First of all, I don't believe that we have free will, but the argument of "free will" is the main theodicy that Christian apologists use. Here's why this argument cannot be justified if God is omnibenevolent.
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Lucian,
From what I’ve read, it is clear that you place a high value on logic and consistency. That is something I respect. You reject evasions that appeal to some higher, unknowable logic beyond reason, and that places you in rare company. So I intend to engage your argument directly, using only sound reasoning and clear definitions, on your own terms.
You argue that the concept of free will, when used to defend God’s goodness, creates a contradiction. If God gave humans moral agency knowing it would lead to suffering, then, by your reasoning, He chose to receive love at the cost of our well-being. That would make Him selfish. Since you are unwilling to conclude that God is selfish, you reject the premise that He gave us free will. In your view, denying free will is the only way to preserve divine goodness.
At first glance, this may seem like a reasonable reductio. On closer inspection, though, your conclusion collapses. The entire force of your argument depends on moral and relational categories that have no place in a deterministic framework. You appeal repeatedly to concepts like love, obedience, well-being, suffering, harm, selfishness, and moral value. Yet none of these terms are coherent unless freedom is real.
If no one can ever do otherwise, then no one can choose to love, no one can choose to obey, and no one can be blamed or praised. There is no moral responsibility, there is no “ought", there is only causality. A domino does not "obey" the law of gravity, nor does a computer "obey" it's programmer when it executes its programming. It's all purely cause and effect. If every thought, choice, and impulse is predetermined, then there is no such thing as morality. Every appeal to goodness or harm or value becomes a linguistic shell, evacuated of meaning. Yet your entire critique of free will depends on those very concepts.
You argue that if humans had been created without moral agency, we would have lived in blissful communion with God. That claim assumes that communion is possible without choice, and that bliss can exist without meaning. Neither is true. A relationship that is programmed is not a relationship. A creature without moral freedom is not a person. Relationship that cannot be rejected is not love. You describe a world where beings are denied agency yet somehow experience moral and relational fulfillment. That picture is not only incoherent. It is self-negating. It imagines moral outcomes in a world where morality cannot exist.
You also assert that free will, if it existed, would have harmed both God and man. Yet harm is not a category that exists in a purely determined system. If everything happens by necessity, then there is no deviation from what should have occurred. Harm requires a standard of goodness. It requires the possibility of choosing otherwise. If you remove freedom, you remove harm in the moral sense of the term. Your entire framework turns on a contradiction. You use morally charged language to argue against the only foundation that makes such language intelligible.
Your view also presents a false dichotomy. You assume that God had two options: create morally free beings and allow for the possibility of suffering, or create morally inert beings and guarantee a world of bliss. You favor the latter, assuming it would result in maximum well-being. Yet a world without freedom would not be blissful. It would be lifeless. There would be no love nor hated, no joy nor sorrow. There would be no meaning, no communion, no value of any kind. There would only be function. What you describe is not well-being. It is utility. A perfectly efficient system of causation is not a moral good, it's a machine. The highest goods, thing like truth, love, relationship, beauty, sacrifice, redemption, etc, exist only where freedom exists.
The God of Scripture did not create a machine. He created moral agents in His own image, with the capacity to choose, to love, to reason, to respond. Freedom is not a defect in His design, it is the foundation of it. A world of moral agency allows for evil, but it also allows for everything that makes life meaningful. The risk is real but so is the reward.
Moreover, God was not ignorant of the cost. He knew the danger of freedom and He understood that evil was not only possible, but likely. He judged the outcome well worth the risk. So much so that He willingly took the burden of that risk upon Himself. The value of an eternal (i.e. ever lasting) relationship of love and joy with His creation is so far above the cost of the temporary evil and suffering of this world that God was willing to restore that broken relationship with His own life's blood. It is the veritable pearl of great price and the epitome of "maximal goodness"!
"The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45-46)
