This freedom of man is a truly miraculous aspect of earthly existence, and at the same time, one of the most sublime gifts that God has conferred upon our race. Freedom is the presupposition of responsibility: it is by virtue of his freedom than man can acquire merit and fall into guilt. It is on the basis of his freedom that man can be morally good or evil; and above all, that he is capable of that response to God which glorifies him in an incomparably higher sense than any values that may also inhere in unfree beings. God wills us to serve Him in the mode of this free assent, which is one of the deepest expressions of man’s God-likeness.

Free will introduces the possibility of sin

However, in order to endow man with this greatest of gifts—which lends him his specific dignity, provides his life with its ultimate gravity and emphasis, and underlies the importance of his behavior—what did God, so to speak, take into the bargain? Nothing less than sin: the possibility that man might offend God. For without freedom there can be no sin. Unfree nature cannot offend God; but for freedom, no disharmony would exist in the universe. And yet, God has assigned to man the gift of freedom, because, were he not free, he could not give God the response that is due to Him.

The individual alone has power over his own will

No power on earth, no temptation or attraction however potent, can force our assent; no pressure or influence can forcibly—in the way of a force majeure—provoke our decision. Much can be imposed on man’s body by violence (and also on his psychic state, so far as it is linked to the physical one); he can be made to perform certain actions repugnant to him, and particularly, can be prevented from doing anything he wishes to do; but no matter what limitations are placed upon his outward sphere of action, nothing, except himself, has any power over his inward decision, over his ultimate, and irrevocably free, Yes or No.

Freedom’s first dimension: sanction or disavowal