Yes, Calvinists—free will IS in the Bible.

[Rockson]

. Whichever I choose will be determined by my strongest inclination at the time. That's free will. Self-determination.

Seems to me you're wanting to sit on a fence between free will and no free will. And it seems it opens the door for you to roll out the strongest inclination line regardless of what one says. So mankind....they're bound by inclinations? I'd say they're not but that many choose to rise up above their flesh and walk in the Spirit but you would say well that was your strongest inclination....almost making it seem that one really didn't have free will.

I've heard people say, "Everything in me wanted to give that person a piece of my mind!" But they didn't. They showed restraint. But you would counter and say everything in them didn't? The whole thing just gets crazy. Why not just acknowledge that mankind has free will period.

However, if it is God's will that I die, then I will die no matter what I choose. That's God's sovereignty.

Well again you're trying to take the free will theme to a place that nobody who believes in free will would disagree with you.....but even to seek to make this point is nonsensical. Of course on your point. And if someone chose to reject God's salvation they don't have a choice in the consequences of their actions......but no one is saying mankind can choose by will just anything and everything they want. If they don't want judgement too bad they're going to get it. But mankind's will is free just the same.

 

[Johann]

If I had a nickel for every time a Calvinist said to me "free will isn't in the Bible," I'd have a whole Nickelback album.


I do not accept the Trinity because it is explicitly declared in Scripture.

And this is true of libertarian freedom.

Hence, the philosophical notion of libertarian freedom is under the same umbrella.

The Trinity is deduced from Scripture not explicitly stated, and free will can also be conclusively deduced from Scripture.


First let's talk a little about what free will is not—

1. It's not the ability to do absolutely anything.

2. It's not the guarantee of no influencing forces.

3. It's not the ability to produce self-righteousness.

4. It is not randomness—this straw man caricature would mean choice is not under control of an agent, like a slot machine.

Free will is the limited ability to select between certain limited options as ordained and circumscribed by God's created order.



Now let's take a fairly mundane seeming passage and extrapolate some ideas from it.

3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, "Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife."
4 But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, "Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also?
5 "Did he not say to me,`She is my sister '? And she, even she herself said,`He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands I have done this."
6 And God said to him in a dream, "Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.
7 "Now therefore, restore the man's wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours." (Gen 20:3-7 NKJ)

Just as the Trinity can be deduced from whatever passages you want to cite, so true autonomous decision can be from this passage (as well as hundreds of others, but this passage is sufficient and a good example).

This is a long setup but bear with me. At first God says to Abimelech that he is a dead man because he has sinned. Abimelech answers and implies that this is too harsh a judgment in the light of his current limitations of understanding the situation. Abimelech then declares he is innocent. In verse 6, God does not say Abimelech is wrong, but rather affirms that Abimelech is actually correct on this issue. He has done this "in the integrity" of his heart. Then God says he has somehow kept Abimelech from sinning so far as an act of mercy because of ignorance. But now Abimelech is no longer considered ignorant, as he has been warned, so we end with verse 7 in which God lays out two different outcomes that are both indicated to be a real possibility and determined by the choice Abimelech makes.

Honesty is an attribute of God, and honesty in communication is necessary if you want to be understood in the way you intend to say something. "God is not a man that he should lie," says the Divine. That is, in general, if you wish to convey information and not mislead someone, you actually have to mean what you say. We cannot claim Abimelech would understand this passage in any deterministic way, and if determinism were true it would not be beyond the capacity of God to phrase this in a deterministic way or even to explain that Abimelech actually has no libertarian choice in the matter and there are not two real, viable outcomes as God indicated, where Abimelech either "surely dies" or he will in fact "live" although he was declared dead already, which in this case would indicate he had a pending "death sentence," or ban, on him.

Now the truth about determinism is a sneaky one, because no matter how you phrase something to sound like autonomy, you can always just claim it only sounds that way as some kind of illusion. But the default position of any text should not to be take the plain meaning as an illusion, but to take it as meaning what it says, unless we have strong overriding context. With proponents of determinism, a small percentage of Bible verses that could possibly be interpreted as deterministic are used as an overriding lens to reinterpret a much, much larger majority percentage of thousands of passages that are made to sound deliberately as if choice were two or more actual outcomes decided by the individual, instead of pre-decided by God.

And this overriding persupposition becomes so second nature to the Calvinist, that, in my interaction with determinists anyway, they almost seem to think it's the natural way to interpret choices in Scripture as necessarily deterministic when that's actually not the default way to understand them.

