Question on Stack Exchange regarding how Arminians and Libertarians find support for assertions of free will in the Bible. My type of answers as God does it through me are usually marked as span, downvoted, etc. So I thought I would post my answer here.
“The question here is what case can be made for this view from the Bible.”
My apology for the long answer, but I reiterate through out. God through me also speaks Christ to you, not human speech and He and I like to be thorough. I have personal experience in these matters for a long time. The free willers who have responded will of course not like God’s answers. Expect it to be downvoted.
Libertarian free will is the universal standard of all free willers, even those who say such things as “free will in every thing except salvation”: a total freedom to do anything that is desired at any time, even against perceived self-interest to include choosing who is and is not God and new emotional or intellectual paradigms for oneself. You can find more or less eloquent definitions but total freedom or partial freedom makes no difference. Marx, etc.. “inevitable destruction” of the west is based on starting out in free will and manufacturing destructive determinism via choice over time. If you cry “Partial free will!” then you are supposed to be moving slow. But if you go whole hog and “Libertarian free will” then you are moving fast. The west is supposed to implode based on bad choice over time. It’s also a theatrical plot device over and over: somewhere in the movie somebody says in human speech, “We’ve all got a choice” ( the “good” guy” ) and later someone says “I’ve got/I had no choice!” ( the “bad” guy ).
There is no Biblical support for free will. There never was. There is no free will.
Two answers:
- as regards those who point their lie of free will at you ..their source of “power” ? ..from the Bible?
- as regards their hope that they can take advantage of the total depravity of man but relabel that very depravity as an emotional positive and hope someone else has already instilled in you a sense that to be guilty of constantly “using a free will incorrectly” is a type of holiness so that when questions like you asked show up, they will just appeal ( without mentioning it) to your own sense of supposed best piety, ( i.e. is it correct to want to be holy that way? ) and the deception that you have a free will and your own experience of speech, which you probably haven’t noticed because it seems that it isn’t worth noticing within the context of their arguments. The more sources they quote, the more learned they seem to be, the more -isms they quote, or tell you to avoid or embrace, ( to put a point on it ..the more human speech they use..) the more they make it seem you are actually doing freedom with a free will in order to come to a conclusion and they are manufacturing in you, before you ever think it outright, the façade of a ‘decision’ having already been made simply by being in the presence of lots of thought and speech at all. Theologically, scientifically, politically ..makes no difference.
1.
What support do Arminians/free willers and libertarians see in the Bible for free will? The whole thing. They are like a magician who can blindfold themselves, open the Bible anywhere and put a finger down at random and use that verse as a supposed proof. Pick a card/verse. Any card/verse.
Wait. They use the whole Holy Bible for support and yet there is no free will? The use of individual verses and long winded exposition gives the false impression of not having made a pre-supposition and having an agenda but of honest, particularized research, prayerfully made with fear and trembling after years of “struggling” to win the truth for themselves and being able to quote others who supposedly did the same.
2Timothy 3:7 … Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Why go verse by verse in the farce that they are going proof by proof and that it was a conclusion reached after long, intense study and prayer in human speech ? They presume free will and then start reading into… They have favorite verses but it is always the same argument for each verse, but put in such a way as to hide the agenda: the accusation against God that God as Word Himself /itself can’t/isn’t-supposed-to interfere with the reader because the speech/mind the reader already has is powerless and that powerless character of the speech is turned to an emotional positive because it supposedly leaves room for and necessitates a free will based on a supposed universality of non-interfering language. ..that God, Satan/demons and Man supposedly all share a common speech. They don’t realize what they are doing. But they are forced to do it zealously as their best piety. It comes out as a kind of hysterical statement of “SEE! There is free will again!” They are simply afraid of human speech itself ..as if it were always looking over their shoulder in their mind and they might not honor its powerlessness for an instant.
Because it is.
That is why Arminains and free willers in general think they find support. And I am not saying they are doing it on purpose: they are locked inside a speech not-God. Arminians/free willers in general ( all totally depraved individuals, ..being inside human speech IS the depravity) pre-suppose a language argument that is never mentioned, but always implied that for the most part, they themselves never realize they are making: That God, Satan/Demons/Etc and Man all share a common speech and specifically that language ( they always ask “what is language?” with a singular noun for that reason ) cannot create anything simply by being spoken. I.E. That “we” all live inside a non-creating speech, and in addition, a non-interfering-with-the-will-of-the-hearer-reader-sayer-writer speech..an ‘abstract’ that no one can really put their finger on as to its essence, but heck, its really useful ..to the theory of free will ..because of its assumed non-interfering and universal nature. Everyone is supposedly stuck in human speech and can’t get out, ( exactly as they say we are “stuck in freedom and can’t get out” ) so they would say why talk about it? They just go on as if that’s a given. They always speak “as if” you have free will.
