Biblical Human Will Limitations

The idea we are free to choose from among available options is consistent with our experience. Scripture tells us God sometimes restricts our options, i.e. hardening the hearts of some such that they will reject the gospel, i.e. Romans 11.

"The absence of free will is, however, devastating to all theists since without it you cannot choose to be evil or good, and therefore deserve neither punishment nor salvation." ​

So the complete absence of free will is irrational and unrestricted free will is unbiblical.

Some assert since we are free to choose among various sinful actions, but unable to choose the narrow path that leads to life, it makes sense for God to punish us for the sin we chose. Rational minds object.

We can harden our own hearts by the practice of sin. And God can harden hearts for His purpose, such as Romans 11. God can choose a person well on the way of hardening his own heart, and complete the process. Scripture does not rule any of the three out.

Some say whatsoever comes to pass is predestined to occur. Therefore God is the author of sin. Then some others say while it is true that God to be sovereign must predestine everything, that does not make God the author of sin. Rational minds object.

Why would God still blame us for our choices after He hardened our heart? My answer is He would not. But prior to that, those hardened did make sinful choices, sealing their fate. The hardening, like physical death, simply ends the opportunity to obtain mercy. God, as the potter, has the right to harden whoever He pleases.

Why would God do that, cut short the opportunity of some, and endure their hardened behavior? God did so to make known the riches of His glory (see Romans 9), including even us which He called not from Jews only but also from among Gentiles.

Our ability to make choices from among various options can be restricted by God for His purpose, thus the Biblical doctrine is "Limited Free Will."

Romans 9:16 teaches men can will and work to be saved, thus total spiritual inability as the result of the Fall is shown to be mistaken doctrine.

So when you see disputes raging over complete slavery to sin versus complete freedom of our will, consider that we are fallen and therefore predisposed to sin with a corrupt nature, but we are not so incapacitated as to not be responsible for our choices to reject Christ, or to not treat others as we would treat ourselves, because we have the capacity to accept Christ, and strive to do the will of God.

 

IF the above is true then ALL of Calvinism's distinctive doctrines are false - all of them.

IF the above is true God is NOT immutable, God is not "sovereign" (i.e. by the Calvinist/Augustinian/Classical definition of that term), the future is not predestined, unsaved people are not totally depraved, grace is not irresistible and people can lose their salvation.

More importantly, no one has ever argued for "complete freedom of our will". No one, anywhere, at any time or for any reason.

What the vast majority of those who believe in free will argue is really just in favor of the existence of the will. The term "free will" is a bit of a misnomer really. If we are free to choose then there is no will at all and the freedom to choose simply means that there are alternatives from which to choose; that one can do or do otherwise. It does not mean, nor has it ever meant that a person can do ANYTHING they desire to do, nor has it ever meant that one's choices do not have consequences that might limit one's future choices.

Clete

 

1) Please do not put words in my mouth. I did not say all 5 of the points of the TULIP are false. I believe the "P" comes close enough to "Once Saved, Always Saved" to be given partial credit.

2) God is Immutable, nothing in the OP challenged that basic attribute of God.

3) God is sovereign, in that He either causes or allows whatsoever comes to pass. This is the view held by some Calvinists.

4) Some of the future is predestined, everything God has declared will happen will happen. The issue is that some believe the future is totally predestined, making God the author of sin. That view is false.

5) The lost have Limited Spiritual Ability, able to understand and grow upon Spiritual Milk, the fundamentals of the gospel.

6) Irresistible Grace, as defined by the "I" in the TULIP is false doctrine. However, when God decides to transfer an individual from the realm of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son, that grace is irresistible. And Once placed in Christ, the individual is saved forever. The action is irreversible.

7) Everyone who uses the term "Free Will" without providing explicit limitations is proclaiming false doctrine. We operate within the purview God allows.

8) Limited Free Will is the biblical doctrine. We can choose alternatives that alter the outcome of our lives.

9) You seem to want to define "Free Will" as meaning "Limited Free Will." No problem but our statements should be clear and unambiguous.

