No person can come to Christ by their own freewill !

Mark Quayle said:

Do you see no difference, then, between the will of the born-again, vs the will of the lost or reprobate? I don't see either side here claiming there is no will, nor that there are not choices made.

That we do choose is plain and obvious. That we choose according to whatever we are most inclined to choose at any given moment is apparently universally true. In fact, it can be argued that we always choose according to whatever we most want-at-that-instant of choosing.

Like I thought when I was young, and no Calvinist, considering such things, people are quick to make bold statements, but few, (for example, in this context) consider that one is either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ as the Scriptures show. Thus—what do we even mean, by "free will"? (I still don't call myself a Calvinist, nor Reformed, but Calvinistic at most—long story) but many Reformed and Calvinists use terminology such as, "free to choose from within constraints", concerning the will of the lost vs the will of the born-again, as though the Romans 8 and Ephesians 2 descriptions of 'inability' and 'life vs death' was all that defines the ability of the will to decide—I mean, as though apart from that, then yes, people do decide without constraint of precedent causes.

Simple logic demands that there are always precedent causes, and even the ability to act contrary to them is itself caused! There are no little first causes running about the planet. Only the Creator can be the first cause.

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bbbbbbb said:

This brings to mind Mormonism which posits God as not the Creator of the universe, but the Arranger of the pre-existing stuff.

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Mark Quayle said:

Hardly. That implies that God is not First Cause, which is a logically (necessarily) corollary to Omnipotence. As I just finished saying in another thread, Reality does not encompass God, as though he was another resident, like us, within reality. Reality is, (to say it with cheap words), his 'invention'.

Thus, if anything happens, it was by God's intent.

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Mark Quayle said:

Our moral, intellectual and ontological being does not begin to measure against his. We are clay to the potter. He has the absolute right to do as he pleases to make and destroy defective vessels for his own purposes. We esteem ourselves sentient, unlike common animals, but do we have any idea how our sentience compares to his? He alone exists in himself, not as a result of anything else. Do we have any idea of how our moral agency compares to his? God does not choose to be moral, as though there were other alternatives. "Moral" is what it is, because God is moral.

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Mark Quayle said:

However, if this structure works for you and what I said there does not, my only real objection to it is that for some people it invokes the inference that something can happen outside of God's intention—that God is not, then, after all, omnipotent.

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Jan001 said:

I agree with you.


Romans 9:20-24
But who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me thus?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

Paul is not saying that God deliberately makes people to destroy them. God is love. Paul poses the question, "What if," to teach us that God is sovereign over all his creation, and so we are not to question why he does what he does or to make judgments about his actions.

Isaiah 55:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God did not literally hate Esau. God loves all that he creates. His creation is good. 1 Timothy 4:4
God preferred Jacob to be a patriarch of his chosen people instead of his older brother Esau. Of course, God did know before Esau was conceived that he would sell his birthright to Jacob. Luke 14:26

God's plan never prevents a person from doing good. God's plan never forces a person to do evil.


God is omnipotent. Our finite minds cannot comprehend this fact very well.

Before the creation of the world, God planned to incorporate all of the people's free will decisions in his master plan of salvation.

God sent Jesus Christ to earth when the Romans used crucifixion as the punishment for a capital offense. By doing this, his son's sacrificial death on the cross redeemed mankind from Adam's sin.

1 Peter 1:1-2
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who live as refugees of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by being set apart by the Spirit for obedience and for sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be yours in ever increasing measure.

God knew before the creation of the world which people he would find still faithful to him at the time of their death. He elected only these people to inherit eternal life. He also put these righteous people into his hand, never to be snatched out. Revelation 2:10, John 10:27-30

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bbbbbbb said:

The problem here is that are none righteous, not even one. To emphasize this fact we have two virtually identical Psalms (nos. 14 and 53) which are quoted by Paul in Romans 3 which, I think, serves to silence objections that this harsh judgement is only for the Old Testament folks and not for those living in New Testament times. God simply does not predestine "righteous" folks for the basic reason that there are none to predestine. He has predestined sinners, guilty vile and hopeless sinners, purely according to His own grace and mercy.

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Mark Quayle said:

Many reformed and calvinists agree with you here, but that is ultimately not satisfying to my mind. Take your statement, for example:

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Permissive will:​

God knew before he created the world that Adam would choose to sin and thereby estrange all mankind from God.​

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Logically, if God knew something would happen as a result of creating, but created anyway, then he intended it to happen. God INTENDED that Adam sin. (But, no to the accusation, this does not imply that God authored sin.)

