Note: This post are written originally in Spanish. I then do my best to translate them to English. I beg you indulgence if they do not flow as easy in English as they do in Spanish.
About free will
God is infinitely free, therefore he can only create free creatures, so in addition to the gift of life, he gives the gift of freedom to the human being. It cannot be otherwise, because since God is free, cannot create slaves, because this would be contradictory.
Let us notice that there can be no freedom without responsibility, for these two terms are synonymous in the following sense. The human being, is Trinitarian because has in himself three realities in a single being; his reality of the body, his reality of his spirit and his reality of his psyche. He/she receives sensitive information through the senses. This information passes to our psyche, to our mind. It also receives spiritual information, either from the seal or imprint of God on your conscience or through the channel of faith, which connects your spirit (with lower case letter) with the Spirit (capital letter), or both.
Armed with this information, the reason that resides in the psyche, ponders, analyzes, investigates and discerns it, as a result creates options of four types; 'thoughts, words, actions and/or omissions'. At that point, a human makes an act of will, i.e., an exercise of free will, of freedom, and chooses one or more of those options.
Consider, my beloved Rio Linda's brothers, what lies behind this process. Unlike animals, which are subject to react in a predetermined way given a particular stimulus, that is to say instinctively, human beings are rational. This means that there is no short circuit between stimulus and response, that there is not a decisional reflex arc (instinct). Humans, being rational entities, have a disconnection between the stimulus and the response (we call that disconnection free will).
The stimulus comes to the psyche, where it is evaluated against information residing in the mind and is combined, weighted and confronted with the consciousness and with the information coming from the spirit and then the possible options are generated. At this point, an exercise of free will opts for a given response based on the options available. This whole process describes and summarizes the 'ability to respond', in other words, describes accountability, that is to say, responsibility – ability to respond.
Within mortal creation, only humans have that ability to respond, we are responsible, i.e. which is the same as to say we are free. Hence being free and being responsible is synonymous.
The role of free will in the drama of ‘the humus being'
After considering these concepts, we can now approach the drama of the fall of the humus -being, of the human being from the Grace of God. We can witness the drama of the fall of the first couple of human beings from the privileged place that God gave us, the Garden of Eden. It is very important and critical, brothers and sisters, to focus and carefully examine this drama, since God's Plan for the salvation of the human is nothing more than the search and provision of a way out of the dilemma and the havoc caused by the development of that fall.
The key to the fall and the key to salvation for the human being is the same, the use of his gift of freedom. The use of his rational gift to ponder the situation he was in, to evaluate the information that came to him through the senses, mostly from hearing, against the information already resident in his mind (the imprint of God, plus the word of God in The covenant; the covenant was, “you can dispose of everything in the creation, except the tree of good and evil’’, with the warning that if you disobey, you will surely die. We all know the result, the decision made in freedom by Adam and Eve. The human (Adam and Eve) used our gift of freedom to disobey, influenced by the mystery of iniquity. Hence the assertion of St. Paul; 'Through disobedience, sin entered the world and also bondage (anti-freedom) and death.'
Since Adam and Eve sinned, is the will of God truncated? Did the mystery of iniquity dealt a ‘’check mate” to God? That's what satan thought, but NFI. Not for an instant. The will of God, by definition, must be fulfilled, remember that He can not contradict Himself. There's nothing impossible for God. God's response to the evil attack that instigated the fall of man is The Drama of Redemption, also known by the names of The Plan of Salvation, The Mystery of Christ, the Economy of Salvation, etc .; Promised in Gen 3,15. The rest of the Bible and the rest of the Drama of Salvation is the unfolding, preparation, display and fulfillment of the promise made to us by God in Gen 3:15.
Let us now say, brother pilgrims of Rio Linda, that this drama has 4 acts.
Note: this is the third of about 12 posts (4/12) on this subject, will continue...