Well, I don't know if this clears it up any for you, but William James, prominent psychologist and philosopher, weighed in on free will in a pragmatist perspective:
Quote:
Free-will prgamatically means
novelties in the world, the right to expect that in its depeest elements as well as in its surface phenomena, the future may not identically repeat and imitate the past. ... It holds up improvement as at least possible; whereas determinism assures us that our whole notion of possibility is born of human ignorance, and that necessity and impossibility between them rule the destinies of the world.
Free-will is thus a general cosmological theory of
promise, just like the Absolute, God, Spirit, or Design. ... Elation at mere existence, pure cosmic emotion and delight, would, it seems to me, quench all interest in those speculations, if the world were nothing but a lubberland of happiness already. Our interest in religious metaphysics arises in the fact that our empirical future feels to us unsafe, and needs some higher guarantee. If the past and present were purely good, who could wish that the future might possibly not resemble them? Who could desire free-will? ... "Freedom" in a world already perfect could only mean freedom to
be worse, and who could be so insane as to wish that? (William James,
Pragmatism)
Generally, we have free will so that we can improve ourselves. In such a perspective, God gives free will as well as an atonement so that mankind can do the heavy lifting themselves. Whether they actually
do or not is entirely beside the point; the provisions for salvation has been made and mankind has only the choice whether to accept it or not.
