Why I am a Universalist, Comment: A Soteriology for All Possible Worlds

I was talking today with Nolan Rampy one of my Masters thesis advisees (BTW, for readers of Freud's Ghost Nolan is doing his thesis on Terror Management Theory and religion). We were discussing my post on the post-cartesian world and the crisis of free will. On my Facebook account (which imports this blog) Nolan made this comment to that post:

Dr. Beck,
While neuroscience is rapidly disproving the notion of free will, from what i understand, research in quantum mechanics (i.e. heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is keeping the possibility of free will alive. i have done a reasonably good job of keeping up with the free will debate from the neuroscience perspective; however, i am in over my head when it comes to quantum mechanics, i would love to hear from you regarding a reconciliation of these two fields of research. or it may be that i have misunderstood the implications of quantum mechanics regarding the free will debate, in which case some clarification would be greatly appericiated.

This is a really interesting point. I had this reply:

Nolan,
After my universalism series, I ought to blog about free will. I think I will. However, here's a quick hit.

Some people think you can save free will from causality by rooting it in a non-deterministic mechanism (e.g., a randomizing devise). Quantum mechanics seems to deliver the goods on this. If free will were linked to quantum randomness you would, indeed, have a non-deterministic will. Success!

But what have you lost in this success? You still loose moral accountability and any notion of character. For if your choices are inherently random you still cannot be morally praised or blamed for your actions. Choice reduces to a random (albeit quantum) flip of the coin.

In the end, from my understanding and reading, quantum mechanics can defeat determinism but it produces a kind of will that is more troubling than the entity (a causal will) it was created to replace. Kind of like a volitional Frankenstein.

Anyway, Nolan and I were kicking this stuff around today when I said something to him I'd like to share here.

Basically, it has to do with the anxiety surrounding the free will debate. Lots of people worry about it.

Part of the worry stems from the fact that free will is a pivotal theological feature in soteriological systems like Arminianism. Free will functions like the keystone in the Arminian arch. If the keystone falters the whole system falters. Free will is carrying a heavy theological burden.

This is so very risky. Free will is one of the most controversial issues in philosophy. It seems a bit wacky to rest an entire soteriological system upon such a shaky construct. Yet most of the people I know do just that.

Another problem with Arminian free will systems is that they are very brittle. Specifically, Arminianism requires the world to be a particular way. And if the world turns out NOT to be this certain way, then the system fails. It's brittle.

Because of this brittleness, when Arminian believers debate issues of free will they get very anxious. And this is understandable. A lot is at stake for them in that debate. The debate (i.e., the world) has to come out a certain way. If it doesn't, the worldview cracks. And when you are faced with such a theological debacle you don't reason effectively or dispassionately. You get emotional and fail to treat you opponent's arguments charitably. So lots of Arminian believers just aren't fun to talk to. Too much is at stake for them.

By contrast, one of the things I really like about universalism is that it is robust across all possible theological worlds. Debates about free will can come out any which way. Our will might be quantum, deterministic, compatabilistic (jargon for affectionados), free or whatever. Universalists really don't care. However it turns out, nothing is at stake for universalists. Either way, any ol' way, God will be all in all.

I like this robustness for selfish philosophical reasons. I can wade into abstract philosophical discussions with an open mind. Free of anxiety to pursue the best argument I see. At the end of the day, I know my soteriological system can handle it.

I find that comforting.