Will We Have Free Will in Heaven? Can We Sin There?

Will we have free will in heaven? Yes: the major Christian traditions hold that the redeemed are free in glory, and most hold they are freer there than here. The live question is whether that freedom includes the power to sin, and so the question of free will in heaven turns out to be a question about how a creature's freedom differs from God's. Augustine, Aquinas and the Westminster divines answer no. Some libertarian philosophers answer yes, at the price of a heaven one could fall from. Frame-Indexed Classical Theism (FICT), the position argued here, answers that the glorified keep the power to sin and are secured, through Christ, in the power not to sin.

Key takeaways

• The redeemed will have free will in heaven, and the traditions surveyed here affirm it; the dispute is over whether the power to sin survives glorification.
• Augustine placed glory at non posse peccare, "not able to sin," and called that inability "not a natural ability, but the gift of God."
• Thomists and the Westminster Confession hold the saints cannot sin: rectitude follows necessarily from the vision of God, and the will is made "immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only."
• Philosophers split: some concede that the redeemed could sin and fall, while Sennett, Pawl and Timpe ground heavenly sinlessness in the character formed before heaven.
• Frame-Indexed Classical Theism, against Augustinian confirmation and Westminster glorification, holds that the glorified are confirmed in a secured posse non peccare (able not to sin) through Christ, keeping a live creaturely freedom; only God is impeccable by nature.

What is the problem of free will in heaven?

The problem is that two things Christians say about the redeemed seem not to fit. Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe put the traditional view as two theses: the redeemed in heaven have free will, and the redeemed in heaven are no longer capable of sinning. Following James Sennett, they call the tension between them "the Problem of Heavenly Freedom." If the saints are kept from sinning, their wills are reined in; if their wills are reined in, it is hard to see how they are free.

Sennett's 1999 paper in Faith and Philosophy (Is There Freedom in Heaven?) set it as a dilemma. If there is freedom in heaven, there seems to be the possibility of evil in heaven, which seems to contradict what heaven is. If there is no freedom in heaven, heaven lacks the very good that was supposed to justify God in making free creatures at the cost of the evil they would do. Either horn costs something the theist needs.

How sharp the dilemma is depends on what "free" means. On a compatibilist account, choosing according to one's strongest desire is freedom enough, and a saint who desires only the good is free by definition. On a libertarian account, freedom requires that the choice not be settled by prior causes, and a will that cannot choose otherwise begins to look less free. The libertarian account of free will is where most of the pressure comes from, and it is the account the Many Beings books defend for creatures in time.

The case for creaturely freedom starts in Volume One, and the download is free.

Augustine's four states of the will

Most of the debate runs on a scheme Augustine set out, and his words are worth having in front of us. In On Rebuke and Grace he distinguishes pairs that sound alike and differ greatly: to be able not to sin, and not to be able to sin. Then he ranks them: "the first liberty of the will was to be able not to sin, the last will be much greater, not to be able to sin."

The tradition drew four states from him. Adam in innocence was able to sin and able not to sin (posse peccare et posse non peccare). Fallen humanity is not able not to sin (non posse non peccare). The regenerate, by grace, are able not to sin (posse non peccare). The glorified are not able to sin (non posse peccare). The Reformed inherited the scheme whole; Thomas Boston's Human Nature in Its Fourfold State (1720) is organised around the states of innocence, nature, grace and the eternal state.

Augustine's fullest statement comes at the end of the City of God (XXII.30), and it contains a sentence the popular treatments leave out:

"For the first freedom of will which man received when he was created upright consisted in an ability not to sin, but also in an ability to sin; whereas this last freedom of will shall be superior, inasmuch as it shall not be able to sin. This, indeed, shall not be a natural ability, but the gift of God. For it is one thing to be God, another thing to be a partaker of God. God by nature cannot sin, but the partaker of God receives this inability from God." (City of God XXII.30)

He answers the dilemma with a question of his own: "Are we to say that God Himself is not free because He cannot sin?" Hold on to the line he draws between God, who cannot sin by nature, and the creature, who receives what it has as a gift. The later answers turn on it.

Volume Two carries the question into its chapter on heaven; see the volume.

Can we sin in heaven? Four standing answers

Three of the four answers say no, and the fourth says yes at a price. Each keeps something worth keeping.

The Thomist answer: the vision makes sin impossible. Aquinas holds that the blessed cannot lose their happiness and cannot sin, because "he that sees God cannot fall into a fault, since rectitude of the will, of necessity, results from that vision" (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 5, a. 4). The will still chooses among the things ordered to its end: "The will can be directed to opposites, in things which are ordained to the end; but it is ordained, of natural necessity, to the last end." Freedom remains in the choice of means; the end itself is fixed by sight. Nor can the blessed walk away from what they see: since the vision "fills the soul with all good things," Aquinas concludes, "the happy man cannot forsake Happiness of his own accord." Thomism and the Scotists then disagree over what causes the saints' sinlessness, a split traced in the piece on the beatific vision.

