I've been quite uncertain about the matter of Calvinism & genuine human freedom of the will, over the years. But gradually found myself gravitating away from Calvinism, regardless of my uncertainty. I really look forward to hearing what further insight Dr. Craig may bring on this subject, that has remained unclear in my mind, to this day.
He takes a fairly strong Molinist view. I highly encourage putting in the effort to understand the Molinist perspective. While it’s certainly becoming rapidly more popular, it’s still often misunderstood.
The greatest book I have read on this topic is Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will. Edwards is considered by many to be America’s greatest philosopher and theologian. It is considered one of the best of his works
Looking forward to your sequel next week, have been involved in discussions with both Calvanists and Armenians recently, I am sure your presentation will help me big deal answer some questions I have on this complex subject of freewill.
I highly recommend listening to James White (he even has stuff interacting with Craigs material) and I recommend listening to Apologia Church for more help on the topic
So God just wants some people to suffer eternal condemnation and others to be saved, based on the doctrines addressed in this video, this is the God of people who believe these things about Him.
I'm waiting with bated breath for the answer to the question of free will. I've been struggling so much with trying to figure out how combining possible origins of the soul with freedom of the will determining the possibility of where that freedom's limits are. If the soul is preexistent with God but separate from God as a sort of "pool of souls" for example, then God can still be good while our wills being "determined" with a compatibilistic free will. However, that would also imply that "bad souls" exist from the getgo with no possibility of ever being saved; this is possible but still unsatisfying. Another is that God creates the soul and the soul has a different type of action that brutely chooses one decision over another with no prior sources to where that soul chooses from, but if we combine the foreknowledge of God, he would also know if that soul will ever sin. Which leaves me wondering why God would ever create that soul to begin with then? If it's the only way in order to create new life, does that mean God has to work off of some "soul constructing queue system" and can't choose one type of soul over another or something similar? Clearly, there are people who will end up continually rejecting God, but the source of souls creates a big problem for me on whether we're entirely determined or that if we have some sort of libertarian freedom why we would be created at all. If someone's a Molinist/Armenianist and knows a solution to this, PLEASE let me know if you have a more satisfying answer or a way to clarify in a way that actually makes sense to me. Because right now I'm inclined toward compatibilism and very bitterly at that.
Some souls can be needed to save others. The influence of a soul who will ultimately reject God and make thousands more want God. Remember that you cannot know what good truly is, without knowing what bad is. But think of it like this: as God already knows what that person will do, not making that person based on that would be a violation of His own law - to have creatures with free will. If you were on the side and see that you would say: hey wait a minute, that's not fair. You said free creatures, why are you letting only creatures that choose you to exist? If free means "free", then let all that are free - exist. And God said: no problem, I will make such a world. Because you are dealing with the mind of God. A mind that can predict every moment of your life based on you and what's around you. Your thought process is ongoing, even if you say "I will think of nothing" it is still running, still "processing nothing". God is the creator of such a process and thus He can accurately predict every single thing from birth to death. But His mind goes beyond as He can do that for every single being and every single physical event, simultaneously. Thus nothing can surprise Him and nothing is hidden from Him. Does this mean you don't have free will? No, you have it, but it's impossible for you to be unpredictable to God. It's impossible for you to be less than 100% predictable to God. All of His creation is already predicted, already known, by Him, and how it will end. So the only reason this world exists is because the end pleases God. And this is the perfect world for that. True free creatures that really do express their free will capability and though fallen, still end up choosing God. That how good He is at this.
