Can We Really Exercise Free Will?
- Thread starter LifelongLearner
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OLDBUTNEW
Guest
That truly is disheartening.
The majority of Christianity today is not Calvinistic or Reformed.
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Well it depends on how you look at argument.
As far as I can see they have no argument
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OLDBUTNEW
Guest
from Ephesians 4 verses 17-19 ~ Gentiles walk in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more.
err they should have realised by now m
But no matter theres always the next argument
That must be more of Scripture you reject, since God's Word holds them responsible.
Plus I bet you believe some of the things about God they object to.
Does that dishearten you also? It should.
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OLDBUTNEW
Guest
err they should have realised by now m
But no matter theres always the next argument
I agree, Bro. I was just trying to refute @Bible_Highlighter's statement above.
Magenta said:
Uh, yeah. That's rich. We are not the ones saying 2 Thessalonians 2:10 is a dark verse (i.e., its a mystery verse).
Anyway, under God's Divine Enlightenment or Enablement, here is....
Free Will in the Bible:
#1. Joshua 24:15 KJV -
"Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve"
#2. Matthew 11:28 KJV -
"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
#3. John 7:17 KJV -
"If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God."
#4. John 7:37 KJV -
"If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink."
#5. Acts 2:38 KJV -
"Repent, and let everyone of you be baptized"
#6. Acts 3:19 KJV -
"Repent therefore and be converted"
#7. Acts 16:31 KJV -
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved"
#8. Acts 17:30 KJV -
"but now commands all men everywhere to repent"
#9. Revelation 22:17 KJV -
"Whoever wills, let him take the water of life freely."
#10. Genesis 4:7 KJV -
"If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."
#11. Revelation 22:17 KJ2
"And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that hears say, Come. And let him that is thirsty come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
#12. Luke 13:34 NLT -
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God's messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let me.
For the moment you take away free will is the moment you make God responsible for directly creating evil and sin. However, there is no darkness in God at all. God created free willed beings that made the decision to be evil and to sin. God did not force Adam and Eve to rebel. They had a choice to either choose life or to choose death. They chose death. Not because God wanted them to. It was because they wanted to choose death. Why on Earth did God even reason with Cain to do good if he was later called wicked? Put your thinking cap on.
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Unless I missed your post, you have not engaged with me with Scripture yet.
In other words, there is no refutation you have offered on this topic, unless you bring up God's Word as a part of the discussion.
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don't give him a sniff, if you tell him your not realising he will think it fine to do what he wants.
He been told shown,
If he keeps on with it' now. Its on him
He's old enough
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OLDBUTNEW
Guest
Yes, brother: I was trying to refute you where you said that most Christians today are not Calvinists: How are you so sure of that?
In the hope that God may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth so they will come to their senses and
escape the snare of the devil, who has taken them captive to his will... I hope you are able to hone your teachings skills. Truly.
It starts with believing what Scripture actually says and not believing -and insisting- it says what you want it to instead.
Right, let’s double down on anti-intellectualism and childish, incoherent replies instead of actually discussing the Bible.
If that’s the route you want to take, it certainly won’t help you win this discussion.
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what I've been saying is there is no such thing as a false Calvie To a true Calvie
And I only use the term Calvie for students of the Calvin college.
The problem is brother is Calvinism can be used as good word or bad word. I was just joking with my surprised emoji
So when you have the true word of God being spoken how many false idols of Calvinism do you think will emerge
Well the answer is millions and they will circulate like wild flies
It's like Anglicism spoken in the right way from an Anglican church it can be seen as good Anglicism,
but it's word to identify with m,, it's just a label.
Nowhere stated in the Bible. They were however of the natural world which according to Scripture in case you did not know:
For all that is in the world- the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes,
and the pride of life- is not from the Father but from the world.
Know what else is said of the world? Natural men live there, and the world CANNOT receive the
Spirit of Truth. If you are saved you were called out of the world; you might say, God forced you.
Who said they were forced? Jeepers. You free willers and being forced are like married or something. Living in sin.
Well, it is fear of death that is at the root of man's bondage to sin. Of course Adam and Eve were not there yet
but it is not death they wanted. It's what the natural man does = Takes God off the throne, puts himself on.
Again you read into the text what is DEFINITELY not there. In fact Eve was deceived by the serpent's lie concerning NOT dying.
If God said one path leads to life and the other leads to death, then choosing the forbidden path is choosing death.
That isn’t “reading into the text.” That is literally what God Himself said in Genesis 2:17.
You keep trying to split hairs because the implications contradict Calvinism.
Let me answer you point by point.
1. “God created free-willed beings” – you said “nowhere stated in the Bible.”
Adam is explicitly presented as a moral agent who can obey or disobey. God commands him (Genesis 2:16) and warns him (Genesis 2:17). Commands and warnings make no sense if the person cannot choose.
Also, Eve is accountable for being deceived (1 Timothy 2:14) and Adam is accountable for knowingly sinning (Romans 5:12). Accountability presupposes the ability to make a genuine choice.
God even says to Cain:
"If thou doest well… if thou doest not well…" (Genesis 4:7).
That is a conditional statement to a moral agent capable of either path.
2. You said: “You might say, God forced you.”
And that proves my concern with your position.
If your system teaches God “forced” salvation on you, then your system also makes Him the reason others are lost. Because if God does not “force” the same grace on the non-elect, then they never had a chance.
That is not how Scripture speaks.
God draws, convicts, enlightens, reproves, calls, reasons, stretches out His hands, and pleads.
But Scripture never says God “forces” anyone.
Even Stephen says to the Jews:
“Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost” (Acts 7:51).
Resistance presupposes the ability not to resist.
3. You said: “Who said they were forced? Jeepers…”
You literally just said a few lines earlier:
“God forced you.”
So if the elect are forced, you must logically explain why Adam and Eve were not “forced” into sin by the same divine determination. Otherwise, you have two different doctrines of God working against each other.
You cannot have it both ways.
4. On Adam and Eve “not wanting death.”
Of course they didn’t emotionally desire dying. Nobody said they liked death.
What they did desire was the thing God said would bring death.
God Himself tied the forbidden act to death:
“in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)
If you knowingly choose the thing God says leads to death, you have chosen death in the moral sense.
Adam was not deceived (1 Timothy 2:14).
He knew the consequence and freely chose disobedience anyway.
That is simply Scripture.
5. On “Eve was deceived.”
Correct. Eve was deceived. Nobody denies this.
But that doesn’t negate free moral choice; it simply explains her motive.
Adam, however, was not deceived. He sinned with full knowledge.
So your response is incomplete and doesn’t address the actual point I made.
6. The real issue
Your system refuses to allow man to make real moral choices, because if you admit Adam and Eve had one, the whole Calvinistic system collapses. So you must reduce everything to “bondage,” “fear,” “natural man,” etc., even though none of that applies before the Fall.
You said Adam and Eve were “natural” and therefore acted in bondage.
But Genesis 1:31 says everything God made was “very good.”
There is no bondage to sin before sin.
There is no “fear of death” before death exists.
And there is no “natural man cannot receive the Spirit” before the fall of mankind ever occurred.
You are reading post-Fall verses backwards into a pre-Fall world.
My conclusion
Adam and Eve sinned because they chose the path God warned would bring death, not because God “forced” them or predetermined their fall. Your replies simply prove my point: Calvinism has to rewrite the Genesis account to make its system work.
I’ll stick with the plain reading of Scripture.
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