Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
I know, right? As if God did not decide to have mercy up on whom He will have mercy, like Eph 1:4: says.How can people make truly "free" choices based on NOTHING at all without salvation becoming an arbitrary flip of the coin choice?
There is a contention that Augustine held a Calvinistic approach to predestination.Thanks for asking! Having done a lot of praying, thinking, researching on this question, my conclusion is this: Logically, God in some way has predestined everything that occurs, which doesn't mean he necessarily "likes" every outcome, but it is the outcome God has chosen.
Biblically, there are some really big and important questions. The various passages that indicate God wants to save all men, the passages that say God is upset when humans disobey him, etc. are all very convincing. However, the Book of Romans, especially when Paul speaks about Esau and Jacob, is very convincing on the side of the Calvinist. In short, the Bible seems to present conflicting messages.
Historically, and this is something I have been looking into a lot more recently, the earliest church fathers (prior to the Council of Nicea in 325 AD) definitely supported an interpretation that would be thought of today as "Arminian." Not every father spoke about these topics; many did not. But when they did, they often spoke definitively against what is thought of today as Calvinism. The belief was that although God was in control of the whole universe in one sense, man absolutely had free will to choose.
This is, of course, until you get to Augustine, who taught basically what John Calvin did later on regarding this subject (not all subjects). Many others at the time and after Augustine echoed those beliefs.
So, to be perfectly honest, I'm a bit torn. I hold to sola scriptura, so the scriptures are my highest authority, but I believe that the scriptures are not entirely clear on this. Generally speaking, in these sorts of situations, I would go to the church fathers, and they seem clearly to reject Calvin's view of predestination (as well as Luther's and Ambrose's and Augustine's). However, logic tells me Calvin's view on this subject is basically right, and I'm not sure how to get around those problems presented above and elsewhere.
Nowhere do you ever explain why one person WANTS to choose God or WANTS to come to faith. You keep repeating that it's all according to free will. Fine! Let's say it is. You still haven't answered the question. If two people, with absolute free will, hear the Gospel and come from the same household and everything, why is it one chooses faith and the other doesn't? Because one "wants" to and one does not? Ok, why? You still haven't answered the primary question here and neither has anyone else. You can say people, for whatever reason (greed, lust, power, stubbornness) want to stay in sin, but you can't tell me WHY one person values greed, lust, power, etc. over the person who forsakes it all for faith. And that's what the whole issue comes down to. WHY do some do that, even while others do not?
Hi bling,
I understand your pov and agree to a point.
We need to be cautious that "free will" does not overshadow mercy and grace.
Free will is not the main thing. This makes salvation man-centered, not God-centered.
We have to ask did Jesus die so that we could exercise free will ?
Jinc asks a question no one has satisfactorily answered up to this point.
The free will choice by man does not take anything away from God.
The free will choice to humbly accept God’s charity, just allows God to not force His Love on the person, since that would not be Loving on God’s part.
You say forced, but this terminology has no point of reference.
What exactly could we compare this to in our own lives ?
Isn't this really a false construct that is meaningless ?
The only reason we love God is God loved us first per 1John 4
God assertively and with persuasion made us fall in love with Him.
We did not randomly wake up one morning and decide to love God.
God draws us with cords of love. God demonstrated His love with force.
If God really wants to have someone, will God not have him or her ?
Don't get caught up in the ones that might appear to be passed over by God.
Focus on God's persuasive powers. God can make us fall in love with Him.
Explain God's enemies suddenly loving God, without any initiation by self.
Acts 9. How and why does Saul suddenly love God ? Freewill...nope !
Very similar to my thinking. Free will sounds great and seems the right way...until you look closer at what it implies. Then, you see that it has to mean that God controls the outcome anyway.
Not according to the reasoning you've laid out here. OTOH, it does illustrate the point I was making, which was that it doesn't take agreeing with the contentions of those who believe in Election to see that God rules and decides. The arguments of the Freewillers lead to the same conclusion.God does control the outcomes through the spiritual rules He set up, as outlined in His Word.
