How Could We Not Sin in Heaven?

I've often wondered how God will bring it about that we will not sin in heaven. If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? I think I've hit upon a partial solution, or perhaps a complete one. But first it is important to note that there is a distinction to make. In heaven, it will not simply be the case that we will not sin, but that we will be unable to sin. Does this crucial point mean that our choices will be somehow restricted, or even taken away altogether? How can we be free and obey God without the possibility of disobedience?

I would like to begin by making an analogy that will perhaps explain a bit of the situation. Each person, though all totally corrupted by sin (Romans 3), has differing desires for sin. I, for example, have no desire to indulge in drunkenness, though for others it is a serious temptation, and all have their own weaknesses. It could be the case that just as I have no desire to become drunk on my own, and that if anyone offered me the opportunity, I would reject it, in heaven this would be the case for all sins. Our inclinations would be such that if offered the chance to sin, we would freely reject it. But we can go even further. Only the righteous/saved will dwell with God in heaven (Revelation 21). Just as I will not only not choose drunkenness if it is offered to me, but will also not offer the choice to another (because of my own inclinations), no one in heaven will offer temptation to anyone else, because no one will be inclined at all toward any sin. So not only would we freely choose every time not to sin on our own, but the choice or temptation will never even be offered because no one will have sinful inclinations.

Does this capture the inability to sin, or is it simply a very strong form of the ability not to sin, which Christians (and only Christians) possess right now? I think that while the above may be helpful in imagining our state of mind in heaven, it does not quite capture our total inability to sin before God. Lenny Esposito points out (http://www.comereason.org/phil_qstn/phi039.asp) that God is unable to sin, though no one doubts He is totally free. Therefore it is indeed possible to be free and have an inability to sin. It could be that just as I (as a Christian not bound by my sin nature) am totally free (in the Sartrian sense of never being totally unfree), I do not have the ability to fly unaided. This does not essentially restrict my freedom (since we are not claiming a sort of radical freedom).

Granted, though, flying and making moral choices are not quite the same. For a complete understanding we must look to the Bible. 1 John 3:5-6, 9 state :

You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. … No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

It is our partaking in the nature of God that provides us with the inability to sin, because God cannot go against His own nature, namely, absolute holiness. Esposito writes:

Because we have two natures that are at odds with each other, there is an inner struggle that exists in every believer. Romans 7 is dedicated to showing this struggle. However, upon death, the old man will pass away leaving only the new, divine nature. One of the most important passages to understanding this is found in Romans 6:4-7:

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

The last verse is key - "he who has died is free from sin." When we're saved and choose to be baptized, we die to ourselves and receive a new nature. This nature is in conflict with our old fleshly nature. When our bodies die, that old nature perishes completely as well, leaving the divine nature alone.

Now we return to one of the big questions I raised at the beginning: If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? There is no easy answer to this question, and in the end we must trust God's wisdom. But Christian philosopher William Lane Craig writes that perhaps the only way heaven could exist would be as a result of our life on earth (http://www.origins.org/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html). He says:

Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.

There is also the very old concept of the felix culpa, or the happy fault. This idea, briefly stated, is that God allowed the Fall in order to bring about a greater good through the Incarnation of Christ and the salvation of our souls. As Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica,

But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Romans 5:20): "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound." Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal candle, we say: "O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!" (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4001.htm#3)

We see in the world that God allows some evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good, and so it can be inferred that if our relating to Christ in the way that we do now is the greatest and ultimate good, God might permit the entry of sin into the world in order to accomplish it.

Agent Causation and Frankfurt-Type Examples

In his article, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Harry Frankfurt presents his argument that the principle of alternate possibilities is false. This principle, simply put, states that for a person to be held accountable (morally responsible) for an action, they must have been able to do otherwise. This seems to hold in the event that a person is coerced into an action, or that that action was the only one available to them, or that they were in some other way “forced” into that action. However, Frankfurt presents what has come to be known, appropriately, as a “Frankfurt-type” example, in which he seems to demonstrate that a person should at the same time be held morally responsible while being unable to do otherwise. Frankfurt, being a compatibilist, wishes to show that determinism and free will can coexist. But what happens to the principle of alternative possibilities if we are not compatibilists? What if we are instead proponents of agent causation? Does Frankfurt’s example still hold? It is my contention that while Frankfurt does indeed prove that the law of alternative possibilities is not logically necessary, an agent-causation view of free will creates problems for Frankfurt’s example.

Let us first examine Frankfurt’s example and what it shows before altering it to fit our purposes. In the most appropriate iteration of his Jones case, Frankfurt has a certain unsavory character named Black hiding in the background, waiting to intervene in Jones’s life if Jones does not do as Black desires. Once Jones begins to seem as if he will perform a certain action that Black is opposed to, then Black will intervene in whatever way necessary to bring it about that Jones does as Black desires. The way in which Black intervenes is not important; it could be anything from magic to neurosurgery. Whatever the method, the success of the intervention is guaranteed. When the fateful choice is made, though, Jones instead decides on his own to choose that outcome which Black desires, and therefore Black does not intervene at all. This example is supposed to show that Jones is morally responsible for his action because he performed it based on his own choices, though at the same time he could not have done otherwise because of the Black’s intervening in the event that Jones seems as if he will choose differently.

