Argument

Freedom in Heaven Objection Defeater

Intro

Christians often explain evil this way: God gave us free will, and real freedom means we can choose wrong. That is why people can do terrible things.

A sharp skeptic answers with a question about heaven. "You say the saints in heaven will never sin. So either they are not free, or freedom does not need the ability to sin. If they are not free, heaven is a place of puppets. If freedom does not need the ability to sin, God could have made free people who never sin, and your free will excuse for evil falls apart."

It is a good question, and Christians have been answering it for sixteen hundred years. Here is the short version.

First, the objection assumes something Christians never believed. It assumes that being free means always being able to choose evil. But Augustine taught the opposite. He said the freedom we had at creation was the ability not to sin and also the ability to sin, and that the freedom of heaven is greater, because it is no longer able to sin.

Second, God Himself proves the point. God is perfectly free, and God cannot sin. Scripture says God "cannot be tempted with evil" and that it is "impossible for God to lie." If freedom required the ability to do evil, God would not be free. Nobody believes that.

Third, you already know how this works. You are not able, in any real sense, to torture a child for a nickel. That is not because something is stopping you. It is because of who you have become. Your character has made it unthinkable, and you are still free. Heaven is that same thing made complete. The saints freely became people who love God, and now sin has nothing left to offer them.

Fourth, evil does not give goodness its value. A hard world gives courage a chance to show itself, but courage was good before the danger came. God's goodness was good before anything evil existed. Evil gives virtue its occasion, not its worth.

So heaven is not a world of puppets. It is the end of a story in which free people were made good, partly by their own free choices along the way. That answers the second half of the objection too: heaven cannot be the starting point, because the road to it is part of how its people come to exist.

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In full

The objection is a dilemma, named "the Problem of Heavenly Freedom" by James Sennett ("Is There Freedom in Heaven?", Faith and Philosophy 16.1, 1999) and set out by Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe as the apparent inconsistency of two traditional theses: (i) the redeemed in heaven have free will; (ii) the redeemed in heaven are no longer capable of sinning ("Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven," Faith and Philosophy 26.4, 2009). The atheist deploys it against the free will defense:

• Horn A. If libertarian freedom requires the ability to sin, the saints are not free, and the Christian picture of heaven is incoherent or a heaven of automata.
• Horn B. If freedom does not require the ability to sin, God could have created free creatures who never sin from the start, so the free will defense fails to explain why evil exists.

The steel-manned version comes from inside Christian philosophy. Steven B. Cowan ("Compatibilism and the Sinlessness of the Redeemed in Heaven," Faith and Philosophy 28.4, 2011) argues that only compatibilism (see Compatibilism) can explain heaven's sinlessness, and that libertarians who take the free will defense cannot.

This page answers Horn A directly and divides Horn B from it. The reply has five steps. (1) The definition is false: the tradition never held that freedom essentially includes the power to sin. (2) God is the counterexample: maximal freedom with no ability to do evil. (3) Derivative freedom: on Pawl and Timpe's account, the saints' inability to sin traces to character they freely formed, the way our present inability to commit certain atrocities does, and they keep real non-derivative choices among goods. (4) Occasion, not value: evil supplies occasions for virtue, not the worth of virtue, which is grounded in God. (5) Horn B is a different argument: heaven is a consummated state, not an initial one, and a self-formed character cannot be created ready-made. The full treatment of Horn B is on All-Do-Good World POE Defeater.

What the page does not claim. It does not claim the libertarian account is the only Christian option, that every philosophical puzzle about heavenly freedom is closed, or that this reply by itself justifies every evil. It claims the dilemma fails: neither horn forces the conclusion the objector wants.