I’m no expert in this area, but maybe I can help shed a little light on the important issues. FIrst, you seem to have constructed this dilemma concerning the origin of the soul, in which a pre-existent (it seems you mean ‘uncreated’ by this) soul cannot have libertarian freewill, whereas a created soul cannot have compatibilist freewill. But I see no reason for this. While it is plausible that you could have an uncreated soul originating from some pool of souls as you put it in which all of those souls have some bent towards doing either good or evil, even in this scenario, there is no reason to assume this ‘bent’ precludes libertarian freedom. All the libertarian claims, in essence, is that my will serves me rather my choices serving my will. I can will to do something, but I can also choose to go against that which I will to do. Of course, the compatibilist says that, in fact, that which you do is the thing that you also will to do, thus making your choices subject to your will. Rather than addressing that particular debate right now, my point is that either one of these cases could possibly be true, whether the soul in question is created or uncreated. Now second (and this portion would only apply directly to one who places confidence in the Judeo-Christian scriptures on all that they attempt to teach), the Bible leaves very little, if any, room to believe that the soul of man is pre-existent and not created along with his human body. A number of verses would support this such as John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16. But even if we think for a moment philosophically about eternal, uncreated souls, how is it they could exist? We understand God’s eternality through his aseity, so is this an attribute we would also want to ascribe to rational human souls? If not, then the souls existence would have to somehow be rooted in the nature of God himself, perhaps emanating eternally from him in the sense that early Greek church fathers talked about the Son ‘eternally begotten of the Father’, but all of this seems to over complicate the plain, natural biblical teaching that each man is a completely, newly created being, consisting of both body and soul. Third and finally, your primary concern seems to quite plainly be: how is it that God could create a free creature with uncoerced, libertarian freedom, know in advance that this creature would choose to reject him, and still be good. And this is where Molinism can provide a perhaps unusually satisfying answer. To put the answer in its simplest form, the Molinist believes that this world is the best of all feasible worlds that God could have created. To flesh that out a little, let’s just consider the concept of ‘best’ or ‘produces the most good’. It is true that it is not as good for a person to reject God’s offer of salvation as it is for them to accept it (though here the Calvinist is apt to argue that even in man’s damnation God is glorified via the execution and demonstration of his justice). So let’s grant it that in a possible world where God creates one person and that person subsequently chooses to freely reject him, that isn’t such a great world. We can even perhaps grant that it would be better if that world had never been created. But what happens when we add a second person to the equation. Sure, nothing changes if they also choose to reject God, but given the 50/50 base probability of them choosing to live in harmony with God, let’s say they do. I think it is clear from scripture that it is a tremendous good for a person to live in harmonious fellowship with God. So perhaps (emphasis here on the perhaps :) ) maybe it is worth the cost of damning one soul to allow for the possibility of saving another. Applying this to the actual world, the Molinist argues that God has chosen to actualize that world which ultimately leads to the greatest amount of good. But why then is there suffering and evil? Why not create a world in which millions of people all freely choose to accept God’s salvific offer? To that, the Molinist can respond by noting that, while all things are surely possible for God, not all things are feasible. Some things God cannot do by nature of them being logically impossible (e.g. create a rock so big he can’t lift it), but there are other things he may not be able to do by nature of them not being feasible. For example, it is broadly logically possible for you to choose to eat your own hand (bear with me, sometimes graphic is more memorable). But it may not be feasible for God to actualize a world in which you choose to eat your own hand, because it might be that in all actualizable worlds, you would never make this choose. Likewise, while the Molinist does believe that this world is, in at least a limited sense, awful; she can also maintain that this is the best of all possibly feasible worlds for God to create given the condition of autonomous beings with libertarian freedom (which in my estimation says a lot more about the awfulness of autonomous agents than it does about God’s goodness or omnipotence). It just might not be feasible for God to create a world in which everyone chooses to freely do good without him having to violate freewill. One final note regarding the issue of determination, it is also fair to say on this view that while humans have complete and uncoreced, libertarian freedom, everything is also ultimately determined by God in the sense that this is the world he chose to create in which certain free actions would occur ultimately leading to a predetermined outcome. From our perspective, we have choices, but from the eternal perspective of God nothing could have ever happened other than it does given that he knew which world he would freely choose to actualize. Problem solved. Maybe some of this helps, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, try not to become embittered by a view you feel forced to logically accept. Certainly use that as motivation to continue searching, but if anyone can live an intellectually confident and fulfilling life, even in the midst of uncertainty, it is above all the Christian who believes in the affirmation of Romans 8:28 that God is good and all that he does is likewise always for our ultimate good and benefit.
