Question: What does the Law of God teach about free will?

“Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the LORDyour God is giving you.” Deuteronomy 16.20

Many matters of significance are implied in this brief command: that we may know what justice is, and what “doing justice” requires of us; that following justice is to be desired over following injustice; that there are consequences for our choices; that justice is in line with the will of God; and so forth.

I imagine that most people would like to live in a just society. They want things to be right and fair, and they want people to follow the rules or, if not, to receive the “just deserts” or their unjust actions.

But what if “justice” is merely a human construct? And what if that human construct, as we know it today, has been foisted upon us by people who are not acting in accord with human nature when they require us to submit to “justice” as they define it? What if, in fact, we are expected to act in certain ways, under certain circumstances, which to fail in is to incur punishment, but that we are almost certainly guaranteed to fail in because of the nature of our bodily composition?

This is the question, one of them at least, which certain members of the neuroscience community are beginning to ask. Recent studies are leading some neuroscientists to conclude that there is no such thing as free will. To these researchers it is becoming apparent that, prior to our actually making choices or taking actions, our brains have been at work directing our thoughts, wills, and choices in directions determined by factors other than our desires. Through a variety of brain studies, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, neuroscientists believe they can observe the brain working before the subjects being observed make conscious decisions. The brain is at work, in effect, guiding our desires and choices, and it is acting in response to stimuli from within and around us, of which we are not conscious and over which we have no control.

In other words, we have no free will. Our willing is determined by activity within our brains, brought on by stimuli beyond our ability to know or to control.

In the arena of justice, this could mean that punishing “criminals” for their actions is, in effect, inhumane, because justice, as practiced today, holds people accountable for their actions, when it may be that they actually have no control over their actions, that other factors or forces are operating in or on them before they choose to act, compelling them to act in ways beyond their ability to control. “Justice” as we know and practice it today may not be “just” at all, and it may be time to reconsider such taken-for-granted terms as “crime” and “punishment” and “rehabilitation.”

The philosophical community is alarmed by such conclusions, as are many neuroscientists and, sociologists, legal experts, law enforcement officials, and (of course) politicians. Is some of the most nuanced and sophisticated science of our day leading us to see that our centuries-old definitions of “justice” are wrong, and our system of justice inhumane?

In God’s commandment to Israel is embedded the assumption, as we have seen, that the people can know what justice is and what it requires, and that they can freely choose to follow justice and only justice. Is God simply wrong?

T. M. Moore

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