God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil,by Thaddeus Williams. Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2021. 216 pp. $27.99
Did you make the choice to love God from your own free will? Or were you influenced—by God or something else—to choose to respond in love to God’s love? God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil, explores this question. The author, Thaddeus Williams, is associate professor of theology at Biola University.
The first part of the book explains that the most common answer to the problem of evil is the Free Will Defense. The Free Will Defense, advocated by Alvin Plantinga, J. P. Moreland, Norman Geisler, Clark Pinnock, Gregory Boyd, Rob Bell, and many others, asserts that God gave humanity Libertarian Free Will, the ability to make autonomous moral choices. God did that so people could choose, dispassionately, to love him or not. Instead of choosing to love God, humanity used free will to disobey God and fall into sin. But, according to advocates of Libertarian Free Will, free will survived humanity’s fall into sin. The Free Will Defense asserts, therefore, that the problem of evil cannot be blamed on God because he merely gave us the power of moral choice. Humanity’s choices, then, are responsible for the problem of evil, so opponents of the Christian faith cannot use the problem of evil to discredit Christianity. Despite how plausible this sounds, Williams demonstrates that there is not one singular “problem of evil” but multiple problems of evil. He argues that any answer to the problems of evil must be philosophically credible, biblically compatible, and existentially consistent.
Nested in the arguments of the Free Will Defense is the assertion that a person must have free will in order to love authentically. This is the subject of the second chapter in part one. The Free Will Defense position argues for three types of freedom: freedom from physical force, freedom from coercion, and freedom from one’s own heart. In other words, love is not authentic if someone elicits a statement of love from you using physical means (like a microchip inserted into your brain) or coercion (such as putting a gun to your head), or if your own heart has any inclination to love. The first two freedoms are obvious, but the third freedom required by the Free Will Defense is problematic. If love must be chosen dispassionately, apart from your own desires, your own reasons, or your own tastes and inclinations, then that is indifference, not love. Williams calls this Freedom from the Heart and contrasts it with Freedom of the Heart which is freedom to choose love apart from coercion or physical modification. In the final chapter of part one, Williams shows that Freedom from the Heart cannot overcome two philosophical problems. Those problems are that love cannot be indifferent to what is best for the person loved and that dispassionate love cannot explain why a person chooses to love one person and not another. He concludes, then, that the Free Will Defense is not philosophically credible.
In part two, three chapters are given to evaluate the biblical arguments made for the Free Will Defense. The first chapter begins with Norman Geisler’s attempts to prove from the Bible that every command of God requires the human ability to carry out those commands. In response, Williams shows that many texts such as John 6:44; Matthew 7:18; and Jeremiah 17:9 cannot be explained by Geisler’s interpretation. Part two, chapter two explains the position of Clark Pinnock that humanity must have the ability to choose not to sin because sin grieves God. There would be no sense in God’s grief, the argument goes, unless people could choose to do the will of God. God is saddened by our sin because we could have chosen differently with the free will he gave us. But, Williams shows, that argument does not withstand texts such as Acts 4:24–30. Finally, chapter three in this second section looks at the nature of love. According to Pinnock, I. Howard Marshall, John Eldredge, and others, love must be freely chosen in order to be authentic, so God must have given us the power of free choice. But this assertion is inconsistent with texts such as Mark 10:27. Thus, the Free Will Defense fails the test of biblical compatibility.
Part three begins by explaining, in the first chapter, five possible theological explanations for unforced love. These five explanations exist on a spectrum between free will on one end and divine force on the other end. Williams shows that the Free Will Defense is compatible with the first three of these five but not the fourth—Heart Reformation—which led to the title of the book, God Reforms Hearts. Part three, chapter two surveys Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 11:19–20; Jeremiah 31:33; John 6:37, 44, 45; John 17; and many texts from Paul’s letters to show that the Bible teaches Heart Reformation and that the Free Will Defense cannot explain these texts. In part three, chapter three, Williams revisits the problems of evil to show that the Free Will Defense cannot even solve the problems of evil that it claims to solve.
God Reforms Hearts is a strong challenge to the Free Will Defense that dominates most approaches to apologetics. The Free Will position is set forth fairly and documented clearly across church history and contemporary evangelical theological writings. The Free Will position is also critiqued thoughtfully and challenged both philosophically and biblically. I found Williams’ challenges to it convincing. I also agreed with his brief argumentation advocating Heart Reformation as the correct biblical way to understand a believer’s love for God.
Despite the helpfulness of God Reforms Hearts, some might find it—especially the first section—difficult to read. It is well-written and well-argued, and Williams uses helpful analogies when he can, but he argues philosophically in part one and those without a background in philosophy may struggle to follow the argument. Parts two and three argue from biblical texts, so the argumentation there may be more familiar to those accustomed to biblical studies.
Free Will theology is not merely about apologetics. It is assumed and treated as axiomatic by many Christians, authors, and preachers. For that reason, faithful teachers of God’s Word need to be familiar with and able to refute the arguments of Free Will proponents. If you can persevere through the first section, God Reforms Hearts may be a helpful tool to understand biblical love and the related problems of evil.
