The worship of the great god, free will, is one of the errors most deadly to man's soul.
The worship of the great god, free will, is one of the errors most deadly to man's soul.
Well, the reason I wrote the article is that I began looking to try and find out a historical church position on the whole question, since, like Erasmus said, one think that Christ would not let His entire Church fall into error for 1300 years. What I found, though, was that, prior to Calvin, the most pre-destinarian voice in the Church was Augustine, but even he stopped short of double predestination and God being the effective agency in evil. My conclusion, though, is that we are probably in error if we attempt to apply our own human reason to the mind of the Infinite Pantocrator. When we try to force a scenario in which either men are free or utterly under divine control, we are painting an incomplete picture. I suspect the reason that the Church Historical has wrestled for an answer to this issue is that it is one that has no pat and easy solution, and we would be better off instead trusting to the mercy of Christ.