Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, or “Pot Luck”

[Crowns&Laurels]

I believe in soft determinism in practicality, as free will and predestination are not two diametrically opposed things.
But when pushed, I tend to stand firm on predestination because it is ultimately the greater of the two- it is the Beginning and the End, where human wills are simply frequencies in between.

 

[GillDouglas]

To listen to some - one would think that the Bible presents a sort of "Jeffersonian" picture of God and His relationship to His creation. It does not.

God is active in even the most minute ways in His creation according to scripture.

The problem is that people simply will not allow for God's total sovereignty and free will existing together. The scriptures tell us that they do.

This refusal to believe what the scriptures teach is often manifested here with comments about "robot" and "puppets" and the like.

Ridiculous IMO.

We are what we are and God is what He is. We have our being in Him. He's God and we're not.

We make choices all the time. The fact that God may have predestined those choices for His eternal purposes doesn't change in the slightest way the fact that we are the ones making those choices.

Apparently many are not happy just being what God created. They will not be happy unless they are totally independent of Him.

In what creature have we seen that attitude before?

Why is one saved, and another lost? It is God who makes this difference. Since it is God who has put the difference between men, the redeemed and the condemned, it rests entirely on His grace and not the will of man. We had nothing to do with our physical birth, but certainly see it as a sovereign gift of God. We likewise have nothing to do with our spiritual birth and receive it as a sovereign gift as well.

An unregenerate man never adequately realizes his utterly helpless condition and imagines that on his own could reform himself and possibly turn to God, if he chooses. However, there is no such thing as a "self-made" man. If man is so fallen so they be at enmity with God, that enmity must be removed before he can have any desire to do God's will. The first movement toward salvation can no more come from man that his dead body could originate its own life. Regeneration is a sovereign gift of God. And because this change is produced by power from God, a living spring of a new and recreated life, it is irresistible and permanent.