Calvinism makes sense

Loren T.

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But your comparison assumes God is evil from the start. You might as well say that God is responsible for creating angels and men in the first place, He knew beforehand did He not?
No it doesn't. There is no room for God allowing any thing in your theology, according to Calvin himself. So any talk of secondary causes is pointless. God, according to Calvin, meticulously controls all of our actions. Logically, then his God authors sin, despite all the protests by Calvins followers that he doesn't mean that.
 
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No it doesn't. There is no room for God allowing any thing in your theology, according to Calvin himself. So any talk of secondary causes is pointless. God, according to Calvin, meticulously controls all of our actions. Logically, then his God authors sin, despite all the protests by Calvins followers that he doesn't mean that.

According to your argument, knowledge of evil = guilt. Which rules out the omniscience of God in order to clear His name, in order to preserve His attribute of Holiness. However this slippery slope would be heterodoxy, and most importantly contrary to what the Scriptures teach about the nature of the knowledge of God. How is it God can have perfect knowledge of evil and all foreknowledge of evils without being in some manner responsible? Because of the distinction between Creator and creation. Because God is perfectly pure and Holy and more, as Creator, He can have all knowledge without the guilt of premeditation. Man being finite and far from possessing the attributes of his Creator, by temptations of autonomous aspirations chose to disobey his Creator in the garden for knowledge of evil, and with it throwing his wife under the bus, in effort to suppress the truth, demonstrating an inability to be a finite creature and possess knowledge of evil without the resulting guilt.

Man was created as a theonomous creature, but in the fall he fell from it into the deceitfulness of an assumed autonomy, the result of knowledge of evil.

So here again, the Creator - creation distinction is important to understanding the will of God and the will of man and the resulting distinctions of causality.
 
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Loren T.

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According to your argument, knowledge of evil = guilt.
That's not my argument at all... That's just what you're hearing from your perspective. You're arguing against something that I never even came close to claiming.
 
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St_Worm2

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I've found that Calvinists overwhelmingly agree that God's soverienty equals total control. I don't care much for titles. Wesleyan armininan would be in the ballpark.
Hi Loren, that seems odd to me, because I've been a Calvinist for more than 20 years now, and I don't know a single Calvinist who believes that (that we do not make our own free will choices because God is in total control of them). "Hyper-Calvinists" believe that, but Hyper-Calvinists are not Calvinists. In fact, I question whether Hyper-Calvinists are Christians.

You may want to revisit Calvinism and what it actually teaches, because what you have been led to believe about it simply isn't true.

Yours and His,
David
 
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That's not my argument at all... That's just what you're hearing from your perspective. You're arguing against something that I never even came close to claiming.

This is what you said;

I see no difference. If I hire a Hitman to be my secondary cause, I'm still responsible for his actions.

It is what you claimed. Your argument against Calvinism is that the distinction between first and secondary causes makes no difference, God would still be responsible/guilty for the actions of others.

My argument is, by recognizing the distinction of first and secondary causes, both the Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man can be established. You claim it makes no difference, cause is cause, but you do this, because underneath the protest, is libertarian free will, the interpretive lens for all of Scripture, the "key" to unlocking your theological presuppositions. However, nature itself speaks to causality, and order and predication presupposes it. How is it one creature in all of creation is exempt from causality? I understand the libertarian free will perspective better as a Calvinist than I ever did as an adherent to libertarian free will.
 
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Loren T.

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This is what you said;



It is what you claimed. Your argument against Calvinism is that the distinction between first and secondary causes makes no difference, God would still be responsible/guilty for the actions of others.

My argument is, by recognizing the distinction of first and secondary causes, both the Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man can be established. You claim it makes no difference, cause is cause, but you do this, because underneath the protest, is libertarian free will, the interpretive lens for all of Scripture, the "key" to unlocking your theological presuppositions. However, nature itself speaks to causality, and order and predication presupposes it. How is it one creature in all of creation is exempt from causality? I understand the libertarian free will perspective better as a Calvinist than I ever did as an adherent to libertarian free will.
I never said anything about knowledge equaling guilt. I said that Calvinist presume God controls everything because that's how they interpret sovereignty. Yes if God is causing the actions, it makes no difference what he is using to cause them. This has zero to do with what his omniscience. Because omniscience does not equal causation.
 
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Loren T.

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Hi Loren, that seems odd to me, because I've been a Calvinist for more than 20 years now, and I don't know a single Calvinist who believes that (that we do not make our own free will choices because God is in total control of them). "Hyper-Calvinists" believe that, but Hyper-Calvinists are not Calvinists. In fact, I question whether Hyper-Calvinists are Christians.

