Mere Christianityintermediate
In Lewis’s account, what makes free will valuable despite making evil possible?
Answer
It allows creatures to choose love and goodness rather than act as machines.
Explanation
### Why this is right
Lewis argues that meaningful love and goodness require freedom. A world of creatures programmed to behave well would lack voluntary moral choice, even though freedom also makes wrongdoing possible.
### The concept
Free will is the capacity to choose, including the possibility of choosing wrongly. Lewis presents it as a condition for genuine love, joy, and moral action, not as a guarantee that people will behave well. His argument addresses why a good creator might permit the risk of rebellion.
### The other options
- **B. It guarantees that every person will choose rightly.**: Freedom includes the possibility of choosing wrongly.
- **C. It removes the need for moral responsibility.**: Choice is central to Lewis’s account of responsibility.
- **D. It ensures that suffering never occurs.**: Lewis says freedom makes evil possible, not impossible.
### Terms
- **Free will**: The capacity to choose among possible actions.
### Remember
Freedom can make love possible, but it also makes refusal possible.
Related Questions
- In Lewis’s piano analogy, what corresponds to the Moral Law?(intermediate)
- Explain how Lewis responds to the objection that moral rules are merely social conventions.(intermediate)
- Reconstruct Lewis’s inference from the Moral Law to a power behind the universe, and identify one limit he places on that inference.(intermediate)
- Lewis claims that every culture has identical moral rules in every detail.(intermediate)
- Lewis argues that the Moral Law is simply a description of what human beings usually do.(intermediate)
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