The Reformed answer: glorification. The Westminster Confession states it in one sentence: "The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only" (9.5). Freedom to good alone is freedom in its perfection, and it arrives only at glory. It reads as the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints carried to its end.

The libertarian concession: the redeemed could fall. Some philosophers hold that heaven must keep the power to sin. John Donnelly, as Pawl and Timpe report him, argues that "to think that when one attains heaven, due to the achievement of some degree of moral perfection, one no longer needs to be free, is to misunderstand the Christian notion of heaven," and that the redeemed could earn an "eviction from Heaven." Augustine reports Origen holding something similar. Augustine's reply is about certainty. The saints are promised equality with the angels, and "if we are certain that we shall never lapse from eternal felicity, while they are not certain, then we shall not be their equals, but their superiors" (City of God XI.13). Blessedness without that certainty would be less than blessedness. Pawl and Timpe agree with him and call the concession a Pyrrhic victory.

Derived freedom: the character formed on earth. Sennett proposes that an act can be free though determined, provided its causal history includes the agent's own undetermined free acts. The saints' earthly choices built the character that now makes sin unthinkable, and so their heavenly goodness is still theirs. Pawl and Timpe refine this: character rules sin out without settling each choice, so the saints keep undetermined choices among goods, such as, in their example, "the choice either to sing in the heavenly choir or to play the harp." Their complaint against Sennett is that on his view "there is no libertarian free will in heaven" at all. A Molinist variant has God place the redeemed only in circumstances where they would freely not sin; the Molinism debate covers that machinery.

The position argued here is stated in one place; read the statement.

FICT's answer: a secured posse non peccare

Frame-Indexed Classical Theism is a research program in analytic theology that resolves classical theological dilemmas by diagnosing them as artifacts of a single formal error. God's frame is atemporal, simple and a se; ours is sequential, composite and contingent; and God's frame is the ground of ours, containing and sustaining it. Predicates whose content involves time, modality, agency or value are said of God and of creatures analogically, and treating such a term as if it meant the same thing on both sides is the Many Beings Fallacy. On free will in heaven, FICT parts from Augustinian confirmation and from Westminster glorification at one point, and keeps what each is protecting.

Volume Three of the Many Beings books states the position in its chapter on eschatological time:

"The glorified are not rendered impeccable, for only God is impeccable by His very nature. We therefore locate the glorified not in the traditional non posse peccare (not able to sin), but in a confirmed posse non peccare (able not to sin). Like unfallen Adam, they retain both the power to sin and the power not to sin (posse peccare et posse non peccare); unlike Adam, they are secured in Christ and stand in the immediate presence of the Good, so they reliably and freely exercise the power not to sin. Defection, though genuinely possible, is presumably never chosen."

Volume Two's chapter on heaven gives the reason in moral terms. "The glorified believers are not automata; they are morally serious agents." What holds them is a perfected nature, a clarified vision of the Good, and God's sustaining presence, and "the stability is ethical and spiritual, not mechanical." John names the same conjunction of sight and likeness: "we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2, NIV).

This is a deliberate departure from Augustine's placement of glory, and it is made with Augustine's own distinction. He wrote that God "by nature cannot sin," while the creature "receives this inability from God."

FICT keeps the line between nature and gift and adds an index to it. Volume One defines free will in two senses. In the absolute sense it is "the intrinsic ability to choose and uphold righteousness in every instance, by one's own proper power, without external coercion and without requiring a saving intermediary," and "God possesses this impeccably and essentially." In the finite sense it is "the capacity to make choices among various options, both moral and immoral, within the bounds that our nature allows." "Cannot sin" belongs with the first sense, as a property of a nature, and so it belongs to God, whose righteousness is His essence. What the creature receives is not the divine property on loan. It is a creaturely freedom perfected and secured, a posse non peccare confirmed through Christ. In glory, saints and angels alike keep free will and use it choosing freely between goods. The choice of evil, seen from God's frame, is slavery to sin, and chosen in that state it would be an Absolute Evil choice, met with eternal condemnation and no redemption, as with the angels who fell. The view holds together with exhaustive sovereignty: God sustains the saints' freedom as He sustains ours, and He does not author sin, a relation the permissive will piece treats.