God gave man the ability to choose Him. That was HIS decision. Therefore, man's acceptance or rejection is ultimately within the confines of God's plan, and therefore, God is controlling the outcome according to His Will.
Well, it is a mixed bag, as they were not all in uniform agreement on various topics, and some were "in" for awhile, and then "out", of a door that revolved on occasion.I will say ... The more I read the early church fathers, the more convincing it is that they held to a form of Arminianism. They certainly didn't believe in TULIP (Calvinism). I've been spending a lot of time reading the sources directly and in-context by the way, not just quotes on websites.
We're called to choose righteousness, to choose good over evil, life over death. Faith is a righteous step for man, a matter of justice IOW. Unless we maintain that God simply cannot make free moral agents, with moral responsibility, then these choices aren't merely blind responses to some external forces or conditions but are, rather, our cooperation with and participation in the justice of God, a participation we can refuse, or, OTOH, that we can even grow stronger and more committed in. As this commitment grows we become more just, our choices responding to and working with grace.I believe great arguments can be made by both Calvinists and Arminians from the Bible, and having read the earliest church fathers, I agree with Arminians that the early church did tend to focus on free will (although I'm not sure they ever did address WHY a person ultimately makes the free will choice.)
One of the great flaws I see in free will, however, is that it ultimately boils down to an arbitrary choice. If all people can choose, by God's grace, to reject or accept Him in faith, then why does one person have faith while the other does not? If it's because of some positive quality in the one who chose faith, or some circumstance in life, or really anything at all, then couldn't it easily be said that God is in fact ultimately behind the decision? In other words, if there is a reason one person chooses and another doesn't, then isn't that reason also ultimately foreseen and foreknown at the time of creation? If God knew this particular external force would keep people from faith, why did God create a universe with that external force within it?
I just don't see how a person can honestly escape God's sovereignty in all things at the end of the day.
Not according to the reasoning you've laid out here. OTOH, it does illustrate the point I was making, which was that it doesn't take agreeing with the contentions of those who believe in Election to see that God rules and decides. The arguments of the Freewillers lead to the same conclusion.
Man's power to choose is the freedom to oppose even Gods will. This opposition was first committed by Adam -by his act of disobedience. If this power is impossible then God must've actually wanted Adam to sin, after telling him not to do so. And man would be nothing more than a moral automaton, not resposible for any of his actions.This was also my point. Having the ability to choose could even be thought of as a form of hyper-Calvinism, ironically. The reason I say this is because if people really are given the power to choose but the only difference between one person choosing God and another rejecting God is something inherent in the individual (in other words, something about the person who chooses God, DNA etc., makes that person choose God while the other rejects God) then ultimately the only reason people choose the way they do is because God essentially has designed them that way, or at least designed people so that they could be that way depending on how DNA turns out. This is even more problematic that mainstream Calvinism because it would mean God designs people to reject Him. Insisting man has a choice, which is often done as a way to put the responsibility on man, rather than God, logically leads to either accepting the idea all choices are arbitrary or the idea that God is designing people to reject him. Neither is biblical but both are logical based on that line of thinking. I'm not sure how anyone who supports man's power to choose can escape that conclusion.
This was also my point. Having the ability to choose could even be thought of as a form of hyper-Calvinism, ironically. The reason I say this is because if people really are given the power to choose but the only difference between one person choosing God and another rejecting God is something inherent in the individual (in other words, something about the person who chooses God, DNA etc., makes that person choose God while the other rejects God) then ultimately the only reason people choose the way they do is because God essentially has designed them that way, or at least designed people so that they could be that way depending on how DNA turns out. This is even more problematic that mainstream Calvinism because it would mean God designs people to reject Him. Insisting man has a choice, which is often done as a way to put the responsibility on man, rather than God, logically leads to either accepting the idea all choices are arbitrary or the idea that God is designing people to reject him. Neither is biblical but both are logical based on that line of thinking. I'm not sure how anyone who supports man's power to choose can escape that conclusion.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?