You said:
“For one thing, it directly teaches free will as it speaks of ‘intent of the thoughts’ as a fact. This quote would deny free will if it said something like ‘The LORD looked and man and made it so that his heart nad only evil intents’.”
You would argue that black is white.
So, you think that you can just go through the Holy Scriptures, the word of God, with your little pair of scissors, snipping here and snipping there, putting things together in any way you please without any regard to the context, without any regard to WHO PUT THESE WORDS TOGETHER AS HE DID. It says:
1) “the wickedness of man was great in the earth”
2) “every intent of the thoughts of his heart”
3) “was only evil”
4) “continually”
Wickedness. Every. Only. Continually. Get real!
You can cut and paste the Lord’s Prayer into a kidnapping ransom note too, but that only means you put asunder what the Lord Himself joined together.
You said:
“This quote doesn’t teach positive free will, the will to do good. It also doesn’t teach, for example, thermodynamics. However, a few verses down we read that ‘Noe found grace before the Lord’ and then that ‘Noe was a just and perfect man in his generations, he walked with God’. Make note: not was walked by God, walked with God. So yeah, free will, but it requires to read more than one verse at a time.”
So, the words God spoke regarding man just three verses previous to this do not apply to Noah? God forgot what He said. Oh, that’s right. You have the right to tear the context apart at any time you choose.
It says, “Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” (Genesis 6:8) Does the Holy Scripture itself have an answer for how someone corrupt and fallen and, yes, YES, totally depraved, such that “EVERY intent of the thoughts of his heart was ONLY EVIL CONTINUALLY”, could find grace in the eyes of the LORD? Again, I will make it easy for you, and give you one verse only.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)
Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD because the LORD gave him the faith to believe the opposite of what fallen Adam believed when first he felt the fear and horror of unbelief and separation from God, that God was only good and gracious, that He would send the SEED to crush the serpent’s head. Why did Noah walk with God? Because he was now, by faith, God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus (THE SEED!!!!!!!!!!!!!) for good works. Noah, like Abraham after him, believed in God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And yes, the faith of Abraham and the faith of Noah was a gift from God to each of them, as Ephesians 2 teaches. God’s creation of faith in Noah’s heart, a heart whose every intent was only evil continually, was as great a miracle as His creation of the world out of nothing. It was a miracle, for with God nothing is impossible!
You, Annalex, have been taught to think contrary to what God clearly and plainly says. You have furnished the proof with your own writing.
Enough said. Let the reader judge the truth of what I’ve said.
That we strictly speaking don't know because the scripture does not say anything on that subject. But we know that the scripture is written in such a way to emphasize that both the wicked men and Noah acted on their free will.
The point you are now making is valid: the ability to do good is enabled by divine grace, and the scripture, here and eslewhere is very clear on that. You original point was that these verses somehow teach absense of free will, and that is flat contradicted by the verse itself, and its immediate context, as I pointed out in my previous post.