 

I didn't say that you said it, I was simply pointing out the logical consequences of your statements. You do not get to have your cake and eat it too.

On the contrary! If God is immutable then free will is an illusion, but if you can do OR do otherwise, then God cannot be immutable

First of all, the idea that God is immutable (in the classical sense of the term), is not biblical and so don't be too afraid of dropping it. No one believed it at all until Aristotle and it didn't creep its way into the church until Augustine, who all but worshiped Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, imported it into the church in the 4th century.

That is not what the word sovereign means. It isn't the dictionary definition and it isn't the Calvinist definition of it either.

God is the highest authority that exist. He is, therefore, the sovereign of the universe - by definition.
If there is a crime that occurs in a particular country, did the king of that country either cause it to happen or allow it? No, of course not! People are not allowed to commit crimes in a just society and a king's position as a nation's sovereign is not dependent upon the daily machinations of his subjects. What makes him the sovereign is the fact that he has the right to do something about it.

God does not allow rebellion against Him, He punishes it! And is right (just) to do so precisely because He is sovereign. If your definition of sovereign was correct then saying that God was just would be meaningless. As is the case if God is immutable, by the way, and for the same reasons.

That view is indeed false and while it is true that some future events are predestined and that those particular things will happen, it would be an over statement to say that "everything God has declared will happen will happen". Indeed, that is very clearly not the case. There are several examples of prophesies that God gave in scripture that did not come to pass. I'll give just two of the most obvious ones....

God declares that He will "without fail" drive out all the people's in Israel's promised land...

Joshua 3:10
And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites:​

But Israel disobeyed and so....

Judges 2:3 Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.’ ”
​

God declares through the prophet Jonah that Nineveh will be destroyed in forty days...

Jonah 3: 4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”​

But Nineveh repents, as Jonah feared they would, and so God repented of the disaster which He said He would bring up them and He didn't do it....

Jonah 3:10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.​

Those two occurrences beautifully exemplify both sides of a moral principle that God describes in Jeremiah chapter 18 (one of the top five most important chapters in the whole bible, by the way)...

Jeremiah 18:7 The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, 8 if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. 9 And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, 10 if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will repent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.​

(You bible might read "relent" or "relented" in these passages but the Hebrew word used is the normal word for "repent" (Strong's H6152). The King James gets it correct but the translators of more modern bibles were very nearly all Calvinists and so intentionally translated the word incorrectly because of their doctrine.)

If so, ALL of Calvinism is false! ALL OF IT! (i.e. it's distinctive doctrines)

Whether it is your intention to say that or not, is irrelevant.

Once again, if so, then the entire system is false.

You see, these doctrines are not cherry picked doctrines that Calvin just arbitrarily decided that he liked and so made them a part of his doctrine. No! These doctrines are derived logically for a single premise. If the premise is true then so are these doctrines. If any one of the doctrines are proven false then it also falsifies the premise and thereby the entire logical framework of the doctrinal system.

This feels like a doctrinal position that tries to straddle a line where one is attempting to keep one foot in the Calvinist camp and the other one outside of it.

Such theological pretzel twisting is not necessary. Calvinism is false. Just drop it completely and move on. I agree with you that one cannot lose their salvation but it isn't for reasons that have anything to do with Calvinistic "irresistible grace" or any of the concepts upon which that doctrine is based.

This is frankly foolish nonsense. Do you mention the law of gravity any time you discuss your ability to fly from one city to another? Do you explain the fact that the Earth is spinning on it's axis every time you employ the concepts of sunrise and sunset?

No, of course you don't and you'd be weird if you did. No one speaks in this manner nor could they consistently. It simply isn't reasonable to even expect, much less require, people to define the context and/or mention every exception to any generally true statement.

Of course we operate within the purview of God's creation. God has made the universe in a particular way and we don't get to just ignore it. I mean, I suppose we could do so, but if we did, it wouldn't be long before reality showed up to kill us. The fact that we exist and live our lives, doing the things we do, within the confines of reality is the very epitome of a fact that literally goes without saying.