Argument structure

Form

Defensive (a defeater). P1 and P2 attack the dilemma's hidden premise, first by the historical record and then by counterexample (God). P3 supplies a positive model of how freedom and impeccability fit, drawn from the libertarian literature on tracing. P4 corrects a category mistake about where virtue's value comes from. P5 divides the horns, showing that the second horn equivocates between consummated and initial states. Soundness is contemporary: the dialectic is live in Faith and Philosophy (Sennett 1999; Pawl and Timpe 2009, 2013; Cowan 2011), and the reply rests on the classical tradition plus the published tracing account.

Cheatsheet

The 30-second reply (read aloud). You're assuming free means always able to pick evil. Christians never said that. Augustine said the freedom of heaven is greater than ours, because it can't sin anymore. And think about God. God is completely free, and God can't sin. So the ability to sin isn't what makes you free. Here's how it works for us. You can't bring yourself to torture a child for a nickel. That's not a lack of freedom. That's who you've become. Heaven is that, all the way. The saints freely became people who love God, and sin has nothing left to offer them. And no, that doesn't mean God could have made heaven first. A character you formed yourself can't be handed to you ready-made. Heaven is where the road ends, not where it starts.

The 5 fast facts:

1. Augustine, City of God XXII.30: "the first freedom of will which man received when he was created upright consisted in an ability not to sin, but also in an ability to sin; whereas this last freedom of will shall be superior, inasmuch as it shall not be able to sin."
2. Augustine, same chapter: "God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives this inability from God."
3. Scripture on God: "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13, ASV); "it is impossible for God to lie" (Hebrews 6:18, ASV).
4. Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III.138: perfected virtue brings "a kind of necessity for good action, for instance in the Blessed, who cannot sin," and "yet the will is not, for that reason, any the less free."
5. The modern statement: Pawl and Timpe (Faith and Philosophy, 2009) argue the blessed are unable to sin "because of the character the redeemed have formed in their pre-heavenly existence," while character still leaves real free choices open among good actions.

The 3 strongest counter-moves:

• "Is God free?" If yes, and God cannot sin, the objection's definition of freedom is gone. If no, the objector has redefined freedom so that the most free being is a slave.
• "Are you free not to torture a child for a nickel?" If the answer is that you could never do it, ask whether that makes you unfree. It makes you good.
• "Where did the saints' character come from?" From free choices across a lifetime. That is why heaven cannot be the first chapter.

Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):

• Grant: on earth, our freedom includes the real ability to sin, and that ability is part of why moral evil happens. Now collect: then the ability to sin belongs to freedom under formation, not to freedom as such, and the objection's definition of freedom has to go.
• Grant: there is a genuine philosophical puzzle here, and Christian philosophers disagree about it (Cowan defends a compatibilist answer). Now collect: then the question is which Christian answer is best, not whether the doctrine is incoherent; a debated model is not a contradiction.
• Grant: the saints in heaven cannot sin. Now collect: then heaven's people are the finished product of a history in which sin was possible, which is exactly what the free will defense says this world is for.

The closing line. The freest being there is cannot sin. Heaven is not less freedom; it is freedom finished.

P1, The objection's definition of freedom is not the Christian one

Affirmative case

1. The dilemma rests on a hidden premise. It needs "if an agent is free, then at every moment the agent is able to choose evil." Without that premise, (i) and (ii) do not conflict.
2. Augustine denied the premise outright. "Neither are we to suppose that because sin shall have no power to delight them, free will must be withdrawn. It will, on the contrary, be all the more truly free, because set free from delight in sinning to take unfailing delight in not sinning" (City of God XXII.30). He contrasts the first freedom, posse non peccare (able not to sin), with the last, non posse peccare (not able to sin), and calls the last superior. See Augustine.
3. Aquinas agreed. He distinguishes the necessity of compulsion, which lessens praise, from the necessity of interior inclination, which "does not diminish but increases the praise due to a virtuous act," and applies it to "the Blessed, who cannot sin" (Summa contra Gentiles III.138, as quoted by Pawl and Timpe 2009). See Thomas Aquinas.
4. Plantinga's definition does not require it either. The free will defense needs creatures who are significantly free in a world where moral good is possible. It says God could not guarantee that such creatures never sin; it does not say a creature stops being free once its character is settled.

