We do rather cherish the idea that, when it comes to making decisions—and especially ethical ones—that we operate with a kind of reasonable control over our preferences. We receive and observe the information in front of us and then we use our reason to evaluate each course of action.

And then we decide. Freely.

Or so we imagine. Recently I saw a documentary in which a man was invited to lie in an MRI machine while being presented with a series of ethical decisions. The scientist monitoring his brain activity declared that the man’s brain had subconsciously made the decision up to six seconds before he was aware of choosing.

Now, we should be wary of  scientific experiments performed for TV. What goes on in an MRI machine is not the same as what occurs in lounge rooms or in offices, or in any of the normal spaces in which we have to make choices.

Nevertheless, the experiment suggests that our choices, including our moral ones, are not as ‘free’ as we would like them to be. If we understand ourselves well, we will know that we are a bundle of instincts, genes, impressions, influences and brain waves, over which we have almost no control. Our preferences and decisions emerge out of this complex tangle of processes. We are not like a blank slate, not at all.

For the leading ‘New Atheist’ Sam Harris, this means that human beings do not at all have anything like a free will. In his book Free Will he announces that, “The facts tell us that free will is an illusion.” What then? How can we hold anyone responsible for their actions if their decisions are not their own? If a person is compelled to act by factors extrinsic to them, then they cannot be held liable for any consequence that results. Moral judgment becomes impossible.

Given that, like almost all theological systems, the Christian Bible describes a moral universe in which human beings are agents called to act in the light of God’s character and in accordance with God’s judgments, it naturally follows that Christian theologians have been attracted to the notion of human free will and have sought to expound it at great depth.

Yet there’s a theological conundrum here too. It has two aspects. The first has to do with God’s control over events. If God controls and even predetermines everything that happens, then in what sense are his creatures at all free when they act? Then, in what sense can they be held accountable for their actions? If God condemns us simply for doing that which he had predetermined we would do, then it would seem very difficult to escape the conclusion that God is a monstrous being.

The second difficulty is to do with our own condition. Why, if we are ‘free’ to do the right thing, do we so often fail to do it? Human beings cannot resist sin, and indeed, there is none that avoid sin. In Romans 6, Paul calls us “slaves to sin”, by which he means that we are helpless to avoid sin and its consequences for us. We cannot, by something from within our own nature, somehow pick ourselves up and get sin-free.

In Pauline terms we are possessed of a fallen sarx—“flesh”—by which he means that there is something unavoidable about our lapse into sinful behaviour because of something about us. We are imprisoned by our sinful desire. The metaphor of slave-bondage, chosen by Paul the Apostle and revisited by the African bishop Augustine and later by the German reformer Martin Luther, reflects the profound corruption of the human will, to the degree that no simple and unaided decision of the human will can overcome it.

The will itself is a broken instrument, so appealing to the will won’t work to change people.

But if we cannot do otherwise, can we really be held accountable for sin? Augustine of Hippo was loathe to reject the term “free will”, and wanted rather to say that even though the will is free, men and women freely but “inevitably choose” to sin. That is: we sin not because we have no option, but because that is what we actually do. At every point, we could do otherwise. The fact is that we very often don’t. Even though we can understand what is the right thing to do and can see the consequences of doing the opposite, we nevertheless listen instead to our appetites. Our desires for independence, for pleasure, for significance and for possessions are louder in our ears than our consciences. To borrow from Robert Palmer somewhat: we might as well face it, we’re addicted to sin.

It is not simply a matter of coaxing human individuals to choose differently, or educating them; a wholesale renovation of the human person is what is needed from the inside. Even the capacity to say “yes” to God does not lie within us.

Is this such a dark view of human nature that it leads to despair? Does it make the whole business of urging people to do the right thing pointless? That’s the accusation that humanism levels against the view I have just outlined. Surely we rob humanity of its dignity if we say that human beings inevitably sin? We need to tell people to be better, and teach them how to change, and expect them to rise to the occasion. If we expect them to fail, and we give up calling them to be better people, we will end up with a very    grim view of society indeed.

It is important to recognise that the Bible doesn’t describe human  beings as always choosing sin over doing good. Not at all. In fact, as Paul notes in Romans 2 and 7, we are much more of a mixed bag. But this observation proves that we are still responsible agents, not simply sinning automatically, but actually in principle capable of choosing for good at any given point.

Let’s see if we can think through the problem in another way. One of our assumptions in thinking through the idea of free will is that the free person is an independent one. We tend to imagine our freedom as giving us a God-like independence.

But we need to remember that we are God’s creatures, first and foremost. We are limited and finite. Whatever freedom we are given must mesh with our human nature. A fish is not free to fly like a bird; nor is it free to lactate like a mammal. It is most free when it is most itself, operating within its God-given limits.

So it is with humankind. We are most free when we recognise God’s authority over us; when we recognise that we are made in his image; and when we hear his call to be like him in the world. For that freedom we were made. We flourish in it.

And the opening pages of the Bible show God inviting human beings to exercise their free will in their mission to order the creation. They are to give names to the animals—their names; and they are given freedom to eat from every tree in the garden, bar one. They are not simply acting out a script that God has given them; they are, rather, improvising on his themes. Their true freedom is not an alternative to his rule: it exists because of, and under, his rule.

The fall of humankind looked like a free choice for freedom. But it was in fact a choice for enslavement—like the heroin addict’s first injection.

All of this shows us how extraordinary the grace of God is. Even our response to God in faith is the gift of God, as Paul says in Ephesians 2: “for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”.

But remarkably, the Holy Spirit works in us to renovate us as the creatures we were meant to be. Which means we still operate in our limited way, influenced by our genes and our parents and our peers and our habits and our instincts, but now with the aid of the Spirit of God renewing our minds. As Paul says in Romans 12:2 “be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Then you will be able to know what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will”. Was not the most extraordinary moment in the history of human freedom the moment when Jesus prayed “not my will, but yours”?

Do human beings have a free will? I think it is better to say: human beings were given the dignity of a freedom to live as God’s creatures according to his gracious will. That will is now distorted, and not powerful enough to overcome our desires. We lapse. In the gospel, though, we have the offer of a return to the true freedom of life with God.