A common free willer/human speech argument is: “if God told me to do something, knowing in advance that I have no power to do it, and yet blamed me for not doing it, that wouldn’t be fair. And we know God is fair, so therefore we must have free will…the power to do or not do that command and therefore earn God’s wrath or praise.” Different versions abound, but that is the core argument. Essentially, every time God gives a command, there is an automatic assumption that God merely speaking at all is proof of the hearer’s free will. Any stimulus will do as a supposed proof. “Free willer: Or what’s He saying anything for?! There would be no point, no purpose of speech in His talking if the hearer didn’t have free will. And that would be blasphemous to say that God talks for nothing!”.
The presumption when they say those things is that everyone who hears them is inside human speech and therefore can have no answer ..because their lie does ( I didn’t accidentally leave out the world “not” ) make sense in human speech, but is found to be a liar when you are in Christ. Suddenly they are breaking out the Greek and Hebrew, gettin’ all scholarly/emotionally manipulative when it is brought to their attention.
They don’t want to hear: God is His Word, Is Creating Speech and so when He speaks He expects His Word in us to do His bidding as creating obedience in us by speaking to us
Isaiah 55:11 ..So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
..He gives us more of Himself with each Speaking event in order to grow us in Him. His Word performs what He said in us because His Word is a living spirit. So, yes, He expects to be obeyed and those who don’t are marked as not-His, else He as Word would be in them hearing Himself and performing what He wants.
So when they don’t do what God commands, that is indicative of being unable to hear God, ( God is not in them ) because God has not allowed them to hear. They keep wanting a universal “power to do God’s will” so “anybody at any time” can do what they hear God say. A kind of “God has to accept all drive-by believers and give them what they ask for in human speech” argument.
Here is the Incarnate Speech/Word of God speaking to human beings but not to human speech itself:
John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
John 8:42-49 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth ( as speech/Word ..note mine) and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?
47 He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
48 Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?
The problem with the single-speechism argument is that it assumes a universal non-interfering with the will language –that God Himself must supposedly use. Essentially human speech is claiming that you have to go through it to get to God and that it, not Jesus Christ/Incarnate Word/Speech of God rules heaven. It hides that claim in an argument that sounds positive ( you’ve got the power! / free will! ) for you but is actually blaspheming God.
God IS His Word. He doesn’t “use language”. It is a standard of all Christianity throughout history that Jesus Christ is the Incarnate ( made flesh ) Word of God. –and even before in Pre-Incarnate form in the old testament. ( The phrase “ word of the lord came unto me, saying”, personifying pre-Incarnate Christ is in the Old Testament 42 times in the KJV ) Human language’s definition of speech is not something that becomes flesh. It ( always implied singular) is supposedly an ‘abstract’ “people use in free will”.
Every possible definition has been tweaked in human speech to supposedly make having a free will and being inside a non-creating speech normal and logical and desirable. Is sin a living creature that kills people and has its own desires? Of course not, says human speech/anti-Christ through the libertarian/free willer: Its an act that displeases God we all supposedly do with a free will and if there was not a free will then “by definition” we couldn’t sin! Grace? Free willer: power from God to aid the free will.
Forgiveness? Free willer: that’s when the free will took a wrong turn and God restores us on the right path again but preserves our free will and the speech we’re already in.
2.
You think they are brethren when they say “The Bible is our only Word of faith!” and say great human-heart emotionally positive things about Jesus. Yet the fruit of their speech is death. But it always makes sense to those in human speech because they, like you, are used to an experience of speech ( unless you are in Christ ) in which you can’t just create what you want by speaking it. You can’t just say “Peace, safety and prosperity appear!” and it happens. You can’t just say “steak and potato” appear and boom! there it is. That intuition of that experience of lack of power is what they are taking advantage of and you having noticed everyone else is living in that same situation ..even the animals. You intuitively know that if the so-called ufo’s landed their speech can’t do that either. So you suppose, without thinking about it, as a foundation of daily navigation, that that experience is normal and universal and never suspect that you were made to live, as a soul and spirit and mind in a speech that can create what it says: Jesus Christ. But because of that experience it seems logical and emotionally comforting that you should have a free will..and that you NEED a language that cannot create anything in order to accomplish a successful ‘use’ of a free will. ..you “need” a non-interfering, powerless “medium of communication” to talk “about” rather than speak into existence. The very powerlessness that they cling to in order to make the argument they assume you cling to as well because you got human speech at birth. ( The child is born innocent, but as soon as the human speech enters it it is sinful on account of the not-God speech it has acquired and become totally depraved/total inability to reach God with speech or deed. It’s common sense is now your common sense and its experience of speech is like everyone else’s.)
