Trying to wiggle out if it now, hey? Not only do you say that we are "dead" but that there is an excess of us "tools," of which God made too many just so He can use some and throw away the rest! That's what your theology is saying. You deny deny that we have free will; animals have no free will because they have no reason. But according to you, we are worse than than: we are no different than a hammer.
If we have no free will, we can't do anything on our own, HD. We can be either led by satan or by God, but at no time do we make rational decisions. We are slaves whether to sin or to righteousness, but we are slaves (i.e. not free) either way — always someone's useful "tools."
We simply state that it is God who changes men and help us to grow. He GIVES us everything so that we may be doing His work. He is rather busy you know
Really? Then you can be Orthodox or Roman Catholic, because it is precisely the teaching of the Church that God always makes the first move. But you left out the most important thing: the irresistible grace. Contrary to Scripture, your theology claims that we can not reject God.
Oh?!? And did God somehow change from the Old to the New? Perhaps He took one of those self help courses?
Very "funny." God does not change; our misinterpretation of Him does. Christ walked among people and Gospels tell us exactly what He was like. Let me tell you, no one in the Old Testament imaged God as humble. Oh, no, that would be a "weak" God for you. God did not become Incarnate and appeared bigger than life. He did not stomp on His enemies and razed cities to the ground. No, He taught that we should love our enemies and that we should not resist the evil one.
Eve made no decision to disobey. The scriptures state that Eve was deceived at least twice
But she thought she was choosing good, didn't she? To paraphrase Thomas Merton, when we choose evil it is not because we think of it as evil, but as good. It is a decision, nonetheless. The fact that she was deceived does not change that fact no matter how wrong her decision was.
I. God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil.[1]
II. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God;[2] but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.[3]
III. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation:[4] so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good,[5] and dead in sin,[6] is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.[7]
IV. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin;[8] and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good;[9] yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly, or only, will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.[10]
V. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.[11]