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The free will problem has been a thorny theological issue for Christians for thousands of years. It is bound up with explanations of evil -- people make bad choices, leading to evil. Yet an omnipotent God by definition knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. Giving people free suggests that things could go off in any number of ways, depending upon what they choose. Does that diminish God's omniscience? The vexing implications of these questions became a big part of Calvinism and its doctrine of predestination, among other things. He didn't totally discount free will (perhaps because it seems to go against common sense), but the issue tied him in knots explaining it. Of all the early Christians, Augustine was most concerned with what free will meant. You can read a summary of Augustine's view here. (I tried to find a succint, non-partisan discussion of Calvin's views on free will to link but couldn't come up with one, other than his own writings, which are pretty dense.)
Leaving these dusty theologians aside, the notion of free will is still a problem, and the more you think about it, the more problematic it gets. In a day-to-day sense, most of us these days subscribe to the view that whatever we do (or don't do) is a freely chosen thing. Yet even though Freud is very much out these days, we carry residual notions that there are forces within us that compel us to act this way or that, things beyond our control. Plenty of defense attorneys argue that for their clients. The current self-help culture for all personality ills really posits the same thing: understand why you are compelled to do this, get the insight, and you can act a different way, gaining a corresponding snippet of free will. In many ways we are unknowingly reenacting centuries-old debates.
Leaving these dusty theologians aside, the notion of free will is still a problem, and the more you think about it, the more problematic it gets. In a day-to-day sense, most of us these days subscribe to the view that whatever we do (or don't do) is a freely chosen thing. Yet even though Freud is very much out these days, we carry residual notions that there are forces within us that compel us to act this way or that, things beyond our control. Plenty of defense attorneys argue that for their clients. The current self-help culture for all personality ills really posits the same thing: understand why you are compelled to do this, get the insight, and you can act a different way, gaining a corresponding snippet of free will. In many ways we are unknowingly reenacting centuries-old debates.