@@pitAlexx I was looking into agent-causation and event-causation and I didn't realize that this dichotomy was the heart of what I was trying to figure out! I feel like I sent that comment prematurely. But so that it might help anyone else that comes across this; The difference between agent-causation is that the person themselves or "the will" is the sole cause of a person's actions and it ends there vs. event-causation is that our "wills" ultimately come from a sort of chain of events that lead up to what we perceive as some sort of "spontaneous will". There can be motivations that in some way stem from events but ultimately it comes from an agent that is a different category of things when it comes to choices, temporally your choices create events but not the inverse; they may influence your choice like God responding to counterfactual knowledge of what you will do but not the same to what you actually do. And Alexandru gave a very helpful point about God using one soul or "will" to help save other souls or "wills". I initially saw this as the "pool of souls" idea that was a sort of compatibilistic idea of God trying to save people but I didn't even consider that God's actualizing of worlds could have the same sort of notions of Him using one soul to influence the choices of another's. In a sense, I realize that compatibilism is almost identical with the Molinist understanding of free creatures but with the major difference of choices being ultimately up to a sort of "spontaneous" will and God actualizing a world in which he knows ahead of time what those "spontaneous" choices will be.
Alexandru Ghioroae - I really like the first part of your response, where you pose the question, “How do we know what is ‘good’”, the implication being that perhaps it is necessary for there to be souls who reject God in order to achieve such a high amount of ‘good’, whatever that means exactly. But regarding your second point, I am highly skeptical. You suggest that for God to not create a free creature on the basis on his knowing what that creature would do is itself a violation of that creature’s freedom. Given that, God must create such a creature. But if this is the case, then you have to believe that this is the only possible world of free creatures that God could have created, because if you grant that God could have created a different world with different free creatures, you admit that God could have created others but chose not to. The implication here is that God cannot create any more or less free creatures than he does, which places a sever limitation on God’s own freedom. What then determines which creatures God will create and which he won’t? Or is there some pre-determined set of creatures independent of God that must be created, regardless of his own prerogatives? It seems to me this answer causes much more problems than it seeks to solve.
So in the beginning we have been presented with a question, Dr Craig presented a few possible alternatives but did not give an answer to the initial question. Am I correct ? Or have I misunderstood something. If he has given an answer can someone point me to the exact moment in the video where he did that ? Thank you
LinebackerTuba Well, that everything is determined, even sin, by a God who calls everyone to repent but only appropriates the ability to do so to a few selected individuals and then condemns everyone else to eternal torment for his own glory even though they had absolutely no choice of their own to repent and love him.
A man wills to do as he pleases. But does a man will WHAT he pleases? Or in other words, is it it within man's will to define his will? Or does the will occur in a person in unison with their nature?
Freedom of the will does not imply that there are no influences upon the will. For example, it's difficult to see how a child could choose to have pistachio flavored ice cream if they've never had it before and do not know it exists. Rather, freedom of the will simply means that if a choice is free, it is not causally necessitated by antecedent conditions over which the person has no control. - RF Admin
When dealing with any biblical subject start with the eternal words of the eternal Word, and then see His taught truth corroborated in the rest of the bible, and never use the equivalent of the Talmud to substantiate anything, so let's listen to every word He spoke in Luke chapter on the subject of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, three lost things, a lost sheep, a lost piece of silver, and a lost son. in the first case, the sovereign shepherd leaves the ninety and nine sheep, who are not lost, and are the equivalent of ninety and nine people, who do not need to repent, to seek and find the lost sheep, presumably it had strayed from the fold, the Shepherds Seeks, the Shepherd finds, and Shepherd carries it on His shoulders back to the safety and security of the fold, in the second case, the woman loses one of her pieces of silver, we are not told how, but we know that a piece of silver is inanimate, and could not possibly lose itself, the Woman lights a candle she supplies the Light, she sweeps and she searches until she finds it.In the third case the younger son rebels against His father service, see the dedicated and devoted service of the elder son, he demands his inheritance, and deliberately decides to embark on the pursuit of his own pleasure wasting his wealth on wantonness, finally bankrupt and bereft, sells himself to feed swine to stay off starvation, until at last, he decides to retrace his rebellious steps, pleading for pardon, and is willing to take the place of a day laborer, but to his astonishment, the Father whos will he despised and whose ways he reject runs to meet him in Amazing Grace, and covers him with kisses, and clothes hIm with the best robe, gives him the ring of a restored relationship and provides him with a walk suitable with both,
According to Luther, we do not have free will or free choice but we are in captive of either the will of God or that of devil. He wrote: On the other hand in relation to God, or in matters pertaining to salvation or damnation, A MAN HAS NO FREE CHOICE, but is a CAPTIVE, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan (Luther: Bondage of the Will, Luther's Works, Vol. 33, page 70) and: For if God is in us, Satan is absent, and only a good-will is present; If God is absent, Satan is present, and only an evil-will is in us (ibid, page 112).
