I don’t quite understand. There is several verses in romans that sounds a lot like predestination. There is also a ton of verses that talk about making the choice to follow Christ. I want to believe free will. The idea that God decides who is gonna follow Him and who He’s gonna throw in Hell I find disturbing. If you support predestination please explain the verses that speak about free will. Ex John 3:16. That’s just one of many. And if your for free will please explain the verses that sound like presentation. Ex Romans 9:21-23. Also I know about Armineaism but Romans 9:21-23 doesn’t sound like it’s based on our choices
A defining of free will is necessary. Free will is the person, oneself, is the cause for a decision or action, and no external factor caused the person or oneself to act or make a decision.
In addition, God has, what is called in philosophy/religious/Christian philosophy, middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is perhaps best explained by way of example. Before creation of any earth and humans, a point where God is contemplating what to create, and before God created our present earth, AKA the actualized earth, there were many iterations of earth God could have decided to create. These many iterations included an earth with no one who presently exists or existed on the actualized earth, our earth. These iterations possibly included some of the people from our actualized earth but not others.
Similarly, the possible earths may have involved different circumstances. Naturally, a version of creation without JFK necessarily means he isn’t assassinated and that perhaps Nixon wins the 60 election, LBJ never becomes president, in which Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, head start, never become law.
If George Washington chose to stay at home and not lead the colonial army, do the colonists defeat Britain? Is there ever a U.S.A.? There’s a possible world where this is true.
Additionally, there’s many different possible earths where God intervenes with man differently. Different earths with different timing for intervening, which can affect the human response. Different earths with intervening with different people, at different times, with possible different outcomes.
Among the many different earths, with different people, circumstances, his differing interventions, the different human reactions, God chose our version of earth.
We are free to decide how we live our lives, free to decide how to respond to God. God is free to choose how much favor to show us, foreknowing what we would freely do with our lives, freely react to His word, freely react to Him. God may know that for some, no amount of exposure to His word, no amount of God intervening, will result in some people freely choosing to change their lives for Him. That’s Middle Knowledge.
And God foreknowing our free decisions, foreknowing whether exposure to His word, His spirit, His presence, would make any difference, and foreknowing for some no difference, He chose to create those “vessels” destined to destruction such destruction destined to them in part because of their free choices and God’s choice to punish those wicked vessels freely choosing to be wicked.
Similarly, God foreknowing the vessels freely choosing His Son and to be made righteous through His Son, has chosen to be merciful to this group.
Remember, mercy was God’s choice. We have had no right to mercy. God was not obligated to show mercy to any of us, the righteous and unrighteous. God chose, He chose a creation to be merciful by sending his Son to become sin, and cleanse our sins, by His Son’s death, resurrection, who is alive and blessed forevermore. Amen.
God then foreknows who will freely choose righteousness through His Son. God chose a creation where He would be merciful to some by offering a way to cleanse our sins and create a path for those who want to be saved to be saved. He could have chosen to cast us all aside, being sinners, and choose to not offer any of us mercy.
The above sums up, “
22What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
23And
He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,
24even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.”
Notice the word “patience”? God has accommodated these people with time, time to seek his face, just as the righteous were afforded time to seek his face and did so, while God endured those freely choosing wickedness and giving them time to do so otherwise.
Now, turning to Jacob and Esau, of all the possible versions of creation, of earth, perhaps none of them included one where Esau freely reacted to God like Jacob. Or any possible world where Esau did react to God like Jacob, such a world could not be actualized. The world that can be actualized is one where Esau freely is not receptive to God like Jacob, a world like our own, where Esau doesn’t or wouldn’t freely respond to God like Jacob.
God foreknowing Esau freely would not or does not respond to Him, and foreknwoing Jacob would, reacts to their free choices by choosing Jacob, and choosing to honor Jacob’s free choice to serve God by making him Israel.
Pharoah is mentioned in this chapter of Romans and merits a comment. Again, God foreknew if He did X, Pharoah would freely choose to react by hardening his heart. So, God did weakly cause, or weakly actualized, Pharoah to harden his heart by interacting with Pharoah in a manner God foreknew Pharoah would freely choose to react by hardening his heart. But Pharoah freely chose his specific response of hardening his heart, just as Saul freely chose to react to God’s intervention by surrendering his heart to God as opposed to freely choosing to harden the heart as Pharoah did.
