sunlover1,
So that we as a group may better answer your question and engage in meaningful dialogue, could you provide us with a full definition of the term, "Freewill". Coming from various backgrounds and faith traditions, this term has a great width of possible meaning. However, this being your thread, I would like to know your particular understanding of the term.
Fair question and many may respond in various philosophical ways but the pre- '
Augustinian dualist' view held in common in every place (that is before the dualism of Augustine) we have record that shows the early apostolic churches had an understanding of free will/predestination as being two parts of one process...here are some examples...
JUSTIN MARTYR c.100-165 A.D.
"But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless we repent beforehand.
IRENAEUS of Gaul c.130-200. Against Heresies XXXVII
"This expression, 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldst not,' set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free (agent) from the beginning, possessing his own soul to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will (toward us) is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. And in man as well as in angels, He has placed the power of choice (for angels are rational beings), so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves . . ."
"If then it were not in our power to do or not to do these things, what reason had the apostle, and much more the Lord Himself, to give counsel to do some things and to abstain from others? But because man is possessed of free-will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free-will in whose likeness man was created, advice is always given to him to keep fast the good, which thing is done by means of obedience to God."
ATHENAGORAS of Athens (2nd century). Embassy for Christians XXIV
"Just as with men who have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice (for you would not either honor the good or punish the bad; unless vice and virtue were in their own power, and some are diligent in the matters entrusted to them, and others faithless), so is it among the angels"
THEOPHILUS of Antioch (2nd century). To Autolycus XXVII
"For God made man free, and with power over himself . . . now God vouchsafes to him as a gift through His own philanthropy and pity, when men obey Him. For as man, disobeying, drew death on himself; so, obeying the will of God, he who desires is able to procure for himself life everlasting."
TATIAN of Syria (flourished late 2nd century). Address XI
"Why are you 'fated' to grasp at things often, and often to die? Die to the world, repudiating the madness that is in it. Live to God, and by apprehending Him lay aside your old nature. We were not created to die, but we die by our own fault. Our free-will has destroyed us; we who were free have become slaves; we have been sold through sin. Nothing evil has been created by God; we ourselves have manifested wickedness; but we, who have manifested it, are able again to reject it."
BARDAISAN of Syria c.154-222. Fragments
" 'How is it that God did not so make us that we should not sin and incur condemnation?'
if man had been made so, he would not have belonged to himself but would have been the instrument of him that moved him . . . And how, in that case, would a man differ from a harp, on which another plays; or from a ship, which another guides: where the praise and the blame reside in the hand of the performer or the steersman . . . they being only instruments made for the use of him in whom is the skill? But God, in His benignity, chose not so to make man; but by freedom He exalted him above many of His creatures."
CLEMENT of Alexandria c.150-215. Stromata Bk ii ch. 4
"But we, who have heard by the Scriptures that self-determining choice and refusal have been given by the Lord to men, rest in the infallible criterion of faith, manifesting a willing spirit, since we have chosen life and believe God through His voice."
Stromata Bk iv ch. 12
"But nothing is without the will of the Lord of the universe. It remains to say that such things happen without the prevention of God; for this alone saves both the providence and the goodness of God. We must not therefore think that He actively produces afflictions (far be it that we should think this!); but we must be persuaded that He does not prevent those that cause them, but overrules for good the crimes of His enemies."
TERTULLIAN of Carthage c.155-225 Against Marcion Book II ch.5I
find, then, that man was by God constituted free, master of his own will and power; indicating the presence of God's image and likeness in him by nothing so well as by this constitution of his nature...you will find that when He sets before man good and evil, life and death, that the entire course of discipline is arranged in precepts by God's calling men from sin, and threatening and exhorting them; and by this on no other ground than that man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance.
. . . Since therefore, both the goodness and purpose of God are discovered in the gift to man of freedom in his will . . ."
Now I am not saying the early church is an authoritative proof since even they say the Holy Scriptures are the basis on which we place our faith and doctrine. Having said that you can know that in believing that this is the conclusion...one which was passed on from the Apostles who started their churches directly to there primary Church leaders who were appointed and discipled by the Apostles (whose minds were opened to the scriptires by Christ Himself). Surely they all would not have missed this Calvinist sense of unconditional election and each in there respective place teach the same doctrine had it not been the doctrine...before Augustine (4th century) there were no Calvinists.
Let that which these holy men were taught to teach be what defines what we mean by free will (skip modern philosophical argument and manipulations as good as some may be).
In His name
Paul
