Article May 13, 1985 Issue

Does God's man have free will?

JOHN E. SWEENEY

Some time back, my Sunday School class of older high-school pupils had a visitor, a young girl. She was not very familiar with Christian Science, and she asked a number of interesting questions. At one point she asked if Christian Scientists believe that man has free will, that he can choose whether to do good or evil. I needed to think about this, and I turned to the Father to tell me what I needed to know. My desire was to find an answer—not to give some overwhelming retort or to prove how superior Christian Science might be about this, but to give an accurate, honest answer to the question.

The problem was that I didn't want to say "Yes" or "No"! It seemed wrong to say that man was a helpless creature, unable to express any dominion, and yet I certainly knew man couldn't do or want to do evil.

I found myself saying, "Well, this Christian Scientist believes that man has freedom—he is free, but only free to do good. The spiritual man—the only man that God could or would create—is the very image and likeness of God. Man is incapable of sin, of wickedness, of wrong, and is also incapable of wanting to do these things, or even of knowing what they are supposed to be."

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