Free will is the power that each individual has to choose your actions, which way do you want to go. The expression is used by several religions, such as Christianity, Spiritism, Buddhism, etc.
The real meaning of free will has religious, psychological, moral and scientific meanings. For some people, free will means having freedom, and they often confuse it with disrespect and lack of education.
Everyone really has the right to do what they want with their life and choose which path they want to follow, as long as it doesn't harm anyone.
free will in the bible
The expression "free will" is not in the Bible, however, in several passages we can see that God gives the power of choice to human beings.
According to the Bible, God's will is for people to follow his commandments and do good things. It is also possible to see in the Bible that each person will be accountable for the way they use their free will, that is, they will be held responsible for their actions.
The Bible also speaks of predestination, where some people are chosen even before they are born, and are predestined to follow God's way.
For some people this is a conflict, because they say that if a person is predestined to do something, he has no will of his own. Despite this, the Bible says that despite having chosen some people, it does not interfere with their free will, the person's choice is free, but God knows in advance what the person will choose.
Free Will and St. Augustine
Free will (Arbitrary Libero) it was a work by Saint Augustine. This book, which is dated 395, was written in the form of a dialogue between the author and his friend Evodius. In this work, St. Augustine elaborates some theses about human freedom and addresses the origin of moral evil.
Often the expression free will has the same meaning as the expression freedom. However, St. Augustine clearly distinguished these two concepts. Free will is the possibility to choose between good and evil; while freedom is the good use of free will. This means that man is not always free when he puts free will to use, it always depends on how he uses that characteristic. So, free will is more related to the will. However, a distinction between the two is that will is an act or deed, while free will is a faculty.
Free Will in Spiritism
According to Spiritism, free will is one of the fundamental properties of the Spirit. It consists in the freedom to do or not do something, to follow a certain path or to avoid it.
In Spiritism there is a belief that the acts performed were not predetermined and that is why each person is responsible for their choices. In this way, free will is developed along with the development of intelligence and implies an increase in accountability for the acts performed.
Free Will in Philosophy
Within philosophy, free will is opposed to determinism, which defends that all events are caused by previous facts. For determinism, the actions of Man are determined by laws of nature or other causes and therefore the human being cannot be held responsible for his actions.
For philosophy, the individual does exactly what he had to do, his actions are inherent to his will, and occur with the force of other causes, internal or external.