If God wanted to convey a deterministic meaning of any kind to Abimelech it would have been easy, simple and clear to simply phrase what God says to Abimelech in a deterministic way, "I have chosen you to sin," or "you will go on and do what I have decided for you to do," or "you must fulfill your destiny and this is what it will be." God does not choose any of those easy options which would be honest and clear, to phrase something deliberately in a way that sounds non-deterministic, and this is not by any definition the honest way of communicating. Abimelech, if Calvinism were true, would have been misled by God.

So although we have verses where Jesus says "the only true God" in reference to his Father, we take the higher percentage of verses and reinterpret the lower percentage of verses, to justify our interpretation that Jesus himself is the only true God as well. In the same way Scripture actually ends up directly supporting the idea of libertarian freedom, instead of directly opposing the idea of libertarian freedom, as many Calvinists contend.

So by using the exact same "hermeneutics" we would use to come to a deduction of the Trinity, we come with this consistent and predominantly used method of interpreting the Bible, to describing choices as multiple potential outcomes determined by the agent.

A Calvinist cannot "walk through the text" when reading from "the original Hebrew" and stay a consistent exhaustive divine determinist in Genesis chapter 20.

Peace to Spiritual Israel.

Liberating-isn't it?
J.

 

[makesends]

4. It is not randomness—this straw man caricature would mean choice is not under control of an agent, like a slot machine.

Might want to reconfigure that statement. A slot machine is not random and is under the control of its maker. The fact that its maker cannot predict its next outcome doesn't mean it is random.

Oh, and its maker is not God.

 

[makesends]

I see you cannot refute his OP which is why you dodged the request

That's a bit of cheap shot, brother, no? I hope you were just poking fun at him.

Makes me think of many posters on these sites, who because of their habit of being 'all over the place' writing statements, using hinted-at meanings for word, and using hinted-at statements as axioms, and speaking in hard-to-follow language and grammar, they then brag because others don't care to take the time to sift through what they have said for something worthy to engage. Some posters make me feel like a mosquito in a nudist camp, while with others, I don't even see any flesh to sting!

I've been there I don't know how many times. There are many with whom I choose not to engage because of their noisy antagonism, their self-righteousness, their self-appointed office of 'prophet' speaking for God, and so on.

That @Ladodgers6 chooses not to engage does not imply that he cannot refute the OP

 

[civic]

That's a bit of cheap shot, brother, no?

There was lots of history, offline phone conversations and text messages. So things are not always what they appear to be and I will leave it at that. But this is water under the bridge now and our forums no longer interact with one another. Thats unfortunate imho but thats the way things ended up. I will say this though since I left calvinism I was no longer welcomed in my former group and that was held against me. I'm not playing the victim but just stating the facts from lots of offline interaction with my former group of "friends " .

 

[makesends]

This is not clear thinking. This the confused doublespeak of compatibiliism, as it's formerly known, a literal logical contradiction.

If your only real option is your strongest desire, the other "options" are not actual options, you are just calling them something called "options."

When I speak of options I mean actual potentials of choice, not potentially determined strongest desires.


Again the "limited" means there are areas and times where we do not really have an option, and LFW has always taught this.

The area of options are limited to certain things decided by God, and these include things we are actually capable of.

I may not actually be capable of ripping my own skin off, for example, because the desire not to overpowers me, but that is no proof of anything.

This whole 'argument', such as it is, presupposes actual multiple possibility, which is never proven, but only assumed, by humans. That we choose is indisputable, I think —more than obvious— but that we could have chosen other than we did, has never been proven.

 

[makesends]

Why not just acknowledge that mankind has free will period.
Well again you're trying to take the free will theme to a place that nobody who believes in free will would disagree with you.....but even to seek to make this point is nonsensical.

The truth doesn't depend on what anybody thinks, except God himself. Why scorn something because 'nobody really believes that'?

That's the tone of your argument, here, as I read it. But maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're getting at.

 

[The Rogue Tomato]

I've heard people say, "Everything in me wanted to give that person a piece of my mind!" But they didn't. They showed restraint. But you would counter and say everything in them didn't? The whole thing just gets crazy. Why not just acknowledge that mankind has free will period.

No, the strongest inclination was to show restraint. It's very simple.

 

[Rockson]

The truth doesn't depend on what anybody thinks, except God himself.

Truth I'd say though isn't found in Calvinistic viewpoint of God.

Why scorn something because 'nobody really believes that'?

But is it really scorning or is it rather just laying out something is not true. I wouldn't say if one resist a thought the world is flat they're scorning anything. They can merely just be presenting facts it's not so.

 

[makesends]

Truth I'd say though isn't found in Calvinistic viewpoint of God.

