Diserner
Active Member
If I don't have free will, I have no way of knowing what I would be determined to believe.
I would think that would be pretty obvious.
Yes, Calvinists—free will IS in the Bible.
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If I don't have free will, I have no way of knowing what I would be determined to believe.
I would think that would be pretty obvious.
I think that is not rational
If what you are to believe has been determined and you could not vary from it, where is your freedom to choose what you do believe?
Diserner
Active Member
By definition you have no freedom under determinism—that's the whole point of the system, lol.
So there is no free will in the matter then if determinism is held to.
Diserner
Active Member
Yes, that's correct, you are determined to believe in determinism, lol (under their system).
So any theology that holds to the determination of all things is truly denying a free will in man.
Diserner
Active Member
Yes, 100%, but they will play some semantic shenanigans.
They will start to use "free will" in a way that means non-free to hi-jack the terminology with equivocation.
Many believe in Compatibilism, which says determination and free will are both simultaneously true, even though they contradict.
So they can be quite difficult to deal with.
civic
Active Member
Compatibilists deny LFW.
Diserner
Active Member
Libertarians would say LFW CANNOT be compatible, that is why we add the L to it.
But it gets complicated when they attempt to define a self-contradictory position.
Yet they still try to make man's responsibility and determinism compatible.
In order to understand this better theologians have come up with the term "compatibilism" to describe the concurrence of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. Compatibilism is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism. It simply means that God's predetermination and meticulous providence is "compatible" with voluntary choice. Our choices are not coerced ...i.e. we do not choose against what we want or desire, yet we never make choices contrary to God's sovereign decree. What God determines will always come to pass (Eph 1:11). In light of Scripture, (according to compatibilism), human choices are exercised voluntarily but the desires and circumstances that bring about these choices about occur through divine determinism.
Monergism.com How can God be sovereign and man free
civic
Active Member
Yes talk about an oxymoron and inconsistent theology
Indeed
In his book “Chosen by God,” R.C. Sproul argues that free will is not incompatible with God’s sovereignty. He writes: “Free will is not the ability to choose independently of God. It is the ability to choose between different options that God has provided.
What Is Free Will?: Chosen By God with R.C. Sproul
Notice the phrase "independently of God"?
And?
That is a Calvinist speaking trying to make compatible free will and the absolute determinism of all of man's thoughts, and action.
synergy
Active Member
I say that God has predetermined man with free will. God is determined that our salvation is a free will choice on our part. He has completed the Atonement for us and he now awaits everyone's response.
No choice is made independently of God. Every choice serves His purpose and plan.
Yup, because that is how the Bible is written. Man chooses as God has determined Him to do so freely.
Not if you read and then believe scripture.
Joshua 24:15 (LEB) — 15 But if it is bad in your eyes to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves today whom you want to serve, whether it is the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh.”
Deuteronomy 30:19 (LEB) — 19 I invoke as a witness against you today the heaven and the earth: life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. So choose life, so that you may live, you and your offspring,
Proverbs 1:29–31 (LEB) — 29 Since they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of Yahweh, 30 they were not willing to accept my counsel, they despised all my reproof. 31 They shall eat from the fruit of their way, and they shall be sated from their own schemes,
Romans 1:28 (LEB) — 28 And just as they did not see fit to recognize God, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do the things that are not proper,
Hebrews 12:25 (LEB) — 25 Watch out that you do not refuse the one who is speaking! For if those did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, much less will we escape, if we reject the one who warns from heaven,
Luke 10:16 (LEB) — 16 The one who listens to you listens to me, and the one who rejects you rejects me. But the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
Acts 7:51 (LEB) — 51 “You stiff-necked people and uncircumcised in hearts and in your ears! You constantly resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so also do you!
Hebrews 3:8–9 (LEB) — 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers tested me by trial and saw my works
More mindless cutting and pasting. None of which deny compatibilism.
Pathetic non address of scripture
Joshua 24:15 (LEB) — 15 But if it is bad in your eyes to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves today whom you want to serve, whether it is the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh.”
The Jews here were to choose for themselves.
Hello, God was not choosing for them.
Deuteronomy 30:19 (LEB) — 19 I invoke as a witness against you today the heaven and the earth: life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. So choose life, so that you may live, you and your offspring,
God set life and death before them. That would not be true if he determined one
It really is sad you cannot see the obvious and require an explanation
Proverbs 1:29–31 (LEB) — 29 Since they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of Yahweh, 30 they were not willing to accept my counsel, they despised all my reproof. 31 They shall eat from the fruit of their way, and they shall be sated from their own schemes,
Here it was their own scheme, not a scheme where God determined their hatred.
Romans 1:28 (LEB) — 28 And just as they did not see fit to recognize God, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do the things that are not proper,
Hebrews 12:25 (LEB) — 25 Watch out that you do not refuse the one who is speaking! For if those did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, much less will we escape, if we reject the one who warns from heaven,
Luke 10:16 (LEB) — 16 The one who listens to you listens to me, and the one who rejects you rejects me. But the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
How can they be rejecting God if God determined they should reject Christ?
Acts 7:51 (LEB) — 51 “You stiff-necked people and uncircumcised in hearts and in your ears! You constantly resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so also do you!
Why the obvious verbal rebuke if God had determined their stiff-necks and uncircumcised hearts
Hebrews 3:8–9 (LEB) — 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers tested me by trial and saw my works
It really is sad you cannot see the obvious.
If God determined their response, then they are not doing so freely.
Deuteronomy 30:11–19 (LEB) — 11 “For this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too wonderful for you, and it is not too far from you. 12 It is not in the heavens so that you might say, ‘Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us and cause us to hear it, so that we may do it?’ 13 And it is not beyond the sea, so that you might say, ‘Who will cross for us to the other side of the sea and take it for us and cause us to hear it, so that we may do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, even in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it. 15 “See, I am setting before you today life and prosperity and death and disaster; 16 what I am commanding you today is to love Yahweh your God by going in his ways and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his regulations, and then you will live, and you will become numerous, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land where you are going. 17 However, if your heart turns aside and you do not listen and you are lured away and you bow down to other gods and you serve them, 18 I declare to you today that you will certainly perish; you will not extend your time on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to go there to take possession of it. 19 I invoke as a witness against you today the heaven and the earth: life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. So choose life, so that you may live, you and your offspring,
And
God set before them life and death, blessings and curses.
If God determined one, he could not honestly set the other before them.
Thus you have yet another doctrinal fallacy.
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