Anticipated objections

1. "Augustine is just asserting it. Saying 'it's a greater freedom' doesn't make it one."
2. "Libertarian freedom is defined as the ability to do otherwise. A being who cannot sin cannot do otherwise."

Rebuttals

1. The assertion is backed by P2 and P3. The claim is not left as bare authority: God is the paradigm case of freedom without the power to sin, and ordinary moral experience shows character limiting options without destroying freedom.
2. "Able to do otherwise" does not mean "able to do evil." Pawl and Timpe point out that a choice between two good options, singing in the heavenly choir or playing the harp, is a real alternative. The saints can do otherwise in countless ways; what they cannot do is choose evil.

P2, God is free and cannot sin

Affirmative case

1. Scripture is explicit. "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man" (James 1:13, ASV). God's promises rest on "two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie" (Hebrews 6:18, ASV); He is the God "who cannot lie" (Titus 1:2).
2. God is also free. Classical theism holds that God freely creates and freely saves; nothing compels Him. If freedom required the ability to do evil, the most free being in existence would be unfree.
3. Augustine drew this exact line. "God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives this inability from God" (City of God XXII.30). The saints' freedom is a share in God's.
4. So the objection proves too much. A definition of freedom that excludes God is not a neutral definition; it was built to produce the dilemma.

Anticipated objections

1. "God is a special case. Creatures are different."
2. "Maybe God isn't free, then. Maybe He just acts from His nature."

Rebuttals

1. Then the objector has conceded the point. If God is a case of freedom without the power to sin, the ability to sin is not part of what freedom is. The remaining question is how a creature can come to share that state, which is P3.
2. Acting from one's nature is what freedom looks like at its best. The objector who denies God freedom because He acts from a perfect nature has to deny freedom to every good person who acts from a good character. That is a definition of freedom no one lives by.

P3, Character can make sin impossible without making a person unfree

Affirmative case

1. Tracing. Libertarians hold that some actions are free because they trace back to earlier free choices, even when they are now settled (Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will, 1996). A drunk driver is responsible for a crash he could no longer avoid, because he freely got drunk.
2. The same works for good character. Pawl and Timpe's example is a woman who, after years of formed virtue, is no longer able to bring herself to swindle a homeless shelter to pay for a luxury holiday. She was not always so; she became so freely. Her present inability is the fruit of her freedom, not its loss.
3. Applied to heaven. "In heaven, the blessed will be incapable of willing any sin, just as we are incapable of willing the particular sin of torturing an innocent child for a nickel," and "this will be because of the character the redeemed have formed in their pre-heavenly existence" (Pawl and Timpe 2009). Sennett had argued that heavenly freedom is derivative in this way; Pawl and Timpe add that character "underdetermines" many choices, so the saints keep real, non-derivative choices among goods.
4. Scripture describes the same arc. "We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John 3:2, ASV). The creation itself is to be brought "into the liberty of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21, ASV). The end state is called liberty, not its loss.

Anticipated objections

1. "This makes salvation a matter of self-improvement. That's Pelagianism."
2. "Some people are saved on their deathbed with no formed character at all. How are they impeccable?"
3. "Cowan is right: only compatibilism explains it, and compatibilism kills the free will defense."

Rebuttals

1. Pawl and Timpe take up this objection themselves. Their account is about how freedom and impeccability fit, not about who gets the credit; grace can work in and through free cooperation, as most Christian traditions hold (see Sanctification). Nothing in the model requires that a person perfects himself unaided.
2. The account is a model, not a timetable. The tradition holds that God completes the work at glorification ("we shall be like him"); the free choice to receive Christ is itself the decisive free act that the final state traces to. How much formation happens before death, and how God completes it, is a question the model leaves open.
3. The live debate shows the problem has answers on both sides. Cowan's compatibilist answer and Pawl and Timpe's libertarian answer are both coherent proposals in the same journal. Pawl and Timpe argue that compatibilism would make the problem of evil worse, since a compatibilist God could have determined free creatures never to sin. Either way, the Christian is not stuck with a contradiction.

