Tried With Fire

In this way, then, man is said to have free will, not because he has a free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion. This is perfectly true: but why should so small a matter have been dignified with so proud a title? An admirable freedom! that man is not forced to be the servant of sin, while he is, however, ethelodol ous (a voluntary slave); his will being bound by the fetters of sin. I abominate mere verbal disputes, by which the Church is harassed to no purpose; but I think we ought religiously to eschew terms which imply some absurdity, especially in subjects where error is of pernicious consequence. How few are there who, when they hear free will attributed to man, do not immediately imagine that he is the master of his mind and will in such a sense, that he can of himself incline himself either to good or evil? It may be said that such dangers are removed by carefully expounding the meaning to the people. But such is the proneness of the ...

Ever since I've come to the Doctrines of Grace, I've been curious how, when, and why American Christianity took a turn away from its reformed roots to where we are today. I've been trying to dig into the subject, so I was thrilled to find a used copy of  The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch.  Dr. Hatch examines how politics, culture, and religion came together in our fledgling nation and the result of that amalgamation. Dr. Robert Godfrey referred to this book during one of his talks at the Ligonier National Conference, and Nancy Pearcey also references it in Total Truth.  While I was flipping through the text, the title of the appendix caught my eye:  A Sampling of Anticlerical and Anti-Calvinist Christian Verse. Sounds like some fun reading, no?   Dr. Hatch writes,   "Better than any other source, popular poems and songs capture the force of the early republic's religious populism... Using biting sarcasm, a Jeffersonia...

My daughter and I had a very interesting discussion yesterday about objections to unconditional election and limited atonement because they violated man's "free" will.  This is a paraphrase of her a few of her comments: The Biblical (and Calvinist) view of love is if you love someone that you want what is best for them, which is Christ, not necessarily what they think they need or want.  You told me when I was little that you won't give me whatever I want because you love me.   People say that God loves them so much He won't violate their free will.  But when you think about it, a "God" who won't violate your free will is not very loving.  "He" lets us have our own way, not what's best for us.  Is that really love?  Do we really know what is best for ourselves? Sure in the garden, Adam had the will to choose but he chose wrong before sin came in.  Do we really think with sin in us that we would be able to choose better than Adam? 

Nine years ago I was pretty scared after the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center.  I wouldn't watch the news or read a newspaper because of my fear.  All of a sudden, the world seemed completely out of control, and it terrified me. I was a Christian, but my past theology gave me no foundation when that tragic event took place.  I believed that God was in control, but He would not violate our free will.  That sounds good when it comes to salvation, but doesn't give much comfort when the free will of evil men consists of flying airplanes into skyscrapers and killing thousands. Therefore God was in heaven, maybe not wringing His hands, but reacting to things that were outside of His control.  At that time, a bunker in Montana sounded like a good idea to me. Now that my theology is very different, I think my fear was misplaced.  I should be afraid to a certain degree if a terrorist is coming at me with a gun.  It's only common sense.  But I...

But what if the foreknowledge of God and the liberty of the will cannot be fully reconciled fully by man? Shall we therefore deny a perfection in God to support a liberty in ourselves? Shall we rather fasten ignorance upon God and accuse Him of blindness to maintain our liberty? Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) from Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God (Thanks to Martin Downes who gave this great quote by Charnock in his talk Heresy Never Dies .)

These are two quotes that grabbed my attention. What we need is not “free will” but wills made free. From this post by John Samson at reformationtheology.com "You can listen to Greg Boyd and the open theists and frankly, I think you'll want to jump off a bridge to be worshipping a god who didn't know that was going to happen." Quote from Todd Friel of Way of the Master Radio on this program featuring Shai Linne's song Triune Praise