Does God at times override free will? If so, can we really call that free will?

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In regards to Pharoah and where it is said in Scripture that God hardened his heart. This means God withdrawing his grace from Pharoah because Pharoah was resisting God and his grace here. Pharoah of his own free will was resisting God and such sinning and resistance to God is a cause why God may withhold future graces from that person. Thus, it is written,

‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’ (James 4:6).

And the Virgin Mary sang:

‘…he has scattered the proud in the conceit of their hearts,
he has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly’ (Luke 1: 51-52).

Pharoah witnessed the works that God was doing through Moses and Aaron. But, plague after plague he resisted. And so, the Scripture speaks of God hardening the heart of Pharoah though not as if God was himself preventing Pharoah’s conversion, Pharoah did this from his own proud heart which causes God as it were to withhold his grace. There is a lesson to be learned here.

Also, (1) God is not the cause of moral evil or sin. This is from the person themselves.
(2) God does not predestine anyone to hell. He gives every person sufficient grace to be saved.
(3) The Church teaches (cf. the Council of Trent) that in the process of justification, man’s will is not wholly passive as if it is not doing anything of itself in the process, which wouldn’t make any sense anyways, but that it can resist the grace of justification.
(4) The CCC teaches that God’s grace demands man’s free cooperation.
 
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Yeah, it’s complicated…

But are we fully cognizant of what God means when Scriptures states that He ‘will harden/hardens’ the heart/mind?

What is being stated in Scriptures is it that God causes man to commit to sin and to reject Him or rather that God allows man to commit himself to sin or to reject Him?

Consider this understanding in light of Ezekiel 18 and Romans 1–Teaching is not that God forces man to sin or to reject Him but that God allows man to embrace sin and to reject Him.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
From my perspective freewill is not free. God clearly intervenes in the lives of individual people to bring forth His will. Compare Jonah and Pharaoh as prime examples of this. He caused Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach clearly against Jonah’s own will. And with Pharaoh the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose (IE My will) I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.”

From conception we are sinners and alienated from God. We are sinners by nature and in bondage to sin unable to choose God or do anything to please Him on our own. Does God violate our wills by drawing us to Him? When you pray for someone to be changed is that violating their will? God clearly changed Paul’s heart and will to be serve Him to the point Paul declares himself to be a bondservant of Christ.

Proverbs 21 The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD,
Like the rivers of water;
He turns it wherever He wishes.

Isaiah 46: 9-11 Remember the former things of old,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like Me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure,’
11 Calling a bird of prey from the east,
The man who executes My counsel, from a far country.
Indeed I have spoken it;
I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it;
I will also do it.
 
Consider Luther.

Many believe that one day he came out with a divine revelation of the truth and that the Catholic Church rushed to silence him and he somehow got away and lived under the protection of a monarch that scared off the Church’s assassins (you know the albino squad of murdering Priests).

Reality, Luther made some rightful claims, extended his authority to being the right hand of God, reinvented the wheel, got caught up in a political upheaval that lead to the death of over 300,000 people (mostly the average joes and jills) introduced his own version of “truth” and worship, became the axis of protestation, disobedience, and division and lived to the ripe age of 60+ (quite an achievement in times when people dropped like flies).

Luther’s experiment has caused the greatest number of schisms in the Body of Christ–still splintering today.

Since Jesus intended One Gospel, One Baptism, One Body, could God not have forced Luther to capitulate or as in the case of St. Francis of Assisi, submit to the Church’s Authority and cause healing and reconstruction of the Body of Christ instead of fueling myriads of divisions?

Now, a Servant of Christ/God can be used to bring about God’s Salvific Plan even against his/her will; and God can bring His Salvific Plan into fruition even and in spite of man’s determination to obfuscate the Light of Life: Jesus as the Suffering Servant was served up to the Romans by the Jews (religious) bringing forth the culmination of God’s Promise to Abraham and to bring forth His Salvation: so that all who believe, though they are dead/die will Live!

Yet, you are allowed to believe or reject God, as am I, along with all who have come before and will follow till the end of times.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
If religion were psychiatry - God would be diagnosed as a Narcissistic Psychopath. Since everything needs to be about Him and for His glory and He does what He wants at any given time . Lol.😆. God gave us free will, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a catch to it.
 
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As a former RC (now a full, 5 point Calvinist), I find this topic a little “childish” (for lack of a better term). What good parent doesn’t override the free will of their child (eat your veggies, brush your teeth, pick up your toys, etc…)? You call God your Father, yet you don’t accept that He would impose His will on you at times! Read Genesis sometime. You will see things like when Joseph went to check on his brothers, they wanted to kill him. God, however, used Reuben to keep that from happening. Later they sold him into slavery and he ended up in Egypt (exactly where God wanted him). In Genesis 50, Joseph tells his brothers, “What you intended for evil, God meant for good.” They all had free will, but God’s eternal decree was fulfilled!

Why do we force our will on our children? Because we want them to grow up to be mature, upright, independent, God-fearing adults. The Scriptures tell us God does the same for His people (conforms us daily into the image and likeness of his son, Jesus Christ: see Rom 8:28-30). God has a purpose, just as any parent has a purpose in training and disciplining their children. Does your child have “free will”? Of course! But it is subject to the will of the parent, who guides and corrects for the good of the child (see Prov 13:24, Heb 12:6 and Rev 3:19).

Hope this helps!

Pax!
 
Sadly narcissistic psychopaths not only make everything about themselves but would destroy everything that contradicts them; God, on the other hand, makes everything about Saving man from eternal damnation; He even went to the Cross nailing a human body that He fashioned for Himself in order to free man from the Wrath sin affords him.

Yet, man continues to want to reject God and then blame God for not saving him from his determined course of choosing death over Life.

Go figure!

Maran atha!

Angel
 
You read these Scriptures as God overriding free will: we read them as God’s Providence including free will.
 
Agathon, it’s still God’s will that prevails, however you look at it. BTW - Calvinists do NOT deny free will. We acknowledge that men have free will, but that our will is subject to our nature. For example, if you had a pile of hay next to a pile of raw meat, the cow would, by its nature, choose the hay, whereas a lion, by its nature, would choose the raw meat. Thanks to Adam, all men are born sinners (Scripture makes 1 exception to this, and that is Jesus, whose Father was God, not Adam), and so would naturally choose sin over holiness. A study of Romans could be very informative on this subject.

Pax!
 
Cachonga said:
Agathon, it’s still God’s will that prevails, however you look at it.
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A better term would be plan.
Cachonga said:
BTW - Calvinists do NOT deny free will. We acknowledge that men have free will, but that our will is subject to our nature. For example, if you had a pile of hay next to a pile of raw meat, the cow would, by its nature, choose the hay, whereas a lion, by its nature, would choose the raw meat. Thanks to Adam, all men are born sinners (Scripture makes 1 exception to this, and that is Jesus, whose Father was God, not Adam), and so would naturally choose sin over holiness. A study of Romans could be very informative on this subject.

Pax!
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Ah, total depravity. Well, surprise, apostolic Christianity doesn’t hold to total depravity.
From Romans:
14Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the Law, do by nature what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the Law, 15since they show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them. 16This will come to pass on that day when God will judge men’s secrets through Christ Jesus, as proclaimed by my gospel.
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Of course you prefer “plan” as opposed to “decree”. The fact remains, God’s will is done.

As for Romans 2:14-16, notice that they have the law “written on their hearts”. Did they do that by themselves, or was this something God did? Before you give your answer, examine Jer 31:31-34, Heb 8:7-13 and Heb 10:14-18. You may say, “yes, but this refers to Israel!”. True, but consider Rom 2:28-29, which says, “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”
 
I’m confused. What does the verse have to do with free will? Verse 12 says all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. So are you saying that God writing the law on men’s hearts is affecting their free will? Either way we choose to do good or evil. Also, we each have a conscience to accuse or defend us.
 
God writes His law on our heart when He regenerates us (takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh: see Ez 11:18-20). This goes back to our nature (as described above; we make our “free will” choices according to our nature). Until God adopts us into His family via regeneration, we are sons and daughters of Adam. However, when we are changed, we are in Christ (see 2 cor 5:17).

sudy is right in pointing out that this is beginning to stray from the topic.
 
And by that same nature we have the hope to grope after God and find Him. So human nature is wounded, not depraved.
Acts 17
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
 
Cachonga said:
Agathon, it’s still God’s will that prevails, however you look at it. BTW - Calvinists do NOT deny free will. We acknowledge that men have free will, but that our will is subject to our nature. For example, if you had a pile of hay next to a pile of raw meat, the cow would, by its nature, choose the hay, whereas a lion, by its nature, would choose the raw meat. Thanks to Adam, all men are born sinners (Scripture makes 1 exception to this, and that is Jesus, whose Father was God, not Adam), and so would naturally choose sin over holiness. A study of Romans could be very informative on this subject.

Pax!
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So did God want Adam to sin, while telling him not to sin? Does God author evil, then lie about opposing it?
 
Human nature is not wounded. Didn’t God tell Adam that on the day he eats of the fruit he would die? He certainly didn’t die physically, so it must have been a spiritual death. Eph 2:1, 2 says, “And you, when you were dead in your offences, and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief:” (DR). Eph 2:4-5 goes on to say, “But God, (who is rich in mercy,) for his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ, (by whose grace you are saved,)” (DR). Notice, we were “dead in sins”.

I think this is straying off topic, so I’ll end it here.

fhansen, God is the creator of all things. He is the potter, we are the clay. He is not the author of sin. Adam was created for His purpose, which purpose we don’t fully know or understand (the same goes for everything He has created). Adam’s will was not encumbered with a sin nature, as ours is, so we can’t fully understand why he did what he did. As a Calvinist, I believe God decreed that it would happen (nothing happens that God is not aware of), but it was still Adam’s free will that motivated him to eat the fruit and fall under the curse (which is passed on to all of his descendants). God already knows who will end up in heaven and who won’t, yet He still gives life to men (even those who are destined for hell, which we all justly deserve).
 
Aulef said:
I think when Scriptures say “God hardened the heart of men”, it means He turned away from them, not allowing His grace to operate on these men.

In the case of the pharaoh, it seems to me that God simply wouldn’t operate or allow anything that would make the pharaoh change his mind and let the hebrews go.

I think this way because only through God (and now His Church) we are able to turn our evil hearts into good hearts. Without them, I guess we just can’t.
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Whether God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in an active way or in a passive way doesn’t change the fact that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. Pharaoh was therefore not free to do the right thing.

One point that is almost always missed in these kinds of discussions is how the Israelites ever got out of Egypt given the oppressiveness and brutality of Pharaoh’s heart. Isn’t it obvious that God wanted to put HIS glory on display? How can God display His power and His goodness if we (sinful humans) can control our own will and thus our destiny?
 
After reading the comments here, and doing more research on my own, I’ve come to the conclusion that free will does exist and that God doesn’t override it (though he certainly could if he wanted to).

I tried to see if I could reconcile the Calvinist views on this with scripture and with my own beliefs, and I’ve come to the conclusion that even in terms of sola scriptura they just don’t hold water
 
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Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Matt 9:24

I like this verse. I think we can even ask God to help us with our wills.
 
Cachonga said:
Human nature is not wounded. Didn’t God tell Adam that on the day he eats of the fruit he would die? He certainly didn’t die physically, so it must have been a spiritual death. Eph 2:1, 2 says, “And you, when you were dead in your offences, and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief:” (DR). Eph 2:4-5 goes on to say, “But God, (who is rich in mercy,) for his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ, (by whose grace you are saved,)” (DR). Notice, we were “dead in sins”.

I think this is straying off topic, so I’ll end it here.

fhansen, God is the creator of all things. He is the potter, we are the clay. He is not the author of sin. Adam was created for His purpose, which purpose we don’t fully know or understand (the same goes for everything He has created). Adam’s will was not encumbered with a sin nature, as ours is, so we can’t fully understand why he did what he did. As a Calvinist, I believe God decreed that it would happen (nothing happens that God is not aware of), but it was still Adam’s free will that motivated him to eat the fruit and fall under the curse (which is passed on to all of his descendants). God already knows who will end up in heaven and who won’t, yet He still gives life to men (even those who are destined for hell, which we all justly deserve).
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No one justly deserves hell if they had no part in earning it, if IOW, ‘God made them do it’. Calvinism just unwisely places too much onus on God for it all; decreeing and determining evil is different from foreknowing it and deeming creation worthwhile anyway, for His purposes, presumably to somehow ultimately bring a greater good out of it all.

The free will of man must be involved to one degree or another in order for any of it to make sense: the Fall, our exile into a world of pain, suffering, and death-physical as well as spiritual death- a place where good and evil are literally known and where we must daily make choices between the two. In fact, it’s all about the human will in the end. Adam freely fell; we’re asked, not without the help of grace, to freely rise now, to the extent we’re able. That’s a huge aspect of the justice God desires to produce in us. Again, the whole drama of this life makes no sense whatsoever if God’s intention in the end is merely to place a pre-selected number in heaven, and the rest in hell.
 
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