Okay, so here's how it seems to me. I'm just reporting. I recently heard something about free will. I've thought about it before. I thought about it again. I decided to write about it. No one coerced me and no one prevented me. I typed freely what I want on my keyboard. I look forward to the day when I find out what really happened.
I believe God gave me the freedom to choose. He gave me my will, so I have one and the freedom to use it. I take responsibility for this writing, because it is mine. No one made me do this. No one stopped me from doing it.
At the same time, whatever truth I can know on free will comes from God in His Word. No truth about free will can contradict another truth. God does not contradict Himself. He cannot lie.
The Calvinistic Doctrine of Free Will
The Calvinistic doctrine of free will conflicts and perplexes. Calvinism says, sure, man is free. He chooses what he wants to do, but he chooses to sin. It is in his nature to sin. He wants to sin.
Being depraved, man possesses free will, but the will only to sin. Calvinists say that will only to sin is free will. That means he does not will salvation either. He does not want God or righteousness.
Man can choose. He doesn't always sin. He can choose paper instead of plastic. Calvinists consider that a "natural" choice, the realm in which man does exist. They also call this "secondary causation."
On the other hand, other factors seem to come into play with Calvinism and free will. Conflict and perplexity rise. God knows everything, past, present, and future. If He knows everything, then He also predetermines everything. Man cannot do anything that God does not know. Knowledge equals determination and they do not separate those.
Since God knows everything, He also wills everything. If God wills everything, then God determines everything too. Calvinists say the alternative to determinism is that God does not know the future, just all the possibilities of what might happen, or "open theism."
If God determines everything, then He also determines sin and suffering. God predetermines, determines, or ordains sin. He's got a purpose for sin according to His will. God knows every sin, so He determines it all. He determined sin, He determined Hell, and He determined to send most people to Hell.
God ordains suffering for sin. You might say Adam and Eve sinned. They did, but every man also sinned in Adam. Every man deserves suffering for sin, starting in this life, ending in his death, and furthermore in his eternal punishment.
If man is not to go to Hell, he cannot choose not to go there. He chooses only to go there, because his will is depraved. If he chooses not to go there, God causes that. He does that through irresistible grace. God chooses who goes to Heaven. God the Spirit regenerates those He chooses to receive the Lord God. Then God keeps them. He loses none of them.
People sometimes use the word "robot" to describe what seems like a lack of free will. Calvinists say, men are not robots. God's sovereignty to Calvinists though means God determines everything. It's perplexing and conflicting that God determines everything, yet man is not a robot.
Everyone God does not choose to save those He chooses for Hell. He chose them to Hell before their birth. Knowledge is love. Foreknowledge is knowing ahead of time. Knowing ahead of time is loving ahead of time. Loving is electing to save. God does not love ahead of time those He also chooses not to save. He chooses them for Hell.
On the other hand, if man chooses, then salvation is of man. Man becomes the operative agent of salvation. If it is not God working, then it is man working. God is not sovereign. Man is. All combined, this conflicts and perplexes.
Does Calvinism Square With Scripture?
I can say I get it. God is in charge. He is in control. For that to be true, I can't have man choose. He can't be a decider. That makes me more on God's side, and I want to be on God's side. But is it true? Does that really represent scripture? I don't see it for a number of reasons. It is not how all the passages harmonize with one another. If Calvinism represent scripture, then scripture itself conflicts and perplexes, and it just doesn't.
When I say Calvinism conflict and perplexes, I mean that Calvinism conflicts with the Bible and perplexes me over its seeming disharmony with scripture. No truth will contradict other truth. It must harmonize. Passages must agree with each other. The right explanation of every passage fits with the right explanation of all other passages.
I can't expose all the conflict and perplexity with the Calvinistic doctrine of free will in one post or even two. I agree with both some of what I read in Calvinism and some of what I read in other historical theological systems. I concur with whatever the Bible says. I dissent with whatever differs with God's Word.
Calvinism or even Reformed theology did not start with Genesis 1:1 or Genesis 50 or Isaiah 10 or Isaiah 40-48 or with the Apostle Paul and Ephesians 1:11. If someone in the day those passages occurred read those passages, and he could have read Calvin, he would not read Calvin there. Joseph and his brothers would not say that God meant them to do the evil they did. God determined them to do evil. Calvinism forces scripture into it. It doesn't harmonize all the passages.
Someone can fit Ephesians 1:11 into Calvinism, but then Ephesians 1:11 doesn't fit the rest of scripture. To fit Ephesians 1:11 into all of scripture, which it does, it must abandon Calvinism.
There are good things about Calvinism or Reformed theology. I like them. I like listening to their proponents on those things. They are better than other men, other theologians.
Not only does Calvinism conflict and perplex related to scripture, but it conflicts with itself. It is incoherent with the data of scripture, but now it is incoherent with historic Calvinism. It's as if Calvinism now allows God to determine modernism and pragmatism. With the new Calvinist, God uses modernism and Calvinism for good, justifying the two when it is convenient for the Calvinist without regard of his free will.
For instance, God determines Daniel Wallace looking for manuscript and James White practicing textual criticism and judging textual variants according to humanly designed standards. God determines contemporary Christian rockers or rappers to increase church attendance. They mold God's sovereignty to fit man's purposes.
(To Be Continued)
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