The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Freud, Sigmund S 159

control of everything, where does EVIL come from ( see THEODICY )? Many Christian, Islamic, and Jewish think ers have discussed these topics ( see C HRISTIANITY , I SLAM , J UDAISM ). In the N EW T ESTAMENT P AUL taught that God chooses whom he will save. A UGUSTINE OF H IPPO argued that without God’s GRACE , human beings could not will to do what was good. During the R EFORMATION Erasmus strongly defended free will; Martin L UTHER strongly attacked it in his book On the Bondage of the Will. Luther and his follow ers later modified these views. But John C ALVIN and Calvinism emphasized a “double predestination”— predestination to salvation and to damnation. Some Muslim thinkers have rejected the teach ing of free will. “Determination,” they argued, belongs to God alone. Beginning in the 10th cen tury C . E . Jewish thinkers living in the Islamic world reacted to such claims. They argued that, accord ing to Genesis, God created human beings in God’s image and likeness, God’s will is free; the human will must be free, too. During the 20th century, Christian and Muslim thinkers tended to favor free will over determin ism. But the old fatalistic cliché remains popular: “When it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go.” The tension between free will and determinism also appears today in a nonreligious context: debates on public policy informed by contemporary psychol ogy. Some stress that heredity and environment cause human behavior. Others insist that human beings are accountable for their actions regardless of conditions. Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939) the doctor who founded psychoanalysis Freud grew up in the Jewish community of Vienna, Austria. Trained as a doctor, he became interested in people who behaved unusually. In the course of working with his patients, he developed influential ideas about human beings’ subconscious and unconscious drives and desires. He applied these ideas to many areas of human life, including religion. Freud suggested that religion began from group feelings of guilt. In prehistory the father was

free will and determinism The idea that human beings are able to choose their own actions. People act, and when we act, we make decisions. Most of us feel that we have the option of choosing between two or more alternatives. We may choose one of them, but we could have chosen another, if we wanted to. This sense provides a basis for the idea that our wills are free. Another important basis for that idea has to do with morality. It seems unfair to condemn a person who had no real choice. In order to hold people responsible for their actions, we need to be able to say that they could have acted differently. There is, however, an idea opposed to free will. It is the idea of determinism, sometimes conceived of as fate. According to this idea, what human beings do is already decided for them. A special form of determinism is predestination. It teaches that G OD has predestined or predetermined what will happen in the future. For some Chris tians, God predestines one item in particular: who will and will not be saved. The tension between free will and determin ism is a classic topic in European philosophy and in Christian, Islamic, and, to a much lesser degree, Jewish THEOLOGY . The issue arises in other reli gions, too. Many religious people feel that fate deter mines certain events, such as the time of a per son’s death. In H INDUISM , BUDDHISM , J AINISM , and S IKHISM one’s previous actions ( KARMA ) determine the circumstances in which one will be reborn and under which one will act. Note that karma does not determine what one will actually do. Determinism is particularly attractive to reli gions that teach MONOTHEISM . It can help emphasize God’s greatness: “God is in control of everything.” If so, God must control our actions. For some, determinism is a consequence of saying that God knows everything. If God knows ahead of time what a person will do, how can the person really have a choice? For others, determinism means that human beings must rely upon God’s grace for SAL VATION . They cannot earn God’s favor on their own. But determinism raises problems, too. If God is in