The cost is real. FICT cannot call the saints metaphysically incapable of defection, so Augustine's certainty argument presses on it. The books' answer is that the city's holiness "is not fragile but secured by God's decree," and that any defection "is presumably never chosen." That explains the city's safety; it does not turn the saints' steadfastness into an incapacity.

Volume Three places this freedom in the glorified creature's time; see the volume.

Objections to a heaven with a live alternative

A position that departs from Augustine owes answers, and the sharpest objections come in two kinds: from the tradition, and pressed against the Many Beings books themselves. Each is answered from the books as they now read.

Don't the books say two different things about heaven?

No. Both volumes place the glorified at the same point, in different words.

The objection reads the volumes against each other. Volume Two says that "even with a perfected nature in heaven, creaturely agency retains a live capacity for willful, absolute disobedience," and says outright, "we do not argue that believers are impeccable in the glorified state." Volume Three calls the glorified "confirmed." In the tradition, the confirmed are the saints who can no longer sin. So either the volumes disagree, or "confirmed" is doing double duty.

The answer is in what "confirmed" modifies. Volume Three does not say the glorified are confirmed in the tradition's sense; it says they are located "not in the traditional non posse peccare" but in "a confirmed posse non peccare." Confirmation settles the orientation of the will: the power not to sin is exercised reliably and secured in Christ. It does not remove the power to sin, which the same sentence says the glorified "retain."

Volume Two says the same thing from the other side: the capacity for disobedience "remains in principle," and the saints "freely maintain righteousness." One position, stated twice, with no equivocation on the word.

Volume Two's heaven chapter is the fullest statement; find it on the volume page.

If God must act righteously, must a righteous saint?

No. The principle runs through what a nature is essentially, and righteousness is essential to God while it is received by the creature.

The objection comes from the books' own foundations. Part I of Volume One holds that a being engages reality only within the confines of its essential qualities, and gives the example: "God, being essentially righteous, must act righteously, for to do otherwise would be a contradiction of His very Nature." Volume Two then says that at the resurrection "the believer receives a glorified body and a fully righteous nature." Run the same principle and the conclusion is non posse peccare: a fully righteous nature cannot act against itself. On this reading the books' own essentialism collapses the live alternative they insist on.

The inference needs the saint's righteousness to belong to the glorified nature the way God's belongs to His, and the books place it elsewhere. The glorified meet the standard "not by self-sufficiency but by contingent participation in God's sustaining grace," since, in Volume Two's words, "Only God is Absolute Goodness Itself."

The Fall shows the difference. Volume One describes Adam's sin as a "quality-shift" from righteous to unrighteous, and Adam remained a man. At conversion, Volume One says, the believer "inherits righteousness as a new intrinsic quality." A creature can lose that quality, as Adam did, or receive it, as the believer does, and through either change it remains a creature: in Volume One's words, the redeemed "remain creaturely."

So the same principle yields different results because the two cases differ in kind. God's righteousness is what He is; the saint's is what the saint has been given. That is Augustine's line again, "not a natural ability, but the gift of God," and it is why the books reserve impeccability by nature for God alone.

For the foundations this answer relies on, Volume One is free.

Doesn't the end of this life end the power to choose otherwise?

It ends the redeemable mode of finite freedom. It does not end the choosing.

The objection sets the books against themselves. Volume Two's chapter on final judgment holds that the moral indeterminacy of this life ceases at death or at Christ's return. Yet the chapter on heaven holds that the saints act "freely and could choose otherwise." If indeterminacy has ceased, what is left to choose?

Aquinas supplies the picture of a finished trial. Of the angels he writes that "after he has once adhered, he clings immovably," and that "the good angels who adhered to justice, were confirmed therein" (Summa Theologiae I, q. 64, a. 2). A creature whose trial is over should be fixed.

The answer lies in what the judgment chapter says ends. It defines the terminated indeterminacy with care: "the redeemable openness of moral becoming across successive embodied moments." What closes is the open question of the person's final orientation, toward God or away from Him. Volume One names the same thing from the other side: when God unveils this reality, "our finite mode of freedom gives way: those in Christ receive a perfected body and will, able not to sin, while the power to choose remains."

The heaven chapter says that heaven "contains no finite moral states" in the orientation-determining sense, and that "the glorified continue to make genuinely finite righteous choices, but those choices now express a confirmed orientation rather than decide an open one." A settled orientation exercised through real choices is not a return to the redeemable mode of this life. Volume Three adds the temporal side: glorified life is a real succession of acts, "an endless, entropy-free succession," so the choosing goes on without the question of destiny reopening.

