Does the Bible teach free will? (part 2)

by Danny Pelichowski

Peter asked…
“I found the Clark quote to be very helpful, although I think our Arminian brothers would love to lay claim to the fact that God is in control of everything.”

Danny's response…
The main focus of my article was to point out the joy and confidence that a believer should have in the all powerful God who is in control of history including the actions of man. Although I know that you are a Calvinist and that we have both been blessed to come away from an Arminian world and life view I think we need to reflect back on the teaching, lifestyle, prayers, doctrine (or lack there of), and worldview that we once had before our reformed understanding of Scripture and doctrine. The issue is not the fact that Arminians deny that God is powerful and in control. They will say those very words and talk about the sovereignty of God. The issue as you and I both know is their interpretation of the will of man, the sovereignty of God, the atonement, and anthropology (doctrine of man).

Maybe I should not only include Arminians in the discussion but also processians, Molenists, Mormons, Pelagians, JW’s, and even many different kinds of evangelicals etc. We can add more to the list who deny the meticulous sovereignty of God and His decrees. I do not make this list to say that if you are an Arminian you believe exactly what a Mormon does because that is not true however the common denominator in all of the above systems is that they all hold to libertarian free will.

Peter asked…
“What do you say to their objection that God's foreknowledge and omnipotence can assure that all things will work out according to his purposes? So the idea being, that God can use evil for his good purposes without being causally connected to it, because he foresees it and has the power to use it for good. Thus, the text you sighted would be read in a fashion that supports this notion.”

Danny's response...
If they say that God foresaw men by their own libertarian free will crucifying Jesus then the atonement was not a predetermined decreed act of God to the problem of man’s sinfulness and guilt. Instead of God creating a way for sinners to be loosed from His wrath He simply looked into the future and responded to man’s autonomous acts and foresaw them crucifying the incarnate Son and then God decided “wow, what an opportunity to use this for the good of saving sinners from hell”. If they do in fact use foreknowledge of libertarian acts of man then I would say that their interpretation is utterly wrong and that God cannot assure HIS purposes at all and any assurance that they speak of is merely an illusion. All God can do is “assure” that he will in fact respond to the libertarian “free from God” acts of man as they chaotically come about and hopefully everything will work out in the end.

We both would ardently disagree with this interpretation of Acts 4 and realize that there is no room for it after further examining the text as well as countless other passages throughout the Bible.

The issue comes down to the libertarian free will farce that these systems adhere to. Despite the fact that this passage refutes it they still hold to their free will because anything else would be unthinkable to them. So it comes down to the disobedience of going beyond what is written and believing in a fairy tale doctrine of free will that does not exist in Scripture. I will conclude with a portion of my original post that discusses the Arminian interpretation of Acts 4. God bless brother!

Danny's said…“A libertarian free will interpretation of Acts 4:23-31 would be as follows: Judas had the libertarian free will not to betray Christ and Pilate had the libertarian free will to let Jesus go and discontinue the punishment of death on the cross. You see, if God is not in control of history and man really did have libertarian free will then the world would be in utter chaos. If we picture God as an incompetent grandfather “up there” who is simply crossing His fingers that things would work out then we might as well stop praying and hide in our basements for fear of random catastrophes ending our lives. However, if we think of God as found in Scripture as the almighty Sovereign who is working all things together after the council of his will (Ephesians 1) then we can live our lives and preach the Gospel with power and confidence that God’s purposes in history will in fact come about.”