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| Predestination or Free Will? |
The question so often debated
among Christians, especially those who call themselves Calvinists and those who
identify as Arminians, is this: Does a
man have free will or is a man’s free will submerged under the flood waters of
God’s sovereignty? God woos us, he
pursues us and he draws us to himself, but does he override our ability to “choose
for yourselves this day whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15)
Norman Geisler, author of Chosen But Free, reminds us that “With
the exception of the later writings of Augustine, virtually all the great
thinkers up to the reformation affirmed that human beings possess the power of
free choice, even in a fallen state.”
John Calvin had a voracious appetite for all things Augustinian and is
credited with creating the great emphasis on predestination. Though Calvin was certainly a proponent of
this doctrine, he didn’t emphasize it nearly as much as his successors. Calvin
quotes Augustine more than any other in his Institutes
of Christian Religion along with Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther.
Among the early church
fathers, Augustine’s opinions seem to have been in the minority. Calvin was strongly drawn to Augustine while
ignoring majority opinions. Whereas
Calvin and Augustine would argue that man is so utterly depraved that he cannot
possibly make a choice for anything good, other church fathers argued that
because man was created in the very image of God, he retained limited freedom
of will as a result of God’s image within his nature. Man’s will was certainly corrupted by the
invasion of evil within his heart, but the image of God within man prevented
the complete obliteration of his will.
In other words, a corrupt man is still capable of willing to do some
good.
Among those early church
fathers proposing the freedom of man’s will:
Iraneous, (130-200, Against
Heresies), “God made man a free agent from the beginning, possessing his own soul
to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God.”
Tertullian, (155-225, Against Marcion), “I find, then, that
man was by God constituted free ,master of his own will and power; indicating
the presence of God’s image and likeness in him.”
Gregory of Nyssa, (335-395, On Virginity), “Being in the image and
the likeness of the Power which rules all things, man kept also in the matter
of a free will this likeness to Him whose will is over all.”
What most Christians believe
about free will can be traced to the teachings and interpretations of three men;
Pelagius, Jacob Arminius and John Calvin.
Pelagius denied that men had need of any assistance from God when seeking
salvation. Jacob Arminius believed that
God freed the will of man so he could choose to obey and be saved. John Calvin believed that man is so totally
depraved that he cannot possibly make a decision to follow Christ and God must
decide for him (predestination).
A summary of these positions
follows:
1. Palagian:
We are free to choose God or not.
The fall of mankind into sin had no adverse affect on his ability to
make a choice. God makes his offer and
we simply say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
2. Semi-Palagian: This is a softening of Palagian’s limitations
on God’s part in the salvation of man.
Men can make a decision for God but only with the help of god. Sin has had devastating effects on the will
of man and God must bring healing to the will before the will can respond to
his call.
3. Arminian: God is not willing that any should
perish so he extends his invitation to all men.
Man, in is depraved state, cannot seek God, therefore, God extends to
all men a pre-emptive grace, a prevenient grace, that affectively prepares the
heart for the indwelling of God. Men may
will to receive this grace or reject it.
4. Calvinism (Augustinianism): Man is so entirely depraved (dead) in his
state of sin that it is impossible for him to make a choice for God. Therefore, God must make the choice for
him. Man’s salvation is monergistic,
meaning that God’s will works independently and alone for the salvation of man. God may decide to save someone or he may very
well walk on by, in that case, he declares the person one of the unelected.
The first three preserve man’s
free will in some form and fashion. Only
the last, Calvinism, eliminates man’s freedom to choose.
Moses came off the mountain
and presented his people with the Ten Commandments from God. The assumption is that if God formulated
these ten rules and identified them as ‘commandments’ then he fully expected
them to obey and live by them. When
Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount, was He setting a standard too high for
his followers? Would it not be a cruel
thing to expect the impossible? Jesus
said, “Be perfect, therefore, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) This sounds like an impossible
command but Jesus is not calling us to absolute perfection, he is calling us to
completion. Much of our ‘perfection’ is
measured by our motive, not a flawless performance. Our completion is finalized when we leave
this life and enter a glorified state with Christ.
The elimination of man’s free
will makes a pure and holy God responsible for the sin in the world. Norman Geisler points out in chapter four of
his book, Chosen But Free, a chapter
he entitled “Why Blame Me?” that the common statement ‘The devil made me do it’
leads to another question, “Who made the devil do it?” The answer must be God. When we make attempts to eliminate our own
free will we eventually cast the blame for sin on a pure and holy God incapable
of authoring sin.
What are God’s expectations
of those who call themselves ‘followers’?
Geisler teaches that ‘ought implies can’. If God gives us Ten Commandments and expects
that we ought to keep them then he will provide us with the necessary grace and
power to do just that. "..God never
prescribes anything without providing the way to accomplish it. If we are
morally bound, then we must be morally free." Geisler says.
Free will is a gift of God to
mankind. We messed up when we began to
make poor choices. Therefore, the responsibility
for sin and suffering in this world rests squarely on our shoulders and God has
no accountability for the evil we created with our own choice to resist God and
refuse his favor.
Calvin and Augustine would
refute Arminius’ idea that the image of God in us has profound meaning and
provides us with the ability to practice freedom of our will. Therefore, we can ‘choose this day whom we
will serve’. If ‘ought’ implies ‘can’,
then the verse found in Deuteronomy 30:19 is not meaningless when it clearly
states that we ‘ought’ to “choose life”.
How might we answer the
question ‘does God choose us or do we choose God?’ God first chooses us. “For God so love the world that he sent his
only begotten son,” and then he enables us to choose him “that whosoever believes
in him”. This cooperative (synergistic)
effort does not in any way limit the sovereignty of God. It preserves his sovereignty and accentuates
his love and the result is a voluntary, non coercive eternal relationship… “shall
not perish but have eternal life.” (John
3:16)
Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.