You quote Exodus 14:17 "I will harden the heart of the Egyptians so that they will enter after them. I will display my glory against Pharaoh and all his army, against his chariots and his horsemen." —That is what it says, and in the larger context (the whole council of God) it also includes the fact that Pharoah also hardened his own heart, just as you showed. So, why make this go beyond what is said, to fit the structure of, "The Permissive Will of God", by saying, "What literally happened is that they personally chose to do evil and God permitted them to do it." That is not what it says happened. That is eisegesis, adding to the text, imposing a preconception or format or particular theology, changing what it says, instead of working out logically what is being said by good hermeneutics.

As always, here the idea of the "permissive will" imposed on Scripture is not satisfying to my mind. It seems to me to be something to keep people comfortable with their notion of what kind of God we have, since their worldview considers it unfair for him to cause people to do something for which he punishes them. That worldview does not consider the extreme difference of being, that God is, compared to his creatures. (By the way, I'm not saying that God did not harden Pharoah's heart in ways that Pharoah did not do to his own heart, but it is rather obvious from Scriptural evidence, as well as from empirical experience, that God accomplishes much of what he sets out to do, BY MEANS OF the individual's will.) Our God is not a mere reactive powerful being—he is proactive FIRST CAUSE with purpose.

Our moral, intellectual and ontological being does not begin to measure against his. We are clay to the potter. He has the absolute right to do as he pleases to make and destroy defective vessels for his own purposes. We esteem ourselves sentient, unlike common animals, but do we have any idea how our sentience compares to his? He alone exists in himself, not as a result of anything else. Do we have any idea of how our moral agency compares to his? God does not choose to be moral, as though there were other alternatives. "Moral" is what it is, because God is moral.


However, if this structure works for you and what I said there does not, my only real objection to it is that for some people it invokes the inference that something can happen outside of God's intention—that God is not, then, after all, omnipotent.

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Jan001 said:

The reason that no one is righteous is because of Adam's sin which all mankind inherited.

Romans 5:12, 14
Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned—...14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

There were righteous people on earth. Noah and Job were righteous men, as was Abraham. Mary and her husband Joseph were righteous Jews. Luke 5:32

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Brightfame52 said:

Jn 6:44

44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

No man can come here means no man has the ability to come to Christ. That cancels out the myth that man has a freewill,

It also means that no man has the ability to believe on Christ for Salvation. Because Christ equates believing on Him with coming to Him. Jn 6:64-65

64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.

65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.


What about those Jesus says to them Jn 5:40

40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

Thats answered in Jn 6:44 they simply will not come because they cannot come unless the Power of God draws them and makes them willing

Ps 110:3

3 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

If and when one comes to believe on Christ willingly, the credit goes to Gods Power !

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zoidar said:

Hi Mark,
Long time no see!

Doesn't omnipotence mean having the power to bring about whatever you intend, rather than ensuring that everything that happens is exactly what you intend?

Omnipotence isn't the same thing as meticulous providence. Having unlimited power doesn't necessarily mean exercising detailed control over every single event.

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truthuprootsevil said:

Well at least you are using the words of Christ in your dispute against free will.

Those who feel man has no free will fail or reject our Father already knows the outcome..... He has already seen the end of each and every individuals life.... He knows the choices we will make..... he knows who will choose the Lord and who won't.

Those who chose the Lord are given to the Lord even before being born on earth ........ All names are already written in the Lamb's Book of Life, only those who reject him will be blotted out / erased. Below are 2 of several scriptures

Psalm 69:28,Revelation 3:5 NKJV - Let them be blotted out of the book of - Bible Gateway Bible Gateway passage: Psalm 69:28, Revelation 3:5 - New King James Version

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Mark Quayle said:

If Omnipotence isn't the same thing as meticulous providence, then some things happen he did not intend. That makes no sense with him being first cause, nevermind his attribute of immanence. He either was, or was not, first cause.

God's omnipotence isn't defined by man's usefulness of the word. We can't rewrite logic. He either was, or was not; He either is, or is not, omnipotent. The word necessarily implies what John 1 says: ALL things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. This includes very reality; he is not a resident within reality, subject to principles outside himself. Reality comes from him.

There can be only One omnipotent; There can be only One first cause; There can be only One self-existent. And all else that is was made to be by that One. Neither any motion of any one particle, nor its very existence, nor any principle by which it operates, can be so, apart from God's intention. Meticulous. The only alternative is for it to happen by chance, which is logically self-contradictory.

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Brightfame52 said:

Jn 6:44

44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

No man can come here means no man has the ability to come to Christ. That cancels out the myth that man has a freewill,

It also means that no man has the ability to believe on Christ for Salvation. Because Christ equates believing on Him with coming to Him. Jn 6:64-65

64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.

65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.


What about those Jesus says to them Jn 5:40

40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

Thats answered in Jn 6:44 they simply will not come because they cannot come unless the Power of God draws them and makes them willing

Ps 110:3

3 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

If and when one comes to believe on Christ willingly, the credit goes to Gods Power !

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