Psalm 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
Psalm 12:2-4 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.
3 The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things:
4 Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?
So:
Pro 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light appears in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not.
The Bible is not written in human speech. The claim that it is is the source code for all the so-called “proofs” Arminians and Libertarians find in the Bible. It is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church that it is written in human speech. Every false religion has a definition of speech in which the god supposedly gave language to human beings so they would be able to communicate with that god and visa versa. But it turns out, every single false religion assumes free will or a determinism that essentially runs off free will while claiming to be deterministic, but has a different break-rule-do-some-penance-get-forgiveness paradigm peculiar to each. The key is that you stay in the speech in which you were physically born ( Billy Graham “Just as I am”? ..arch free willer/heretic “Salvation is an act of human will!” ) –you never even think there may be another speech into which YOU, as a spiritual soul must be translated into/born again. As in:
Col 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
From Wikipedia: ( which, yeah..its wikipedia, but to think that one source is better than another to push a free will agenda is farce ..its all human speech with the same common sense, even if I were to include a German reference, or a Chinese reference or a Russian reference, etc…they were all confounded at Babel.. )
The Eastern (or Chalcedonian) Orthodox Church espouses a belief different from the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Arminian Protestant views. The difference is in the interpretation of original sin, alternatively known as “ancestral sin,” where the Orthodox do not believe in total depravity. The Orthodox reject the Pelagian view that the original sin did not damage human nature; they accept that the human nature is depraved, but despite man’s fallenness the divine image he bears has not been destroyed.
The Orthodox Church holds to the teaching of synergy (συνεργός, meaning working together), which says that man has the freedom to, and must if he wants to be saved, choose to accept and work with the grace of God. St. John Cassian, a 4th-century Church Father and pupil of St. John Chrysostom, articulated this view and all the Eastern Fathers embraced it. He taught that “Divine grace is necessary to enable a sinner to return unto God and live, yet man must first, of himself, desire and attempt to choose and obey God”, and that “Divine grace is indispensable for salvation, but it does not necessarily need to precede a free human choice, because, despite the weakness of human volition, the will can take the initiative toward God.”.
..couldn’t “help God save yourself” if you don’t have free will, right?”. ( note mine )
end quote
So, again, put another way: how can Arminians/free willers in general get/support free will out of the Bible ..anywhere? Everywhere?
Easy, by the simple fact of not being born again in a new speech that IS God Himself ( the precious gift, God is our exceeding great reward, etc..) and by not noticing they are assuming that God is speaking the same language He Himself confounded at Babel ( when of course, He did not confound Himself..) and that essentially there is no other speech that has creating power simply by being spoken. At that point, everywhere they read someone did anything after God spoke or had been revealed to be with the people, they can do nothing else but assume free will and every act of anybody in the Bible thereafter becomes to them a supposed proof of that person having a “free” will.
Free willer classic: Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Free willer: See there –that proves it! There’s a thought process, a choice and an act all rolled into the same verse! They did something! Ha ha ha!
Here is another: Ezekiel 1:3 The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him. And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
Free willer classic: See there! That great prophet could have closed his eyes! But he chose to look and to tell us later what he saw! My friends, are we looking? Are we seeing what God is showing us or are we choosing, with the great gift of free will God gave us to close our eyes in fear and timidity to preserve our status quo? ” That type of “sermon lesson” can be heard from any verse they read in all their meetings.
..no thought that the Word of God is personified in that verse ( pre-Incarnate Christ) and that God forced him to see by opening his eyes and having his hand on him…just the presumption of a universal non-interfering/non-creating speech giving the prophet permission to do whatever with “information”…that by inference “anybody with a free will” could have seen had they been standing there with him.
Isaiah 63:17 O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants’ sake, the tribes of thine inheritance.
Human speech/free willer: uh..I don’t think that verse is in the Bible. I much prefer the Good News Translation: 17Why do you let us stray from your ways? Why do you make us so stubborn that we turn away from you? Come back, for the sake of those who serve you, for the sake of the people who have always been yours. See! That’s a proof of free will …the “let us”, the “we turn away” part..
They can go through the Holy Bible endlessly and keep seeing the same thing, ( and if not, simply change translations, which as each new one comes out, the verses that they think Calvinists use to prove no free will simply get changed..) always appealing to your own experience of human speech as the basis for what they say even after being directly told that is exactly what they are doing. They can’t stop. They don’t have free will. They are all literal, abject slaves to human speech.