This example obviously demonstrates that it is logically conceivable that there can be a case in which a person is morally responsible and yet at the same time unable to do otherwise. Let us set aside the problem of how Black determines when Jones will decide on a certain action and simply take it for granted that Jones does indeed decide on his own to do as Black wishes. We can very easily conceive of such a situation’s coherence, and thus the point that Frankfurt is trying to prove becomes logically possible. All it takes is conception.

Let us now consider an alternate example, one in which a formulation of agent causation comes into the picture. Let it also be the case that the agent is immaterial, for example a soul. Black desires that Jones performs a certain action, and will do whatever it takes to make certain that the desired action does indeed come about. At the moment of choice, Black prepares to intervene if necessary, but Jones decides on his own initiative to do as Black wishes, and so Black does not do anything. The example seems, on the surface, to be exactly the same.

But let us look more closely at the moment of choice. At that moment, Jones-as-Agent deliberates on the options and comes to a decision based, in part, on his character as it exists. In the agent’s consideration, there are alternative possibilities, each of which is decided against in favor of the one the agent does in fact choose. As such, the agent assents to be held accountable to the choice it makes, from the very fact that it makes a positive choice against other actions. Zooming out a bit, though, we find that in fact Black stands ready to force the choice upon the agent in some inexorable manner.

If the agent does not become aware that Black is prepared to intervene, then the choice-making process runs as described above, in which the agent makes a positive choice against alternative possibilities and for others. But if the agent is in fact aware of Black’s plan, then the ability to make a positive assent toward a certain choice and against others is removed. The agent must, as it were, simply carry out the action as if scripted. And even if the agent still decides to perform the action Black wishes, that decision is impacted by the fact that its options are limited to that one action. What does the agent assent to? It conceives of itself as only having one option (let us say that Black will intervene in the case that the agent also decides to refrain from acting). The possibility of choice is gone. Whether the agent would have decided on its own to carry out the action Black wished is irrelevant at this point. Its hand is forced, and it cannot assent or refrain, only act in the specific manner proscribed. There can be no moral responsibility here. In short, the example fails if the agent becomes aware of the intervention. One must at least believe there to be other options for moral responsibility to be given.

But we can go even further. It is not clear whether something can compel an immaterial agent in any other way than intellectually, in the manner of some sort of threat. If that is the case, then the agent has no choice but to be aware of the intervention. As a result, given an immaterial agent such as a soul, it seems as if we must inevitably conclude that the Frankfurt-type example fails.

What if we modify the example to include some sort of self-forming action or character-defining decision such as those which Kane proposes? Let us say that Black is far more dedicated than we thought, and that rather than waiting until the moment the act takes place Black arranges that during Jones’s youth he is presented with certain choices that form in Jones a certain character which is more likely to decide in a certain instance in the way Black wishes. Let us assume that Black succeeds in shaping in Jones a certain character which is likely to choose to act in the way Black wants. However, as an added precaution, Black also plans to watch Jones and intervene at the moment of choice if necessary. As it turns out, Jones does in fact act according to Black’s wishes, and so Black does not intervene at that moment.

Is Black still controlling Jones’s decisions? Jones-as-Agent is in fact acting according to his character, but that character has been formed by Black’s machinations. The agent, it appears, is still being controlled. But because he is acting in accordance with his character, is Jones morally responsible? It appears to me that while in the previous example there is no moral responsibility, because there is no possibility of choice with the knowledge of compulsion, in this example Jones is at least partially morally culpable.

While the responsibility is mitigated, because Jones makes the decision on his own, he should be held partially accountable. Despite the fact that Black has formed Jones’s character, the agent still assents to the choice and as such must be held responsible to some degree. If Jones were to find out that Black had formed his character in the past, it would then be up to Jones whether to follow his character, which would mean that he would be following Black’s conditioning, or to act outside of his character. Would acting outside his character in this instance be considered free, because it is not under Black’s control?

Now let us assume that Jones is not only aware of Black’s character-forming actions in the past, but is also aware that Black plans to intervene at the moment of decision, in order to force Jones to act. In this instance, Jones loses moral responsibility as stated above because he cannot assent to the particular choice over other choices. Not only this, though, but Jones is actually not able to assent to following his own character. If he follows his character and acts on his own as Black wishes, he is not fully free; if he does not follow his character Black intervenes and forces the choice. Either way, Jones is not free. In the previous example Jones did not have moral responsibility. In this one, he does not have alternative possibilities.

To conclude, while Frankfurt showed in his example that moral responsibility and alternative possibilities are not logically necessarily connected, it seems as if the example only holds if we do not accept agent causation. The principle of alternative possibilities still holds true in an incompatibilist universe.



Works Cited

Frankfurt, Harry. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 66, No. 23. (Dec. 4, 1969), pp. 829-839.