Chance and choice

Reflections on the interplay of divine will, natural chance and human freedom.

Is everything that happens, everything we do, everything that exists completely fixed and determined; or is it utterly random and chaotic; or is it all up to us, a matter of will and decision? Do we live in a universe organised by divine command, blind chance or creaturely choice? Do we follow a set path to an inevitable destiny, or a random meandering to who knows where - or do we choose our own path and destination?

As usual, my irritatingly indecisive answer is 'a bit of all three'. I can't sign up either to total determinism, utter randomness or supreme creaturely free will, but rather to a complex interplay of all three elements.

Creator, cosmos and creatures

The three elements could be seen as standing respectively for the role of God, the universe/nature, and humans:

• God is arguably eternal and perfect and, in his own essence (though not necessarily in his relationship with his creation), unchanging.
  
  
• The universe (nature) seems at its most essential level to be random. The sub-atomic quantum world appears to be deeply and fundamentally chaotic, and randomness or chance - or else a pattern so complex it defies our deciphering - seems best to describe the behaviour of weather systems, radioactive decay, gene shuffling in sexual reproduction, and so many other natural phenomena.
  
  However, there is another side to this equation; everything in nature also obeys the natural laws and set processes of physics, chemistry and biology, so law and randomness walk hand in hand, randomness forever giving law something fresh to act on.
  
  
• Humans (and to an extent other creatures) seem to have at least a degree of genuine freedom and ability to make real and meaningful choices with significant consequences for themselves, other creatures and the world. Some would argue that every choice we make is completely predetermined by our genes, our nurture and our present circumstances, but I believe that there is always an element - however small - of free and uncoerced choice. 

Paradoxical sovereignty

God's sovereign rule is one of freedom not coercion

I find it fascinating that God, in his sovereignty and unchanging perfection, does not impose a set order on nature or on human life but gives the freedom of chance (randomness) to the one and the freedom of choice to the other. This suggests to me that God's sovereign rule is a rule of freedom not coercion, and that his unchanging perfection is simultaneously and paradoxically a dynamic diversity. (This perhaps ties in with Aquinas's comment on divine simplicity, that God's infinite simplicity would necessarily appear to finite minds as infinite complexity.)

Of course, randomness - 'chance' - does not necessarily equate to meaninglessness. A roll of the die can produce six different outcomes but each of those outcomes can have a valid meaning or significance. Similarly, complexity need not necessarily equate to chaos; even the most apparently chaotic arrangement can form a meaningful pattern to the infinite mind of God.

The impossible real

everything that happens is both mathematically impossible and inevitable

Looked at from one end of the telescope, everything that happens is mathematically impossible. The odds, viewed from the beginning of time, of my sitting here at this moment writing this or you sitting there reading it are incalculably infinitesimal - zero, in effect. The odds of your or my being here at all are infinitesimal. By any odds, we shouldn't exist. But we do; and viewed at this present moment from the other end of the telescope our being here and doing this is definite, actual, even (in a sense) inevitable - it simply is what is happening; its probability at this point is 1 (i.e. 100%).

And of course we don't know how wide the parameters of freedom are set - how many alternative pathways chance and choice have been allowed to get from the moment dot to this present moment; how many alternative endings and outcomes there could have been and could yet be; whether the final, ultimate outcomes and destinies are all set and it's only the paths to them that are free.

Nonetheless I believe very deeply in real and meaningful freedom to act and to choose within the framework of God's sovereignty and the universe's serendipity. Perhaps our choice, or our ability to choose, is meant to form the bridge between the fixedness of God and the fluidity of nature; the command of God and the chaos of the cosmos. Or perhaps the randomness of nature is what allows us the freedom to choose within the sovereignty of God.

Or perhaps I'm just talking rubbish about things that are far too big for me to have a clue about...

Related posts

• The Sovereignty of God
• Is God in the future?