“Stories, Freedom, and the Meaning of Life”
John Martin Fischer
ABSTRACT: In this paper I explore the idea that we make our lives into
“narratives” or “stories” by exercising our distinctive capacity to act
freely. I also suggest that the traditional problem of the relationship
between God's omniscience and human freedom can be understood as
analogous to the relationship between an author of a story and his or her
characters. Thus, the idea that humans are to be understood as “made in
God's image”, in the context of free will, can be interpreted as the
contention that both humans and God are authors of the relevant stories,
rather in terms of creation ex nihilo.