1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

The Myth of a Truly "Free" Will

Discussion in '2004 Archive' started by Dr. Bob, Dec 16, 2004.

  1. Dr. Bob

    Dr. Bob Administrator
    Administrator

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2000
    Messages:
    30,285
    Likes Received:
    507
    Faith:
    Baptist
    Actually, Dr. Norm Geisler has perpetuated a myth that HE is a calvinist. That is 100% false and for consumption of the gullible only. His every point is pure Arminian and he tries to redefine each as calvinism.

    Newspeak at its worst.
     
  2. GeneMBridges

    GeneMBridges New Member

    Joined:
    May 13, 2004
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    izzaksdad,

    Geisler is very certainly not a Calvinist. He is most certainly an Arminian. He says, for example, irresistible grace is only for the willing, which is a complete redefinition of the term. He calls traditional Calvinists "extreme" and perpetuates, among other things, the myth that we believe the will is destroyed. Even his definition of "perserverance of the saints" is at variance with that of Calvinists. We Calvinists believe that all the saints persevere because God preserves them. He believes God preserves all the saints, but not all of them persevere.

    With regard to the will, I very often point out to those that believe in libertine free will because "God created us in His image" is false if we consider the nature of God. After all, if we are made in His image, then our wills should be in His image as well.

    God can not sin or do evil. He can not create rocks He can not lift. In short, He can not will Himself to do something that contradicts His attributes and character. Then why do those that believe in libertine free will then believe that we have libertine free will "because we are created in God's image." Being created in God's image would logically mean that our wills are compatibalist, not libertine.

    Satan's lie at the Garden was a half-truth, not a total lie. He said that we would be like God, knowing good and evil, but that we would not surely die. No, no...we died, but we did become like God, because we know the difference between good and evil. We freely chose to possess the type of compatibalist free will (free agency) we, as a race, would have. We are certainly in God's image with respect to the operation of our wills, in that we also have free agency, not free will, just as He does. However, our free agency is diametrically in opposition to His, and that is the problem and why we Calvinists say regeneration must precede faith. We choose only what is compatible with our fallen nature, just as God can choose only what is compatible with His righteous nature. For us, that will never include choosing Christ unless we are first regenerated by the Spirit. Appealing to "the image of God" does nothing to help the libertine free will position; in fact, it only hurts it.
     
  3. izzaksdad

    izzaksdad New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 9, 2004
    Messages:
    126
    Likes Received:
    0
    Just for the records sake, 'good reading' meant looking at differing views!
     
  4. OldRegular

    OldRegular Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2004
    Messages:
    22,678
    Likes Received:
    64
    I don't understand. Who is no son? :confused:
     
  5. GeneMBridges

    GeneMBridges New Member

    Joined:
    May 13, 2004
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    The allegation is that we "must" be "robots." However, that would be philosophical fatalism. In true fatalism, persons and events are not grounded, they are orchestrated via coercion and impersonal. That is not what we believe. God's sovereignty does not imply anything unwillingly done by any created thing, nor is it impersonal. By definition, God is personal and personally involved, and all persons involved are also moral creatures. Thus this is not fatalism.

    Simply put if man is not held responsible for his sins just because God planned it anyway, then the objecting person must also believe God is unjust in judging Satan, because Satan is certainly only acting in accordance with his own nature as well. He must also believe God is not morally responsible as well, even though He can not sin.

    Man is responsible for his actions because he is personal. Fatalism would mean that we are coerced by outside forces. That is not the Reformed position. The Reformed position is merely that man freely, voluntarily, and noncoercively does all that God has sovereignly decreed. God does not force man to do anything he does not want to do already. (Regeneration is not forcing man to do something against his will, it is mercifully transforming the will of the dead sinner, and then he freely, voluntarily, and responsibly believes and is justified without any coercion). Nothing is done by anybody unwillingly. God may set everything in motion, but the one thing He does not do, because it is contrary to His nature to do, is create fresh evil in mens hearts in order to coerce man's will. He may harden his heart. He may darken his understanding, but he does NOT increase the amount of evil in men's hearts.

    What makes a man responsible for his actions is that he has a will and makes personal choices. It does not logically follow that a person must have libertine free will to be held morally responsible for those choices. If that is true, then God is not morally responsible for His choices, and neither is Satan. The objection to free agency on that basis is thus philosphical and begs the question within the Christian worldview. The Christian worldview holds that God sovereignly decrees all that comes to pass and that man and the other powers all freely and voluntarily and noncoercively fulfill that decree. To a degree, it is a mystery, but it is not illogical and it is not a contradiction.