You may want to revisit Calvinism and what it actually teaches, because what you have been led to believe about it simply isn't true.

Yours and His,
David
Well, since Calvin makes statements like these, how can any of his followers claim otherwise?
“Everything is controlled by God’s secret purpose, and nothing can happen except by his knowledge and will.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion)

Calvin writes: “What we must prove is that single events are ordered by God and that every event comes from his intended will. Nothing happens by chance."

“But where it is a matter of men’s counsels, wills, endeavours, and exertions, there is greater difficulty in seeing how the providence of God rules here too, so that nothing happens but by His assent and that men can deliberately do nothing unless He inspire it.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.171-172

“Does God work in the hearts of men, directing their plans and moving their wills this way and that, so that they do nothing but what He has ordained?

“But of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him."

Actually, Hyper Calvinists seem to be the only ones who take this theology to it's logical conclusion.
 
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I never said anything about knowledge equaling guilt. I said that Calvinist presume God controls everything because that's how they interpret sovereignty. Yes if God is causing the actions, it makes no difference what he is using to cause them. This has zero to do with what his omniscience. Because omniscience does not equal causation.

Allow me reference a Confession, a rather old one, a Calvinistic Confession important to all confessing Presbyterians...

WCF
Chapter III

Of God's Eternal Decree

I. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

II. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions yet has he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.

IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.

V. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, has chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.

VI. As God has appointed the elect unto glory, so has He, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

VII. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extends or withholds mercy, as he pleases, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.

VIII. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men, attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the Gospel.

WCF
Chapter IX
Of Free Will

I. God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil.

II. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.

III. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.

IV. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly, or only, will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.

V. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.

WCF = Westminster Confession of Faith

The London Baptist Confession of Faith reads nearly identical. Other Confessions like the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Augsburg Confession support the inability of free will to perform any spiritual good accompanying salvation.

There is a body of evidence (including the above) which overwhelmingly shows that trying to pin this notion of God actively meticulously controlling everything onto Calvinists has no foundation in Calvinism. Maybe try running the same argument over on the Lutherans? Might prove more successful where people lack a nuanced view. Here it is nothing but a strawman, an old rotting one at that.
 
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Loren T.

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IV. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly, or only, will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.
Can't you see that this is malarky according to Calvin's own words? This only works in a system where individual election is not assumed. Ariminians say that Grace free us to make a choice between Good and Evil, God or Satan. Any illusion of choice under Calvinism is necessarily that, an illusion. To say he freely wills to accept salvation while that salvation is actually rendered certain for some and he rendered certain that others would be damned, (which is the logical consequence, you can't have one without the other.)

IV. "These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished."

If you can't see how this statement totally cancels out any notion of man freely choosing, then you have clearly drank too much of Calvin's coolaid.
"so that nothing happens but by His assent and that men can deliberately do nothing unless He inspire it.”

Let's assume nothing means "nothing" shall we? This means God inspires every evil act from murder to rape to child abuse. There is no escaping these conclusions or making them compatible with a good God. The only out is to scrap your whole silly system and come to know the Jesus who is the whole Truth.
 
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Can't you see that this is malarky according to Calvin's own words? This only works in a system where individual election is not assumed. Ariminians say that Grace free us to make a choice between Good and Evil, God or Satan. Any illusion of choice under Calvinism is necessarily that, an illusion. To say he freely wills to accept salvation while that salvation is actually rendered certain for some and he rendered certain that others would be damned, (which is the logical consequence, you can't have one without the other.)

Calvinism does not stand or fall on John Calvin, in fact he was not original in his teaching and preaching, being the Augustinian that he was, he leaned heavily on St. Augustine. Also it should be noted, in general Confessions should be given more weight than any one man, because during those days they were usually the result of communities of agreement with numbers of leaders involved.

The problem you see, is that for man to truely be free in the sense you want is a person must deny at least two of the orthodox attributes of God, namely omniscience and immutability. Heterodox theologians of modern times have sought to work around this problem and developed upon the heresy known as "open theism" or "process theology". Unfortunately (for Arminians) it is a more consistent form of Arminianism, unfortunate because it is equally unbiblical and is a downgraded humanized version of God.

IV. "These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished."

If you can't see how this statement totally cancels out any notion of man freely choosing, then you have clearly drank too much of Calvin's coolaid.

Then pass me more coolaid (the old Root Beer flavor) with some fresh McDonalds fries (light salt) please.

