[malakhi]

How would you explain this?

God is absolutely sovereign.

Sin is contrary to God's will.

I believe that, in an act of His divine sovereignty, God empowered man with a truly free will. This free will is in practice quite limited in scope (we can't "will" things into existence, as God can). But within the scope in which we operate, our will, and thus our choices, are truly free.

I'll make one of my famously poor analogies here. We are on a ship. God's will is the ocean on which we sail. God created the ship and us. He is the captain of the ship. Within the confines of the ship, we can do whatever we like. We can obey our captain, or we can mutiny against him. We can work together, or we can fight one another. And we can be rewarded with dinner with the captain, or we can be thrown into the brig.

Contrary to what some Calvinists have expressed, I don't believe that the exercise of our will somehow diminishes God's sovereignty. Our will, freely operating within the ship, remains vastly smaller -- and contained within -- the will of God. We operate in the space He permits. He still steers the ship.

God's will for us is expressed in His commandments. We sin when we disobey Him, when we set our will against His. In this way, sin is contrary to God's will.

I believe a truly free will is necessary for there to be true moral responsibility for our choices and actions. You don't "punish" your computer for following its programming. If a piece of code fails, it is the fault of the programmer, not the software. For punishment of sin to be just, it must be for that which we are truly responsible. And we are only truly responsible if we truly had a choice.

[HarleyD]

Being on the other side of the fence for many years I think you've summed it up nicely. I believe the real dispute in your analogy is over how much we operate in the space permitting.

From your analogy you would probably say that if God's assignment for you is to work in the kitchen, you would have the freedom to prepare the menu, schedule the meals, etc. From the Reform perspective we would say God would tell us what He wants to have served, give us the ingrediants, tells us when the meals will take place, etc. The difference, of course, is the degree of control.

If a meal that you developed did not go well it would be your fault since you were the one to control the ingrediants, recipes, etc. Your shipmates may not be very approving and, if egreious enough, the cries may be carried to the Captain who would not be happy.

On the other hand, from a Reform perspective, every meal that would be fix would be perfect since the recipes, ingrediants, etc. would be picked by God. We are just instruments in putting it together. No one can complain to us because it was developed by the Captain.

It a matter of perspective of control.

[monkfan]

I believe a truly free will is necessary for there to be true moral responsibility for our choices and actions. You don't "punish" your computer for following its programming. If a piece of code fails, it is the fault of the programmer, not the software. For punishment of sin to be just, it must be for that which we are truly responsible. And we are only truly responsible if we truly had a choice.

Something else to consider is how love works. It must be given freely. In order for that to be possible, it is necessary that we have a choice in the matter. If we don't have a choice, if it's not given freely, then it ceases to be love. It would be something artificial. As such, it would be worthless. Therefore, free will exists so that love can exist. Not that I disagree with what you stated above, but thought the rest of the picture was worth painting. :)