There is Only One Feasible Position to Take: Molinism-Advanced OSAS Arminian
Reconciling God's Infinite Foreknowledge, Determinism, and Free Will
Have you figured out how
free will can be free if determinism is true?
(Determinism is causing everything because each thing produces another thing
which then could be infinitely foreseen, including God's own planned
interventions.) Determinism is needed because God would have to be able to
account for all things.
Obviously free will can't exist without God because how could an unconscious
universe without a will and without a conscience, produce a consciousness and
conscience with a free will in a man! Can a bird house produce a bird? Of course
not.
So the question is, is free will real or
illusory? If it is illusory, it
is explained by determinism and therefore, Calvinism would be true. And
furthermore, it really wouldn't matter what you or I do (whether Atheism
Naturalism or Calvinism Charades), because it is all precaused anyway. Whether
you jump out of a plane tomorrow or feed millions of starving children in the
next year, it wouldn't matter. It's all forced to happen anyway. There was
nothing you could do about it anyway. You would not be any more guilty for being
a mass murderer than you would be if you were the most spiritual Christian that
ever lived.
All the pleadings
in the Bible would be a charade, because you couldn't respond to them any more
than you could choose to do something other than what you were going to do
anyway.
God would be evil to have created us since He lied about our free will and
pleads to it, for it would just be illusory. But
God can't be a liar,
for if He exists, He would be holy, righteous and true (truthful).
A Calvinist will respond by saying free will is not real and even say that God
does not plead with sinners (to avoid the contradictory two wills of having a
secret will and a revealed will since God can't contradict Himself). A
contradictory will to reveal (say, in the Bible, by misreading it) that God
wants to save all, but has a secret will not wanting to save all, He would be
contradicting Himself and lying.
So if you believe such a God, you are just making God in your own image, the
image of a liar. You are a liar if that is what you worship. The Bible says, be
"not doubletongued" (1 Tim. 3.8). If such behavior is immoral for man, then it
would be immoral for God, for why would His morality be less than ours?
That's why some cults and religions like Gnostics have two creators. One Good
Creator who created the creator of us. This creator who became evil by his own
volition, created us. But would a Good God allow an evil creator? That would
make God Himself evil. But God can't be evil.
Is it reasonable for an evil creator to get his way to not provide sufficient
grace to save (by passing over), irresistibly saving others, and damning
billions to Hell without recourse or opportunity for salvation, all while God
the ultimate Creator does want to save all? No! A loving God would never allow
that. But that is what Calvinism is. Praise be to God, only God can create life!
Neither the Devil, fallen angels, or demons can create sentient life (power of
perception and consciousness) out of the material of the universe.
Others try to make Jesus to have two wills like the Coptics or versions of. His
godly will is to want to save all, but his human will does not. The Coptics give
Jesus two wills. But not wanting to save all by providing sufficient grace to
all to give us the choice under any circumstance is evil. Besides
Jesus is not schizo.
He has one will and one will only. He always does the will of the Father. His
human nature and divine nature are always willing the same thing in perfect
accord and obedience to the Father.
Finally, there is the problem with, how can there be a secret other will if you
believe it is revealed God doesn't want to save all? It's not a secret then. So
such attempts of Calvinists are completely absurd and evil to say the least. Who
know how corrupted man's heart really is! But we do know it is not Totally
depraved. Otherwise, nobody sufficiently
could receive what Jesus did
for us by the grace of God.
The Calvinist shuts his mind down
to the verses of Scripture that show God is pleading with man. So that is how a
Calvinist deals with the contradiction between pleading with men and no alleged
free will, by denying Scripture; that is, by denying free will to exist or is
real, and by denying God is pleading with men. Of course, their very choice to
assume this is itself a fact of their free will which some choose and others
choose not to believe. Test this out. You can change your mind if you like. The
truly sad part in such a view is that to assume you cant repent and believe in
Christ to be regenerated, then you will never repent and believe in Christ to be
regenerated. You have put up a wall between yourself and God.
One caveat. Once you are truly regenerated, you can never choose to assume you
couldn't repent, because obviously, you really had repented and believed in
Christ to be regenerated and would not deny what you know was true for you. It
would be more reasonable to conclude you simply were never born-again to begin
with if you had made the claim at some future date that you couldn't repent and
believe in Christ to be regenerated.
If God pleads with men, free will must be true. If free will is true then God
must plead with men. But if God pleads with men, free will must not be true. If
free will is not true, then God is not allowed to plead with men, otherwise it
would be a pretentious charade.
If free will is true, which seems more reasonable in light of the above
evidenced facts, because God does plead with us,
thus giving us the choice,
then would determinism have to be false?
But if determinism is false, then how can God foresee all things like all the
hairs on our head (and the hairs you choose to pluck out or graft back in at any
given moment)? Moreover, how can God truly create a person with free will for
doesn't the person's choices have to be created, provisioned for, and caused for
any given situation?
Therefore, we must accept, no matter how much it hurts our brain to think about
it (and is best not to think about that which you don't have enough information
yet to resolve), that both free will (somehow, someway) is true and
determinism is true:
that is, there is a cause and effect to everything at the same time, free will
is true. Nothing, though, is truly random. So accept
free will is real and determinism is real even
though you don't know how God reconciles them. God is proven by nature and Jesus
is proven to be God, so these are not the issues. Moreover, the issue wondering
if you are saved by assuming regeneration before repentance and faith, for God
will never save you that way. God only saves one
way. You would have to repent
and believe in Christ to be regenerated. The issue is trying to understand how
God reconciles His infinite foreknowledge with free will and accepting true
salvation.
Perhaps God has not given you the capacity to understand since no human being
has ever been able to reconcile free will with His infinite foreknowledge, but
since we know they both exist, we hold the course. But
at least you are being genuine and honest to God
in accepting both logically (reasonably) and Scripturally this proper basic
knowledge that is not far away from any of our hearts.
The best you can say is this: God works outside of time so He can see all
things. He created the world we live in, all its provisions: all its laws,
functions, and cause and effects. He knows all our options in any given scenario
or situation and environment. Yet free will
is true. You can go choose to
do something in the next 30 seconds you have never done before in your life.
That option is afforded to you. So free will is really true.
The best explanation I have ever seen to attempt to reconcile free will with
God's infinite all-knowing foreknowledge is
called Molinism. Though its author in the 16th
century was a non-OSASer, I believe you can apply it
to OSAS Arminians.
The way to apply it is simply to say God has all His programs (like in the movie
Matrix), so He knows what any person will do in any given situation based on
antecedent causes, and free-will is really free, because God saves to the
uttermost; that is, He saves the most and damns the least. This point is what
establishes free will: when God saves the most and damns the least. He does
everything He can to save a person. He is never unrighteous. He is always
righteous and holy in all His dealings. Whereas in Calvinism, God does not save
the most and damn the least, but passes over many or even double predestines
them to Hell, and irresistibly imposes salvation on others without giving them
the free will choice either. Very sad.
Calvinism is the evil that the body of Christ, the Church faces. It is what
Satan will get the Antichrist to use against us.
Praise the Lord for this discernment, understanding and spiritual knowledge of protection
in the inner spirit.
Troy Brooks