    The responsibility is a moral responsibility. The fact that man's choices are compatibalist in no way diminishes the moral dimension of his choices, for he may freely choose to not act in an evil manner with respect to voluntas (see below for definition). However, he freely chooses not to do so, thus morally condemning him. All it takes is one time and he is condemned. Inaction is also a moral choice that can avoid sin. Man nevertheless sins.

    We must remember, that the Reformed position restricts moral inability soteriologically to the ability to come to Christ and believe on his own, and this is an exegetical belief. Often those that object also believe that one is condemned for rejecting Christ, since they affirm general atonement, not for all ones sins, since those, they say are paid by Christ. (To which I reply that unbelief is a sin as well, so they are being inconsistent if they are not universalists, but that's another thread).

    There is one part of the will which was not lost in the fall which is common to all men, saved and unsaved. The theologians have called this aspect of the will voluntas. Voluntas is the power to perform any actions of a lesser nature aside from the ultimate choice of believing the gospel. Yet there is also an ability of the will which has been lost in the fall which theologians call Arbitrium. The Scripture describes fallen man as "being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart." (Ephesians 4:18) Thus, the ultimate choice to do the will of God and be pleasing to the Father from the innermost heart and soul is no longer a desire of man's fallen nature. By nature he rages against any such idea and will not submit to God. Both voluntas and arbitrium describe the will as determined by what the self most characteristically is. It is in accordance with man's innermost dispositions. The loss of arbitrium in the fall means that man cannot and will not reform himself in such a way as to perfectly obey God or believe His gospel. Our new birth, however, restores the soul's willingness (arbitrium) to do what is pleasing to the Father.


    http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/inability.html

    http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/twoviews.html

    http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0207.htm

    From Piper:

    It may help, however, to consider that the innability we speak of is not owing to a physical handicap, but to a moral corruption. Our innability to believe is not the result of a physically damaged brain but of a morally perverted will. Physical inability would remove accountability. Moral innability does not. we cannot come to the light because our corrupt and arrogant nature hates the light. So when someone does come into the light "it is clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought by God." John 3:21. The best treatment of this difficult subject I know of is Jonathan Edward's Freedom of the Will."

    [ December 18, 2004, 12:56 AM: Message edited by: GeneMBridges ]
     
  6. Rich_UK

    Rich_UK <img src =/6181.jpg>

    Joined:
    May 26, 2003
    Messages:
    389
    Likes Received:
    0
    Gene thanks for that most helpful post, I enjoyed reading it.
     
  7. av1611jim

    av1611jim New Member

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2002
    Messages:
    3,511
    Likes Received:
    0
    I completely and absolutely reject [snipped]taught by John Calvin.

    If it were true of the will as you guys here assert, then it follows that it was God who willed Satan to rebel. Or it was God who designed Satan to rebel. Therefore God is the creator of rebellion to His own self.
    Total nonsense.

    In Calvin's view, it was God who designed Satan to rebel, entice 1/3 of the angels to follow that rebellion, then punish them for what God himself had designed. Going further with it; it was God who set Adam up to fall. God designed Adam to fall, to disobey Him. Then God threw Adam out of the Garden and cursed the earth for something God himself designed, according to His foreknowledge. Then God, in order to right the wrong He himself created, sent His only son to the cross to pay for something God did.

    This is all just totally wacko. Without freewill, this scenario is what you have reduced our Thrice Holy God to. Completely and utterly nonsense.

    In His service;
    Jim

    [ December 18, 2004, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: Dr. Bob ]
     
  8. GeneMBridges

    GeneMBridges New Member

    Joined:
    May 13, 2004
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    On the other hand, Jim, if we follow your conclusion to the logical end, then you end up denying God's omnipotence and in Open Theism. :rolleyes: You too must also answer the question "If evil exists, then how does it exist if God does not ordain it to exist?" If evil happens in spite of God's will, then doesn't that deny God's omnipotence?

