3249 Freedom of the will.... (doctrine of predestination)

September 9, 1944: Book 42

The sun of the spirit shall rise and chase away darkness.... where there is darkness there shall be light, where there is lack of understanding and ignorance there shall be enlightenment by the word of God, for it is God Himself Who instructs people if they want to receive His word. And He truly gives them these instructions in the right form, in accordance with their will for truth and according to their receptivity and worthiness. And this is His word: Try to think of the divine will as the fundamental principle according to which everything takes place in heaven and on earth.... try to let this divine will apply first, and then you will only look at every event from this side, that the divine will cannot be uninvolved in it, for without (His) God's will no other will can come into effect.... even if it is completely adversarial. Every will, whether good or evil, must first be sanctioned by His will before it can come into activity, thus the divine will underlies every happening, which, however, does not mean that God approves of what the evil will gives birth to. Nevertheless, even the evil will could not be if the human being were not enabled by God to want, thus every will is founded in God's will.... But God never determines man to want good or evil, but the direction of his will is left up to him, and this is free will.... The fact that the human being can want is God's gift, God's destiny or also a grace of God.... but what he wants is his own destiny, in this God leaves him complete freedom, even though he can also be prevented from carrying out what he wants. Nevertheless, his will has been put into action, he has declared the direction of his will to God, and it is this direction of will for which he has to answer. And the divine commandments are the standard for good or evil will. Thus God will never try to influence the human will to violate His commandments, but He will put the thoughts into his heart to take a stand on one of the commandments.... Thus good and evil will always approach him, the will in the human being will also be stimulated according to divine determination.... however, it is up to the human being how he decides. And God will cause him to express his will through earthly events, and therefore earthly events approach him in a way which is most favourable to his decision of will. And this is fate, his predetermined course of life, which takes all his predispositions into account and gives him the greatest opportunity to let his will become active in the right direction. Freedom of will is very often misunderstood, for it is related to the execution of earthly activity, and a prevented execution of what the human being wants is called unfree will.... The possibility of execution is completely independent of the will itself.... This is free, i.e. the human being himself determines the direction the will takes, and the freedom of his will will never be touched by God.... However, freedom of will can be misused for God-opposing activity as well as for God-opposing thinking. Even then the human being makes use of the strength from God, i.e. the life force which flows towards him, and consequently, in a certain sense, of God's approval, because without His will nothing can happen and without His will the human being would also not be able to think. And yet, it cannot be said that God has determined the human being's will for his thinking and acting. Even if God Himself placed the will in the human being, He nevertheless did not direct this will to good or evil deeds. And this has to be kept apart, otherwise free will would have to be denied and the human being could never have a claim to perfection. People usually relate the freedom of will to purely earthly actions, thoughts or events, and they often experience that they are very unfree because actions, thoughts and events do not always correspond to their will. Then the will of God obviously expresses itself and they eagerly contest the doctrine of free will. But even then 'will' and 'possibility of execution' are still different terms, because the human being can always give the will the direction he likes. In spiritual terms, however, the will will always be able to be carried out, for what the human being wants he also receives the strength for, except that his will also determines the origin of the strength, that the strength is supplied to him from above or also from below, thus he hands himself over to the strength which his will inclines towards. But even then God gives His approval, i.e. He does not hinder the human being's course of development although it leads away from Him, because He has given the being the freedom of will and will not eternally revoke this freedom if it lives out the last stage on earth as a human being, which shall earn it the final maturity.

Amen

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