Leaving Calvinism?

At the 22 minute mark Flowers gets into a fascinating discussion which I think is the crux of the matter. Flowers believes that the free will itself must be the determining factor in the taking of a decision. I believe that every human decision will always be the result of a combination of circumstances and inclinations. Free will for a human is never completely self determined or else it must become totally random because it is based on nothing (or no influence or information that we can perceive). Flowers then used God himself as an example to refute this which is foolish because we are not at all like God in those respects. His charge of begging the question is wrong unless he can show that the deterministic factors are not really there or relevant.

Example:
Mrs. Smith offers me a cookie at the church social. I think for a minute and then take one. What happened to lead to that. Flowers might say I determined to take one. It was totally my autonomous decision. I say baloney.
Here is what happened: You saw the cookie. Your body desired it and the sight and smell sent signals to your brain to take it. You realized it was sweet, and fat and forbidden on your diet. You balked. You then realized that Mrs. Smith had worked hard making them and might be offended. You rethought the situation. You realized you could eat less for supper. You evaluated all this and then decided to take a cookie. It was truly your decision but it was based on all those inclinations - not on some sovereign self determination which at best was really a shorthand way of describing all your mental gyrations.

Does it make any difference in your Christian walk? NO

 

I find it amazing that you do not understand what a free will choice is.
Man has the God given ability too evaluate information and then to make a choice based on that information. If the choice is not made via a free will then it is logically made under coercion.

Why does a self determined choice have to be totally random? Even your example shows your stated position is wrong.

Look at the information that the man had to work with that he evaluated and then finally made his free will choice. Actually what we see is a series of free will choices.

1] saw the cookie
2] desired it
3] realized it was sweet, and fat and forbidden
4] balked
5] realized that Mrs. Smith had worked hard making them and might be offended
6] rethought the situation
7] realized you could eat less for supper
8] evaluated all this
9] decided to take a cookie

Free will is not the boogeyman that calvinism wants to portray it as.

 

@Silverhair . I think that Calvinism, in it's theological statements at least, tends to go too far the other way. And I think if you would read some of the Calvinists like J.C. Ryle, you would be very comfortable with the way they handle free will and man's responsibility, as well as God's love for all people. Not that it really matters as I have said before I do not put these issues at a tier 1 level at all.

Regarding the list above, all I am saying is that we have a difference of opinion on how those things work. I feel that those things actually influence your free will choice as a human being. You, and I assume Flowers, have a much higher view of our ability to evaluate and decide in an impartial, detached manner. I am saying that your bodily desires, your desires to please others, your concern re health, your training and ability to put off immediate gratification - all these things are more than things you consider. They are part of you and they determine your free will choice.

What Flowers does at the 23 minute mark, where he describes how that God can make a completely libertarian free will choice because he doesn't need us or anything else is astounding to me in that although that is true about God, he then turns around and claims that we have the same libertarian free will. On the contrary, we are completely a mass of needs and wants and in degree of ignorance. We are constantly moving, changing and amassing knowledge, and we have given instincts, wants and a human nature. So in my opinion Flowers completely blows his own argument. Once again, this is just philosophy. It has no bearing on one's faith or orthodoxy and it in no way offends me if you completely disagree. But it may have an effect on how you view man's condition by nature, whether we have an "inclination" to sin and whether or to what extent we can extricate ourselves from that condition by ourselves and if not exactly how much and in what way does the Holy Spirit help us.

 

@DaveXR650 what do you think evaluating information is? A person will have various pieces of information to evaluate.The choices he makes will be influenced by the value he places on those various pieces of information but he still uses his free will in doing so and in the final decision that he does make.

You say I may have a much higher view of our ability to evaluate and decide in an impartial, detached manner. Man does not decide in an impartial manner, they evaluate the information, which you want to call influence, and then make choices based on that. Like the man in your example he was influenced by the information he had and evaluated it and made a choice. That is free will.

Consider this, you stand in front of a judge accused of crime X. The judge knows you have a history of such crimes. He has a strong dislike for for crime X but he is a fair and honest judge so he knows he has to decide in an impartial, detached manner if he is to uphold the standard of his office. So while he is influenced by the information and personal animus to crime X he has to evaluate the evidence honestly and make his choice as to what the verdict will be.
Did he evaluate the evidence, or was he influenced by the evidence? What is the difference in the final free will choice that the judge will make?