But is it really scorning or is it rather just laying out something is not true. I wouldn't say if one resist a thought the world is flat they're scorning anything. They can merely just be presenting facts it's not so.

What I heard in my mind was an old and invalid 'argument' that conclusions should be made "because humanity does (or does not) commonly believe that". As though if humanity thinks something, that is all the validity needing pursued. It is poor logic, and usually presented in a scornful tone, as though shame should cause a person to back off of whatever is not commonly believed. You hear it from atheists —"Are you serious?? Talking donkeys and sly snakes???"

 

[makesends]

But is it really scorning or is it rather just laying out something is not true. I wouldn't say if one resist a thought the world is flat they're scorning anything. They can merely just be presenting facts it's not so.

But if their argument is that the world can't be flat, "as everybody knows (read, "you are such an idiot!") is true," they have not shown valid basis for argument.

 

[Rockson]

But if their argument is that the world can't be flat, "as everybody knows (read, "you are such an idiot!") is true," they have not shown valid basis for argument.

I can agree with that.

 

[Diserner]

Might want to reconfigure that statement. A slot machine is not random and is under the control of its maker. The fact that its maker cannot predict its next outcome doesn't mean it is random. Oh, and its maker is not God.

You misunderstood.

I never claimed a slot machine was random, that is not the comparison.

I claimed it is not under control of the user.

 

[brightfame52]

You misunderstood.

I never claimed a slot machine was random, that is not the comparison.

I claimed it is not under control of the user.

Its under the control of God !

 

[Diserner]

Its under the control of God !

Was not questioning that!

 

[brightfame52]

Was not questioning that!

Okay, I just added my two cents, God is in control of everything, and nothing is free from His Control.

 

[civic]

Okay, I just added my two cents, God is in control of everything, and nothing is free from His Control.

Does your god have freedom ? Is he constrained by his own determinism ?

if so he is nothing but a robot himself.

 

[makesends]

You misunderstood.

I never claimed a slot machine was random, that is not the comparison.

I claimed it is not under control of the user.

What is the comparison, then? If you say the comparison is that it is "not under control of it's user", what's that got to do with whether or not God is in control of all things? If you mean that it is not under control of its maker, its maker, as you present it, is not God, even if you can show that it is not under control of its maker.

Maybe I'm wrong to say that I think you intended to show that God can make things over which he does not EXERCISE control. But the fact that the slot machine is doing precisely what it was designed to do, shows that it is doing exactly, in every specific, what it was caused to do. So with God and all creation.

 

[civic]

What is the comparison, then? If you say the comparison is that it is "not under control of it's user", what's that got to do with whether or not God is in control of all things? If you mean that it is not under control of its maker, its maker, as you present it, is not God, even if you can show that it is not under control of its maker.

Maybe I'm wrong to say that I think you intended to show that God can make things over which he does not EXERCISE control. But the fact that the slot machine is doing precisely what it was designed to do, shows that it is doing exactly, in every specific, what it was caused to do. So with God and all creation.

One of the differences is man in not a preprogrammed inanimate object but a living being made in the image of his Creator having a mind, will, emotions to think, live, choose, freedom etc...... God gave man dominion/sovereignty to rule over the earth. Those were choice He freely gave to man to make free choices. Having Sovereignty is not meticulous control over ever action and deed of your rule. That is a false assumption within the calvinists paradigm.

 

[Diserner]

What is the comparison, then?

I believe the problem here is that Calvinists view everything under a certain framework, and they struggle to put themselves in a different worldview.

Thus when we attempt to describe True (or Libertarian) Free Will, the fallback is always, "but that is describing something I don't believe in."

You must understand that those who accept LFW believe that God can delegate the authority of the source of a decision. When we say things like God grants autonomy, we are using a very compact and shorthand language, for we do not mean God grants ultimate or absolute autonomy. We mean, rather, that God grants a very small,. dependent and limited autonomy, the autonomy of not controlling certain choices in any way.

So the true "Maker" of a choice, under LFW, is actually the free will agent, the decision-maker. LFW then logically becomes two very remarkable things, it becomes a kind of creation of something new, and it becomes a truly supernatural thing not strictly quantifiable by classic logic.

The point I attempted to make in regards to the slot machine, is that when the user, or agent, that is playing pulls the lever, he himself is not in any way under control of the outcome. That is of course assuming he is not the creator of the machine or having done some elaborate setup.

Random as a concept is actually surprisingly hard to define in a thorough way, although people feel they grasp it's meaning "intuitively." But by the use of random specifically here, I am talking of "that which has no possible method of prediction by the observer."

I hope this clear some things up, as this is indeed, a very complex topic.