i went to the reformed camp kicking and screaming but i do believe it´s the biblical answer to this question. God's sovereignty and free will are two sides of the same coin, therefore, by my lights, compatibilism makes sense for the ''below/worldly'' things. and predestination for the ''above/heavenly/salvation'' things. but i'm open for correction.
The fact that you went there "kicking and screaming" should tell you something about the systematic. If it was as recognisably good as God is, you wouldn't dislike it.
Great video! Makes god out to be an authoritarian, and a terrible parent figure. The whole point of life is to be better then your creator, be better then what was meant for you. Human defience need not be like the devils, we may defy by being better!
No one will come to Jesus Christ and His Salvation unless they first desire to. Therefore, the will must be in subjection to desire. How then will a person get a desire for Christ and His Salvation ? There seems to be only two possible ways: - 1. God Sovereignly gives a desire to a person to want Christ and His Salvation. 2. God has created the person in such a ‘particular way’ that the person’s desires are in accordance with how God has created them. So, if a person desires Christ and His Salvation, then is because God has created him or her in such a way that he or she will desire Christ and His Salvation. Therefore, there can be no free will to choose Christ nor any free will in regard to everyday earthly things. The person’s will is in subjection to their desires and their desires are in subjection to the way that God has created them. Freedom of the Will is not possible as long as a person is a result of God's creative act in their essence and nature.
But you’ve left out the obvious third alternative. 3. That God creates a person and places them in such circumstances where they will freely desire and choose him. With this, he neither gives them the desire nor the will, but places them in conditions such that their will naturally conforms with their desire for him, a desire he has divinely orchestrated through circumstances but is neither coercive nor forced.
@@micahscanz --- Your third alternative is included in my second alternative. God creates people in such a way that they will have the desires that they do. As I wrote.... 2. God has created the person in such a ‘particular way’ that the person’s desires are in accordance with how God has created them. So, if a person desires Christ and His Salvation, then is because God has created him or her in such a way that he or she will desire Christ and His Salvation. Therefore, there can be no free will to choose Christ nor any free will in regard to everyday earthly things. The person’s will is in subjection to their desires and their desires are in subjection to the way that God has created them. Freedom of the Will is not possible as long as a person is a result of God's creative act in their essence and nature.
So when we are supposedly made in the image of God, your response is "lol jk not after the fall." Yuck. Calvinists and their invisible words and scripture twisting!
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![[William Lane Craig] Q&A - Neuroscience and free will?](/img/n.gif)
Thank you Dr Craig! You're a hero to many!
I've been quite uncertain about the matter of Calvinism & genuine human freedom of the will, over the years. But gradually found myself gravitating away from Calvinism, regardless of my uncertainty. I really look forward to hearing what further insight Dr. Craig may bring on this subject, that has remained unclear in my mind, to this day.
He takes a fairly strong Molinist view. I highly encourage putting in the effort to understand the Molinist perspective. While it’s certainly becoming rapidly more popular, it’s still often misunderstood.
@@micahscanz Thanks Micah.
The greatest book I have read on this topic is Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will. Edwards is considered by many to be America’s greatest philosopher and theologian. It is considered one of the best of his works
Thank you so much Dr. Craig for the enlightenment. Praise God for you.
I’m reading the comments and MY LORD. You guys are all way to smart. All I know is...THIS VIDEO SLAPS’
Looking forward to your sequel next week, have been involved in discussions with both Calvanists and Armenians recently, I am sure your presentation will help me big deal answer some questions I have on this complex subject of freewill.