P4, Evil gives virtue its occasion, not its value

Affirmative case

1. Courage is the clearest case. Danger is the occasion for courage to be shown. But courage is good because of what it is, a settled will to do right at a cost, not because danger exists.
2. God's goodness is good with no evil at all. Before creation there was no evil, and God was perfectly good. "God is love" (1 John 4:8, ASV). If goodness needed evil to have value, God's goodness would have had no value until something went wrong. See Evil as Privation of Good, which explains evil as a lack in a good thing, parasitic on goodness, not its partner.
3. Choice on earth matters because of what it makes us. "I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19, ASV). The choices are real because the outcome is real: they form the people who will live in the life chosen.
4. So heaven loses nothing. "He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 21:4, ASV), and nothing unclean enters (Revelation 21:27). Virtue does not shrink when its old occasions are gone; it is finally at rest.

Anticipated objections

1. "Without the possibility of evil, love is cheap. Heaven's love would be automatic."
2. "Then why do Christians say suffering builds character, if virtue doesn't need evil?"

Rebuttals

1. Love is not cheap when it is the settled love of a person who chose it. A marriage of fifty faithful years is not cheapened because, by now, adultery has become unthinkable to both partners. It is the most valuable kind. See Free Will Argument from Love.
2. Formation and value are different questions. Hardship can be the occasion through which virtue is formed (the soul-making theme), but the virtue, once formed, is good in itself. Scaffolding helps build a house; the house does not need the scaffolding to stand.

P5, Horn B confuses a destination with a starting point

Affirmative case

1. Heaven is consummated, not initial. The saints arrive in heaven having lived a free life. Heaven proves that a sinless consummated state of free creatures is possible. It does not prove that a sinless initial state of free creatures, with a self-formed character, is possible. The detailed version is on All-Do-Good World POE Defeater.
2. A self-formed character cannot be created ready-made. If the saints' impeccability traces to their own earlier free choices, God could not have given it to them at creation without the history; that history is part of what the state is.
3. Plantinga's point stands. In God, Freedom, and Evil (1974), Plantinga argues it is possible that every creaturely essence God could create would go wrong at least once in some situation if left free ("transworld depravity"). If so, God could not have guaranteed a world of free creatures who never sin, even though such a world is logically possible. See Alvin Plantinga.
4. Soul-making adds a second reason. On the Irenaean view developed by John Hick (Evil and the God of Love, 1966), a world with real stakes is the setting in which persons grow into goodness; a world built ready-made would skip the growth that makes the goodness theirs. See Problem of Evil, Soul-Making Theodicy.

Anticipated objections

1. "God is omnipotent. He could just create people with the finished character."
2. "Why not shorten the road? Why does it need so much suffering?"

Rebuttals

1. Omnipotence does not include contradictions. A character formed by one's own free choices but not formed by one's own free choices is a contradiction, like a married bachelor. Aquinas: what "implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence" (Summa Theologiae I q. 25 a. 3).
2. That is a different objection. The amount and distribution of suffering is the evidential problem of evil, answered elsewhere (see Problem of Evil). The heavenly freedom dilemma, which claimed a contradiction, fails either way.

Cross-examination

Round 1, Fix the definition of freedom

1. Q: Does being free mean always being able to choose evil? Expected: yes. Follow-up: then is God free?
2. Q: If God is free and cannot sin, is the ability to sin part of freedom? Expected: hedges. Follow-up: then your dilemma's first premise is gone.

