Can We Really Exercise Free Will?

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To those teachers who taught in the early centuries - PRIOR to the "Reformers" (Martin Luther, Zwingli, and John Calvin) FREE WILL meant moral agency - our ability to either submit and surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit or to resist Him and follow our desires. As early Christian martyr Ignatius of Antioch wrote:

Seeing, then, all things have an end, and there is set before us life upon our observance [of God’s precepts], but death as the result of disobedience, and every one, according to the choice he makes, shall go to his own place, let us flee from death, and make the choice of life. If any one is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice.
(Ignatius of Antioch ~100AD – Epistle to the Magnesians, Ch. 5)
These ideas are contrary to the belief common to most pagan religions of the time - many of which taught that human action depended not on their choices but had been pre-determined by the invisible manipulations of FATE.

Apologist Justin Martyr argued that if man were unable to submit to God and seek His help then God could not fairly judge him.
“But lest some suppose, from what has been said by us, that we say that whatever happens, happens by a fatal necessity, because it is foretold as known beforehand, this too we explain. We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, and chastisements, and good rewards, are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power. For if it be fated that this man, e.g., be good, and this other evil, neither is the former meritorious nor the latter to be blamed. And again, unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions, of whatever kind they be.
(Justin Martyr ~155AD – First Apology, Ch. 43)

This was the universal view of Christians centuries before the Reformers were born.

Pure nonsense! God did not force A&E to sin. Besides, He warned Adam upfront that on he day he ate he would DIE. So...Adam especially sinned with his eyes wide open!
 
Genez said:
So tell me. How does God "make" someone to believe?
Does He force something in a person to change to make one believe?

By shedding his agape love abroad in his people's hearts? What a novel idea, heh?
2-Corinthians4-5-7.png

2 Corinthians ch 4 verses 5-7 ~ We do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us.
 
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A figment of your hopelessly biblically illiterate and vain imagination.
ooooo the insults are coming thick and fast in your superior intellectual mind now, did we tread on your precious free will with his word or something, it clearly looks that way from you and your crews, exceptionally poor taste comments lately
 
Sounds nice...

The greatest force for good is God's Justice.
God's justice even determines where His love will present itself.

Nonsense! Since God's love is moral in nature, He couldn't even be just without himself being LOVE.

What this world desperately needs is not more justice per se, but more Love from which Justice would flow.

Moreover, God will always love his people for all eternity in the new Eternal order. And there will never be a nanosecond in eternity when God will ever have to execute Justice. 1Cor 13 doesn't teach that God's Justice never fails but that Love never fails! Also, it is never said of God that God is Justice. However, it is said that God loves justice and that his throne is established on righteousness and justice. Love clearly trumps justice!
 
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Nonsense! Since God's love is moral in nature, He couldn't even be just without himself being LOVE.

What this world desperately needs is not more justice per se, but more Love from which Justice would flow.

Moreover, God will always love his people for all eternity in the new Eternal order. And there will never be a nanosecond in eternity when God will ever have to execute Justice. 1Cor 13 doesn't teach that God's Justice never fails but that Love never fails! Also, it is never said of God that God is Justice. However, it is said that God loves justice and that his throne is established on righteousness and justice. Love clearly trumps justice!

God IS love.
It does not say simply that God loves all.
Because, God will not love what His justice condemns.
Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
You want to argue some more? :)
 
Now...answer my question instead of deflecting: Can the devil do anything in this world apart from God's will? Or is the devil a co-ruler with Almighty God?
The Bible specifically blames Satan for the blindness. I doubt God would co-own that and not take credit for it.
 
You believed with your mind? Or a desperately wicked heart?
The identities, types, dynamics, and intended soteriology message here is vastly beyond your grasp or comprehension......so I post this for the edification of others.

Rth 1:16 - And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
 
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naw you have to determine the voltage by dividing the wattage and and the amps,

In your case your only a 5 watt light bulb running at 2 amps, you only have 2.5 volts running your brain lol, you work it out Using the
Using the v=p|I formula
V=p/Icap V equals cap p /cap

Voltage = Power/ Current)

V = 5 watts/2 Amps

V = 2.5 volts for your tiny pea brain 🥳🤩.


Joke everyone has a pea Brain did you know ?
Everything is coming from a 110 circuit that has been reduced tremendously.
 
You believed with your mind? Or a desperately wicked heart?


Get the context, finally.
God was giving Jeremiah a critique of what the degenerate Jews had become since following after Baal.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Can legitimately read from the Hebrew as follows:

The deceitful heart above all things is desperately wicked.

That's what the context was about.
For Jeremiah was confounded as to how low his fellow Jews could have allowed themselves to become so depraved!

They developed a deceitful heart because of the deep sins they greedily pursued!

It was not about all hearts. It was about those who have deceitful hearts.

False teachers have deceitful hearts!
 
No regeneration (born from above>> saved) which NON Reformed bible scholars, agree includes within it positional sanctification and justification, cannot precede faith.
Show me from scripture where born from above equals salvation.
 
Show me from scripture where born from above equals salvation.

I have many times!!!!

Wow, I cannot believe how inculcated you are, you do realize your doctrine is outside traditional, orthodox-evangelical Christianity, doesn't that bother you?
 
ooooo the insults are coming thick and fast in your superior intellectual mind now, did we tread on your precious free will with his word or something, it clearly looks that way from you and your crews, exceptionally poor taste comments lately

In one sentence, you just reversed what you condemned and did it yourself.
 
Get the context, finally.
God was giving Jeremiah a critique of what the degenerate Jews had become since following after Baal.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Can legitimately read from the Hebrew as follows:

The deceitful heart above all things is desperately wicked.

That's what the context was about.
For Jeremiah was confounded as to how low his fellow Jews could have allowed themselves to become so depraved!

They developed a deceitful heart because of the deep sins they greedily pursued!

It was not about all hearts. It was about those who have deceitful hearts.

False teachers have deceitful hearts!

Amazing how they are all trained and operate in sync, same ole cherry picked proof texts out of context.

Not just here, but other discussion boards, it is the exact same responses.

Scary.
 
Get the context, finally.
God was giving Jeremiah a critique of what the degenerate Jews had become since following after Baal.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Can legitimately read from the Hebrew as follows:

The deceitful heart above all things is desperately wicked.

That's what the context was about.
For Jeremiah was confounded as to how low his fellow Jews could have allowed themselves to become so depraved!

They developed a deceitful heart because of the deep sins they greedily pursued!

It was not about all hearts. It was about those who have deceitful hearts.

False teachers have deceitful hearts!
Just because the original audience is Israel doesn't preclude the truth from being universal.