Aquinas draws his contrast between the angel, whose will "adheres fixedly and immovably," and man, whose will "adheres to a thing movably." Volume One parts from Aquinas on the angels as well: the unfallen angel "keeps the power to defect from the meta-orientation toward the Good, for only God is impeccable; he freely and reliably exercises the power not to sin." Volume Three holds that glorification "perfects the human as a human," a life of "real creaturely sequence," so FICT, unlike Aquinas on the confirmed angels, Augustine's non posse peccare and the Westminster view of glory, does not make the saints' settledness an incapacity.

Won't a live power to sin be used, given endless time?

Not on the books' account. The argument that finite freedom eventually fails is about finite freedom alone, and glory gives a perfected will, so defection, though genuinely possible, "appears exceedingly unlikely, perhaps never occurring."

This objection combines Aquinas with the books. Aquinas holds that rectitude follows "of necessity" from the vision, so the blessed cannot sin. Volume One, on original sin, holds: "Given sufficient exposure to temptation, finite freedom operating without that capacity will eventually defect at some point."

Put the two together. If the glorified keep a real power to sin, they are finite freedom in endless time, and by the books' own reasoning someone, somewhere in eternity, will fall. Only Aquinas's necessity would stop it.

The Volume One sentence carries its own index. Its subject is finite freedom alone: freedom in a righteous state such as Adam's, which "did not equip them to sustain perfect righteousness indefinitely across every temptation their life in Eden could bring." The glorified are not left with finite freedom alone. In Christ they receive a perfected body and will, able not to sin. Volume Two states the scope for history: the inevitability of evil in history "was indexed to present HFF conditions," the conditions of the Human Finite Frame, and "that necessity is conditional, not absolute. In glorification the relevant conditions are removed."

The glorified do not stand in finite freedom alone, and what holds them is given rather than self-generated: Christ, a healed nature, the unveiled presence of the Good, and God's sustaining grace, a stability the books call "ethical and spiritual, not mechanical." Here FICT stands with Aquinas, and against Donnelly's concession, in expecting the saints to persevere, and agrees that the vision is part of what holds them. It declines only to turn that hold into an inability: the books place the glorified in a confirmed posse non peccare, a human freedom perfected as human, and reserve impeccability by nature for God alone. Assurance here and now is a separate question, taken up in can you lose your salvation.

Volume One argues finite freedom from its axioms; see the book page.

How the answers compare

Asked "will we have free will in heaven," each of the five answers says yes; they part over the power to sin.

Frequently asked questions

Is there free will in heaven?

Yes. Augustine, Aquinas, the Westminster Confession and the modern philosophers surveyed here each affirm it. They disagree over whether that freedom includes the power to sin; Frame-Indexed Classical Theism holds that it does, while Thomists and the Reformed confessions hold that it does not.

Can you sin in heaven?

On the Augustinian, Thomist and Westminster views, no: the saints are not able to sin. On Frame-Indexed Classical Theism, the glorified keep the power to sin but are secured in Christ and in the presence of the Good, so they freely exercise the power not to sin. Of the city John writes, "Nothing impure will ever enter it" (Revelation 21:27, NIV).

What does posse non peccare mean?

Posse non peccare is Latin for "able not to sin." In Augustine's scheme it is the state of grace. Where the Thomist and Westminster views place the glorified at non posse peccare, FICT places them in a confirmed posse non peccare.

Could someone be cast out of heaven?

The Thomist and Reformed traditions say no, because the saints cannot sin, and Donnelly's view allows it. Frame-Indexed Classical Theism holds that defection is genuinely possible but "presumably never chosen," and that any defector "would be instantaneously removed," so the city's holiness "is not fragile but secured by God's decree." Volume Three states the weight of such a choice: it "would be an Absolute Evil choice, met with eternal condemnation and no redemption, as with the angels who fell." Volume One adds the frame index: from God's frame, the chain "from foreknowledge to glorification" is unbroken (Romans 8:29-30).

Why didn't God make us unable to sin from the start?

Augustine answered that the order was fitting: first a freedom "adapted to the acquiring of merit," then the freedom of the reward. Volume Two holds that history is ordered to this end: "to bring finite beings, through redemption and sanctification, to a state in which they freely maintain righteousness by works in unbroken communion with God." Volume One is careful that the righteousness in view rests on Christ's works, not the saints' own.

Where to go from here

The question "will we have free will in heaven" looks like a question about heaven. It is a question about the difference between God and a creature. Augustine drew that difference in one sentence, and the main answers since then have been ways of reading it. Read it as a line between what God is and what a creature receives, and the saints can be perfectly secure without being made into something only God is.

How God's knowledge of free acts leaves them free is the subject of theological fatalism. Why God needs no knowledge of what creatures would do, standing prior to His decree, is taken up under the grounding objection.

The whole series begins with Volume One, and your copy is free.