    You all typically reply that God was able to prevent evil but He chose to allow for the possibility of evil. Okay, but how does that not mean He is not also the prime mover since all things that exist do so because He causes them to exist. (It's rather ironic that you all will say "all means all" with reference to the atonement, but as soon as we get to "all means all" with respect to the existence of all things, you begin equivocating on the definition of "all.") It is inconsistent to the nature of God as the ground of all being to say that God did not sovereignly decree the existence of evil.

    Your view is scary, because it depends on the validity of the possibility of choosing either good or evil to exist in order for persons to be real. However, if that is true, then the Thrice Holy God Himself is not making real choices either, because it is impossible for Him to do evil, and, if your assertion about the reality of choices and free will is true, then it is also true that God might one day do real evil.

    Calvinists simply recognize that God accomplishes His decrees via secondary causes. Calvinists do not teach that God forced Adam and Eve to fall. Neither do we teach that God forced Satan and his legions to fall. We teach that God ordained both events for a purpose and that all involved parties freely, voluntarily, without one bit of coercion fulfilled that decree. Do we really have to exegete every text that clearly teaches that God ordained the existence of evil? It does not logically follow that just because God ordains the existence of evil that He is Himself unjust or evil. If that is true, the same could be said of the Arminian contention regarding the allowance of the possibility of evil. One might argue that if God did not do so, then He would be acting against His own nature. For example, God is a forgiving God. How then could He manifest that aspect of His character without something existing that required to be forgiven.


    We argue that the ordination of evil is not itself an act of evil or a manifestation of evil in the Creator. In fact, it is a necessary act of a necessary being who is purely actual without any potentiality in Him. Only being potentially forgiving would not be actually forgiving. It thus necessarily requires the existence of evil to be forgiven in order for a Purely Actual Necessary Forgiving Being (God) to display that aspect of His perfect character, thus the sovereign decree must have included that evil exist, because it is the sovereign decree that we understand as the decree of primary causation and sustaining causation that grounds all being. It was, however, accomplished via the existence of secondary agents, namely Satan and his angels and man, and neither were at all coerced. This is not illogical and not unbiblical.

    Acts 4:27 (KJV)
    For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,

    28For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.


    NAS: 27 For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,

    28to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.

    [ December 18, 2004, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: Dr. Bob ]
     
  9. HankD

    HankD Well-Known Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    May 14, 2001
    Messages:
    26,977
    Likes Received:
    2,536
    Faith:
    Baptist
    NKJV Ecclesiastes 3:11
    He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
     
  10. whatever

    whatever New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2004
    Messages:
    2,088
    Likes Received:
    1
    In addition to the excellent answer that GeneMBridges already gave, I would ask you to look at a couple of other cases.

    After all that Joseph went through he had this to say: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." So, if Joseph was right then God meant for Joseph's brothers to sin against Joseph, and his purpose was to provide for the family during the famine, and yet God remains holy. Was Joseph wrong? Was it all just a coincidence?

    Also consider Job. In chapter 1, after his livestock and servants are taken or killed, and then his children all die, he says "naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." And the Bible says "in all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong." In other words, ultimately it was God who took Job's livestock, and his servants, and his children, and He did it through sinful men, yet He remains holy.

    Then is chapter 2, after Job's body is stricken, he says to his wife, "you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" And the Bible says "in all this Job did not sin with his lips." In other words, Job is telling the truth. How is it possible that Job could receive "evil" from a holy God?

    [ December 18, 2004, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: Dr. Bob ]
     
  11. gopchad

    gopchad New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 11, 2003
    Messages:
    136
    Likes Received:
    1
    Since God exists outside of time, He sees the events of time as a whole. If one studies the decrees of God one will see how that his "allowing" certain things to occur, in no way limits his omnipotence, omniscience, or immutability. As you say, events will occur as God sees, but not necessarily because He chose it that way. It is because in His omniscience He knows the way we will choose.

    BTW, I am neither Arminian or Calivinist, but a Biblicist. There are good points made by both men. A guess I am maybe moderatley Calvinistic, but I tire of men using labels such as these to describe others who do not agree with them 100%.

    In Christ

    Chad
     
  12. pinoybaptist

    pinoybaptist Active Member
    Site Supporter

    Joined:
    Mar 17, 2002
    Messages:
    8,136
    Likes Received:
    3
    Faith:
    Baptist
    gopchad said:

    Is accepting God a good thing ? Is it a good act ? If your answer is yes, then in effect God elects certain people to salvation because He saw some good thing in them, and that is, their predisposition to cling to Him, to come to Him, to accept Him, to seek Him, which some do not have.