Round 2, Test it on the objector

1. Q: Could you torture a child for a nickel? Expected: no. Follow-up: is that a lack of freedom, or a sign of good character?
2. Q: Did you choose to become that kind of person, at least in part? Expected: yes. Follow-up: then you already accept that freely formed character can rule out evil.

Round 3, Separate the two horns

1. Q: Is heaven the starting point of the saints, or where they end up? Expected: where they end up. Follow-up: then heaven shows what is possible at the end of a free history, not at the start.
2. Q: Can God create a character formed by your own free choices without your free choices? Expected: no. Follow-up: then God could not have made heaven first.

Dodge table

Live-cite kit

Scripture (ASV):

• James 1:13, "God cannot be tempted with evil."
• Hebrews 6:18, "it is impossible for God to lie."
• 1 John 3:2, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is."
• Romans 8:21, "the liberty of the glory of the children of God."
• Deuteronomy 30:19, "therefore choose life."
• Revelation 21:4 and 21:27, no more tears; nothing unclean enters.

Classical:

• Augustine, City of God XXII.30: the last freedom "shall be superior, inasmuch as it shall not be able to sin"; "God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives this inability from God."
• Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III.138: perfected virtue gives "a kind of necessity for good action," and the will is "not, for that reason, any the less free."

Scholarly (the objection, stated fairly): James F. Sennett, "Is There Freedom in Heaven?" (Faith and Philosophy, 1999); Steven B. Cowan, "Compatibilism and the Sinlessness of the Redeemed in Heaven" (Faith and Philosophy, 2011).

Scholarly (the reply): Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe, "Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven" (Faith and Philosophy, 2009) and "Heavenly Freedom: A Reply to Cowan" (Faith and Philosophy, 2013); Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974); John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (1966).

Aphorism: "The freest being there is cannot sin."

Aphorism: "Evil gives virtue its occasion, not its value."

Connection to Scripture

• James 1:13, Hebrews 6:18 and Titus 1:2, God cannot sin, and God is free.
• 1 John 3:2, the end state is likeness to Christ.
• Romans 8:21, glory is called liberty.
• John 8:36, "If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."
• Galatians 5:1, "For freedom did Christ set us free."
• Deuteronomy 30:19, the choice set before us now.
• Romans 12:21, "overcome evil with good," goodness as the stronger power.
• Revelation 21:4 and Revelation 21:27, the consummated state.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

• Steven B. Cowan, "Compatibilism and the Sinlessness of the Redeemed in Heaven," Faith and Philosophy 28 (2011). doi:10.5840/faithphil201128441 open access
• John Harwood Hick, Evil and the God of love (Macmillan, 1966). Open Library
• Robert Kane, The significance of free will (Oxford University Press, 1996). Open Library
• Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe, "Incompatibilism, Sin, And Free Will In Heaven," Faith and Philosophy 26 (2009). doi:10.5840/faithphil200926437 open access
• Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe, "Heavenly Freedom: A Reply to Cowan," Faith and Philosophy 30 (2013). doi:10.5840/faithphil201330214 open access
• Alvin Plantinga, God, freedom, and evil (1974). Open Library
• James F. Sennett, "Is There Freedom In Heaven?" Faith and Philosophy 16 (1999). doi:10.5840/faithphil19991617 open access

See also

• Problem of Evil, Free Will Defense, the defense this objection targets.
• All-Do-Good World POE Defeater, the full answer to "why not make heaven first?"
• Problem of Evil, Soul-Making Theodicy, why formation needs a world with stakes.
• Evil as Privation of Good, why evil is not goodness's partner.
• Free Will Argument from Love, why love needs freedom.
• Morality Is Emergent Objection Defeater, where goodness gets its authority, if not from evolution.
• Libertarian Free Will, Compatibilism and Molinism, the models in the debate.
• Heaven, the doctrine of the final state.
• Sanctification, how character is formed in the Christian life.
• Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Alvin Plantinga, the main voices of the reply.
• Problem of Evil, the master hub.