Divine Perfection and Free Will

Why these two ideas are incompatible

We intuitively know that God, in His essence and in His nature, is perfect. In fact, an appropriate definition of the word ‘perfection’ might well be ‘God’. What it means for God to be perfect is that He is entirely whole, complete within Himself and lacking absolutely nothing.

One might consider the divine attribute of omnipresence in relation to what I have written in the preceding paragraph. If the extent of God’s being were limited in any way so as to prevent Him from being omnipresent, He would not be perfect. Without omnipresence, God would cease to have power over the entirety of existence, and this would be a limitation on His perfection. We cannot accept such a limitation as we know intuitively that God is all-powerful and perfect.

God’s omnipresence is important because it essentially means that God is existence itself and that any created thing must exist within God. This perspective is sometimes referred to as ‘panentheism’ which literally means ‘all in God’. A panentheistic perspective that embraces God’s omnipresence leads to an understanding that there can be no free will, because there is no part of existence in which God is not present, and therefore there is no part of existence which is not under His control.

The divine sovereignty versus human free will problem has occupied the thinking of philosophers and theologians throughout history, but the key to resolving this predicament is to understand that God’s omnipresence — an aspect of His perfection — leaves no room for free will. Instead, the entirety of creation is a manifestation brought about by the will of God for His purposes, and He is in control of the unfolding of all events in the microcosm and the macrocosm. It’s important to consider this understanding as part of the theology of whichever religious path we may be following.