Can We Really Exercise Free Will?
- Thread starter LifelongLearner
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So in your world there is ZERO difference between Adam and his fallen progeny?
You really do flatter yourself quite a bit, don't you? You have a true love affair with SELF and your contrived worldly wisdom.
Hey Rufus, what're the good points about being a Calvinist?
It is extremely manipulative. Such people seek to gain power and feel a sense of control for self-serving reasons.
R
RedeemedAbby
Guest
What we are seeing is not entirely new (natural man always wants to feel he has absolute agency), but ancient people generally had a far more fatalistic, dependency-shaped conception of agency than modern Westerners, and this seems connected to their material conditions and political structures. If you told your average farmer in bronze age Mesopotamia that if he worked hard he'd be a rich man some day, or that his opinion mattered in the governance of his nation, he would think you were making a joke. Ancient peoples, and poor people generally, probably have an easier time with the intellectual concept of total dependence on God, because they have an echo or parallel of that in their personal situations.
You really hit the nail on the head when you said
The whole idea that 'life has no meaning without free will' strikes me as more derivative
of the hyper-individualism of American liberalism than of any demonstrated logical position.
And the free willers do rely on a lot of logical fallacies to prop up their position.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and I agree. As you can see, cv5 always gives a redX to God's word when it disagrees with his/her thinking.I spent about five minutes typing an answer to this, and ten finding all the right passages to cite
God is obligated to no one. In Adam we sinned and are by nature children of wrath. If God were to leave all mankind to perish, He would be just. Out of His love and mercy and for His glory, from eternity, He chose in Christ. For them, and them, Christ died; for them the Spirit is sent for salvation. That the Spirit does not work in others is not unfair but the counsel of God’s will, ‘He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy.’ Faith itself is the Spirit’s gift, not the natural ability of man. Salvation, from beginning to end, is of the Lord.
Scriptural References
Spiritual Death and Inability
God's Sovereign Grace
The Spirit and Faith
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and I agree. As you can see, cv5 always gives a redX to God's word when it disagrees with his/her thinking.
I got at least five. Does that make me an ace?
There ya go. Start firing off the "answers" Rufus buddy. If you are able....
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Yes @Rufus , you have chosen to refrain from addressing these countervailing theses, all of which are fully supported by context, hermeneutic principes and logic.
You will not because in my opinion, you cannot. And vice versa.
https://christianchat.com/threads/can-we-really-exercise-free-will.218061/post-5610217
https://christianchat.com/posts/5627431/
https://christianchat.com/posts/5629048/
Conclusion the same as always: Free-willers have the truth, facts, and scholarship on their side.
Calvinists? Not so much.
If that were the case then the first group who rejected the outward call of the Gospel in Lk 14 all wound up at the banquet in spite of their willful rejection, which would make Jesus a clueless wonder and you a worldly wise man.
Less rambling and more chapter and verses, please. Luke 14 has 34 verses. If you are too lazy to look up what you might be referring to? Why should we do your work only to find out you were seeing things wrong?
Chapter and verse.
We do not deny election.
We just understand what election is about.
You have superimposed.
Okay, FWers gird up the loins your dark, web-filled attics and answer the questions that will follow these three passages:
1 John 2:15-17
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
NIV
And,
James 4:4-6
4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble."
NIV
And,
2 Cor 6:14-7:1
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
17 "Therefore come out from them
and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
and I will receive you."
18 "I will be a Father to you,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty."
NIV
You FWers believe that Jn 3:16 teaches that God love the entire world in the distributive/quantitative sense whereas Reformed folks believe that God loves the world in a qualified/qualitative sense. But if you're right, then explain to me why John commands believers to not love the very world that you allege God does? Why are God's chosen ones commanded to not love the world in the distributive sense, as God supposedly does?
But it gets even worse! If any saint loves the world the way God supposedly does then that love for the world turns into hatred for God! And this makes perfectly good sense considering that the ungodly world is very much unlike God! Anyone who truly loves God cannot and will not love that which is entirely antithetical to his thrice, holy character. It's no wonder at all that Christ explicitly omitted this God-hating world from his High Priestly prayer (Jn 17:9). And it also nicely explains Jesus' remarks about how there's no greater love for another human being than one lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13), notwithstanding the seemingly contradictory Pauline teaching in Rom 5:8-10; . Jesus clearly was not eternally predestined to die for his enemies but was predestined to die for all the friends the Father gave to him in eternity.
Plus Reformed understanding of the relationship between the world and God's covenant people is one of utter SEPARATION. God never intended for His covenant people to fellowship with and love the ungodly world, as I have often proved with numerous scriptures. God never intended that his saints marry unbelievers. God never intended for believers to cozy up to unbelievers who have nothing in common with each other. Come out from them and be separate!
So, how is that God can supposedly love the ungodly in the distributive sense and EQUALLY as much along with his saints, but simultaneously forbids his saints from emulating Him!? Explain this very awkward dichotomy -- if any of you feel up to the task.
1 John 2:15-17
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
NIV
And,
James 4:4-6
4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble."
NIV
And,
2 Cor 6:14-7:1
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
17 "Therefore come out from them
and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
and I will receive you."
18 "I will be a Father to you,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty."
NIV
You FWers believe that Jn 3:16 teaches that God love the entire world in the distributive/quantitative sense whereas Reformed folks believe that God loves the world in a qualified/qualitative sense. But if you're right, then explain to me why John commands believers to not love the very world that you allege God does? Why are God's chosen ones commanded to not love the world in the distributive sense, as God supposedly does?
But it gets even worse! If any saint loves the world the way God supposedly does then that love for the world turns into hatred for God! And this makes perfectly good sense considering that the ungodly world is very much unlike God! Anyone who truly loves God cannot and will not love that which is entirely antithetical to his thrice, holy character. It's no wonder at all that Christ explicitly omitted this God-hating world from his High Priestly prayer (Jn 17:9). And it also nicely explains Jesus' remarks about how there's no greater love for another human being than one lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13), notwithstanding the seemingly contradictory Pauline teaching in Rom 5:8-10; . Jesus clearly was not eternally predestined to die for his enemies but was predestined to die for all the friends the Father gave to him in eternity.
Plus Reformed understanding of the relationship between the world and God's covenant people is one of utter SEPARATION. God never intended for His covenant people to fellowship with and love the ungodly world, as I have often proved with numerous scriptures. God never intended that his saints marry unbelievers. God never intended for believers to cozy up to unbelievers who have nothing in common with each other. Come out from them and be separate!
So, how is that God can supposedly love the ungodly in the distributive sense and EQUALLY as much along with his saints, but simultaneously forbids his saints from emulating Him!? Explain this very awkward dichotomy -- if any of you feel up to the task.
I thought you were and elite, highly schooled, highly educated scholar on this thread with gazillion of hours of intense study under your hood -- all supported by other elite scholars with more study hours under their bonnets? You don't know how to find that parable, O Self-Exalted One!? Lazy much? How did you ever make it through all those many hours of study?