ShadowAce: “Example—I’m driving a car down a road. Who has the responsibility for where it goes or what it may or may not hit? The car? or the driver? The car is merely doing what the driver tells it to do. No one holds the car itself accountable for its actions—because it has no free will. It was created to perform a certain task, and it was the driver who is responsible.”
I think the issue of free will is a real sticking point in this debate. There seems to be some definition of free will by the Arminian crowd in which human volition is violated when God chooses His elect.
Your description of the driver versus the car is an interesting illustration and I will try to use your same illustration to show the error in your free will argument. The driver of the car can choose to drive on the road, stop and go at will, and obey traffic rules. Or the driver can choose to drive on the sidewalk and run traffic lights or speed excessively. But a driver cannot drive the car to the moon or drive through the core of the earth nor to the depths of the sea - to be honest, most drivers don’t even have an inkling to do such things. But if the driver truly had Armenian “free will” he could do all these things!
The fact remains that all people on earth are constrained by their environments, their desires, and their humanity - all things created by God. People still have free will to follow their desires but these desires are a product of their sinful natures - their nature to make themselves God. These people CANNOT choose God until these fundamental desires and (free) wills are changed.
So how is our desire turned to God? How do we come to submit our lives and heart to the one true Creator of the universe (and all that is in it)? Is it something within us or something that only God can manage? Or is it as the good Arminian would purport - that this is the ONLY part of our lives that God avoids in order to turn this over to our “free will”. Seems odd that God would keep out of the only truly important decision of our lives...
Interesting extension of the illustration. I can understand your point, though I do not agree with it.
God (according to my belief) does not keep out of this decision. He is influencing us, not sitting on the sidelines.
These people CANNOT choose God until these fundamental desires and (free) wills are changed.
Again, I think we disagree on the meaning of Titus 2:11-16. As a result of this disagreement, we'll never see eye to eye on this issue.