I've heard many people tell me about Bible prophesy. If the Bible can predict future events then it stands to reason that those events are PREDETERMINED and Man has no choices in this world. Think about all the choices you've made in your life and how different life for you would be if you had done things differently. Now multiply that by the total number of peolple on earth and you have some idea of the infinite number of possible "futures".
On the other hand, the Bible also says that we all have free will and choices. If we truly have free will, then our future is up to US; not predestined.
Any opinions on this contradiction would be appreciated.
God's will or free will?
by thinker 71 Replies latest watchtower bible
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thinker
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bjc2012
Thinker,
The Bible deals with what Jehovah accepts or does not accept from those who worship him. Now, if you are a worshipper of Him then how you live your daily life is somewhat regulated but not all things. Ones every waking moment is not under scrutiny all day every day. An individual can still make choices about many things in his life. I don't know of any verse in the bible where humans are told that they can do anything that they want without suffering any consequences. If you are willing to accept the consequences, then you can do whatever you feel big enough to do. Exercise your free will. The one outstanding thought in the Bible is that humans will not offer any kind of worship that they please and it be accepted by Jehovah. He and He alone makes the decision of what he will accept and what he will not. This is what the bible is all about. We do not have free will in this matter other than what Moses stated in Deuteronomy 30:19, 20: "I do take the heavens and earth as witnesses against you today, that I have put life and death before you, the blessing and the malediction; and you must choose life in order that you many keep alive, you and your offspring, by loving Jehovah your God, by listening to his voice and by sticking to him; for he is your life and the length of your days...."
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ianao
Hey Thinker:
bjc is right. It all depends on whether or not you choose to worship the God that the Bible claims created you. That choice is why so many religions exist today. It is a viable alternative to individual gods that permit practices that are harmful to others. Too bad it has it's own hang ups that end up shifting physical abuse to mental abuse for it's followers.
The Bible is a great book that gives you hope for something better than what you see. It's better than having no hope for anything beyond the life that you live now.
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thinker
Thank you both for your comments. But, I believe you may have misunderstood my main point.
In a nutshell: Free will would, by definition; negate a predictable future.
A predetermined future (prophesy) would mean mankind's choices are already made for us. -
ianao
Thinker: I will refrain from comment on this, out of the same respect I showed spectromize on an earlier post.
bjc2012, please feel free to comment.
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expatbrit
Thinker:
I'm not sure if this is really connected to your question, but you may find the following article of interest, regarding Pelagius.
Let me know what you think.
Expatbrit.
Augustine and Pelagius
By R.C. Sproul--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation." So wrote B. B. Warfield in his assessment of the influence of Augustine on church history. It is not only that Luther was an Augustinian monk, or that Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other theologian that provoked Warfield's remark. Rather, it was that the Reformation witnessed the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over the legacy of the Pelagian view of man.
Humanism, in all its subtle forms, recapitulates the unvarnished Pelagianism against which Augustine struggled. Though Pelagius was condemned as a heretic by Rome, and its modified form, Semi-Pelagianism was likewise condemned by the Council of Orange in 529, the basic assumptions of this view persisted throughout church history to reappear in Medieval Catholicism, Renaissance Humanism, Socinianism, Arminianism, and modern Liberalism. The seminal thought of Pelagius survives today not as a trace or tangential influence but is pervasive in the modern church. Indeed, the modern church is held captive by it.What was the core issue between Augustine and Pelagius? The heart of the debate centered on the doctrine of original sin, particularly with respect to the question of the extent to which the will of fallen man is "free." Adolph Harnack said:
"There has never, perhaps, been another crisis of equal importance in church history in which the opponents have expressed the principles at issue so clearly and abstractly. The Arian dispute before the Nicene Council can alone be compared with it." (History of Agmer V/IV/3)
The controversy began when the British monk, Pelagius, opposed at Rome Augustine's famous prayer: "Grant what Thou commandest, and command what Thou dost desire." Pelagius recoiled in horror at the idea that a divine gift (grace) is necessary to perform what God commands. For Pelagius and his followers responsibility always implies ability. If man has the moral responsibility to obey the law of God, he must also have the moral ability to do it.
Harnack summarizes Pelagian thought:
"Nature, free-will, virtue and law, these strictly defined and made independent of the notion of God - were the catch-words of Pelagianism: self-acquired virtue is the supreme good which is followed by reward. Religion and morality lie in the sphere of the free spirit; they are at any moment by man's own effort."
The difference between Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism is more a difference of degree than of kind. To be sure, on the surface there seems like there is a huge difference between the two, particularly with respect to original sin and to the sinner's dependence upon grace. Pelagius categorically denied the doctrine of original sin, arguing that Adam's sin affected Adam alone and that infants at birth are in the same state as Adam was before the Fall. Pelagius also argued that though grace may facilitate the achieving of righteousness, it is not necessary to that end. Also, he insisted that the constituent nature of humanity is not convertible; it is indestructively good.
Over against Pelagius, Semi-Pelagianism does have a doctrine of original sin whereby mankind is considered fallen. Consequently grace not only facilitates virtue, it is necessary for virtue to ensue. Man's nature can be changed and has been changed by the Fall.
However, in Semi-Pelagianism there remains a moral ability within man that is unaffected by the Fall. We call this an "island of righteousness" by which the fallen sinner still has the inherent ability to incline or move himself to cooperate with God's grace. Grace is necessary but not necessarily effective. Its effect always depends upon the sinner's cooperation with it by virtue of the exercise of the will.
