Family of God and Mary as God always together with The Father and the Son becoming again for all in One Family.

Peace always,
Stephen
Gods in being preexisting become again for all Creation in One God in being.

6

I think where we may differ is on some of the underlying assumptions.

When you define freedom as “self-determination of goodness”, that’s a meaningful theological definition, but it doesn’t really address the question I was raising about whether the structure of the choice itself can be coercive.

Your socket analogy works if the danger is something the parent did NOT design or control. My question was about cases where the authority does design the consequences and could remove them. In that kind of scenario, it’s harder to call the outcome a purely “natural” result of a person’s choice.

I’m not trying to argue against your view. If freedom is only choosing the good, and evil is slavery, then I’m curious how a person could “freely” choose hell in the first place. That’s the tension I’m trying to explore.

7

Peace to all,

Jesus already said, about the disciple he loves the most, “What is it to you if he should remain alive until I return, you must follow me.”

Peace always,
Stephen Andrew

8

I don’t think that people consciously choose hell. I think that they (consciously or not) choose sin and tell themselves things such as “I’m not doing anything wrong” and “there’s no punishment attached to doing what I’m doing” and “there is no hell.” Father Robert D. Smith said that many people will be surprised when they find out that, just as Jesus said, there is a judgment.

9

AveMaria,

What the actual choices/options from which the person has to select?

10

Right — that’s exactly the tension I’ve been pointing out.

If freedom is “self‑determination to the good,” then choosing evil is a loss of freedom, not an exercise of it. And if choosing evil is a loss of freedom, then choosing hell can’t be a free choice.

So the question becomes:
Is hell the result of free will, or is freedom only the ability to choose the good?

Both can’t be true at the same time.