Free will is free will whether you say one evaluates or is influenced by the available information.

Look at the list you gave. "your bodily desires, your desires to please others, your concern re health, your training and ability to put off immediate gratification - all these things are more than things you consider. They are part of you and they determine your free will choice." Dave they are things you can consider and accept or reject at any given time or situation. Do you always only decide in one way regarding all things on your list? I doubt that you do. So when making an alternative choice you are exercising your free will.

As hard as you try to avoid man's free will it is always there when man has to make a choice.

 

Sorry but the flaw of all free willers is exactly what Flowers did in his own video. He demands that our free will be the same as the way God has free will. Then, like Flowers says "The cause of the choice is the chooser". Such is not the case with us. Sure, we freely choose what we most want to do. And God has the right to righteously judge us based on our choices.

Why does this matter? Because with a correct view of free will you can begin to understand how the Holy Spirit can be said to be essential (and the initiator) in our salvation in a true and actual way - not just as another piece of information that we sovereignly take under advisement. And people who really look into this tend to end up with a Calvinistic view of soteriology.

I'm not claiming that our choices aren't real, or that they cannot be righteously judged by God. Our choices are ours, and we have enough ability to make these choices to be held responsible. But I am saying that the choices we freely make, contrary to Flowers own statement, are not like God's choices. Our choices are not autonomous. If we are sinful then we are going to make sinful choices. If we have high self esteem and self righteousness then we are not going to humble ourselves before God without outside influence. Enter the Holy Spirit and God's providence as now being instrumental in our coming to faith.

Like I said before, Calvinism has a wide spectrum of belief in these areas and I truly disagree with the rigidly deterministic end of it. But guys like Flowers, and you, tend to think you can come along and just blow it away when the fact is you have not done your homework and gone deep enough to really flesh it out. If you do, you will find at some level, in Calvinism, a formidable and carefully thought out view of how this all works. It isn't perfect, which is why many speak of paradoxes and so on but it beats a radical free will theology in my opinion.

 

I find it not in the least surprising that you would say that I "have not done your homework and gone deep enough to really flesh it out." What would make you think that I have not gone deep enough, the fact I do not agree with your deterministic view of free will and salvation. The bible is clear that man can and are expected to make real future changing choices.

God holds man responsible for the choices that they make regarding the influence/information that He provides. You keep saying that man can not even evaluate those truths. Strange but God thinks we can. You do know the God can freely create and I am quite sure that Flowers does not think that his free will allows him to create something from nothing or that he can save himself. Speaking for myself I know I can do neither but I also know that I could freely trust in or reject Christ Jesus.

You keep saying the Holy Spirit has to be the initiator. Well that would fall under the conviction of ones sinful actions and He does that for the whole world. But even though He convicts the whole world not everyone turns to God in faith do they. Does that mean that He is ineffective, NO. It shows that man can exercise there own free will. The only way your view works is if all those convicted actually came to faith. Thus determinism. As I said before, you do not have a real understanding of biblical free will. You are allowing some man to dictate what you think is free will and it has to fit into your calvinism.

Man sins but man can also make the choice not to sin as is evidenced by the number of times that you {@DaveXR650} could have but chose not to do so. You have fallen into the Total Inability trap of the DoG. An unbiblical concept. What you consider a formidable and carefully thought out view I see as a man trying to fit the bible into his preconceived theological view.

You do realize that people came to faith by freely trusting in God prior to Augustine and even he held to free will until he ran back to his earlier pagan teachings. So you see free will comes from the bible determinism comes from pagan heresy. You as a Christian should want to hold to biblical truth and not pagan philosophy.

 

You tend to just keep restating your belief in an autonomous free will that is in reality a fantasy. There are reasons why in a disputed call in a game where 80,000 people saw it that 90% of the fans of team A see the truth the opposite of 90% of the fans of team B. It's a simple fact that their autonomous decision was mostly determined by their team loyalty. If the Shawnees stole a settler child and raised him as a Shawnee he ended up loving the Shawnee life. We choose to get married but it all started at about age 15 when girls suddenly became fascinating rather than simply annoying.