I highly recommend listening to James White (he even has stuff interacting with Craigs material) and I recommend listening to Apologia Church for more help on the topic
So God just wants some people to suffer eternal condemnation and others to be saved, based on the doctrines addressed in this video, this is the God of people who believe these things about Him.
I'm waiting with bated breath for the answer to the question of free will. I've been struggling so much with trying to figure out how combining possible origins of the soul with freedom of the will determining the possibility of where that freedom's limits are. If the soul is preexistent with God but separate from God as a sort of "pool of souls" for example, then God can still be good while our wills being "determined" with a compatibilistic free will. However, that would also imply that "bad souls" exist from the getgo with no possibility of ever being saved; this is possible but still unsatisfying. Another is that God creates the soul and the soul has a different type of action that brutely chooses one decision over another with no prior sources to where that soul chooses from, but if we combine the foreknowledge of God, he would also know if that soul will ever sin. Which leaves me wondering why God would ever create that soul to begin with then? If it's the only way in order to create new life, does that mean God has to work off of some "soul constructing queue system" and can't choose one type of soul over another or something similar? Clearly, there are people who will end up continually rejecting God, but the source of souls creates a big problem for me on whether we're entirely determined or that if we have some sort of libertarian freedom why we would be created at all. If someone's a Molinist/Armenianist and knows a solution to this, PLEASE let me know if you have a more satisfying answer or a way to clarify in a way that actually makes sense to me. Because right now I'm inclined toward compatibilism and very bitterly at that.
Some souls can be needed to save others. The influence of a soul who will ultimately reject God and make thousands more want God. Remember that you cannot know what good truly is, without knowing what bad is.
But think of it like this: as God already knows what that person will do, not making that person based on that would be a violation of His own law - to have creatures with free will. If you were on the side and see that you would say: hey wait a minute, that's not fair. You said free creatures, why are you letting only creatures that choose you to exist? If free means "free", then let all that are free - exist. And God said: no problem, I will make such a world.
Because you are dealing with the mind of God. A mind that can predict every moment of your life based on you and what's around you. Your thought process is ongoing, even if you say "I will think of nothing" it is still running, still "processing nothing". God is the creator of such a process and thus He can accurately predict every single thing from birth to death. But His mind goes beyond as He can do that for every single being and every single physical event, simultaneously. Thus nothing can surprise Him and nothing is hidden from Him.
Does this mean you don't have free will? No, you have it, but it's impossible for you to be unpredictable to God. It's impossible for you to be less than 100% predictable to God. All of His creation is already predicted, already known, by Him, and how it will end. So the only reason this world exists is because the end pleases God. And this is the perfect world for that. True free creatures that really do express their free will capability and though fallen, still end up choosing God. That how good He is at this.
I’m no expert in this area, but maybe I can help shed a little light on the important issues.
FIrst, you seem to have constructed this dilemma concerning the origin of the soul, in which a pre-existent (it seems you mean ‘uncreated’ by this) soul cannot have libertarian freewill, whereas a created soul cannot have compatibilist freewill. But I see no reason for this. While it is plausible that you could have an uncreated soul originating from some pool of souls as you put it in which all of those souls have some bent towards doing either good or evil, even in this scenario, there is no reason to assume this ‘bent’ precludes libertarian freedom. All the libertarian claims, in essence, is that my will serves me rather my choices serving my will. I can will to do something, but I can also choose to go against that which I will to do. Of course, the compatibilist says that, in fact, that which you do is the thing that you also will to do, thus making your choices subject to your will. Rather than addressing that particular debate right now, my point is that either one of these cases could possibly be true, whether the soul in question is created or uncreated.
