Writing about two centuries before Jesus, another man named “Jesus,” son of Eleazar, son of Sirach, provided a classic formulation of the sublime truth concerning the human power of free choice.

 Do not say, “Because of the Lord I left the right way”;
for he will not do what he hates.
 Do not say, “It was he who led me astray”;
for he has no need of a sinful man.
 The Lord hates all abominations,
and they are not loved by those who fear him.
 It was he who created man in the beginning,
and he left him in the power of his own inclination.
 If you will, you can keep the commandments,
and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.
 He has placed before you fire and water:
stretch out your hand for whichever you wish.
 Before a man are life and death,
and whichever he chooses will be given to him.
 For great is the wisdom of the Lord;
he is mighty in power and sees everything;
 his eyes are on those who fear him,
and he knows every deed of man.
 He has not commanded any one to be ungodly,
and he has not given any one permission to sin. (Sir 15.11–20)

3. Much later, at the time of the Reformation, Luther and others rightly wished to emphasize sinful humankind’s total dependence on God’s grace. But they made the mistake of supposing that, in crediting salvation entirely to God, we must exclude the sinner’s responsibility for his or her conversion and justification. Thus these Protestants denied human free choice. Against them, the Council of Trent solemnly defined the truth that human beings, even after Adam’s sin, can make free choices (see DS 1555/815). Good free choices also are God’s gift, yet they are truly our own free choices (see DS 1525/797; also see S.t., 1–2, q. 111, a. 2).

4. The ability to make free choices is one important way in which human persons are somewhat like God. God is not determined in any way by anything other than himself. Moreover, he creates all else by his free choice (see DS 3002/1783, 3025/1805). Similarly, in choosing freely one is not determined by anything other than oneself, although as a creature one remains dependent upon God even for one’s free choices. Moreover, as a real cause through freedom, a human person also is like God. In choosing freely, however, one not only brings about things other than oneself, one is one’s self-maker under God. Thus we have the great dignity of being, in a limited but true sense, of ourselves (see S.t., 1–2, Prologue; q. 1, a. 2; q. 9, a. 3).

5. Experience and philosophical reflection agree with faith that human beings can and do make free choices. Everyone capable of thinking about the matter has had the experience of making choices, including wrong ones by which moral guilt was incurred. Yet determinists deny that choices can be free.³

6. Since this denial runs counter to experience, determinists bear the burden of proving their case. In attempting to do so, they must appeal to our reasonableness and try to show that we ought to accept their position. The difficulty is, however, that this “ought” itself embodies an appeal to freedom. Determinists are asking us to be loyal to the pursuit of truth, and such a commitment is impossible if we cannot make free choices. Thus any attempt to prove that the experiences of choice and moral guilt are illusory is self-defeating.

7. Underlying most deterministic arguments is the assumption, usually unstated, that nothing can come to be without a “sufficient reason” which accounts for it.⁴ A “sufficient reason” would be one which makes clear why the thing has come to be rather than not coming to be, and has come to be precisely as it is rather than otherwise. Of course, a free choice has an adequate cause: the person choosing. But the idea of sufficient reason involves more than that of adequate cause, for it adds the notion that everything can be completely explained. Thus a sufficient reason for a choice would make clear why just this choice, not some other, had been made. But the assumption that there must always be a sufficient reason is not self-evident; and if any free choices are made, either by God or by us, it is false.

8. God does act freely—that is, without a sufficient reason—for example, in creating and redeeming. Of course, God always acts in accord with his own wisdom, but his love is not determined by his wisdom. As for human persons, they also have reasons, but not sufficient reasons, for their choices. To explain why they chose as they did, people point to the good promised by the possibility which they chose. Yet if they had chosen otherwise, they would also have explained their different choice in a similar way (see S.t., 1–2, q. 13, a. 6). Thus there are reasons but never sufficient reasons to account for human free choices.

9. Determinists also point out, quite correctly, that many factors limit the possibilities open to us, and we are not usually even conscious of some of these. They are, however, mistaken in thinking that factors beyond our control which limit our possibilities also settle what we will choose within these limits. Because there are limits on what one can choose, it does not follow that one cannot choose freely within the limits.

3. See Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Germain Grisez, and Olaf Tollefsen, Free Choice: A Self-Referential Argument (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 122–77.

4. Determinists often suggest that actions done by free choice would be unintelligible, mysterious, random, accidental, causeless, contingent, chance happenings. This whole line of argument reduces to the argument from sufficient reason, which received its classic formulation from Laplace. See ibid., 77–90.