Everyone concedes the above, even while realizing they are partly random and biological, yet when it comes to our creator, who has already demonstrated love to us and infinite wisdom, we demand an independent autonomy that goes against tons of scripture as well as personal experience. Don't dare let the Almighty himself touch our sacred free will, even though it will lead us straight to Hell with no intervention. Calvinism at least recognizes that fact.

 

Exactly. And how this all works and how God judges us is somewhat of a mystery. There is a whole spectrum of views on how this works. Calvinists, regular Baptists, Wesleyans, and other groups believe this in varying degrees and view the details differently but they all say that the Holy Spirit is essential in that he must act or man simply will not come to Christ. Flowers, although he has some kind of role for the Holy Spirit, seems to be avoiding the essential and decisive nature of this role. If anyone has a quote or video from Flowers that refutes this please let me know. I tend to like him but think he is way off in the weeds in that one area (of free will).

 

Dave free will is free will. That is the ability to choose otherwise, the ability to evaluate various information and make a choice. The conviction of the Holy Spirit is a form of information is it not. Your example is of no valve as they are not making a choice but rather just showing loyalty to a team. The reality is we do see free will in life all the time. The fact that you disagree with my view and write a comment shows a free will on your part. You had to make a choice, respond or not and to agree or not. Are you saying that this is all scripted. I hope not

As I said the fact that you are presented with choices to sin or not proves free will. You wrote "our creator, who has already demonstrated love to us and infinite wisdom" and yet you in effect deny His ability to demonstrate either. You do realize that for love to be genuine it has to be freely given. God demonstrated His love for us when He sent His son to die for our sins we demonstrate our love for Him when we freely trust in His risen Son.

The bible is clear that we have to make real choices and those choices have consequences.
Isa 1:19 If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land;
Isa 1:20 But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword"; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

By the logic you are presenting the "if you" has to be read as "when I make you". You say we demand an "independent autonomy" you are ignoring what scripture shows us. God requires that we make real choices whereas it is your calvinism that says God has to rule by decree.

Free will* is arguably the most well taught doctrine in the entire Bible

* people have a choice in what they do and that their actions have not been decided in advance by God or by any other power. (John 1:11-12; Romans 10:9-10; Isaiah 55:6-7; John 7:38)

 

So you do not believe that man has an actual God given ability to make free choices?

 

So free will is not a concept it is a reality. Just a bit of a nit-pick. Calvinism would be a concept, a philosophical construct.

Concept

1. a general notion or idea; conception.
2. an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.

 

I don't know why free willers always bring this up. It is meaningless if the choice you made was your choice in the first place. That you could've chosen differently? But then that wouldn't have been your choice.

Yes, but much more. It is an attempt at actually pulling or moving your very will. And this is where I find the methodology of Flowers inadequate. I agree with the Arminians and Baptists that this type of grace can indeed be resisted, but it is way more than information. In addition, I believe, like the Arminians, Baptists, and Calvinists, that it is essential and the decisive thing when it is effective.

You missed my point. Their perception of what is true, their very belief, was determined by their inclination to their team loyalty. How much more does this play out when a man in his natural state is presented with the gospel? No. According to you we have a sovereign ability to carefully evaluate the situation and the only thing allowable is our self determined decision.

Of course not.

Sure. Those choices are real. But warnings like that are present from Genesis through the OT and every single time the fact that the Israelites were inclined to rebel and do evil is proven, by their own actions. And of course we're just like them except we don't have a book written about it. All I'm saying is that your will does not function like Flowers says it does. If you can't cease from sin because your eyes are full of adultery is it still your own fault? Of course. But you may not have the autonomous ability to fix that. That is all I am saying. Your "free will" is you freely acting according to your inclinations.

 

Did I say it made the concept false, NO. I said that free will is not a concept it is a reality. It is not something that man has thought up and idea. It is a God given reality. Man has a free will because God gave him one with which to make real choices. Calvinism on the other hand is something that man has conceived an idea a concept of how to understand scripture.