But, rudimentary as its initial act must be if compared with its final perfection, confidence in God is what we need as a supreme guide throughout the entire course of life with its turmoils and vicissitudes, its temptations and trials; what we need as a governing faith all along our path, from our first awakening up to the moment when we are summoned to the throne of the Judge Eternal. Confidence in God, directing and shaping our actions, itself growing apace with our transformation; the confidence that makes us speak with the mouth of the Psalmist, “In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded” (Ps. 30:2).

9. Striving for Perfection

9

Striving for Perfection

THE gift of free decision—the capacity of freely choosing one’s position, commonly called freedom of will—is one of the deepest and most characteristic marks of the person.

Man alone is a free creature

Alone among earthly creatures, man is not exclusively dependent on the blind causational rhythm of nature. To be sure, he also is placed in the framework of this causational rhythm; his body, together with some provinces of his psychic life, are dependent upon it. Beyond that, however, he is endowed with the capacity of entering into an entirely different kind of relationship with his environment. In his cognitive acts, the link of natural causation is superseded by the absolutely different and spiritual one of intentional object-reference. Based on that, his affective acts, too—such as joy, enthusiasm, and so forth—enclose a meaning, a reference to some object; which, is to say, they have motives in the proper sense of the term and not simply causes in the manner of mere biopsychical reactions.

Nor is this all. In an even more integral sense of freedom than the one implied in his single cognitive and emotional acts as such, man—by virtue of his personal center of consciousness—can posit free decisions and thus call into being an entirely new sequence of causes. The Yes and No he pronounces, his free assent and dissent, are no mere effect of forces and influences, impressions and impulsions canalized or arranged by his personal center in the fashion of an agency of exchange, as it were; they are properly and actually generated by man’s central personality.

Free will is a sublime gift