Catholic/Baptist discussion on Free Will

[ocuinn]

The words of a reformed baptist on Free Will:

This is a HUGE issue that radically seperates Reformed protestants from Roman catholics, and, for that matter, from most other protestant assemblies.

here’s my take: yes, God has given free will, but i think free will is badly misunderstood. how FREE is a sinner who has not been regenerated by Christ? according to the pauline epistles, we are slaves to sin. this is the standard description of sinners. In ephesians 2 paul says, “kai umas ovtas vekpous”, “you were dead”, this was the condition of every sinner before regeneration. so is a sinner free to sin? in essense, yes, though God can certainly stop them, restrict them, etc. but their nature is “free” to sin. is their nature freed to righteousness and saving faith in christ? emphatically, no. a dead man cannot bring himself to life(spiritually) anymore than a dead man in a grave can come out. Dead men dont love christ, to put it another way.

now, as to the fall, i would say that the fall was the free choice of adam and eve but it was providentially ordained by God in order to glorify christ as the savior of sinners. The only way for God to (theoretically)demonstrate the love, grace, compassion, AND justice and righteous judgment of christ was through the Fall. So adam and eve (freely) chose to sin but the plan was purposed by God.
if you look at scripture throughout its recording of redemptive history, going all the way back to the earliest record, going back to the patriarchs, etc, you see a consistent pattern of God doing whatever pleases Him. This is why Jesus prays in matthew 11, “this was well pleasing in your sight”. and this is in the context of God hiding and revealing truth to various groups. God can choose to open the spiritual eyes of a blind man or SHUT the eyes that they will not see.

now, we DO freely choose christ, but i think when you read that “God opened their heart” or God “granted them repentance” those expressions are intended to convey that the “free choice” came AFTER Gods choice. God chooses to give a sinner faith in christ, otherwise its really not a “gift” (eph 2:8).
at the end of the day, we are either saving ourselves by choice, (“decisional regeneration”) or God is saving us all the way to the point of granting faith to believe. Who gets the glory if we contribute the slightest bit to our salvation? And if man is really DEAD, as paul says, how could we possibly muster up love and faith in christ? theres no reason to believe we ever could…
i know in my own conversion it was totally a miraculous grace of God that He overwhelmed me with strong and undeniable feelings of guilt and an extreme awareness of my need for His forgiveness. These feelings did not come from me, they came from God. my eyes were opened by HIM, not my efforts. Romans 9:16 says “it does not depend on him who wills or him who runs but of God who shows mercy”… this whole salvation thing is totally of God. paul says in 1 corinthians that the reason is so that “no man should boast”. i realize im giving you snippets and not the whole context, but if you read that chapter you’ll see that he is specifically dealing with salvation issues, and how men are saved, and why some are saved and not others, (just as he does in romans 9-11).

i believe our wills are in bondage to sin, and therefore not really all that free, and to be truly free only comes when Christ SETS us free, by His divine work…

I am trying to discern the difference between the teaching of the Church and the beliefs of this Baptist. It is not an issue I am familiar with. Can anyone explain? thank you

AP Quinn

 

[Peter_Da_Rock]

I stopped reading when I got to the part where GOD orchestrated the downfall so that he could sacrifice his son