Free Will, Quantum Physics, and the Garden of Gethsemane

Free will is a perennially controversial topic. How is that only some are predestined and yet all are judged, for example? How is that God can “harden” Pharaoh’s heart and yet hold him accountable for his actions? Ditto for Judas and other villains, whose actions were prophesied before they took place? Recently, however, my intellectual difficulties with free will have specifically centred on the realisation that, when somebody makes a decision, they ultimately do so for a reason.

Let’s say I do something wrong. Why did I do what I did? A reasonable answer to that question cannot be provided without negating the idea of free will, for once you identify a cause of my behaviour, you are implying that my behaviour was the result of determinate forces rather than any sort of meaningful choice. This is true even if we ignore ‘structural’ explanations that would attribute my behaviour to external factors relating to the particular situation that I faced, and focus only on me as the agent. Maybe I acted as I did because I have certain desires or weaknesses, for example, or maybe I am just a bad person. In any case, even if the reason for my actions is internal to me, it is still a reason, and we are therefore forced to the conclusion that, if anybody else had faced the same conditions – where those conditions include my preferences, worldview, personality traits, and other internal factors – they would have done the same thing, because they would have effectively been me.

You might retort that my preferences, mind-set, and personality are not beyond my control – if I am selfish, on this view, it is because I have cultivated selfishness rather than altruism. However, even ignoring the fact that personality traits are usually innate or the result of upbringing rather than conscious choice, this riposte only begs the question, because cultivating a certain trait ultimately involves a choice, or rather a series of choices. Why did you choose to cultivate a certain trait whereas I didn’t? We are back to square one. Alternatively, you might retort that people are capable of acting against their desires. However, I could just as easily reply that only people with certain qualities, traits, or whatever are capable of such self-denial, self-discipline, or whatever. What if I do not possess those characteristics? Again, we are back to square one.

With all of that said, there are two reasons why my hope in the concept of free will has been restored. The first reason is found in a rather odd place – odd not only because it is weird in itself, but also because you would not necessarily expect to find philosophical meaning in it – namely quantum physics. Let me say from the outset that I am strictly a layman when it comes to this area, so please excuse any inaccuracies, simplifications, etc.

Scientists (and people in general) used to (and to some extent still do) perceive the world in ‘Newtonian’ terms. The Newtonian paradigm conceives the world as a massive machine based on a system of interlocking cogs, whereby forces act on matter to generate physical phenomena. This is a world of cause and effect, in which nothing happens without a cause. If you could collect and compute all the relevant information, in this world, you could predict what would happen to a tee. Thus, on this view, the only reason we cannot precisely predict the weather, for example, is that the weather is complex (perhaps infinitely complex), not because it is inherently unpredictable. 

Essentially, my musings on free will have been predicated on a Newtonian view of agency – every action is essentially a reaction, an effect of some definite cause. More recently, however, the field of quantum physics has come to the fore to compete with the Newtonian paradigm. What this field shows us is that, at the extremely microscopic, sub-atomic level, the universe is fundamentally indeterminate. Even if you could collect and compute all the relevant information, in a quantum world, you would not be able to predict the outcome or state of a given particle or phenomenon.

The popular online comic strip xkcd recently published a cartoon depicting a line of academics: the first is a sociologist; the second is a psychologist, who declares that “sociology is just applied psychology”; next in line is a biologist, who in turn declares that “psychology is just applied biology”, and so on to chemistry and physics (and ultimately maths). If we run this sequence in reverse, we can conclude that, if physics is characterised by indeterminacy, then so too is chemistry, biology, psychology, and finally sociology (and you could keep going to economics and politics). Indeterminacy in physics thus implies indeterminacy of human agency. Of course, this line of thought does not definitively prove that free will exists – never mind that we can assign morality to it – but it does at least allow for the possibility of its existence.

The second factor that has helped revive my belief in free will comes from the Bible. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, facing the prospect of dying on a cross for the sins of the world, says (three times in fact) something very peculiar: “not My will, but Yours be done” (see Matthew 26:36-50; Mark 14:32-46; Luke 22:39-49; John 18:1). Earlier in his ministry, He similarly claimed, "I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38). I find these to be astonishing declarations, which shed invaluable light on the idea of free will. In particular, the passages show us that, at one level, Jesus actually ‘willed’ to do something that was against God’s will – namely to eschew the cross – but, at another level, nevertheless acted (and indeed willed) against His own will[1]. Indeed, on another occasion Jesus claims that “[His] food is to do the will of the Father” (John 4:34).

Although these scriptures may give us hope that free will is real, they nevertheless present us with a curious state of affairs, whereby Jesus' will is simultaneously contrary and identical to that of the Father. What I glean from this paradox is that there are multiple levels of will: we all of us have a human, sinful will, but we also have a will ‘above’ that will – like Jesus, we can will not to act according to our own will. Potentially, this could lead to either a circular argument or an infinite regress of wills, but I would submit that the Holy Spirit is our ‘ultimate’ will. After all, the Gethsemane episode shows us that the will to act against one’s own will is not a ‘wilful’ act per se, but rather one of self-denial, of submission to Another’s will. When Jesus surrendered His will, when He denied Himself, His will automatically reverted to that of the Father. Painting a picture of the Trinity that contrasts neatly yet tragically with the scene of Jesus’ baptism (see Matthew 3:13-17), I would argue that this occurred through the Holy Spirit.

The same is true for us; Romans 8:27, for example, tells us that "the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God". Indeed, in similar fashion to Jesus’ baptism, this is part of the mysterious ‘joining’ that occurs between our spirits and the Holy Spirit (see, e.g., 1 Corinthians 6:17). Jesus goes so far as to state that we become His relatives if we do the Father's will (Matthew 12:50; see also, e.g., John 17:11,20-23). Over time, moreover, just as Jesus grew in stature and favour after His baptism, the Holy Spirit transforms our sub-wills so that not only are we capable of acting against our sinful will, but our will becomes that of God (1 Corinthians 12:13; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18), although this process will never be fully complete until the End of Days (e.g. Romans 8:23).

Of course, like Jesus, we still have to choose to listen to and obey the Spirit, and we can (and often do) choose not to. A fundamental indeterminacy thus remains, and it would appear that for all of my deliberations I have not really explained anything. I have an easier time accepting this, though, knowing that the universe itself is indeterminate, and that Jesus Himself - who, after all, is the firstborn of all creation, by whom all things were created, and in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17; see also Romans 8:29) - grappled with the same issue.

Note:

[1] In so doing, of course, Jesus was correcting what occurred in the first Garden, when the first Adam (plus Eve) acted according to his own will rather than God’s, and thus introduced sin into the world; whereas Adam (and Eve) chose to eat from the forbidden tree and eschew the Tree of Life, Jesus choses to let himself be crucified on the tree, and so give us that life once more. Now, it may appear that the Newtonian conception of agency rears its ugly head here - a strange coincidence since Newton was famously enlightened by a piece of fruit falling on his head from a tree - for we are compelled to ask why Adam and Eve chose to sin if God had not made them sinful. By the same token, however, the quantum conception of agency may resolve this very puzzle – Adam and Eve sinned not because they were sinful, but because they had free will, which is inherently indeterminate.