    So, is man naturally good ? How then will your opinion square with 'all have sinned and come short of the glory of God', and 'there is none that doeth good, no, not one, there is none that seeketh God', and 'all we like sheep have gone astray', and Paul's 'there is no good thing in me'.

    If your answer is no, then, you will have to come up with another scripturally incongruent and insupportable thesis on why there are those who choose God and there are those who do not.
     
  13. GeneMBridges

    GeneMBridges New Member

    Joined:
    May 13, 2004
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    0
    The problem with this is that libertine free will is a philosophical objection that seeks to deny this very premise. Those that hold to the position you articulate here typically say that God bases His choices on what He foreknows man will do, in this case, with Christ (e.g. accept or reject). In fact, that is the very reason that Open Theism has developed recently, because those that espouse it have realized it is inconsistent with their presuppositions to continue to affirm orthodox Theology Proper.

    First of all, nobody denies that God knows such a thing (except for Open Theists). The issue is whether or not God grounds, e.g. anchors, His actions in such a thing. Scripture says God foreknows the people He justifies. It does not say that He justifies them on the basis of foreseen faith.

    For one thing, to say this defeats the premise that the person holding to libertine free will seeks to deny, namely that God does not ordain the faith of some and not others in a fixed manner. How is grounding election on what God knows ahead of time any less fixed an event than the Reformed postion that says God intervenes in man in such a way to ensure that each believer does, in fact, believe and be justified? The answer is simple. I does not do so. The events are still etched in stone in such a system. The bigger problem that position incurs a separate problem, namely that it introduces something contradictory into the nature of God.

    God is understood to be pure actuality without any contingency in Him. In other words, He does not depend on anything to exist. He is not self-caused, because that would be a contradiction, since He would both exist and not exist simultaneously in order to bring Himself into existence and maintain His own existence. He is not caused, because there was never a time and will never be a time when He did not exist. He is uncaused. He simply exists without cause. He is thus the Uncaused cause of all that is caused.

    Such a being is purely actual. That is to say, He is not just potentially loving. He really loves. Not only that, He loves to the greatest degree that love can express itself. God knows. Not only that, there are no limits to His knowledge. He possess all possible knowledge. God is not thought, but God is the cause of all thought. Thus, He is always thinking in the greatest measure that thinking can occur.

    If something is "potential," that means that if it has knowledge it must anchor the knowledge it has in something other than itself. It depends on something else for its knowledge. In fact, there might be some things that it does not know. We know, but we do not have all knowledge, and, what knowledge we have, we depend on our senses, our environment, teachers, and ultimately God Himself. In fact, we can not know God apart from common or special grace. He is knowable only within the limits of that which He reveals to us and that we can, through our natural abilities and the illumination of His Spirit in our hearts, reveal to us, particularly with respect to His word. As the source of all knowledge; He is knowable, but the limits of what we know are the limits of His own self-disclosure and the limits of our own ability to know as caused things. We are thus, "potentials." We are actualized, e.g. caused to exist, by God, sustained by God, and dependent on God. We are actual, but not purely actual, because we have potentiality in our beings, by the very nature of being caused to exist by something other than ourselves.

    In short, a PURELY actual being thus, can not, by definition, anchor, or ground its actions or attributes in any thing that possesses the quality of potentiality, because that would make it dependent on something other than itself. It can not even do this voluntarily, because that would ultimately require that God know something in order not to know it or depend on something occuring in order to not depend on it. (This is, in fact, the very kind of thing that Open Theism says, e.g. that God voluntarily choses not to know things that He knows. In short, it entails a contradiction. Whereas orthodox Theology of God entails antinomies that are not illogical as such).

    He will not violate His own nature, because He simply can not do things that are contrary to His nature. By definition, a being of absolute actuality can not have any potentiality in Him. Potentiality is, by definition, contingency. Contingency, by definition, requires dependence on something other than self. For example, we are understood to depend on God for our first cause and the cause that keeps us from winking in and out of existence, what logicians sometimes term, "conserving" or "sustaining cause." In fact Scripture explicitly says God the Son is the one that sustains our existence. It is one of His roles in the Trinity to do this. Hebrews 1:3 says that He is continually upholding the universe by His word of power. This matches what we can deduce from the cosmological argument from conserved cause about God's nature (which both Reformed and nonReformed Protestant theology both say is valid).

