FREEDOM OF CHOICE

In all things relating to the body, man reveals a close relationship to the animal world. Naturalists class him in the mammalia, and put him at the head of the primates. They tell us that he has a more erect posture, and a more highly evolved brain, than the anthropoid apes. His face is set at a more perpendicular angle in relation to the body, but physically there is no great gulf between man and the other primates. He belongs to the same natural order.

The same number of bones compose his skeleton. The same muscles and the same viscera are in his body, and even the same natural senses enable response to the environment. We can grant these claims of the scientist, but there are two characteristics in which man differs from all other earthly creatures: The possession of freedom of the will and the rationality of intellect.

The human being is the only creature that can submit to self-examination; the only creature that can persistently deny personal appetites and impulses; the only creature that can simultaneously love one thing, think of another thing, and then act in opposition to the first love and initial thought. In a word, man has free will—freedom of choice in mental and spiritual things. Swedenborg devotes a whole chapter of True Christian Religion to a discussion of the imperative necessity of freedom of choice and its value to us as spiritual beings.

It is the ability to choose between two courses of action, and' especially the ability to choose between right and wrong, between the true and the false, that separates us from the whole brute creation. It is this freedom of choice that makes our conscious response to God possible, and enables us to attain angelhood. In this respect, there is a great gulf fixed between us and the rest of the animal world. This subject of human free will has been a perennial subject of debate for many centuries. There is a school of thought that denies the possession of freedom to the human mind.

It says we are creatures of heredity and environment. Our motives, say the advocates of determinism, are the result of outside pressure acting upon inherited desire. We will always follow the strongest motive, and that motive is decided not by our own will but by the pressure of circumstances acting on hereditary inclination. Pushed to its logical conclusion this belief takes away from us all responsibility for our actions. It says that Christ on the cross, and Nero fiddling while Rome burned, were each alike predestined to his fate, each alike the creature of circumstances.

As a subject for academic discussion this theory, that all our thoughts, decisions and actions are determined by circumstances over which we have no control, may be very interesting. But all civilization, all social order, all law and all political procedure are built up on the opposite belief, namely, that we are responsible agents who can choose between good and evil, and can act, if we so desire, in opposition to the pressure of heredity and environment. There is no law court in the civilized world that would accept the plea of “determinism” as an excuse for crime.

All social order is built on the assumption that the individual is morally a free agent. Swedenborg distinctly teaches that we possess freedom of choice. He gives many reasons for this freedom, and considers the subject from a spiritual point of view. If human beings had not this freedom, he says, the Word of God would be of no use. Why teach us the Ten Commandments if obedience or disobedience thereto is already decided by the pressure of circumstances? Why teach us to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God if our lives and conduct are determined by an inexorable fate? If we have no freedom of choice, why ask us to choose? Why reveal to us the will of God? Why should the Lord invite people to turn to him, if the turning is outside the range of the human will?

Again, without freedom there would be nothing whereby we could unite ourselves with the Lord, All response to Divine invitations must be voluntary on our part, If we were compelled by circumstances to turn to the Lord, we would be automatons. There would be no virtue in our obedience, A sheep is a harmless animal, but no one praises the virtue of the sheep-fold. The sheep can no more be praised for its gentleness than a tiger can be blamed for predatory instincts. Obedience to God on our part is only praiseworthy from the fact that we yield it as the result of freewill.

Swedenborg goes further, than this and asserts that if man had no spiritual freedom God would be the cause of evil. Evil is a perversion of good. It came into, the world when people commenced to live from the promptings of selfhood rather than from obedience to Divine Law. Humanity is therefore the author of evil. Free to choose between good and evil, people chose' the latter and became slaves to their natural appetites instead of their master. And for the gratification of those appetites they forsook the path of obedience by exercising their God-given freedom.

That this would happen was foreseen by the Creator. That redemption would be necessary, and that with divine help people would eventually win their way back to virtue, was also foreseen. This ultimate victory is the “one divine event to which the whole creation moves” Humanity must learn to love goodness and truth in freedom and must choose the heavenly path in freedom. The only alternative to this belief would be to assume that God created all the evil in the world. Either God or we are responsible*

If we were not free, the responsibility for every form of evil would rest with the Creator, then we could no longer believe in God as being of perfect love. In another of his great works, Arcana Coelestia, Swedenborg explains how the evils of the race produced hell, and how the influence of hell ultimated itself in evil forms in the world of nature. But in True Christian Religion our author contents himself with the simple statement that the abuse of human freedom is responsible for the evil that is in the world. He does, however, give on illustration of this.

Speaking from his experiences in the spiritual world he says, “Several times I have heard expressions respecting the good of charity made to descend from heaven, which passed through the world of spirits and penetrated into hell, even to its depths; and in their progress these expressions were turned into such as were directly contrary to the good of charity, and finally into expressions of hatred of the neighbor; a sign that everything that goes forth from the Lord is good, and that it is turned into evil by the spirits in hell” The human will and the understanding of humanity are in the exercise of freedom.

We are free to do evil or good according to free choice. We are free to live in charity towards the neighbor, free to make ourselves useful in the world, free to follow the principles of heavenly life. Also we are free to live according to the dictates of our natural mind, free to wage war on our neighbors, to seize the goods of others, to harbor and practice deceit, revenge and lust. Nevertheless, says Swedenborg, both in this world and in the spiritual world the doing of evil is restrained. “It is self evident,” he says, ''that the commission of evil, both in the spiritual and natural worlds, must be restrained by laws, in order that society may continue to subsist.

Without external restraints not only society, but the whole human race would perish. We are obsessed by the love of ruling, and the love of gain. These two loves, unless restrained, would know no limit; and they are the chief source of our hereditary evils. The sin of Adam consisted in his evil desire, infused in him by the serpent, to become as God. Hence the curse pronounced against him stated that the earth should bring forth the thorn and thistle (Gen. 3:5,18), by which is meant all evil and its attendant falsities.

People who have surrendered to the love of ruling and to the love of gain regard themselves as all-important. They have no pity, no fear of God, no love of the neighbor; they are un-merciful, ruthless, cruel, covetous, and greedy; and they will employ any sort of craft and treachery to rob others” If we had no freewill in spiritual things, it would be easy for the Lord to convert the whole of humanity to himself in a single day. Then, by divine fiat, all evil in human life would cease. But people would no longer be able to come into the image and likeness of God. “Compulsion in spiritual things affects only the natural man; but it closes up the spiritual man, and binds him to the truth.”

Without freewill people would not be truly human. The human race pays a big price for the spiritual freedom conferred upon it. It pays in wars, tyranny and oppression. It pays in crime, perversion and degradation. All these things are due to the misuse of freedom by the individual. But in the proper use and enjoyment of that freedom the human race enjoys spiritual gifts and triumph attainable in no other way. Only by freedom of choice can we rise on stepping stones of our dead selves to communion with the Lord and to angelhood in heaven. “The free individual is the one whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves besides.”

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