Further, no one, and I mean that explicitly, no one believes, or has ever even suggested, much less taught as a matter of doctrine, that we are able to choose to do anything whatsoever. This is not what the term "free will" means, nor has it ever meant that. Suggesting otherwise is a textbook example of a straw-man argument.

The term "free will" is merely a title for the doctrine and it stands as a counter to the Calvinistic idea that you have a will but that it is not free to do or to do otherwise. In other words, the Calvinist do this double speak trick when it comes to discussions about the will. They literally do want to have it both ways, where it's BOTH that everything is predestined AND that you choose your actions. You have a will, the Calvinists say, but that will is not free. "Free will" is merely drawing a distinction away from that doctrine. It does not mean that the will is unfettered from the limitations of reality.

Indeed, the term "free will" is somewhat of a redundancy. It is really just a way to say that you have a real will; that you are able to make real decisions that have real consequences and that you could have decided otherwise and created difference consequences. In other words, if the will isn't "free" it doesn't exist at all.

But not unreasonably so, right? Defining terms within the context of a debate is totally valid and even necessary in many cases, but once everyone is on the same page, then we can just discuss the subject at hand without all the cumbersome meticulousness that one might expect lawyers to use in a court room proceeding.


Excellent post, by the way! I enjoyed responding to it!

 

I) Repeating, you were wrong when you said I rejected all 5 points of the TULIP.

2) God is immutable, the same yesterday, today and forever. Do not waste my time with sophomoric argumentation. God's character and attributes do not change, when God says if you repent, I will relent, that is not a violation of His attribute of immutability.

3) God is sovereign as used in scripture. And yes, some Calvinists agree with the definition - "God causes or allows whatsoever comes to pass."

4) Everything God declares will happen will happen. There are no exceptions given in scripture.

a) Israel did take possession of the promised land.
b) God said he would overthrow Nineveh due to their wickedness. When they repented, God relented.
c) Since God will turn from His adverse action if wicked behavior ends, the behavior is immutable. ​

5) Four of the five points of the TULIP as unbiblical and false, the "TULI." Once saved, always saved is valid, no one can lose salvation, only the possible rewards diligent ministry might bring.

6) Only God has the power to relocate a person from being "in Adam" (in the realm of darkness) into the kingdom of His believed Son. This is not straddling a line, but presenting biblical truth. Col. 1:13

7) We agree, we operate within the purview allowed by God, thus we have limited free will. Many people accept the doctrine that if a person has been hardened, they no longer have the capacity to choose Christ.

8) We agree, Limited Free Will is biblical doctrine, we can make the choice of life or death provided we are allowed to do so with an unhardened heart and exposure to God's revelation of His gospel.

 

I never said that you did. Can you read?

You contradict yourself and make my "sophomoric" argument for me!

The doctrine of immutability as taught by both Augustin and Calvin is not limited to His character. I agree that God's character is indeed quite entirely immutable but that IS NOT what the doctrine of immutability teaches! Not even close! It's not even 1% of what the doctrine teaches.

Augustine wrote, "Therefore, You alone are truly good, because You cannot change, and if You were to change, it would be for the worse, for You cannot become better, being already perfect." - St. Augustine's Confessions. In Book I, Chapter 4

That logic is not merely applied to God's character but to His entire being. Any aspect of God that changes must, by Augustine's logic, be a change for the worse and since God cannot become better and would not be willing nor able to be forced to become worse then, in whatever aspect of God you are discussing, God is absolutely immutable.

The term for this is Ontological Immutability where God's very being or existence is immutable. Not only do God's attributes (like His character, power or knowledge) remain constant, but His existence itself is completely independent, necessary, and unchanging. God’s existence is not contingent on anything else and remains constant regardless of anything outside Himself.

This is Augustine's and Calvin's immutability and it is THE premise for their entire doctrinal system, including ALL FIVE points of Calvinism.

Incidentally, I give Augustine too much credit! He was not the genesis of this faulty line of reasoning. It was Aristotle...

Socrates: "Then it must also be the case, Adeimantus, that if something is in the best possible condition, it cannot undergo any change at all, either for the better or for the worse."

