Does Christianity allow for free will?

IMHO, this proposition carries greater implications that many realize. From this we must conclude that there exists no free will in heaven if free will is what causes evil and heaven is supposed to be "evil-free." Additionally, if we were to presume that free will can exist in heaven, then we can conclude that God is capable of creating an environment in which free will can exist without evil. If he is so capable yet an environment exists in which free will exists with evil, then we must conclude that God wanted evil there and in fact put it there, and the claim that free will is the cause of evil is thus negated.

There's a problem here. In the typical Christian conceptualization of God, His foreknowledge is exhaustive and infallible. If that is the case, then your statement "He ... knew what might happen" is actually false. With infallible foreknowledge, He must've known what would necessarily follow his decision to create humans. In fact, its meaningless to speak of free will at all if God's knowledge is thus. All events are necessarily consistent with God's foreknowledge at the instant of creation and God is therefore culpable for all outcomes.EDIT: Given this statement from you in your response to Martin: ...it seems your God-concept is more consistent with the existence of free will than the god-concept against which I am arguing. It is only infallible and exhaustive foreknowledge of all single outcomes that negates free will. The probablistic scenario you've described is something different since God within it (as I understand it) God can be partially wrong.[This message has been edited by ::, 01-05-2004]

Hi, Justin. Asgara already supplied a sufficient response to your post, but I thought I'd phrase one for you in my own words in order to give you a few perspectives... The important qualification that is often overlooked is the supposed infallibility of God's foreknowledge. Since it is supposed to be impossible in principle for God to have erroneous knowledge, all of the future events which he knows thus must be precisely determined in order to be known. It is a contradiction to say that God infallibly knows the exact future state of any propogating system, and that future state is still undetermined. In other words, if the state were truly undetermined, then God could not know infallibly and precisely what it is. Knowing that future state precisely and infallibly requires determining exactly what it is to be known. Well, strictly speaking, the uncertainty principle prohibits this from being true because it is impossible in principle to know completely and precisely any single state of the universe. You may be able to predict the future state of your body with a high degree of accuracy, but you cannot predict it with infallible accuracy. Yes. That is, between infallible foreknowledge and free will.1.) I have free will with respect to action A at time T if and only if there exist possible worlds A₁, A₂, A₃, ... A_n in the future (at time (T + 1)) of action A.2.) Divine (infallible) foreknowledge requires that all worlds contrary to that which is divinely known are impossible (because those worlds represent the possibility for God to be wrong, which, according to the definition of infallibility, is impossible, hence those worlds do not exist).3.) Suppose that at time (T - 1), God infallibly knows that world A_G exists at (T + 1).4.) According to (2), all other worlds besides A_G are impossible, and therefore do not exist.5.) Therefore I do not have free will with respect to action A. Lots of odds and ends that I've found on the net. Nothing comes to mind that's worth singling out. I agree. If evil necessarily follows from free will, then free will can't exist in Heaven where there is supposed to be no evil....but that's a different thread altogether...