St. Augustine, over a thousand years ago, wrote on the divine election of the saints using several supporting verses found in the Bible. The Church has wrestled with Gods absolute sovereignty and mans freewill since the beginning and different theologies have emerged to harmonize this. Calvinism or reformed theology (pioneered by St. Augustine and supported by Martin Luther), Arminiasm, and Molinism (middle knowledge affirmed by William Lane Craig). It appears that we are not free at all, in the way that we think that we are, and in reformed theology man is only free in sin but not free to receive the Holy Spirit as his sin nature is following its natural (Deterministic) path to reject the things of the spirit. The Holy Spirit must regenerate the person first and that is totally unconditional. Sam Harris on The Delusion of Free Will: youtu.be/aQJjn-gekn4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Libertarian free will is the position that the unbeliever’s free will is sufficiently self-contained, self-sufficient, and self-caused (without external coercion) so as to be able to accept or reject Christ as Savior, on his own, apart from Gods enabling. It assumes that the sinful will is somehow capable, by virtue of being free, to be able to choose to believe in God and follow him through Christ. First of all, this violates scripture which says that man is deceitful (Jer. 17:9), full of evil (Mark 7:21-23), loves darkness rather than light (John 3:19), does not seek for God (Rom. 3:10-12), is ungodly (Rom. 5:6), dead in his sins (Eph. 2:1), by nature a child of wrath (Eph. 2:3), cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14), and is a slave of sin (Rom. 6:16-20). Therefore, how is it possible that an unbeliever who cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14), who does not seek for God (Rom. 3:10-12), and who is a slave of sin (Rom. 6:14-20), simply chooses God? Second, libertarian free will promotes the non-Christian idea of independence from God and suggests that the unbelievers final decision to receive Christ is dependent on nothing than his own self-contained, self-caused, autonomous free will choice. Furthermore, this position attributes to a created thing (human free will) that which belongs only to the uncreated God: autonomous, self-sustained, self-causation.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 04:41:34 +0000
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