Stephan
Grozinger of Weston is challenging the fundamental religious principle of free
will in his new book, Faith on a Stone Foundation: Free Will, Morality and the
God of Abraham.
“Many
believe that we have free will — the ability to make choices from something
other than our nature and our nurture. We believe that our free will
distinguishes us from animals and from computers and gives us dignity,”
Grozinger said.
But
after years of religious and theological study, Grozinger said, he came to a
startlingly different conclusion.
“Free
will seems like the focus of faith. But science and philosophy are increasingly
asserting that we don’t have free will and that our decision-making process is
exclusively the result of nature and nurture,” Grozinger said.
An
attorney by trade, Grozinger provides well-researched arguments on both sides
of the subject of free will in his book.
“I
strive to answer whether human dignity is possible if we don’t have free will,
and does belief in the Judeo-Christian God make sense if we don’t have free
will,” he said.
Those
aren’t easy questions to tackle. Grozinger takes on the challenge by citing
examples in theology, Greek and moral philosophy, existentialism, evolutionary
psychology, and pop culture.
He
also reviews familiar biblical stories, such as the Garden of Eden, Noah, Job,
and Jonah and concludes that scripture is entirely consistent with the idea
that human beings do not have free will.
Labor of love
Grozinger
said the book was a labor of love that took him eight years to write.
A
graduate of Ridgefield High School and a member of St. Mary’s Church, Grozinger
practices law in Weston, where he lives with his wife, Claire Ingram, and their
daughter Zoë.
“I first came up with the free will argument
while standing on the sidewalk of Catoonah Street in Ridgefield. I then started
taking notes while walking in the Trout Brook Valley nature preserve in Weston.
At first I thought what I had would become a blog post, then perhaps a long
article. Eight years later it has evolved into a book,” he said.
Grozinger
has many interests. He is a member of the board of directors of the Aspetuck
Land Trust, a volunteer firefighter in Weston, where he was twice named
Firefighter of the Year, and a former member and chairman of Weston’s Planning
and Zoning Commission.
He
also has a deep interest in theology, and for the past six years has delivered
a lecture on the subject of theistic existentialism to the senior class and
faculty of the Convent of the Sacred Heart school in Greenwich.
Grozinger
said his life in Connecticut has given him much to think about on the topic of
free will.
“A
central idea in Christianity is that you have to believe in God or in Jesus in
order to be well regarded by God,” he said. “But it’s obvious some of us are
born and raised with every advantage in this regard. I myself grew up so close
to St. Mary’s Church in Ridgefield that it literally filled my bedroom window.
Meanwhile, many others are born and raised in situations where they might never
hear a compelling faith story or that are outright hostile to faith. If God is
fair, how can He reward believers and leave non-believers out?” he asked.
He
applied the same analysis to morality. “Even people who have left religion
entirely say they are doing what God requires because they are a ‘good person.’
But every parent would acknowledge that how good you are has a lot to do with
how you are raised. We don’t raise our children hoping their free will is good
— we form them and reform them. And whether you commit a terrible crime can be
traced back to whether you were born with a violent temper or were raised in an
abusive household,” he argued.
This
led Grozinger to conclude that lack of free will was compatible with faith and
human dignity.
“If
we take an individual’s nature and nurture into account when we think about
their bad behavior, we’re led away from anger and hate and into understanding
and forgiveness. That this is a central idea in Judeo-Christianity is no
accident,” he said.
He
said when he looked at the Bible with this new perspective, he discovered it
was completely consistent with the idea that human beings don’t have free will.
“I realized that I had been misunderstanding some of the most important
narratives in the Bible for decades, especially Jonah, Job and the Garden. Once
I looked at them with new eyes, the message was unmistakable,” he said.
Grozinger
said he hopes his book will spark interest in the subject of free will and he
encourages readers to share their thoughts with him by email at stephan@stephangrozinger.com.
Faith
on a Stone Foundation is available locally at Books on the Common in
Ridgefield and the Ridgefield Public Library and online at Amazon.com.
Grozinger blogs on the subject of faith at faithonastonefoundation.com.
By Patricia Gay
By Patricia Gay
