subtitles might include:
–Taking “free will” down another notch;
–Calvinism; not so bad as we thought;
–Stripping “free will” of it’s traditional power;
–Predestination explains more than we thought;
–Our response to God is not what we thought it was…
Introduction:
In all honesty, this is but a continuation of another question I’m struggling with here evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5428 in which I wrestle with how to reconcile the notions of predestination and free will. We of the UR conviction don’t mind so much if God’s salvation is said to be “predestined” it seems to me; though some prefer not to use this language (finding it perhaps too loaded and potentially misunderstood). However, we also find very offensive, ie wrong, incorrect, simply unacceptable, the idea that damnation is predestined by God. ie planned beforehand as an outworking of God’s will.
(Please note that I’m using quote marks not to express cynicism, but to acknowledge that perhaps these words have different meanings for all those involved in the discussions…)
Arminianism, the intellectual home turf on which most of us were formed, departs from Calvinism in allowing some contribution (often a pretty large one as it turns out!) to salvation to be made by our free will. But this unmasks a seemingly unresolvable tension with Calvinism because Calvinism has decided (or, at least it seems obvious to them…) that our free choice is something we “do”, something that we “provide”, something we “contribute” to our salvation thereby negating the bible’s claim that salvation is from God, by grace/faith (I’m using them interchangeably for convenience sake…) Alone.
Now it begins to get murky (contentious even) about here because Arminian’s also like to say that they are saved by Grace Alone. Except they then begin to find ways to smuggle in various degrees of free will into the process! “Of course we must accept!” they’ll say; “that seems obvious!” Others, recognizing their vulnerability to the charge of salvation needing something besides God’s Grace (namely, our “contribution”) try to mute free will’s involvement by calling it “synergy” – ie we must “cooperate” and “work together”. Calvinism replies “no, you can’t do that; for ‘cooperation’ is every bit a contribution as is ‘accept’ and ‘choose’”. “That’s not ‘Grace Alone’ anymore because it’s ‘Grace plus’ now.”
Seeing this problem, other Arminian’s respond by forming something of a hybrid between Calvinism and Arminianism. I think I first heard that this has been given a name – “Calv-Arminiam” – in Ravi Holy’s thesis (Alex first brought it to my attention here… evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2549) which is titled “Damned Nonsense”. (Great read by the way)
Here the idea is to accept only half of predestination – the “saved” half. The other half (who actually talks about the “halves” of salvation anyway?? Oh well…!!! Obviously, when I say “half” I mean the other path ie the path to salvation or the path to damnation) – the damned – do have a contribution to their destination; they choose hell, they reject salvation, however one wants to put it… Many though, and especially me I suppose, find this position invalid, contradictory, and approaching the absurd. To suggest (as an SDA friend of mine has) that “opting out” of salvation is volitional and therefore my responsibility for my arrival at damnation – yet “opting in” is not a volitional act (which might mean I thereby make some contribution to my salvation) is simply incoherent so far as I can tell.
Main Thesis
(sorry for the insanely long intro!)
[size=150]Is love – ie the love “response” to God’s Grace – really a free choice we can make? [/size]
I would like to also ask my question like this:
Is there a rational way to accept that predestination to salvation really isn’t a choice at all, ie it does not involve our volition, but is, nonetheless quite real and legitimate? This would avoid the problem of being accused of believing in a “Grace plus” doctrine.
I’m doing this because I would like to explore (this is all a thinking-out-loud experiment; admittedly not ready for prime time!!) if it is possible to honor the Arminians attempts to embrace the happy side of predestination while at the same time honoring his commitment to free will. (And, of course, hopefully help pave the way to a more likely positive response to UR!)
(I would like to leave aside for the moment the so called choice to damnation if I may…)
So then… …here I am pondering God and His goodness and wonder and… well, my heart is just filled! And you of course know the feeling of this presence and peace in your lives. And I believe this “thing” I am experiencing towards God is Love. I call it love, I want it to be love, I believe it is love. But someone comes along – let’s say a well meaning Arminian – and tells me “you know Bob, that’s not really love, unless you could freely choose against all of this.” “Love must be chosen to be real” he goes on “so if you are not able, right now, to ‘un-choose’ this special thing you’re calling love, it can not be considered ‘real’ love.”
