Thread: Free Will

Can anyone explain to me free will? Is it different than what it used to be? or has our free will always been more...ehh..partial? I also heard in some video that God has actually predestined all of us to do things...so are free will isn't actually how we think it is?

Originally Posted by INsearch

Can anyone explain to me free will? Is it different than what it used to be? or has our free will always been more...ehh..partial? I also heard in some video that God has actually predestined all of us to do things...so are free will isn't actually how we think it is?

Our will is only as free as our nature, first of all - so the unregenerate person cannot choose to place his faith and trust in Christ. Once regenerated, that becomes possible, even inevitable.

But you're asking more about day-to-day things. We are free in that we do not act under compulsion. Our choices are real choices, and we do whatever it is we actually want to do. Nothing is forced on us, in other words.

AND

God has decreed everything whatsoever that comes to pass. Everything we do, everything everyone else does, EVERYTHING - is decreed by God. Nothing happens that is outside His plan - there is not a single stray molecule in the universe.

These two are both taught in Scripture and comport with experience. Our minds cannot do better than accept that they are both true and praise God for it.

To augment the above:

We are not "autonomously free" - that is, we are not free of God's decree. The Arminian wants our ability to choose to be totally unfettered by either nature or God - and each is impossible. There is nothing we can choose that is not ultimately decreed by God - and we are "free" in making those decisions, again, because every single decision we make ends up being exactly what we wanted to do. We do exactly what we want to, when and how we want to, and therefore it is difficult to call that functionality anything less than "free". (remembering, of course, that what we choose is bound by our nature - we choose what we are able to according to who we are - and that we choose in line in every single instance with what God has previously decreed before the foundation of the world)

Also - check Westminster Confession chapters 3 and 9.

Originally Posted by toddpedlar

To augment the above:

We are not "autonomously free" - that is, we are not free of God's decree. The Arminian wants our ability to choose to be totally unfettered by either nature or God - and each is impossible. There is nothing we can choose that is not ultimately decreed by God - and we are "free" in making those decisions, again, because every single decision we make ends up being exactly what we wanted to do. We do exactly what we want to, when and how we want to, and therefore it is difficult to call that functionality anything less than "free". (remembering, of course, that what we choose is bound by our nature - we choose what we are able to according to who we are - and that we choose in line in every single instance with what God has previously decreed before the foundation of the world)

Also - check Westminster Confession chapters 3 and 9.

Now that's one of the most "make sense" explanations on free will and such I have EVER heard

If by free will it is meant that when I do something, I do it freely without compulsion or constraint, then this is freedom of action and Reformed theology agrees that man is a free moral agent and freely makes choices. But free will is a misnomer, in a sense, because the will is not truly free but subject to the nature of the individual — and that nature is corrupt.

When most argue theologically for man’s free will, they are not simply saying that man is a free moral agent and that he freely makes choices. They are arguing for what may be called libertarian free will, that man has the moral ability and is free, in his unregenerate state, to savingly trust in Christ at his own discretion. We must understand the issue here.

If you will grant that the will is subject to the nature of man, and if you agree that our unregenerate nature is corrupt then you must agree that man does not have a libertarian free will. He freely makes choices, but these choices are limited by his nature. He does not have a free will toward God!

It is not by the will of the flesh, or by the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:13).

It is not of him who wills or him who runs, (Rom. 9:16).

Receiving God’s mercy, which is ultimately given in Christ, is not attributable to the will or efforts of man, but to the will of God.

In the exercise of His will he brought us forth, (James 1:18, NASB). It is God, in the exercise of His will, who brings us to faith!

Charles Spurgeon once said, “I will go as far as Martin Luther, where he says, ‘If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly.’” (Sermons Vol. 1, p. 395).

For Edward's thorough treatment of the topic in line with the good feeback you've received here:

Freedom of the Will