Transferring this divine grace to any mortal brings no good
Are human all actions conditioned by some external factors, or he has freedom of will, and if so, then where and to what extent he can display it. The philosophers and theologians argue on this for at least 25 centuries. The dispute only at first glance seems purely theoretical and philosophical. Throughout the history, it happens that freedom is “shed over the head” of this or that people. However, in such situations, freedom becomes a heavy burden, which people are unable and reluctant to take on. Finding means for living becomes difficult, the situation – unstable, full of stresses and the future – vague. Isn’t it better to consign my freedom to a wise, kind and perfect creature who would provide my more or less tolerable existence, and I, switching off my mind, will live my life being not responsibility for anything. It is a familiar situation, isn’t it?
The Christian tradition until Martin Luther (i.e. 15 centuries), with various ups and downs and shades, generally, was accepting freedom of people’s will. For example, Augustine the blessed was realizing the complexity of the problem and confesses, “When you defend the freedom of will, it seems that you deny the bliss of God, and when you confirm the bliss, then it seems that you annul the freedom.” Despite all these, traditional Christian thinkers (also Armenian) could not deny the right to free choice of people because, otherwise, it would turn out that a person has no “place” to be improved, to expiate sins and join with God. Consequently, they were recommending to catch from two “pillars”: the bliss and the freedom, viewing the second as a way to first. Certainly, there are monks who were saying that God without any specific reasons plans good inclinations for some of the people and evil ones for the other part, but such thinking is condemned as a sect.
Luther and Calvin, essentially, repeated the theses of these sects. If a part of Armenians love to repeat the fatalistic “wisdom”, “who is an ass, we are packsaddle”, then Luther brings the parallel of the horse, “all people are horses, God sits on the back of some of them, and the devil sits on the back of the rest of them. Thus, the freedom of will is nullified, everything is left for the “top”. Such authoritarian thinking can make a person very responsible for he should constantly prove that God is sitting on his back and from here, the so-called, the “protestant ethic”, and vice versa, highly irresponsible, well what we can do, everything is already decided. These extreme “deterministic” approach often finds a place in the sciences. For example, a biologist can express an assurance that human behavior is conditioned exclusively by the genetic code. Or, the Bolshevik-type “Marxist” can argue that everything is predetermined by “social being.” Recall also that one of the main symptoms of schizophrenia is that you are constantly under the control by someone and this generates your steps. But the main Christian tradition, I repeat, however, leaves a place for free will to some extent. The Christian thinkers of new times were thinking in that way. For instance, Danish philosopher of the first half of the 19th century, Søren Kierkegaard, noted that the divine power cannot contradict divine goodness and as a creature with true virtues, God can give an opportunity to people to be free even of Himself.
A man carrying the heavy burden of freedom on his shoulders should realize that neither they are perfect nor any other mortal. And escaping the freedom and relying on anyone’s perfectness, as it was done in the 20th century by particularly Italians, Germans and Russians, as it turned out, is not a solution as well.
The solution is offered by the 17th-century British Christian philosopher John Locke. Accordingly, we must accept the imperfectness and being sinful of all of us (except, God) and not to eat each other, we must create such mechanisms of restraining inside the state, which would neutralize the “sinful” interests of one group by similar “sinful” interests of the other group. Sounds not so lofty and poetic but a number of peoples managed to do it.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN,
Aravot Daily
