Freedom, Free Will
See also: Choice, to choose, Slaves, oppressed, prisoners.
Freedom is a characteristic of spiritual beings, who can choose to perform good or bad actions. Free choice is rewarded by God if it is good, and punished if it is bad.
In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"
- How man frees himself from the grip of the flesh (of the world).[1]
- If God provided everything, He would commit a theft against His friends. He would deprive them of the power to be merciful and to obey accordingly the commandment of love.[2]
- The Master and the freedom of His students.[3]
- Man is a free being. I came to free him increasingly from sin in regard to the spirit and from the chains of a Religion deviated.[4]
- Everything is spontaneous in Me and around Me.[5]
- Man possesses free will, which means that over the human freedom of thought and feeling, Satan cannot exercise his Violence. God does not do so either.[6]
- Man does not know how to be perfect and misuses the gifts of God who gave man the freedom to act, yet commanding him the good things, advising him the perfect so that man cannot say: "I did not know".[7]
- The two coins given to all sons before their sending into the world are time and free will that God gives to every man so that he may use them as he sees fit after being instructed and trained by the Law and the examples of the righteous.[8]
- God is Father, He loves us and He weeps if we are bad, but He does not force us to obey. Yet whoever is bad will one day be chastised by horrible torments...[9]
- Indeed, the freedom to behave, left by God to man His child, is like a capable servant given by God to man, His child, to help him make the vineyard fruitful, that is, the Soul.[10]
- God rarely Violates human freedom.[11]
- The spiritual man is the true superman because he is not a slave to the senses, while the material man is worthless in comparison to the true dignity of man, for he has too many appetites that he shares with the brute and is even inferior to it while surpassing it, by making the natural instinct of the animal a degrading vice.[12]
- Satan helps to finish enslaving. God lets him do it, because from this Struggle between the High and the Low, between the Good and the Evil, emerges the value of the creature. The value and the will. He will always allow it, even after I have risen. But then Satan will have a great Good enemy against him and man will have a powerful Good friend. - Who? Who? - Grace.[13]
- God granted creatures free will so that through it the creature may perfect itself in Virtues and thus make itself more like God its Father." And I tell you again, O mocker and cunning seeker of sin in my words, that from Evil, which was formed voluntarily, God still draws a good end: that of making men possessors of a deserved glory.[14]
- Oh! Truly I say to you that whoever makes good use of his intelligence and free will and who calls upon the Lord to see the truth of things, shall not be ruined by Temptation, for the Father of the Heavens will help him to do Good despite all the traps of the world and Satan.[15]
In other works of Maria Valtorta
In the Notebooks
- Catechesis of February 18, 1947: "No one's free will, not even Christ's, has been forced to yield or not to Temptations. Temptation resisted, merit gained. This is why God left man his splendid freedom of will, so that he may attain, thanks to it and by his personal merit, a deserved glory".[16]
In other sources
Simone Weil (1909 – 1943)
The proper function of intelligence requires total freedom, implying the right to deny everything, and no domination. Wherever it usurps a command, there is an excess of individualism. Wherever it is uncomfortable, there is an oppressive community, or several.
The Church and the State must punish it, each in its own way, when it advises acts that they disapprove of. When it remains in the realm of purely theoretical speculation, they still have the duty, if necessary, to warn the public by all effective means against the danger of a practical influence of certain speculations in the conduct of life. But whatever these theoretical speculations are, the Church and the State have neither the right to try to stifle them, nor to inflict on their authors any material or moral harm. Notably, they must not be deprived of the Sacraments if they desire them. For whatever they have said, even if they had publicly denied the existence of God, they may have committed no sin. In such a case, the Church must declare them to be in error, but not demand from them anything resembling a denial of what they have said, nor deprive them of the Bread of life.
A community is guardian of doctrine; and doctrine is an object of contemplation for love, faith, and intelligence, three strictly individual faculties. Hence a discomfort of the individual in Christianity, almost from the beginning, notably a discomfort of intelligence. It cannot be denied.
"The Waiting for God" – La Colombe/Livre de poche editions – Paris 1963 - pp. 56-57