    God's actions flow from His attributes. Therefore, if there is not any contingency in Him, nothing He does can, by definition, be contingent. Thus, if, by "Events will occur as God sees, but necessarily because He chose (meaning sovereignly decreed) it that way; it is because in His omniscience He knows the way we will choose," We mean that God grounds His actions with respect to election in "foreseen faith," we have thusly said that something God is doing is contingent, which contradicts both the revealed nature of God in Scripture and that which we can, through common grace, logically deduce by understanding the characteristics of an necessary, purely actual Being that is the ground of all be-ing. The nonReformed position in this matter is thus inconsistent with the Theology Proper (Theology of God) that it says it also affirms.
     
  14. Marcia

    Marcia Active Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Messages:
    11,139
    Likes Received:
    1
    I am sure Dr. Geisler does not need me to defend him, but since I am student at his seminary, I have to say this: doesn't the Arminian view teach that one can lose one's salvation? I know Dr. Geisler does not agree with that.

    Actually, I'm with Gopchad on this one: neither Arminian nor Calvinist, but Biblicist. I hate to be labeled as Arminian by Calvinists because I do not agree with much of what they say. I am not Arminian. It seems Calvinists have set up the system so that if you are not their kind of Calvinist, according to the way they interpret scripture, you are, by default Arminian.
     
  15. Bro Tony

    Bro Tony New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2004
    Messages:
    2,398
    Likes Received:
    0
    I'm with Marcia, Gopchad, Diane on this one. I am neither a C or an A. Just want to follow the Bible without having to hold to a man-made theological system that requires me to see the Scripture according to their particular view.

    Bro Tony
     
  16. whatever

    whatever New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2004
    Messages:
    2,088
    Likes Received:
    1
    I am sure Dr. Geisler does not need me to defend him, but since I am student at his seminary, I have to say this: doesn't the Arminian view teach that one can lose one's salvation? I know Dr. Geisler does not agree with that.

    Actually, I'm with Gopchad on this one: neither Arminian nor Calvinist, but Biblicist. I hate to be labeled as Arminian by Calvinists because I do not agree with much of what they say. I am not Arminian. It seems Calvinists have set up the system so that if you are not their kind of Calvinist, according to the way they interpret scripture, you are, by default Arminian.
    </font>[/QUOTE]Not all Calvinists consider anyone with differeing views to be Arminian, and the ones who do this really irritate some of us who don't. Having said that, there are some who believe in some sort of eternal security who also call themselves Arminians.
     
  17. whatever

    whatever New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2004
    Messages:
    2,088
    Likes Received:
    1
    I really don't get this. Do you guys really think that we Calvinists don't want to follow the Bible? Do you really think that Arminians don't want to follow the Bible?
     
  18. Bro Tony

    Bro Tony New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2004
    Messages:
    2,398
    Likes Received:
    0
    Can't speak for anyone else, but I do think you want to follow the Bible. I just don't like to have to be labeled by one group or another. I think also that a person who hold strictly to a man-made theological position has to twist some Scriptures to make them fit into that position. Every honest C or A that I have spoken with has admitted that there are difficult passages that don't fit neatly into their system.

    I do not, nor would I, question yours or someones elses statement concerning their belief in the Bible. I just believe any man-made system leads to a bias.

    Not that all of us don't have some kind of bias. ;)

    Bro Tony
     
  19. Marcia

    Marcia Active Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Messages:
    11,139
    Likes Received:
    1
    Well, I'm glad to hear that, Whatever, but in my experience I am labeled Arminian, or others who disagree with the C view are.


    Well, never heard that.

    I stopped posting in the C/A forum because I got tired of the same ol' stuff going round and round, plus other stuff. It got old fast for me. [​IMG]

    Guess my interests lie elsewhere. [​IMG]
     
  20. whatever

    whatever New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 7, 2004
    Messages:
    2,088
    Likes Received:
    1
    I agree.

    Of course there are. But we can't let go of the things that we do understand because of other things that we don't understand. There are passages that people with no system at all can't figure out, too. And we all twist Scripture at times.

    Sure, we all have bias. The very phrase that you keep using ("man-made system") is evidence of bias, so maybe not having a system leads to a bias too. But what if Calvinism (or even Arminianism) is really a God-made system? If so, then your non-system is just another man-made system.
     
Loading...