jonathangolder
From Inverness Baptist church
Something i've struggled with since studying Philosophy last year in school, is the possibly of having free will yet still there be an omnipitent God. It just doesn't seem possible that if we could have complete free will then God is in control of everything, the two just don't go hand in hand. Through-out the Bible you come across passages, Romans 8 being the classic and we say ah yes God control everything. Then the other day I was reading Genesis 2 and 3, God didn't plan for Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of Good and Evil, he was 'walking through the garden' looking for them, I decided that maybe this was God showing us we had free will.
But What if 'God's Will' is the alternative? We don't have complete free will, yet neither are we completly 'determined'. Yet we are under God's will, at certain points in are life perhaps he will give us complete free will, and at others he carries us and our decisions completly.
Any thoughts?
Here's a quick summary of my understanding of the issues at play on this topic:
God's will involves loving his creatures so much, to the point that they have free will.
That freedom more fully expresses his power and love than a partially free will in mankind ever could.
God would rather have us make a free choice than force us into a position (even if it was good for us) which would be against our own original will.
Therefore, our free will is pretty much the trump card in all our decisions and moral choices in life - but that possibility has only come about as a free gift, through God's will initially and - ultimately - all things will happen according to his will as it works like an all-embracing command of the creation found under him and draws us towards his desired destiny for us.
If we choose something other than that, then God, out of love, fully respects that choice and permits it to happen out of love for our autonomy - and so, the possibility of hell and suffering existing under the watch of a loving God.
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This has been covered extensively and pretty exhaustively (exhaustingly!) in the past. Try this thread:
http://www.worshipcentral.org/forum/topic/pre-destination-vs-evangelism
www.thepointchurch.co.uk