Like, GO1/Book Omens opinion on the idea of Free Will at the face of God’s Ineffability was a lot more…jovially ambivalent, I guess is the best way I’d put it. The idea of ‘actually, what if trying to go against the Great Plan is actually still part of God’s bigger Ineffable Plan?’ was originally a triumphant, positive moment. Crowley and Aziraphale’s biggest actual contribution to saving the world…
Although the final note on it is still ambiguous between that viewpoint and Adam’s more straightforward ‘Yeah, I don’t care it was written, I am defying the plan, fuck you.”
And then again when Crowley has his big revelation at the end of the book, in that context, the Universe being God’s ‘giant game of Solitaire’ was maybe not an inherently positive thing, but it was not inherently negative either.
God wanted Adam and Eve to eat the Fruit of Knowledge, for Humanity to have their own sense of right and wrong, to have humans disobey Their commands, to have Free Will… but is it all kinda nullified by the fact that it was just God’s plan all along? The whole Chess-vs-Solitaire thing demonstrates that God isn’t really on Heaven’s side, and that seems like a good thing considering Heaven is full of assholes, but is that the same thing as God being on the side of Humanity? The ‘real Ineffable Plan’ Crowley speculates about here is the concept of a Humanist Revolution against Heaven and Hell, but will it actually be an empowering moment for Human agency if it was planned by God all along? If all the heroic actions taken by our cast to try and save the world, Adam defying his destiny and all that, if they were essentially just part of God’s Rube-Goldberg machine to see if They built the world properly enough to save it from destruction, does it make them lesser and not as ‘Free’ on some level?
There’s no real definitive answer for these questions either way. Part of the point is that these are ideas are truly hard to grasp and are actually kinda Ineffable. (The Joke, especially in the original book, is Aziraphale tossing out the word ‘ineffable’ when he just doesn’t to argue with Heaven’s doctrine, then culminating his character arc by turning this around on Heaven at the airfield… and then the final punchline is that Crowley ended up stumbling on a revelation that is legitimately Ineffable). And it’s also paralleled with the Paradox at the end of Newt and Anathema’s storyline. Anathema decides to stop living her life following Agnes’ prophecies… but it’s pretty clear that Agnes predicted that as well, and is happy with it.
Does this weaken the Free Will of Anathema’s decision? Well, that depends how you look at it, but it’s hard to deny that this scene is framed in a very positive way.
All of this plus, just, generally the ending of the Book having all the characters living Happily Ever After, and insinuating that Humanity’s future is going to be defined by Adam’s ordinary mischievous hopefulness ‘for ever’, just sort of incentivizes the readers to see the more optimistic sides of these Ineffable Paradoxes. To believe that even with this Biblically Literalist Universe’s many downsides and self-contradictory Ineffability, there is room for Free Will and there is room for human agency and there is room for hope that Humanity will make things better eventually…
But it’s just when GO3 turns around and goes ‘no, God is an unambiguously sinister figure, She does want the world to end eventually, Her plans do unambiguously negate everyone else’s agency, believing you have Free Will under God’s existence is like believing you can win a rigged game, the world could only be ‘free’ and ‘real’ if it was Godless, and this is so important that it not only requires our two main leads to sacrifice themselves and their relationship after 6000 years of longing and doubts, it also justifies not bringing back the old world and the old supporting cast back, because the ‘Real Free Will’ of the new humanity is so important that the lives of the humans that came before will just pale in comparison apparently…’
It’s when you pull out all of this bullshit, that questions like ‘hey, if everything that happened in the old universe was part of God’s will, how do we know Crowley and Aziraphale’s sacrifice and the Universe Reset wasn’t just the next step of the Imeffable Plan?’ or ‘is this New Universe really Godless? Couldn’t God go back on Her promise?’ or ‘does the New Universe have Real Free Will, actually?’ do actually feel like they require a more definitive answer, or at least a heavy implication in their favor. Paradoxical ambiguity isn’t going to cut it anymore. The price paid for the creation of this new universe was immeasurably high, and it was supposed to be worth it because it was ‘’’better’’’. At this point, when someone asks ‘wait, how do we know it’s better?’, the answer can’t just be ‘*shrug* Well, who can really say for certain……”
