Thank you for your reply. I understand what you are trying to say.
How do you explain the John passages that I posted before, Romans 9, as well as Titus 1:1? What do you think it means when it talks about God’s elect?
I think Chaguito show that the dichotomy is in the viewpoint: From God’s viewpoint, He know His elect. Jesus points this out in the John passages I quoted earlier. But from out viewpoint, we must act. Jesus points this out in His parables.
We confess our belief in Him. But what causes the change? Was it purely ourselves, or was it the Holy Spirit acting on us to make our confession?
As Ephesians says, we are dead in our trespasses and sin. Spiritually dead. The spiritually dead will not seek God; that is their free will. This is demonstrated in the both the OT and NT. Only a change of heart (regeneration) will change us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. Can we do it alone? No. Once spiritually alive, can we go back to being spiritually dead? No. We can sin, but we grieve at it, as Paul discusses in Romans 7, and that is the free will of the believer.
But there are those who delude themselves they are saved, but continue to sin without grief. Those who act this way clearly do not demonstrate that they are saved at that time, though they may repent later. Should they persist in their sin, the demonstrate that they were never the elect, as described in the parable of the wheat and the tares.
So man does have free will, but the spiritually dead’s free will shall never seek God. The believer’s free will will choose to follow God, but imperfectly, as he still has his sin nature. The sin nature will die with the body, and then the believer will perfectly follow God.
Finally, the free will of man can never trump the Sovereignty of God.
... the demonstrate that they were never the elect ...
should be
... they demonstrate that they were never the elect ...
“Finally, the free will of man can never trump the Sovereignty of God.”
But then God wouldn’t truly be sovereign, would He? So, that’s a statement that a Calvinist should only see as self-evident and unworthy of re-stating. :)
Thanks for the (partial) thumbs-up.
By the way, how about this: The most basic theme of the Bible is the idea that God makes covenants with man, from beginning to end. The term most often used in Scripture to define the character of God is chesed - one who honors his covenants. The very act of making a covenant means that God by definition limits His sovereignty, because he makes promises (many of them conditional) to man as far as man loves and honors the covenant (chesed). If He purposely limits His sovereignty, is He really less sovereign?
My point is that Calvinists tend to view God through Greek lenses, while the whole of scripture describes Him through Hebrew lenses. Thus, “omnipotent” is a Greek concept which the Bible eschews in favor of “King of kings who bows to meet His people.” (through covenant).
And here we come to the crux of our disagreement.
Scripturally, that statement is incorrect. Logically, it's meaningless.
I believe that both predestination and free will exist. I believe that a few people may be predestined, but the vast majority of people come through their own free will.
Both concepts exist in Scripture. To ignore one is to ignore vast amounts of Scripture that is useful for teaching. To emphasize no free will among the general population drives people away from God--not toward Him. It also paints an incomplete, and distorted, view of God. One that isn't very nice to contemplate, or consider.