And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free – John 8:32

The human issues most frequently debated and differently resolved in contemporary moral reflection are all closely related, albeit in various ways, to a crucial issue: human freedom. – John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor

“Freedom,” says Archbishop Fulton Sheen “has two sides: freedom from something and freedom for something.”¹

The separation between these two complementary sides of freedom is the source of all errors regarding its true nature. Freedom properly understood integrates both the concept of an absence of restraint and the concept of a goal. “The first is freedom of choice; the second is freedom of perfection; they are related as means to an end, as a bridge to a city.”²

With this starting point it is possible to distinguish correctly between the closely related concepts of free will, liberty and freedom.

Freedom from restraint is known as choice. That liberty or freedom firstly refers to the means is confirmed by Leo XIII when he says, “liberty …considered as to its nature, it is the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end proposed, for he is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of many.”³

Freedom taken in its totality is a broader concept including as it does the goal. Freedom is thus capable of being perfected or distorted, an idea that will be returned to later.

Liberty is the same thing as free will since it has been defined as “the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end” which is what our free will is. “Now, since everything chosen as a means is viewed as good or useful… it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or, rather, is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice.”⁴

This last sentence from Leo requires some clarification. The will has in its action more than simply the act of choice but also other acts such as desire (for an absent good) or enjoyment (once a good is attained). Hence liberty is a property of the will and identical with will in so far as it refers to free will. It must also be emphasised that freedom of the will refers to “choosing means fitted for the end proposed.” It does not refer to choosing the ultimate end. For as St Thomas says, “…neither is natural necessity repugnant to the will…” for “as the intellect of necessity adheres to the first principles, the will must of necessity adhere to the last end, which is happiness: since the end is in practical matters what the principle is in speculative matters.”⁵

With the background of these distinctions the first side of freedom, that is, liberty or free will can be examined in more detail. This in turn will pave the way for a proper understanding of the goal of freedom.

The root of free will lies in the fact that none of the goods of this world are pure goods or the universal good. Only God is pure act and therefore pure being and therefore pure good⁶. All other goods are mixed goods. The intellect judges them as being in some ways good and in some ways not perfectly good thus making choice possible.⁷ “Reason sees that whatever things that are held to be good upon earth may exist or may not, and discerning that none of them are of necessity for us, it leaves the will free to choose what it pleases.”⁸

Regarding the pure or universal good, however the will is not free. Presented with the absolute good the will has no choice but to desire it. Therefore in heaven sin becomes an impossibility for it is to reject the Perfect Good itself, present to the intellect in the light of the beatific vision. While we can desire God in this life we can also reject Him. Only in heaven does he reveal Himself as being Perfect Goodness with infinite perfection.

So we can choose between mixed goods because they are mixed. Should a person eat chocolate fudge or strawberry ice cream for dessert? Neither is a perfect good that compels us to accept it. It is this imperfection in things, that which makes them fall short of being goodness itself or as such that enables choice.

God is also free. In fact it will be shown that God is not only free but supremely free. God's decision to create the universe was a free act of his will as taught by the first Vatican Council⁹. If He makes the world He can show forth his glory and create beings who can come to know, love and serve him. But no matter how great any created world were, even if it were to have no moral evil, there would be no compulsion involved for it can never be an absolute unlimited good. God was not compelled to make the world in the same way He is compelled to love Himself¹⁰.

All this brings us to an important point that has been implicit in the discussion thus far. We always choose something under the aspect of good. We know from all too common experience that we often choose evil but it is never evil per se which we will. The will is repelled by evil and never chooses something under this aspect. Good is the proper object of the faculty of the will, that to which it is ordained, just as the proper object of the faculty of sight is colour.

So far the examples have been with respect to choices in which neither decision is for some action intrinsically evil in itself. There is nothing wrong with choosing either the fudge or strawberry ice cream.

Liberty is about exercising this choice with respect to means for an end. But it is not a perfection of this power to choose something which is evil. Indeed to choose sin is to be a slave to sin the Scriptures inform us¹¹.

In Veritatis Splendor John Paul II uses the example of the situation in the Garden of Eden to illustrate the difference between choosing among good means to an end, which is a proper manifestation of liberty, and choosing between good and evil themselves which does not belong to the essence of liberty but is a possibility resulting from it while man lives in this “vale of tears.” In Genesis it is written, "The Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die' " (Gen 2:16-17). Commenting on this verse, the late Pope writes, “With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God's commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat "of every tree of the garden". But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil", for it is called to accept the moral law given by God.”¹²

This is the point at which our discussion takes into consideration the other side of liberty, its direction toward the ultimate good of man. Freedom in its totality refers not only to liberty of choice but to the goal of freedom of choice, that is the perfection of our nature by attaining what makes us happy. So the more we sin the less free we are in that it takes us further away from our ultimate state of freedom. This is the difference between the proper understanding of freedom taught by reason and the Catholic Church and the understanding that prevails in western culture of a directionless freedom consisting in doing as one pleases. The Catechism tells us that freedom “attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.”¹³

From this it follows that the ability to sin does not enter into the definition of freedom. For “the end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason.”¹⁴

In Libertas Leo XIII devotes significant attention to this fact. If liberty meant the ability to choose good or evil then it would follow he agues, that God, Jesus Christ and the Blessed in Heaven are not free, or at the least, are less free than man is in the wayfaring state.¹⁵

What then is the cause of our ability to sin? To get further light on this we have to consider that, "the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect."¹⁶

“Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possible, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something which is not really good, but which has the appearance of good, and that the will should choose accordingly.” By contrast, there are no such imperfections in God. As such, "the infinitely perfect God, although supremely free, because of the supremacy of His intellect and of His essential goodness, … cannot choose evil; neither can the angels and saints, who enjoy the beatific vision."¹⁷

When we sin we fall under a misapprehension regarding what is the true good for us and instead choose an apparent good. While we always choose something under the aspect of good this principle must be correctly understood. It does not mean that people who make evil choices always “mean well.” A person can choose evil knowing full well that it may cause unjustifiable harm, or, put simply, that it is not the virtuous good. The point is simply that for someone to choose something they must see it as good in some way or else there would be nothing to motivate the will. To grasp this point it is helpful contemplate any occasion on which we have sinned. While we knew speculatively that it was the wrong thing to do we would not have chosen it unless there was some aspect under which it was seen to be a good for us.

So the state of imperfection of our faculties of intellect and will means we can abuse our freedom. God allows the evil that can result from this as He wants us to love Him freely, that is, that it would involve the exercise our liberty in such a way that it is directed towards Him. If they had been presented with the pure good from the beginning, our wills would not have this choice. So moral evil is tolerated for a greater good, that of making a world containing intellectual creatures.

When we direct our freedom towards attaining our final end we perfect it. “Freedom… is given as a gift… to be received like a seed and to be cultivated responsibly.”¹⁸ “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes.”¹⁹ In seeing that sin does not bear any relationship to freedom it becomes easier to see the necessary connection which must exist between truth and freedom. For, “only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his true good.”²⁰ It is for the same reason that, “man is free to draw a giraffe only on condition that he gives it a long neck… one is free to draw a triangle only on condition that he gives it three sides, and not in a stoke of broadmindedness fifty-seven sides.”²¹

Freedom then, is not something which exists for its own sake. To be free for freedom’s sake is meaningless and empty. There is a name for such a freedom that has completely divorced itself from all consideration of truth and good: hell. We are free to come to the Good which alone will make us happy. Not without justice therefore is freedom defined as “the right to choose between good things without hindrance for the sake of the highest law of our being.”²²