CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 1:

• God and His Attributes
• The Blessed Trinity
• Creation
• The Angels
• The Days of Creation
• Man
  • 75. Man's Soul
  • 76. Union of Soul and Body in Man
  • 77. Faculties of the Human Soul: In General
  • 78. Faculties of the Human Soul: In Particular
  • 79. The Intellective Human Faculties
  • 80. The Appetitive Human Faculties
  • 81. The Sensitive Appetite in Man
  • 82. The Intellective Appetite in Man: The Will
  • 83. Free Will
  • 84. Man's Knowledge of Bodily Reality
  • 85. The Manner or Mode of Man's Understanding
  • 86. What the Intellect Knows in Material Things
  • 87. Man's Knowledge of Himself
  • 88. Man's Knowledge of Nonmaterial Things
  • 89. Knowledge in the Separated Human Soul
  • 90. The First Production of Man's Soul
  • 91. The Production of the First Human Body
  • 92. The Production of Woman
  • 93. Man as the Image of God
  • 94. The Intellect of the First Man
  • 95. The Will of the First Man
  • 96. The Ruling Power of Man in the State of Innocence
  • 97. The Preservation of Man in the State of Innocence
  • 98. The Preserving of the Human Race in the State of Innocence
  • 99. The Bodily LIfe of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 100. The Righteousness of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 101. The Knowledge of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 102. Paradise
• The Divine Government

83. Free Will

1. The will is free with the freedom of choice ofmeans. If a man's will were not free, all counsels,exhortations, commands, rewards, and punishments would bemeaningless things. Man does not always act from necessity. Heweighs and considers a course of action; he seeks advice; he judgesthat this way is to be followed, then perhaps changes hisjudgment and decides on that way. Nor does a man act withthe mere sense-judgment of an animal, an instinctive judgment; heworks on understandable motives. Man acts with the unhamperedjudgment of an intellect which shows various courses open forchoice and makes practical and nonnecessitated decision. In a wordman has free will. In the fact that man is rational is involved thefact that he has free will.

2. The term free will, strictly understood, meansthe act of the will making a free choice. But the termfree will is commonly used as a synonym for the will itself. Andthus free will is the will in its character as a faculty fortending to or choosing, without being necessitated, goods uponwhich the intellect is capable of making various practicaljudgments.

3. Free will is an appetitive power, not a knowing power.It operates in the light of knowledge furnished by the intellect.Knowledge is, of course, necessary for the act of free will; choicecannot be made without knowledge of the field of choice. A travelercannot choose a road in total darkness which prevents his seeingany roads at all. But the characteristic act of free will is theact of choosing, and therefore it is a faculty of the appetitiveorder, and not of the cognitional or knowing order.

4. Free will as an act is the will exercising itsconnatural tendency towards good and resultant beatitude bychoosing, without being forced, some particular object apprehendedby the intellect as good or desirable.

"Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life eases the mind and a clean conscience inspires great trust in God."
Thomas á Kempis

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"Though the path is plain and smooth for people of good will, those who walk it will not travel far, and will do so only with difficulty if they do not have good feet, courage, and tenacity of spirit. "
St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

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"We must not be behind time in doing good; for death will not be behind his time. "
St Phillip Neri

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