Featured FREE WILL and PREDESTINATION

As Jonathan Edwards and Martin Luther have expressed in their writings the will of man is not free from inward compuslons of the heart which is desperately wicked. Even God's will cannot choose contrary to His own nature. He cannot will into existence another God. He cannot will to sin. He cannot will to be mutable or etc.

Neither can the fallen man whose heart is ruled by "the law of sin" exercise choice contrary to their own fallen nature which "IS enmity against God and IS not subject to the Law of God and NEITHER INDEED CAN BE. So, they who are in the flesh CANNOT please God."

The condition of the human heart makes man incapable of choosing righteousness as the very motive and intents of the fallen heart is ruled by the Law of sin.

 

Great questions. A couple of examples here.

1- Prov. 16:9 "A man’s heart plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps."

So in essence man has limited free will that he exercises but God's sovereign will will ultimately supercede it to bring about his ultimate will. Man is always trying to do things his own way and we have that freedom, but doing things our way instead of God's way has consequences. Just ask Abraham & Sarah how getting Hagar involved to have a child worked out. :tongue3:

2- Genesis 50:20 "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

Joseph's brothers meant to bring harm to Joseph, but in the long run God still brought about his ultimate Sovereign plan which was for Joseph's good.

The application for salvation is a great mystery, an Antinomy because there are many scriptures that talk about foreknowledge, predestination, but there are also many scriptures that speak to man's responsibility, accountability, confessing before men or denying Christ before men and so on. If you take either of these truths and ignore the other to support an extreme view of Salvation doctrine then it is not a complete doctrine. It's silly that we have these 2 camps, Arminian & Calvinism when they both hold extreme views without acknowledging the truth of both truths are in the Word. Praise be to God that he knows the mystery and that is enough.

 

I guess I would have you to break down what you mean. I do believe that God chose a people before the world began to give His son in order to give them eternal life. I believe His choice or election was unconditioned upon any foreseen good or evil in the lives of those elect.

 

God has free will by definition.

And He knows all -- even about his own works in the future.

Acts 15 : 18 “Known to God from eternity are all His works.

 

Too much "fog" in the OP's questions. Please remove it so we can better glean what you questions are.

 

Psalm 37:23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way.


Please explain this "TryingtoDoRight"...

 

Our will cannot be free if it is predetermined.

When is our will free to make choices between alternate outcomes? When God allows it. We make plans but God directs our steps. Thus we make autonomous plans which God can allow or block or alter partially.

 

If God is just "a very smart human with lots of power" then God reacts to everything He sees and comes up with the smartest outcome -- short of knowing the future and what would really work out in the long run of all eternity.

in Christ,

Bob

 

Our will is just as free as our nature is. Change the nature and the will changes...

 

So just "reprogram" their nature and they do whatever their newly acquired instinct tells them to do?

And not even God himself can change that law of "man without God only follows instinct" idea.

If it were true - Lucifer never would have fallen, nor would Adam nor would Eve.

in Christ,

Bob

 

Strict determinism is a troubling, narrow minded and shallow view of God’s Providential Sovereign Control over the world.

Example:

Simple logical example, if one were to use his God given mind to reason with, demonstrates why such dogmatic theological views which impose strict Determinism unto the Biblical meanings of predestination are troubling:

1)Necessarily God has fore determined everything that will happen

2) God has determined X

3) Therefore it is necessary that X will happen

X = man’s choices

X = evil

IT UNAVOIDABLY LOGICALLY AMOUNTS TO FATALISTIC THEOLOGY BY MAKING GOD THE AUTHOR OF EVIL!

In my opinion the Doctrines of Deterministic Grace are rebellion against how one was made (Rom 9:21-23) in that they must freely respond to Christ’s Lordship over them (Rom 1:20-22) and have no excuse not to bow their own knees. The Doctrines of Determinism are a demonstration of pride and/or a confession that that one could not find it within his own heart (Rom 10:9) to “willingly” respond in love of truth to the light given to all men (John 1:9, 1John 1:5-10). Strict Deterministic views are a sad denial of God’s attributes of being Only Good through creation of His creatures and it logically denies the truth in divine judgment of those creatures by denying free will, thus, they (Determinists) own the Problem of Evil which fatalistically affects their misguided doctrines. All 5 points of the TULIP are logically unavoidably dependent on strict fatalistic Determinist’ views.

 

Here is a simple construct to demonstrate the faulty logic (reasoning that supposedly supports strict determinism) behind the shallow Calvinist argument above:

Calvinist: “God determined all things that ever happen, He is Sovereign."

Free Will: "Did God determine the things Jeffrey Dahmer did?"

Calvinist: "No, Jeffrey Dahmer did what he did because of his nature."

Free Will: "Who determined Jeffrey Dahmer’s nature?"

Calvinist: "God did, He determines all things, He is Sovereign."

If Calvinists are interested in coming to logically “true” conclusions it seems that they are very selective about recognizing which arguments can be understood as coming to a valid logical true conclusion and those that don’t.

 

ONLY God has absolute free will, as all other beings have natures that ae not perfect, not all everything, not basedtotally upon holiness/justice/NO sin/darkness etc at all!

We are bound by our wills, all beings are, ONLY God 'nature' ALLOWS hIM TO DO only WHAT HE DESIRES TO DO, FOR HIS DESIRES ARE ALWAYS RIGHT, PERFECT, BEST ETC!

 

And yet God knows what HE will do in the future Acts 15:18

 

If that is true...than "will" is literally no different than "nature".
It shares no distinct properties, and never does anything or implies anything other than "nature" does.....

It's LITERALLY the SAME THING.

It has no meaning. Calvinists might as well deny that the words "will" and "nature" are anything other than synonyms for one another. They aren't even two definable concepts in your view.

They share equally and all properties in concert with one another, and they are neither qualitatively nor quantitavely different in any way whatsoever.

Calvinism literally re-defines terms into non-existence.

In Calvinism:
"Nature" possesses the properties of redness, sphericity, a rubber composition, a certain propensity to bounce....

And is therefore, a Red beach-ball:

A"Will" then, also possesses in precisely the same quantities and qualities that redness, sphericity, rubber composition and the same propensity to bounce....

And is also therefore, a Red beach-ball.

It is LITERALLY the exact same thing and has no separate identity....
You've just re-defined it into non-existence.

How convenient............I could win every argument I ever engaged in if I could ignore or simply re-define the meaning of any word I felt like at my leisure.