The free will defence argues that humans, not God, are responsible for sin and evil. Its central claim is that love must be freely given; coerced love is not genuine. For love to exist, humans must have freedom—including the freedom to choose evil. God, it is said, created humans with this freedom so that we could love Him and one another. Therefore, the suffering and sin in the world are the result of human choice, not divine action.
The defence can be summarized as follows:
"Humans require free will to love authentically. God allows suffering and sin because preserving our freedom is necessary for love to exist."
The argument often compares humans to robots, claiming that without free will we would merely simulate emotions. However, being influenced or conditioned does not equate to being a robot. Humans can be affected by environment and biology while still exercising meaningful choice.
A key feature of the free will defence is that it frames the existence of evil and suffering in terms of God’s desire to receive freely given love. Humans must have genuine freedom to love, because coerced love would be meaningless; the emphasis is therefore on what God receives rather than on human well-being. This implies that the moral value of our actions is primarily measured by their significance to God, not necessarily by their impact on human flourishing or the reduction of suffering. Critics argue that this makes the doctrine more concerned with divine priorities than with the lived experience of love, effectively justifying suffering as a necessary condition for God’s satisfaction rather than for human moral or emotional growth.
The free will defence also struggles to explain natural evils—such as earthquakes, diseases, or other disasters—that occur independently of human choice. Some attempts attribute these to supernatural agents, but this requires additional assumptions and does not resolve the moral problem of why an omnipotent, benevolent God would allow suffering in general.
Evil and sin can be understood as deviations from good. If God is perfectly good, reliance on human freedom to achieve moral purposes raises ethical questions. Even if humans misuse free will, God remains responsible for creating the framework in which such misuse is possible. Therefore, the existence of free will alone does not fully justify the presence of evil.
In conclusion, while the free will defence offers a way to reconcile human freedom with divine intention, it does not address the full moral problem of evil. It cannot account for natural suffering or fully absolve God of responsibility for the conditions that allow evil to occur. The defence highlights the tension between human freedom, moral responsibility, and the nature of divine goodness.