Let's assume nothing means "nothing" shall we? This means God inspires every evil act from murder to rape to child abuse. There is no escaping these conclusions or making them compatible with a good God. The only out is to scrap your whole silly system and come to know the Jesus who is the whole Truth.

Here again I see equivocating knowledge with the guilt of sin, what we as fallen creatures have to deal with is the undeniable fact that God knew in advance, allows terrible sins, while having the omnipotence to intervene and prevent them, even without touching a will He has the power to do things that effect the choices of men using surroundings even. So between the orthodox attributes of God, "free will", is not the get out jail free card that so many Arminians presume that it is.

Btw, if you're going to quote John Calvin, quote him in context with citation to his work along with a page number or at least a reference to chapter/section/verse. It is far too easy to Google an anti-Calvinist webpage with misquotes, too easy to edit a single word from a quote to fit a narrative. I give no credence to random sites composed by random people for obvious agendas. John Calvin wrote at great length, and while I am not a scholar myself, I have read enough to know his critics are more often than not proven wrong, simply by reading the direct sources (which I own and have quick access to). The biggest problem seems to be an inability to take a step back, temporarily suspend biases, and try to understand where the person is coming from at least to the extent of not misrepresenting them intentionally.
 
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Loren T.

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The problem you see, is that for man to truely be free in the sense you want is a person must deny at least two of the orthodox attributes of God, namely omniscience and immutability. Heterodox theologians of modern times have sought to work around this problem and developed upon the heresy known as "open theism" or "process theology". Unfortunately (for Arminians) it is a more consistent form of Arminianism, unfortunate
Why do you equate God's knowledge with causation? You keep doing it with out giving any reason why it has to be so.
God can interfere as little or as much in the affairs of man as he wishes. To deny this is to make God subject to his attributes, not the other way around. Free will is No reason to deny omniscience. And open theism is not the same as process theology. I'm not an open thiest, so we can dispense with that diversion tactic.
 
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BNR32FAN

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If Christ's atonement were unlimited then all would be saved. No his atonement is limited. Free will suggests merit on the part of the believer. Faith becomes works. No it is God who chooses the elect. Not the other way around.

Don’t you believe God wants everyone to be saved? Do you believe God loves everyone? Do you believe in eternal security?
 
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Why do you equate God's knowledge with causation? You keep doing it with out giving any reason why it has to be so.

I have not. However, it would be a mistake to separate the knowledge of God from the will of God. Whatsoever He allows, He has willed, and whatsoever He has willed, He has known. Quite honestly I think it is more likely you are equating God's knowledge with causation, at least where it fits the desired narrative. It is the only way you can claim Calvinists think of God as meticulously controlling every last detail in the universe at all times. When you think on Calvinism, it is how you interpret the sovereignty of God, but your understanding of Calvinism, has been shown to be incorrect.

God can interfere as little or as much in the affairs of man as he wishes.

Agree, and if God is free to exercise His sovereign will as He wishes, why does the Arminian balk at the notion of monergistic regeneration? (which is also a Lutheran doctrine btw)

To deny this is to make God subject to his attributes, not the other way around. Free will is No reason to deny omniscience. And open theism is not the same as process theology. I'm not an open thiest, so we can dispense with that diversion tactic.

Omniscience and immutability as they apply to the will of God, the will of man. Can you do anything other than what God already knew in advance? If not, how is your will independent of the foreknowledge and will of God? Even where the will of man is not concerned there are questions to be asked. If a natural disaster occurs, could God have prevented it?
 
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Loren T.

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Loren T.

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According to the rules in this part of the Forum, I can't promote another form of theology.... I can only point out the errors in Calvinism. So it seems to me it's up to the calvinist to prove that God allowing something equals God willing something.
When God says stuff like this:
"And they built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin," (Jer. 32:35).
The calvinist directly contradicts what God has said.
 
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Lol, contradiction after contradiction, often in the same post. "I have not equated knowledge with causation, and now I will do it again."

How to not answer a question, you failed to answer a simple question. You are the one doing the equivocating, you are the one who claimed distinction between first and secondary causes makes no difference, hence your equivocations. Laugh all you want, call it contradiction if you want (not that it makes it so), but your responses amount to assertions without explanation, when explanation has been provided for you. All you've really shown is how to ignore context, a hallmark of eisegesis.
 
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Don’t you believe God wants everyone to be saved? Do you believe God loves everyone? Do you believe in eternal security?

Every question you have asked comes from a position of railing against the sovereignty of God, and a poor interpretation of the word "all", inconsistent as well.
 
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Well, since Calvin makes statements like these, how can any of his followers claim otherwise? “Everything is controlled by God’s secret purpose, and nothing can happen except by his knowledge and will.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion)

Calvin writes: “What we must prove is that single events are ordered by God and that every event comes from his intended will. Nothing happens by chance."

“But where it is a matter of men’s counsels, wills, endeavours, and exertions, there is greater difficulty in seeing how the providence of God rules here too, so that nothing happens but by His assent and that men can deliberately do nothing unless He inspire it.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.171-172

“Does God work in the hearts of men, directing their plans and moving their wills this way and that, so that they do nothing but what He has ordained?

“But of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him."

Actually, Hyper Calvinists seem to be the only ones who take this theology to it's logical conclusion.

6) 16th Century

William Tyndale: "they go and set up free-will with the heathen philosophers and say that a man’s free will is the cause why God chooseth and not another, contrary to all scriptures."

Robert Ferrar (Welsh Bishop of St. David's martyred in Carmarthen on 30 March, 1555) with ten other reforming ministers: "... we disallow papistical doctrines of free will, of works of supererogation, of merits, of the necessity of auricular confession, and satisfaction to God-wards."

John Knox: "… the general consent of all that sect is that God (by his foreknowledge, counsel, and wisdom) has no assured election, neither yet any certain reprobation, but that every man may elect or reprobate himself by his own free will, which he has (say they) to do good or evil … [All these things are] forged by their own brains, and polished by the finest of their wits, when yet in very deed they are but the rotten heresies of … Pelagius, long ago confuted by Augustine …"

John Knox: "Ye [Anabaptists] be proud contemners of the free grace of God offered to man in Christ Jesus. For with the Pelagians and Papists ye are become teachers of free will, and defenders of your own righteousness" (An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations Written by an Anabaptist and Adversary to God's Eternal Predestination [London: Thomas Charde, 1591], p. 121).

Jerome Zanchius: "No free will of the creature can resist the will of God" (quoting Augustine).


7) 17th Century

Henry Ainsworth: "we grant evil freewill (or freewill to evil) is remaining in all natural men: we believe that freewill to good, is from grace and regeneration."

Daniel Featley: "many men have too much Free-will, and take to themselves too free liberty now a days to advance and maintain free will."

John Preston: "not by the power of free will but by the infused grace of His spirit."

Peter Moulin: "It is proved out of the holy scriptures that an unregenerate man is altogether destitute of the power and liberty of his will, in those things that pertain to faith and salvation."

John Owen: "the whole Pelagian poison of free-will … a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God … That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented."

John Owen: Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds" (Works, vol. 10, p. 150).

William Jenkyn: "The bending of men's hearts to believe and persevere are the supernatural fruits of God’s eternal decree, and not the natural fruits of man’s depraved and frail free will."

John Trapp: "The friends of free will are the enemies of free grace."

Thomas Watson: "This crown of free will is fallen from our head" and "If it be God’s purpose that saves then it is not free will."

Francis Turretin: "The word "freewill" (as also "self-determining power" [autexousiou] used by the Greek Fathers) does not occur in Scripture … I Cor 7:37 does not mean freedom of the will."


8) 18th Century

Matthew Henry: "The counsels and decrees of God do not truckle to the frail and fickle will of man."

Augustus Toplady: "A man’s free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul."

George Whitefield: "Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God’s ‘free grace’ but on Man’s ‘free will.’"

William Huntington: "This brought me out of the free-will fog, and truth shone in my heart like a comet … from that moment I waged war against free will."


9) 19th Century

J. N. Darby, early leader of the Plymouth Brethren: "This re-appearance of the doctrine of freewill serves to support that of the pretension of the natural man to be not irremediably fallen, for this is what such doctrine tends to. All who have never been deeply convicted of sin, all persons in whom this conviction is based on gross external sins, believe more or less in freewill" (Man’s So-called Freewill, p. 1).


10) Charles Spurgeon

"I will go as far as Martin Luther, where he says, ‘If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly.’"

"Free-will doctrine—what does it? It magnifies man into God. It declares God’s purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God’s will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent on human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice, it holds God to be a debtor to sinners."

"His will cannot be neutral or ‘free’ to act contrary to his nature."

"Free will has carried many souls to hell, but yet never a soul to heaven."

"I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, "You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself." My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will."


11) 20th Century

Arthur W. Pink: "if the will is their servant then it is not sovereign, and if the will is not sovereign, we certainly cannot predicate ‘freedom’ of it."

Louis Berkhof: "Freedom of the will is a psychological fiction."

John Gerstner: "We have already shown that there is no such thing as free will. That’s a will-o’-the–wisp. You never make choices without reasons, not as a responsible or a rational person" (A Primer on Free Will, p. 11).

W. E. Best: "God’s character is maligned by every person who believes in free will."

Gordon H. Clark: "The Bible consistently denies free will."

R. C. Sproul: "The neutral view of free will is impossible. It involves choice without desire."

James White: "Then why do you embrace Christ, and your moral Buddhist neighbour across the street does not? Are you smarter than he is? More spiritually sensitive? Better, in any way? What makes you to differ? Is the Holy Spirit working just as hard on him as He did on you? If so, why do you believe, and he does not? No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that, in a 'free will' system of salvation, those who believe do so because there is something different about them. If the Spirit is bringing equal conviction to bear upon each individual, the only deciding factor, given equality in everything else, is something in the person himself. I believe the only possible difference between the redeemed in heaven and the guilty, condemned, punished sinner in hell is a five-letter word ... It’s called 'grace.'"

Steven Houck: "This free-willism is a serious error which is contrary to the Holy Scriptures."
 
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2) Before the Reformation

Augustine: "I once laboured hard for the free will of man, until the grace of God at length overcame me."

Prudentius of Troyes: "Concerning Free Will. First. Evidently, that one should confess that free will, lost in Adam by the merit of disobedience, is restored to us and freed through our Lord Jesus Christ. Meanwhile [we live] in hope [of salvation]; later [we shall possess it] in reality, just as the Apostle says, 'For in hope we have been saved' (Rom 8:24). Nevertheless, we should assign the grace of the omnipotent God to every good work, whether in proposing, beginning, working out, or finishing with perseverance. And we should know that without it we are in no way able to do anything good, whether to propose, or to will, or to work."

Bradwardine: "What multitudes, O Lord, do this day join hands with Pelagius in contending for free will and in fighting … free grace."

Waldensians: "Whosoever upholds free-will absolutely denies predestination and the grace of God."


3) Luther

"Free will is an empty term."

"Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin."

"This is plainly to ascribe divinity to ‘free will.’"

"I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want ‘free-will’ to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground …; but because even were there no dangers … I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success … But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him.

Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God" (The Bondage of the Will).

4) Calvin

"The Papists … hold that man, through his own free will, returns to God; and on this point is our greatest contest with them at this day."

"Concerning that this clown babbleth of free will, it is sufficiently rejected throughout the whole scripture."

"Faith is a special gift of God, which proceedeth not from our free will."

"Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind."

"No free will of man can resist Him that willeth to save."

"This movement of the will is not of that description which was for many ages taught and believed—viz. a movement which thereafter leaves us the choice to obey or resist it, but one which affects us efficaciously. We must, therefore, repudiate the oft-repeated sentiment of Chrysostom, “Whom he draws, he draws willingly;” insinuating that the Lord only stretches out his hand, and waits to see whether we will be pleased to take his aid. We grant that, as man was originally constituted, he could incline to either side, but since he has taught us by his example how miserable a thing free will is if God works not in us to will and to do, of what use to us were grace imparted in such scanty measure? Nay, by our own ingratitude, we obscure and impair divine grace. The Apostle’s doctrine is not, that the grace of a good will is offered to us if we will accept of it, but that God himself is pleased so to work in us as to guide, turn, and govern our heart by his Spirit, and reign in it as his own possession" (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3,10).


5) Reformation Confessions

Thirty-Nine Articles, X: "The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he can not turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will."

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. & A. 8: "Are we then so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and inclined to all wickedness? Indeed we are; except we are regenerated by the Spirit of God."

Belgic Confession, XIV: "… we reject all that is taught repugnant to this, concerning the free will of man, since man is but a slave to sin; and has nothing of himself, unless it is given from heaven. For who may presume to boast, that he of himself can do any good, since Christ saith, No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him? Who will glory in his own will, who understands, that to be carnally minded is enmity against God? Who can speak of his knowledge, since the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God? In short, who dare suggest any thought, since he knows that we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but that our sufficiency is of God? And therefore what the apostle saith ought justly to be held sure and firm, that God worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. For there is no will nor understanding, conformable to the divine will and understanding, but what Christ hath wrought in man; which he teaches us, when he saith, Without me ye can do nothing."

Canons of Dordt, III/IV:3: "Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, nor to dispose themselves to reformation."

Westminster Confession, IX – Of Free Will:

  1. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to will and to do that which is good and well-pleasing to God; but yet mutably, so that he might fall from it.
  2. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
  3. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.
  4. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.
 
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