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Jesus leads us to life
Below is a definition of free will, that you talk about being 2,500 years oldYour definition is yours. My definition is the one that has existed for 2500 years and is still being used by secular philosophers.
That is, btw, why very few secular philosophers even believe in "free will" today. Almost all believe in some form of determinism ("free will" is an absolute term...it either exists or it doesn't. It doesn't exist in degrees). Only Christians natter about "free will," even though scripture itself argues against the proposition.
Free Will
The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions. Questions concerning the nature and existence of this kind of control (e.g., does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise or the power of self-determination?), and what its true significance is (is it necessary for moral responsibility or human dignity?) have been taken up in every period of Western philosophy and by many of the most important philosophical figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant. (We cannot undertake here a review of related discussions in other philosophical traditions. For a start, the reader may consult Marchal and Wenzel 2017 and Chakrabarti 2017 for overviews of thought on free will, broadly construed, in Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions, respectively.) In this way, it should be clear that disputes about free will ineluctably involve disputes about metaphysics and ethics. In ferreting out the kind of control involved in free will, we are forced to consider questions about (among others) causation, laws of nature, time, substance, ontological reduction vs emergence, the relationship of causal and reasons-based explanations, the nature of motivation and more generally of human persons. In assessing the significance of free will, we are forced to consider questions about (among others) rightness and wrongness, good and evil, virtue and vice, blame and praise, reward and punishment, and desert. The topic of free will also gives rise to purely empirical questions that are beginning to be explored in the human sciences: do we have it, and to what degree?
The bible declares definitively those in Christ can choose what they sow to.
21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
Rom 6:21-22
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Gal 6:7-8
Paul is emphasising above as believers we have a choice as to what we sow and how we live.
Repentance at its heart is a choice to admit sin is wrong and commit oneself to walk in righteousness.
The whole book of Job is about Jobs choice to praise God despite his circumstance and how satan claimed it was just situational dependent on blessing. This teaches righteousness is a conscious choice of the heart.
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