How busted is your will anyway?

[Truthstalker]

Mine’s fallen, plenty fallen. I have sympathies with the theological position that it is so fallen that it would never choose good on its own and so irresistable grace is needed. This of course conflicts with free will. I will, given my own choice, choose damnation, not out of full realization that that’s what I’m doing so much as from habit and desire. The weakness of relying on free will alone and ignoring predestination is that we can claim that we choose salvation and we are saved by our wills, not by faith that is given as a gift. So God must fix my busted will as part of salvation, which means that in His tinkering to make it an actual free will that is free to choose good He does not let my will choose what it would on its own, so it’s no longer truly free will. Except that free will can only really be free if God sets it free to choose freely.

Comments?

 

[Stephen_C]

I have always viewed free will as a sorta oxymoron. That is we have the free will to choose. But all choices comes at a price. We have to give up something to gain/choose something. As to our salvation and choosing God has him busting our free will…don’t see it that way. I think God has to break down our pride. (At least that is what he had to do to me) So that we are humble enough to hear him. Humble enough to hear the Holy Spirit, and allow his Grace to pierce our hearts. Humble enough to follow him no matter where it may lead. Humble enough to lead me back to his Church. So it is not God busting our free will, but God humbling us enough to know he is our only salvation. Which is to give up to God our free will, and allow him to lead us towards him. In turn he gives us back our will freely (the will to be more holy and Christ like). As you know this is an ongoing process.

I hope this makes sense.

 

[batteddy]

Grace supposes nature.

Even without grace, the will can choose an objectively good thing, that is dogma…but it will always be terribly imperfect in the subjective sense without actual grace.

However, I’d argue to go so far as to say that this would even be true before the fall. I’d say the nature of will was made exactly to cooperate with supernatural grace.