And most of their audience will be in human speech. It will make sense to them too, simply because they are in human speech. They are so used to being accused of “not using their free will properly” that if they DON’T find an “instance of Biblical obedience” followed by an immediate accusation that their audience isn’t doing that same obedience, the audience won’t recognize being “preached to” or getting their daily dose of religious spanking. It has become their best piety to expect to get accused of improper use of the free will as proof that “God loves them”.
here is a classic “scholarly” approach in which human speech again says that it is the equivalent with God as Word, thus reinforcing the implied argument that there is only one universal speech and human beings already have it (–so no point in looking for another one right?):
from:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK540482/ ( from the National Center for BioTechnology Information )
The possibility that voices might be revelatory of God is considered first from an evidentialist perspective, evaluating critically the rational content of what is heard, and then from an incarnational theological perspective of human receptivity to God. Whilst both approaches have their place, the latter is found to better affirm both a Christian theological anthropology and the possibility of revelation as an experience of something that “God does”. Voice hearing of diverse phenomenological kinds may – sometimes – be an experience of spiritual hearing. Whether the voice is heard out loud, as a perception-like phenomenon in external space, or as an inner voice with more thought-like qualities, it is potentially an experience of God within – akin to the quest for God in Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle. Voices may sometimes be at the same time both human thoughts and divine speech.
Hearing a voice is not like hearing a waterfall, touching a stone, or seeing a flower. The presence of a voice implies the presence of a speaker, and a voice heard in the absence of any visible speaker immediately invites questions. Who spoke? Where did the voice come from? What does it mean? A voice is not just a perception, not merely a hallucination; it is an act of communication. It is therefore not surprising that we have discovered that “voices” (AVHs)1 are not just voices. They are associated with a sense of agency and, at least sometimes, if not often, a sense of presence. They are characterful. They have identities. They have meaning.”
end quote
It must be true? Human speech said it through a “scientist” and admitted “spiritual stuff” is real?
Again. With Scripture: Without meaning to, they are being forced by human speech/Belial, to claim that God and the demons have a common language, and that claim is their default piety ..which happens to be the unforgivable sin. The only time in the Holy Bible an unforgivable sin is mentioned is when human speech through the free willers of their day accuse the Incarnate Word of God/Jesus Christ of having an unclean spirit and by that means was able to command the spirits to depart, etc.:
3:22 And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.
3:23 And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?
3:24 And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
3:25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
3:26 And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.
3:27 No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.
3:28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:
3:29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation:
3:30 Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.
Specifically, what is being pointed out is the speech they are speaking and accusing Christ/Word of God of using. They are essentially saying that He as Word of God is demonic speech; that the Word of God Incarnate that Jesus Christ IS can lie, can speak non-creating speech and empower it. They can be forgiven, but the speech itself that made the accusation is not. There is more craft/sorcery in human speech non-creating essence than you realize even now: all free willers in the Bible and today say “What is truth?”, not Who is Truth? ( Jesus Christ ). All languages and words/spirits within them are abstracted to be idealized as powerless and thus supposedly able to be analyzed outside of themselves as supposed non-living entities inside human speech.
If God were to hold them to their own standard, no one would be saved…they say its all their own fault–according to their speech. But there is no such thing as invincibility of unbelief ( because there is no free will ) because God is His Word and has mercy and is not their speech. Their speech will never say “In order to be saved you have to live outside of me.” It’s too busy trying to remain anonymous and keep the whole lie going that it doesn’t exist as such and people are “responsible” for what they say inside of it so as to become catastrophically guilty before God. It is the one going through the Holy Bible making out people have free will and leaving those through whom it acts as the patsy. Blessing for them, God is not deceived.
God confounded their speech before, just when they never suspected they were being used to almost destroy themselves with the mind they had. God saved them, but confused the non-creating speech itself in them. What is common sense in that confused speech is a lie.
Gen 11:5-9 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
11:9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
But we have a new speech..the Word of God.
1Cor 2:12-16 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. ( he can’t understand them at all, no matter how often or with what vigor he claims to understand and defend them with..note mine)
2:15But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
The entire Bible is made of Creating speech/God that has its creating effect in each individual as that particular individuals destiny / election God has already written. Free willers go through and see themselves as staying the way they are, in the speech they already have and God’s Word as powerless by necessity. Christians hear God and live.
Ezekiel 16:6 And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.
If you expect your speech to create what you say, that verse makes perfect sense and is an act of love, of life-saving by God. God gives Himself as Life as Word in Speech. If you depend on the “free will” and a notion of non-interfering speech as a medium of communicating will-neutral information of the one welting in their own blood, it doesn’t; it sounds like a harsh mockery.
Matthew 12:37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. ( anti-Christ/human speech through a free willer replies: See there!” )
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen