Now this is what I'm talking about. Brennon posted an exegesis on Romans 9 and I posted a response, and now bethyada has posted a response. bethyada and I have gone back and forth a little bit in comment, but I thought that it would help to respond to his latest response giving it the space and time it deserves. My words are in red. Please read the above links with comments to follow what has been said already. The issues I have been discussing with bethyada and Brennon are important and will affect how one sees God, witness, and live but neither position make one more pleasing to God or less saved.
Hi Marcus. What we mean by freewill is not complete absolute freedom to do absolutely anything, it means the ability to make choices that are ours.
I agree that free will means that we are able to make choices that ours that we are responsible for. MY argument is that left to ourselves the only choices we can make are disobedient to God.
We are best to make them in line with God's will and God may aid us in this, but we can make decisions, at least some of the time, against what God wills for us. That is we can choose to disobey God even while God wills us to obey him. And that choice is ours, it is not some second will of God's. Essentially freewill says that exhaustive determinism is not true.
I also agree that God holds us accountable for our acts of disobedience and evil because we are responsible we disobey because we want to disobey not because God makes us disobey. The question is - is the opposite true - can we obey God without God helping us and prompting us? Since no one does good and all sin and no one measures up - I have to answer "no". Romans 3:23
This does not mean we act completely without God. For Christians much of what we do is with God's help, he strengthens our spirit to do what we know is right, even while our flesh entices us otherwise. But we still have the choice to align our behaviour with what the Spirit is doing in us, or not.
Where does the Bible say we have the choice to obey or not to obey. The Bible tells us its a choice to obey and we do choose. If there is such thing as free will as Brennon and bethyada have defined it, then we can choose to go to Christ without God doing anything but on our own. John 6:44 disagrees.
Next, the inability to do good does not mean we are determined by God. If we were determined by God then we will be doing good. Rather one is choosing various wrongs. Hebrews 11? Are you referring to verse 6? I don't know how you are reading this. I don't see pleasing God as exactly the same as doing good. And claims about no one doing good I read as doing everything good. Of course people do some good. And all good done by everyone is with God's help. Unbelievers do some good things which we can trace to God's workings in this world.
Not everyone is determined by God to do good. It's a gift. Not everyone gets it. I was referring to Hebrews 11:6...it's impossible to please God without faith. If an unbeliever does good...it is inadvertent. They aren't trying to please God and don't even realize that God gets the credit. God even uses the evil that people do to bless His people and carry on his purpose. Think of Joseph's brothers...what they meant for evil God intended for good!
Acts 17 does say that God does a lot. But freewill does not say God does nothing. God does heaps! But identifying many things God does is not proving we have no will and I am an automaton. Romans 1 shows we make choices.
I surely would not argue that any born-again Christian, as I know Brennon and bethyada are, could be described as an automaton. Romans 1 does say we make choices, Romans 9 shows that aside from the power of God there is no other choice a sinner can make.
God does work on the corporate level and the individual level. But these are categorically distinct.
God doesn't leave man to himself. He works on men's hearts but still lets them make the choice whether or not they wish to join his kingdom.
How can we say that God works on our heart and then say that we can choose to join the kingdom. Jesus told his disciples "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." John 15:16 Do we really think the same is not true for us? bethyada must be saying that if a person can choose to join the kingdom then we can get choose to leave it if we decide, right? I don't know if that is what bethyada is saying but it seems the logical conclusion.
You are pushing freewill to far. It seems that you see the 2 options as
1. God controlling absolutely everything including our thoughts and actions (exhaustive determinism)
2. God doing nothing and humans being able to make any decision and do anything.
But a denial of 1 does not entail 2.
I admit being told that I push free will too far is funny to me, given that I am arguing that God has true completely free will and we as humans don't. A synergistic gospel seems to deny Ephesian 2:8-10
8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
True Paradigm: Corporate versus individual election
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Hi Marcus. Briefly, the beginning of your post sounds like prevenient grace, and we have little to disagree with as it is written. But I do not get the impression that we both agree on what we mean by freedom. I am referring to people not God, we agree that God has freedom.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about exhaustive determinism is that it is exhaustive. There is no true freedom, we do what God will in every action.
Freedom is not complete freedom. See Thibodaux's example of the shoulder. If we are unable to do good then we only have freedom to do evil. But we make our choices. But if God calls us, we can choose to reject that call. God wooing us to him is not exhaustive determinism, that would be compulsion. Yes Jesus choose the disciples, but what of his comment in John 6, yet one of you is a devil?
The Arminian position is that God calls all men. Some accept that call, some reject it. And yes I think that means we can subsequently choose to leave the kingdom (not that it is easy).
Yes without God we cannot choose him (in our fallen state), but even with God some will still reject him.
(Will stop here. Having problems with your combox.)
I totally agree that we don't agree on "freedom". I don't think there is any prevenient grace ( a "middle" state where we are lifted out of our depravity just enough to make a free will choice accepting or rejecting Jesus). I just don't find anything in scripture backing that up...although a lot of people believe it. Just as Jesus chose the 11, he also chose Judas, knowing who Judas was and knowing that it had been predetermined that Judas would betray Him...and yet in all that Judas made a conscious choice! I'd say is true for us all. Without God's unmerited favor - grace - we are only capable of choosing to do evil and nothing that really pleases God enough to save ourselves. When ever a sinner does good...it doesn't count as something they will be eternally rewarded for - as will the elect - and any human act of good is to God's credit anyway.
ReplyDeleteHere is my question about those who respond to prevenient grace by rejecting God - Did God intend to save them, meaning that He failed to do something that He wanted to do?
Prevenient grace is how people make sense of what the Bible teaches. The same as the trinity makes sense of the Godhead.
ReplyDeleteHere is my question about those who respond to prevenient grace by rejecting God - Did God intend to save them, meaning that He failed to do something that He wanted to do?
Intend is a difficult word. I would say desire. God desires to save people who still reject him. They are not saved. God will not have people in heaven who do not love him. Are such people preventing God doing his will. In a way, but that is a poor way of phrasing it. Can you make your wife love you? You can maximise the chances but she still has to make a choice.
The Trinity is explicitly taught in scripture because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all worshiped and are God. I see way around that...therefore the Trinity makes sense to me. Prevenient grace on the other hand cannot be reconciled with scripture. I can't find a single verse that says everyone gets just enough grace to choose or reject Christ.
ReplyDeleteI agree that God desires all people to be saved and does not rejoice in destroying the wicked. This is true. However, I think we can make a difference between intention and desire. The difference can be seen in the Greek. IT seems to me we can say that God desires to save everyone but intends to save only the elect because only the elect will be saved.