The free will debate seems sourced in the Greek philosophical discussions around Determinism. I don't think Second Temple Judeans or first century believers would have even thought to question the existence of free will. It took centuries of developing an "unmoved mover" kind of deity to arrive and make free will an illusion.
Christ's story makes the most sense if God is "merely" the most knowledgeable and most powerful. God doesn't have to have perfect knowledge of everything, and doesn't have to be able to effortlessly do anything. Projecting Greek philosophy onto the story muddles it, and necessitates all sorts of theodicy and additional philosophical acrobatics to steer it back to anything that even resembles actual Good News.
Great series , so thoughtful and reverent, on this topic I would tend to Jonathan Edwards view on bondage of the will. Humankind have free agency but not free will as in contingency......using language of Richards article , we do not have the capacity to consent.....we are dead in trespasses and sin Eph 2.1. If holy Adam could fall, what hope the average Jo(e) living today suddenly consenting and submitting to gods lordship, without grace as the means ?
If I accept your premise, then the question is, does God freely offer “capacity” to anyone who “consents”? For there to be free will, the answer has to be “yes”, correct?
Love demands the offering of choice, from my perspective. I can’t envision a love that does not.
The irony of ‘Free Will’ is that it is a paradox of choice wrapped in an enigma. Too many options, and we become miserable, not enough, and we feel jaded and ripped off. What often appears to be choices, are really reflexive biochemical & biomechanical autonomic responses - I don’t choose to breath, my heart to beat or my pancreas to function, but I can choose to circumvent those processes self-destructively ‘if’ I understand what I’m actually doing (?) Spiritually and metaphysically, it can potentially be the same way. We make seriously impactive choices and decisions based on limited experiential information, hormonal inclinations, and or social & cultural ideological influences. Can any single action we take, ever be unilaterally in all dimensions, accurately informed?
We can synergistically gravitate towards the good in Christ and bring light, peace and hope to others and this world. Or we can rebound backwards and embrace the flesh selfishly to hurtful and destructive ends, but either way, we are hopelessly insensible.
In one sense, Jesus answered definitively the paradoxical quandary of ‘Free Will vs. Determinism’ on The Cross. As he looked down in physical pain and suffering and surveyed below, all who and what circumstances had brought him to the very point, he then astonishingly states; “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”. In other words, they were ignorant of their ‘choices’, thinking that they were doing the pragmatically political and or spiritual thing, that their minds and hearts had led them to believe [whether for good or for evil]. In this way, his pronouncement was for all time and in all contexts, both socially horizontal and spiritually vertical. Simply put; Man doesn’t know what in the Hell he’s choosing or ultimately even why! But the amazing clandestine beauty of our unenlightened gnomic wavering, is that He’s forgiven us for it, already.
While God could have withdrawn free will from people, it would have meant the inability to truly experience love. Love cannot be forced from anyone. Love requires free will. But free will also allows for evil in the world. But God chose to allow free will, love and evil all exist in his universe. Love will win out in the long run. Watch "The Shocking Alternative by C.S. Lewis Doodle" on YouTube which perfectly explains this.
So you are defining “free will” as consent. Ok, but how is this helpful to a discussion on free will? Doesn’t free will/consent (whatever you want to call it) still stand in tension with determinism? How can God know all things if the consent of the elect hasn’t been collected yet? Maybe He already knows that you will give your consent? But then how can He know something that is beyond his work? Can He know something that He isn’t responsible for? Can there even be something in this created reality that isn’t His work?
This is a good topic, although if one is a universalist, then free will is not about determining eternity...heaven or hell.... and this begs the question about what it means when one is born again. The evangelicals are generally not reflecting Jesus in this country in so many ways, one wonders what it really means.
The free will debate seems sourced in the Greek philosophical discussions around Determinism. I don't think Second Temple Judeans or first century believers would have even thought to question the existence of free will. It took centuries of developing an "unmoved mover" kind of deity to arrive and make free will an illusion.
See also: omniscience & omnipotence.
Christ's story makes the most sense if God is "merely" the most knowledgeable and most powerful. God doesn't have to have perfect knowledge of everything, and doesn't have to be able to effortlessly do anything. Projecting Greek philosophy onto the story muddles it, and necessitates all sorts of theodicy and additional philosophical acrobatics to steer it back to anything that even resembles actual Good News.
Great series , so thoughtful and reverent, on this topic I would tend to Jonathan Edwards view on bondage of the will. Humankind have free agency but not free will as in contingency......using language of Richards article , we do not have the capacity to consent.....we are dead in trespasses and sin Eph 2.1. If holy Adam could fall, what hope the average Jo(e) living today suddenly consenting and submitting to gods lordship, without grace as the means ?
If I accept your premise, then the question is, does God freely offer “capacity” to anyone who “consents”? For there to be free will, the answer has to be “yes”, correct?
Love demands the offering of choice, from my perspective. I can’t envision a love that does not.
The irony of ‘Free Will’ is that it is a paradox of choice wrapped in an enigma. Too many options, and we become miserable, not enough, and we feel jaded and ripped off. What often appears to be choices, are really reflexive biochemical & biomechanical autonomic responses - I don’t choose to breath, my heart to beat or my pancreas to function, but I can choose to circumvent those processes self-destructively ‘if’ I understand what I’m actually doing (?) Spiritually and metaphysically, it can potentially be the same way. We make seriously impactive choices and decisions based on limited experiential information, hormonal inclinations, and or social & cultural ideological influences. Can any single action we take, ever be unilaterally in all dimensions, accurately informed?
We can synergistically gravitate towards the good in Christ and bring light, peace and hope to others and this world. Or we can rebound backwards and embrace the flesh selfishly to hurtful and destructive ends, but either way, we are hopelessly insensible.
In one sense, Jesus answered definitively the paradoxical quandary of ‘Free Will vs. Determinism’ on The Cross. As he looked down in physical pain and suffering and surveyed below, all who and what circumstances had brought him to the very point, he then astonishingly states; “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do”. In other words, they were ignorant of their ‘choices’, thinking that they were doing the pragmatically political and or spiritual thing, that their minds and hearts had led them to believe [whether for good or for evil]. In this way, his pronouncement was for all time and in all contexts, both socially horizontal and spiritually vertical. Simply put; Man doesn’t know what in the Hell he’s choosing or ultimately even why! But the amazing clandestine beauty of our unenlightened gnomic wavering, is that He’s forgiven us for it, already.
While God could have withdrawn free will from people, it would have meant the inability to truly experience love. Love cannot be forced from anyone. Love requires free will. But free will also allows for evil in the world. But God chose to allow free will, love and evil all exist in his universe. Love will win out in the long run. Watch "The Shocking Alternative by C.S. Lewis Doodle" on YouTube which perfectly explains this.
So you are defining “free will” as consent. Ok, but how is this helpful to a discussion on free will? Doesn’t free will/consent (whatever you want to call it) still stand in tension with determinism? How can God know all things if the consent of the elect hasn’t been collected yet? Maybe He already knows that you will give your consent? But then how can He know something that is beyond his work? Can He know something that He isn’t responsible for? Can there even be something in this created reality that isn’t His work?
This is where prevenient grace comes in, and the concept originated with Augustine, I’ve read.
This is a good topic, although if one is a universalist, then free will is not about determining eternity...heaven or hell.... and this begs the question about what it means when one is born again. The evangelicals are generally not reflecting Jesus in this country in so many ways, one wonders what it really means.