Adeimantus: "Of course not."

Socrates: "For in either case, the change would be toward something less perfect, or it would be making it worse, and that cannot be true of something in its best state. So it follows that the gods, since they are perfect, do not change."

Adeimantus: "It certainly does."
​

Augustine practically worshiped Aristotle and Plato and refused to become a Christian in spite of his mother's pleading until his mother's Bishop (Ambrose of Milan) explained to the young Augustine how to interpret the bible in light of Aristotelian philosophy, which Augustine later imported into the church through "Confessions".

 

God is sovereign by the normal definition of the word but He is not sovereign is the way Calvinists use that term, which is a derivative of their belief that God cannot change in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.
Indeed, Calvinists have redefined nearly every important word in the Christian lexicon in order to preserve that single doctrine.

False.

Liar. I directly quoted two of them. Just who do you think you are, anyway?

They didn't take possession of what God initially told them they would, only a small part of it.

Besides, I never suggested that they didn't!

Notice how those who cling to their doctrine in contradiction to the scripture have to move the goal post in this manner. Whether they crossed the Jordan or not wasn't the point. The point was that God said that He would "WITHOUT FAIL" drive out certain people groups and then didn't do it (for good reason).

He did not relent. That word is a false and entirely incorrect translation. The correct word is "repent". The King James got it right. The modern translations were all done by Calvinists.

Regardless, the text, whether you use "relent" or "repent", explicitly says the God did not do it!

Jonah 3:10 10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.​

QED

LOL!!! Is there no end to Calvinist (Calvinistic) double talk?!

The same idiots that teach you that God is immutable teach you that every action that the wicked perform is performed by God's own immutable will and decree!

“The devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how muchsoever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as he permits, nay unless in so far as he commands, that they are not only bound by his fetters but are even forced to do him service” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 11)

“thieves and murderers, and other evildoers, are instruments of divine providence, being employed by the Lord himself to execute judgments which he has resolved to inflict.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 17, Paragraph 5)
“We hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things, –that from the remotest eternity, according to his own wisdom, He decreed what he was to do, and now by his power executes what he decreed. Hence we maintain, that by His providence, not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 16, Paragraph 8)

"I admit that in this miserable condition wherein men are now bound, all of Adam's children have fallen by God's will...
...Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it. (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23)
​

You are making an error here, although not as serious of one as with the rest of this post up to this point. The doctrine of "Perseverance of the Saints" (The P in the TULIP) is not the same doctrine as "Once saved always saved." which is more or less a Baptist doctrine. There are those who equate the two but those are all Calvinists or those who don't understand how the Calvinist doctrine different that merely believe that one cannot lose their salvation.

The specifics are best saved for a different thread but suffice it to say that the P is 100% as unbiblical as the rest of the TULIP. Just drop it all.

Again, this is just you moving the goal post.
More than that, it is you intentionally misrepresenting what the bible says, which is why you give a scripture reference without actually quoting the verse. The hope being that no one would bother doing so....

I Corinthians 1:13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, ​

He has done so by His own will and by His own power because the death of His Son, which was also done willfully, satisfies the demands of just and thus permits Him to apply that price to anyone's account He sees fit and for whatever reason He chooses. God is both just and wise and so chooses applies the sin cleansing blood to those who respond to Him in faith and to no other. He offers us a choice and asks only that we make it.

Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life,​

We have a free will - period. I will not participate in your changing the context for your own benefit.

NOBODY HAS EVER BELIEVED THAT PEOPLE CAN DO ANYTHING WHATSOEVER!!!!

You can repeat, by implication or otherwise, this same straw-man argument if you like and each time you do, my response will be the same.

No, we don't.

You want to play word games and then accuse me of making sophomoric arguments.

No!

(Again with the font change! What the heck is that about?)

There is no heart so hard that God would not permit repentance. While there is life, there is hope.

Ecclesiastes 9:4 But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.​

 

1)The only doctrine of immutability I addressed is the biblical doctrine of immutability.

2) God is immutable, the same yesterday, today and forever. Do not waste my time with sophomoric argumentation. God's character and attributes do not change, when God says if you repent, I will relent, that is not a violation of His attribute of immutability.