It is not by accident that Martin Luther considered "The Bondage of the Will" to be his most important book. He saw in Erasmus a man who, despite his protests to the contrary, was a Pelagian in Catholic clothing. Luther saw that lurking beneath the controversy of merit and grace, and faith and works was the issue of to what degree the human will is enslaved by sin and to what degree we are dependent upon grace for our liberation. Luther argued from the Bible that the flesh profits nothing and that this "nothing" is not a little "something."
Augustine's view of the Fall was opposed to both Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. He said that mankind is a massa peccati, a "mess of sin," incapable of raising itself from spiritual death. For Augustine man can no more move or incline himself to God than an empty glass can fill itself. For Augustine the initial work of divine grace by which the soul is liberated from the bondage of sin is sovereign and operative. To be sure we cooperate with this grace, but only after the initial divine work of liberation.
Augustine did not deny that fallen man still has a will and that the will is capable of making choices. He argued that fallen man still has a free will (liberium arbitrium) but has lost his moral liberty (libertas). The state of original sin leaves us in the wretched condition of being unable to refrain from sinning. We still are able to choose what we desire, but our desires remain chained by our evil impulses. He argued that the freedom that remains in the will always leads to sin. Thus in the flesh we are free only to sin, a hollow freedom indeed. It is freedom without liberty, a real moral bondage. True liberty can only come from without, from the work of God on the soul. Therefore we are not only partly dependent upon grace for our conversion but totally dependent upon grace.
Modern Evangelicalism sprung from the Reformation whose roots were planted by Augustine. But today the Reformational and Augustinian view of grace is all but eclipsed in Evangelicalism. Where Luther triumphed in the sixteenth century, subsequent generations gave the nod to Erasmus.
Modern evangelicals repudiate unvarnished Pelagianism and frequently Semi-Pelagianism as well. It is insisted that grace is necessary for salvation and that man is fallen. The will is acknowledged to be severely weakened even to the point of being "99 percent" dependent upon grace for its liberation. But that one percent of unaffected moral ability or spiritual power which becomes the decisive difference between salvation and perdition is the link that preserves the chain to Pelagius. We have not broken free from the Pelagian captivity of the church.
That one percent is the "little something" Luther sought to demolish because it removes the sola from sola gratia and ultimately the sola from sola fide. The irony may be that though modern Evangelicalism loudly and repeatedly denounces Humanism as the mortal enemy of Christianity, it entertains a Humanistic view of man and of the will at its deepest core.
We need an Augustine or a Luther to speak to us anew lest the light of God's grace be not only over-shadowed but be obliterated in our time.
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R.C. Sproul is now the distinguished visiting professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Knox Theological Seminary.
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Seven
Mr Thinker, Man determines the outcome of history(free will), Jehovah the eventual victory of good over evil. How could we have ever experienced the depth of God's love for us or his blessing if all was predetermined? Without sin(the fall), would we know of a loving or forgiving God?
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bjc2012
Thinker,
Yes, the future has already been determined by Jehovah. Can any human change that future? If not, then human exercise of free will encompasses only his future in relation to what has been predetermined by Jehovah. And that is as the Bible says, 'choose life or choose death.' What other choices are there? These were the only choices that Adam was given. Do you have some other biblical definition of free will?
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thinker
Seven,
Thank you for the reply, however it still contains a contradiction.Man determines the outcome of history(free will), Jehovah the eventual victory of good over evil
For example, I think everyone will agree that Hitler was a truly evil man. Your reply would indicate that Jehovah influenced the defeat of Hilter. This would require Jehovah's influence on all those who opposed Hitler (The U.K. abandoning the peaceful negotiations with Germany, America's decision to enter the war, Germany's decision to attack it's one-time ally Russia, etc.) Were all of the necessary choices predetermined by God? If so, what free will do we really have? If Jehovah determines the eventual outcome of good winning out over evil, how exactly does that happen? Is it not by removing the free choice of individuals? It is only WITHOUT mankind's free will that the future can be determined and predicted. A review of history shows that it is a possiblity that Hitler could have won the war (if certain choices had been made differently).
As for prophesy, the bible speaks of Amagedon. Is it possible for the free will of Man to make the necessary choices to avoid this battle? Is it possible that Evil will win out over Good? If it's predetermined that Good will triumph, then why bother with the battle at all? Simply cause Man's choices to be "good" (as you indicate Jehovah can do). But this could, in no way; be called "free will". Your reply seems to indicate that our free will consists only of our ability to choose sides (good or evil) in a predetermined future (the triumph of good over evil) where the infinite number of choices necessary by the players involved (all of mankind) are already known (and therefore are not really choices or free will at all).
Interesting to think about... -
mommy
Thinker,
Very thought provoking post, thank you. I guess the way I have always believed on a personal level, not globally. I believe that our future is determined, to a certain degree. I feel there are choices, like forks in the road and at that point in your life you are to use your free will. Eventually both roads that forked off come back to the main path, but the travel there is different. And then later on down the road another fork and another choice, and on and on.
I also feel that everything happens for a reason too. Some very strange(bad) things have happened to me in my life, but the outcome is always better, even if it is down the road. Such as being someplace I would never go and meeting my soul mate. Or getting fired one week and finding a better paying job with the perfect hours, the next. Just my opinion
wendy