Does that strike you as in any way plausible?
It sure doesn’t seem so to me!!
Instead I would protest! and say “dude! you are either insane, or really poorly informed.”
That would be my impulse.
But why?
Well, it’s a bit hard to put into words I suppose, but it’d be something like this…
There was a moment in my life – I can’t say if it was a series of connected moments, which perhaps extended over some period of time, but lets just call it a moment – when it’s as if God “suddenly” (again, actual time factor not important) became clear to me. And when I saw it, there simply WAS no other option about it! It was NOT a “choice” like people speak of – nor did it seem anything even remotely like a choice to “accept”. That is, I understood, for the very first time, I was being (and later discovered I was all along!) embraced in the loving arms of God and the idea to “reject” that embrace was simply nowhere on the radar screen! There was no processing of the fact that it would have been stupid, and irrational to do so. (it obviously would have been both!) I realized, in some poorly understood way, that I was home now, where I belonged, where I was intended to be, and had always been welcome there. In a sense, I knew that all was, and would be well.
The notion of “choosing to reject” this would have been dizzyingly irrelevant, to say nothing of irrational.
And I might also relive in my mind the journey in which I came to “fall in love” with my wife. Oh, at first I could say it was a “choice” to talk to her, to take her out, and repeat those things. Slowly however, something was happening. Then the dawning awakening that I really do care about her. I want not only to be with her but there is this desire to help see that only good things come to her. What was in her interest, was also MY interest. BAM – I was “in love”. A moment? or a series of them? Didn’t matter. I knew – unforced, yet “unchosen” – I would not be content, or happy, or at peace until she also knew the same things about me… So today, if someone told me my love for my wife was only real IF I had the choice to withhold it and walk away I would find that “crazy talk.” Neither could I rationally say I love her because I have chosen to love her. It just isn’t happening in that realm/on that level.
Now, and I realize I risk veering off the track here, I am suggesting that my response to love with love (first example God; second example, my wife) can not be categorized, in any meaningful way, as a volitional act. It’s a response, to be sure, but is not volitional. Shall we call it an instinct? or perhaps a reflex? I cannot really say. But if we really are created in the image of God, as we so often say, it might as well be this; our ability to react as in a reflex or instinct, to love. Force is not the issue, nor is choice.
One last example of the peripheral (ie limited; extremely limited) nature of choice but in a slightly different setting:
You are a youth leader and are guiding your teenagers on a strenuous hike in the mountains to a lovely alpine lake. Along the way, you come to a very dangerous area where there is no choice but to walk along the edge of a deep abyss. One can do this quite safely if he stays back from the cliff edge, but still not so safely that he is not impressed by the certain death which would follow from leaping off the edge.
When you arrive at the lake you decide to speak to them on the notion of “free will” and love. Love must be “free” to be “real” you say. Being a devout free will Arminian, you start by telling them that to be free, one must both have a choice and be able to make that contrasting and opposite choice. For a choice to be real, it’s opposite must also be able to be chosen you say. Then you say “today, you were free to jump to your death. We know that because we know you also were free NOT to choose to jump to your death.”
The question might then be, do we really think the apparent validity of the “choice” to jump to ones own certain death is the sine qua non (the essential condition) of freedom?? Can we even speak of this as a legitimate “choice” – given the obvious nature of it’s irrationality and foolishness?
To call it a possible choice is true only in the smallest and most remote and hypothetical and trivial of ways. It is so obviously counter to my own self interest, and desires, and to rationality, that I don’t feel any discomfort in saying it’s not really a “choice” at all. Which is pretty much how I feel about my “choice” to love my wife. Or love God.
What do you think??
Bobx3
There does seem to be a very real way in which our choices somehow play in to the process, although I think the stronger case for (libertarian) free-will often overplays its hand. I really liked the “falling in love” analogy. It would seem that experience and reason as well as scripture, would cast a vote somewhere in between hard determinism and libertarian free-will.
)
- and you have to go an bring Love into the discussion!! 
Maybe it’s not uninfluenced, but I don’t see that as a viable choice. In that light, I see the theoretical possibility of sane, free daughters and sons of God going back to sin as so infinitesimal as to be literally non-existent.