Created perfection

Perhaps I should narrow my question even further. I was not asking about what we are free to want versus what we are free to do. I was asking about whether or not you think we are free to have chosen otherwise in any instance in which we may have actually chosen. For example, could the one who chooses to surrender his life to Christ have chosen otherwise, and vice versa. Does such a person possess "free will" in the Arminian sense of 'absolute power to contrary'? Is a person who is faced with the choice to accept or reject Christ equally capable of making either choice.

By the way, I am not trying to start an argument. I am just trying to understand where you are coming from more precisely.

Pastork

[ December 28, 2002, 05:48 PM: Message edited by: Pastork ]

 

Terry God wanted his creation to love him willingly.He was not looking for robots.

 

Pastork,

I read your request earlier and have been trying to think how to word a response, so that I would not be misunderstood.

First of all, let me say that my rock bottom is that I fully trust Christ for my salvation and that the Bible is His Holy Word, inerrant in the original signatures.

Just about everything else I try to examine and that means a fallible human is considering what other fallible humans say and trying to think with her fallible mind...

All that understood, I'll try to give you the most biblical answer I know. Understand it is more important by far that it be biblical than that Helen believes it, right?

In Genesis 8:21, God refers to the hearts of all men as always being inclined (or tending toward) evil from childhood. I think we all recognize that this is the key to understanding why we need a new heart -- need to be born again!

But I look at the word 'incline' or 'tend' and realize that this means, to use a picture (there's a storm going on outside so this picture comes readily to mind...) that although a strong wind can be blowing that little hummingbird in one direction, it still can struggle against the wind to get to the feeder for sugar water.

In fact, that is the very reason we discipline and teach our children -- we require that they learn self-discipline. If self-discipline did not require going against our natural tendencies, we wouldn't need it, would we? If the Ten Commandments were commanding what we tended toward anyway, we probably wouldn't need them either!

But we don't tend that way. We incline toward evil. As I see it, evil is the result of rebellion/disobedience againt God. And after raising six children myself and also thinking about the kind of kid I was, I have no doubts about rebellion being part and parcel of our born-in natures.

And yet, when we discipline our children, we expect them to be able to obey -- to go against that natural inclination, right?

I'm going at this from this angle to try to say that although we do incline always toward evil before we are born again, there is a choice. We can recognize that something is wrong and struggle against it. Whether or not one considers Romans 7:14+ to be the plight of the unredeemed or the redeemed, the fact is that we all recognize that struggle, and that at least a form of it can take place in both the redeemed and the unredeemed condition.

So can an unredeemed person actually make a free choice? Yes, with the understanding of two things:

1. One choice -- that towards evil -- is a whole lot easier to make than the choice towards what is actually right and good. Lots of excuses are available for the wrong choices, and we see them and hear them daily. But if you think about it, those excuses would not need to be offered if the person himself did not know that he could have chosen differently. So although the choice is free, there is not a 50/50 split either among people or in a person's life because of the tendency of the heart. But it can be fought against, and that is the expectation of parents and of our legal system as well.

2. If we look at Pharaoh, in Exodus, we see that he first hardened his own heart before God finished the job for him. In Romans 1, Paul indicates this same sort of progression. In fact, in Leviticus 26
http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=43;t=000125
you will see that God presents one set of rewards, but several sets of punishments for persistent wrong choices. I think, looking at all these passages, and more, that we can also say (and this is certainly backed up in the lives I see around me) that once one has made a choice of one road, the tendency is to keep going down that road -- the decisions which would keep one on that road become easier and easier to make. Thus, once one becomes accustomed to choosing for selfish reasons, it gets harder and harder to choose against them.

So the most free choices are those at the beginning, before habits are set. Before excuses have to be made for previous behavior.

Thus, perhaps choices become less free as time goes on? The progression for the unredeemed who persist in suppressing the truth by their actions would then be -- perhaps -- from hard to choose the right to impossible to choose the right. At what point does God give one over to his own sins? At what point does God say, in effect, "you want it? you got it!" ?

I don't know. I know it happens. We can see about when it happened for Pharaoh. When did it happen for Judas? When for Hitler? Only God knows. At some point the freedom of choice was removed.

But before that there was freedom to choose, even if the choice to do right was hard.

Now, going on to salvation, which is where I think this is probably leading, can one choose to be saved?

I think that's jumping the gun, for the Bible says rightly that no one seeks after God and only God is good...

But Paul states in Romans 1 that God's wrath is being poured out against those who deliberately suppress truth. In other words, they can see it and have decided they don't want it. That means they are rejecting the way leading to Christ, who is the Truth. And that means they are rejecting, over and over again, the evidence of the truth presented to them by the Holy Spirit. Gradually, they will get locked into their positions, but that is not the way they start out.

They start out being presented with something that is true -- something they can accept or suppress; something they can incorporate into their lives and minds or reject from both.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said to seek, knock, ask -- you know that part -- and it would be found, opened, given. What is interesting is that He makes it very clear He is talking to the unredeemed here, for He refers to them as evil in the next verses. So the evil do know how to give good things, and therefore there is some recognition of good going on. That's the first thing. But the second is more important even -- they are being told to ask, seek, knock.

Combine that with Romans 1. If an unredeemed man recognizes the truth and opts for it, and if he seeks after it, no matter how hard it is, then I do believe the Father will lead him to Christ, in line with John 6. And the man will not be refused.

But, you see, I have to put all the relevant passages together. I cannot proclaim will so free that there are no impediments. There are. But they are not insurmountable, as we ARE told to seek and knock and ask. We ARE shown the truth of some of God's character (and therefore His existence) in nature itself.

So, finally, yes, real choices can be made between two real and accessible alternatives. That doesn't make them equally easy, however, and that is a very important point. Very often folks who are against free will concepts picture that it means man is TOTALLY free of any impediments to any choice. That is against what the Bible says. But not being able to choose at all is also against what the Bible says.

So here I am -- a free willer who admits that although both choices are possible, one is a whole LOT harder than the other because of the very nature we were born with.

But hard has never meant impossible!

 

Helen,

Thank you for the clarification of your view. I am a Calvinist myself, but I am sure we can get along fine as brother and sister in Christ.

By the way, I like that your pastor has taught you to recognize a mystery here. If both sides of the debate between Calvinists and Arminians would do this consistently, they would get along a lot better.

Pastork