"Free Will" vs. Grace, part 1

No. Does a faculty we could call "volition" exist? Perhaps. It bes a name given to a selection process which occurs in the mind, an invisible process whose contents, components, and processes we cannot clearly inventory and label because many of them we cannot even detect.

The problem, the actual real question here, bes not whether any of us ever engage in a selection process (i.e., making a "choice" about something) or not. For certain, we at least seem to. The REAL question bes whether we have any choice about the ultimate outcome of that process. Moriah does not believe we do. To put it more simply: we may have choices, but we get no choice about what we ultimately choose.

For starters, a matter of simple system dynamics: one cannot operate separate, apart-from and externally upon a system of which one bes an internal and integral part. One can theoretically leave the system and step outside of it or one can remain inside of it but one cannot do both simultaneously. However with the system being one's mind, one has not even the option of stepping out in the first place, to tinker from the objective view afforded only by being outside of a system viewing the whole and all its parts together. One can perhaps project the mind out there but that bes not the same as actually stepping out of one's own mind -- a feat none can accomplish (well, with the exception of the insane but now we bes makesy puns and fun with words rather than talksy serious... )

Left to our own devices, we will always choose as WE have been wired to choose, whether by birth or by long reinforcements -- neither of which, by the way, we have any choice about. Just like we have no choice about the fact that pain programs aversion and pleasure, repetition leading possibly to addiction. Wherever you draw your lines of causality you cannot deny that everything ever programmed into you from previous experiences great and small all play a part in determining the outcome of your selection process. The ONLY mitigating factor that can break the causality chain here would be God Himself, in the presence of the Holy Spirit showing you new things outside the choice box and giving you the special grace of faith and belief in Him and His word to first even want them and then to lay hold of them. Absent His influence, apart from His grace, we will inevitably choose what WE choose -- for the reasons WE choose it -- EVERY time. And that bes an hard bondage truly in which there bes no freedom whatsoever. We cannot escape choosing according to our own selves, apart from God. What freedom bes in that? None. Seeing that we have hearts what bes deceitful above all things and desperately wicked -- so saith Scripture of us ALL -- that sounds like pretty dangerous ground to be left scrabbling for purchase across.

On top of that do we get a choice about what choices we make? No, we do not. Do we even get a choice about what alternatives exist in those choices? No, we do not. That bes not freedom. That bes a clever mum taking two shirts from the closet and asking little Johnny which one he wishes to wear today, the red or the blue, so Johnny believes himself to be picking for himself when in reality the picks have already been picked (predetermined) by something (someone) else.

Then there bes the matter of how valid bes a choice in and of itself where it has no power to self-reify. We cannot choose to succeed, for example. We can choose to do certain things that we first must BELIEVE contribute toward success or increase the odds of success. But success bes a dynamic involving more than just ourselves. It involves the responses of others to our efforts. It involves the choices of others. It involves whether those others take a shine to us personally or not -- whether they willingly aid us or willingly act the saboteurs and yes, others CAN completely sabotage even the best, hardest, most skilled and creative efforts of a person to succeed. It does happen. We have no control over either the choices of others or random factors and circumstances which can make or break it. At a certain point even the most adept sorceror or sorceress must look in the mirror and admit -- even if only to himself or herself -- that s/he bes not God.

It bes all well and good to be a devout believer in oneself and the ideal that one can do anything one puts his mind to. Moriah enjoys believing those things. Those beliefs feel good. They inspire and motivate which translates into giving special energy to meet challenges as well as special graces to even want to or care about doing so. But they contain NO guarantee. And the first time you mess up or fail, those beliefs either take a swift drop-kick into proactive, persistent cognitive dissonance to maintain them, or they crumble, no two ways about it. Why? Because even a moron knows it simply cannot be TRUE that one can do whatever one puts one's mind to IF one EVER fails or screws up, period. So there bes no alternative.

And do you get a choice about THAT even? No, you do not. How free does your "free" will feel NOW Sucker? Huh-whaaa?

Answer said:

I don't find the phrase "free will" in Scripture. However, I do find the words "believe" and "faith" and I note that these are gifts of God.

Click to expand...

^^ Moriah agrees with this wise answer another provided to this same question.