For those of us who struggle with balancing the idea of human free will and divine causation, that is, how can we say we choose if, as some Protestant traditions hold, God has ordained all things anyway?, perhaps we can, though realizing that we will never resolve it fully, look at this way.  If we insist that we exercise free will in a universe devoid of divine causation, a universe in which everyone is "free" to function in any way that he "chooses," we bump into two problems.  One, what does it mean to be free in a universe that is supposedly already free?  Two, and this is occasioned by the first, if the universe is entirely devoid of any element of external origin, guidance, or order, how, we must ask, if we continue, as must do, to insist that it is subject to a rhythm of cause and effect, did it ever come to be a place subject to such in the first place?
     How did "cause" emerge when there was none there?