Predetermination, Free Will, and Narrative

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, and the question of the co-existence of free will and prophecy came up. It is not uncommon for people to feel that if something in the future is fixed and unavoidable that free will must not exist. However, in the Christian tradition we have both. We have Paul who gave us a slough of statements regarding predetermination, and with that a requirement that humans have free will in order to truly worship and love God. So that leaves us with an issue. Things are predetermined and certain prophesied events must occur as they are fixed. I propose that a way to understand that is through the eyes of narrative.

When writing a story, many describe the characters as directing where they were going to go and what they were going to do. The characters take on lives of their own. The same could be argued for us. We are created by God. We are His creation. He has placed us in our families and given us certain characteristics. These are all elements that shape our backstory and who we are. And there is a general plot that is set into place that we are living within, along with our own subplots. So in that way we have no free will and our future is determined for us.

However, there is the issue of the characters taking on a life of their own. Because we, the characters, have depth and because different things motivate one that will not another, and we have different experiences, we can only decide what would make sense for us to decide. And I suggest that it is out decisions which drive us to a fixed point. It is not that the point is fixed and we are manipulated to reach it, but rather that a point is fixed because, due to who we are, we would never have chosen otherwise.

This includes situations where seemingly random events happen. It is because of our own decisions which are made based upon who we are that bring us to a certain place at a certain time, and it is because of the decisions of other people which are based upon who they are that brings them to do something at that certain place and time, or otherwise cause something to happen then and there. And we need not consider natural events that happen to us, for they have nothing to do with our own will, save that we were in the place where and when it occurred.

Because of this we can have a predetermined story and the foreshadowings of prophecy, and at the same time it happens by our free will. We, because we are who we are, make the decisions that lead to nothing other than what has been predetermined and foretold simply because what has been told is the result of who we are.