3) God's providence allowed His promise of possession of the promised land to be fulfilled.

4) Is is sophomoric to claim relent and repent are not valid translation choices, based on context. See Jonah 3:9-10 - KJV = repent; NKJV = relent.

 

As defined by who?

Me?

Are you saying that you concede the fact that the biblical teaching is that it is God's character that is immutable but that He can change in other important ways?

It is according to Calvin and every Calvinist that knows anything about what they're talking about!

So much so that the write off the entire book of Jonah as one gigantic anthropomorphism precisely for this exact reason!

Except when they aren't fulfilled, right?

Be careful! Someone might mistake your use of the term "sophomoric" as an insult and report you!

OH! No, no, no, no! I'm sorry! That rule doesn't apply to me. I'm the one who actually makes real arguments in favor of the things I believe around here and so you're allow to insult me all you like, of course!

Saying it doesn't make it so. The two words are not synonymous except perhaps in the most broadly general of ways and the Hebrew word "nacham" is the normal Hebrew word for "repent" and it is ALWAYS translated as repent unless it is in reference to God and then somehow the translators can't bring themselves to translated it correctly.

"לְוַתֵּר" (levater), which means "to concede" or "to yield." is the closest Hebrew word to the English word "relent", but that is a modern Hebrew word that isn't found anywhere in the bible at all. Nacham, the word that is found throughout the Old Testament means to change course or to change one's mind, thus the English word "repent" is correct and, as I said, it is translated that way in every single case in the KJV but modern translators were all Calvinists and translated it differently, not because of any grammatical or linguistic reason but because of their doctrine.

 

Did you really mean that Calvin and Calvinists write off the entire book of Jonah as one gigantic anthropomorphism? I believe the doctrines of grace, sometimes called Calvinism, and I fully believe that Jonah is part of the inspired word of God. I haven't ever come across a Calvinists who believes it's not. Calvin's own commentary on the Book of Jonah starts in a way that certainly indicates that he had no doubts that it was true:

"As I have before observed, Jonah seems here indirectly to intimate, that he had been previously called to the office of a teacher; for it is the same as though he had said, that he framed this history as a part of his ordinary function. The word of God then was not for the first time communicated to Jonah, when he was sent to Nineveh; but it pleased God, when he was already a Prophet, to employ him among other nations. It might have been then, that he was sent to Nineveh, that the Lord, being wearied with the obstinacy of his own people, might afford an example of pious docility on the part of a heathen and uncircumcised nation, in order to render the Israelites more inexcusable."

But of course, I may have misunderstood what you meant, in which case I apologise.

 

It might be something of an overstatement but, more or less, that's what they do, yes!

They are Calvinism - period. Why are you afraid of that obvious fact?

I never suggested that Calvinists don't believe it to be part of the bible. What are you even talking about?

Nor have I.

You definitely misunderstood what I meant. Apology accepted.

What I was saying is they don't believe that the book of Jonah means what it seems to mean. God did not repent nor did He relent or do another such thing that would indicate any sort of change with God, either in mind, direction or intent. The language, so they say, is a figure of speech (i.e. an anthropomorphism) designed to teach of something. What that something is, is never defined except to say that whatever it is teaching, it isn't teaching that God can change His mind. In effect, it's supposedly teaching the opposite of what it says.

Is there anything in the text, either grammatical or contextual to make such a claim? NO! It is entirely because of their a-priori doctrinal belief that God cannot change His mind. That is THE ONLY reason they need to twist the text of scripture to any degree they see fit including to the point that it means the opposite of what it plainly states. Where is the need for the bible at all, if such tactics are valid?

 

Well I can only repeat that I don't, nor do any who believe the doctrines of grace that I know.

I am not afraid of it, but as a baptist, I believe much, but not all, of what Calvin taught, so I prefer the term "doctrines of grace".

Sorry, I read more into your sentence, "Calvin and Calvinists write off the entire book of Jonah as one gigantic anthropomorphism."

Thanks, that makes your position much clearer.