Now second (and this portion would only apply directly to one who places confidence in the Judeo-Christian scriptures on all that they attempt to teach), the Bible leaves very little, if any, room to believe that the soul of man is pre-existent and not created along with his human body. A number of verses would support this such as John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16. But even if we think for a moment philosophically about eternal, uncreated souls, how is it they could exist? We understand God’s eternality through his aseity, so is this an attribute we would also want to ascribe to rational human souls? If not, then the souls existence would have to somehow be rooted in the nature of God himself, perhaps emanating eternally from him in the sense that early Greek church fathers talked about the Son ‘eternally begotten of the Father’, but all of this seems to over complicate the plain, natural biblical teaching that each man is a completely, newly created being, consisting of both body and soul.
Third and finally, your primary concern seems to quite plainly be: how is it that God could create a free creature with uncoerced, libertarian freedom, know in advance that this creature would choose to reject him, and still be good. And this is where Molinism can provide a perhaps unusually satisfying answer. To put the answer in its simplest form, the Molinist believes that this world is the best of all feasible worlds that God could have created.
To flesh that out a little, let’s just consider the concept of ‘best’ or ‘produces the most good’. It is true that it is not as good for a person to reject God’s offer of salvation as it is for them to accept it (though here the Calvinist is apt to argue that even in man’s damnation God is glorified via the execution and demonstration of his justice). So let’s grant it that in a possible world where God creates one person and that person subsequently chooses to freely reject him, that isn’t such a great world. We can even perhaps grant that it would be better if that world had never been created. But what happens when we add a second person to the equation. Sure, nothing changes if they also choose to reject God, but given the 50/50 base probability of them choosing to live in harmony with God, let’s say they do. I think it is clear from scripture that it is a tremendous good for a person to live in harmonious fellowship with God. So perhaps (emphasis here on the perhaps :) ) maybe it is worth the cost of damning one soul to allow for the possibility of saving another. Applying this to the actual world, the Molinist argues that God has chosen to actualize that world which ultimately leads to the greatest amount of good.
But why then is there suffering and evil? Why not create a world in which millions of people all freely choose to accept God’s salvific offer? To that, the Molinist can respond by noting that, while all things are surely possible for God, not all things are feasible. Some things God cannot do by nature of them being logically impossible (e.g. create a rock so big he can’t lift it), but there are other things he may not be able to do by nature of them not being feasible. For example, it is broadly logically possible for you to choose to eat your own hand (bear with me, sometimes graphic is more memorable). But it may not be feasible for God to actualize a world in which you choose to eat your own hand, because it might be that in all actualizable worlds, you would never make this choose. Likewise, while the Molinist does believe that this world is, in at least a limited sense, awful; she can also maintain that this is the best of all possibly feasible worlds for God to create given the condition of autonomous beings with libertarian freedom (which in my estimation says a lot more about the awfulness of autonomous agents than it does about God’s goodness or omnipotence). It just might not be feasible for God to create a world in which everyone chooses to freely do good without him having to violate freewill.
One final note regarding the issue of determination, it is also fair to say on this view that while humans have complete and uncoreced, libertarian freedom, everything is also ultimately determined by God in the sense that this is the world he chose to create in which certain free actions would occur ultimately leading to a predetermined outcome. From our perspective, we have choices, but from the eternal perspective of God nothing could have ever happened other than it does given that he knew which world he would freely choose to actualize. Problem solved.
Maybe some of this helps, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, try not to become embittered by a view you feel forced to logically accept. Certainly use that as motivation to continue searching, but if anyone can live an intellectually confident and fulfilling life, even in the midst of uncertainty, it is above all the Christian who believes in the affirmation of Romans 8:28 that God is good and all that he does is likewise always for our ultimate good and benefit.
@@pitAlexx I was looking into agent-causation and event-causation and I didn't realize that this dichotomy was the heart of what I was trying to figure out! I feel like I sent that comment prematurely. But so that it might help anyone else that comes across this; The difference between agent-causation is that the person themselves or "the will" is the sole cause of a person's actions and it ends there vs. event-causation is that our "wills" ultimately come from a sort of chain of events that lead up to what we perceive as some sort of "spontaneous will". There can be motivations that in some way stem from events but ultimately it comes from an agent that is a different category of things when it comes to choices, temporally your choices create events but not the inverse; they may influence your choice like God responding to counterfactual knowledge of what you will do but not the same to what you actually do. And Alexandru gave a very helpful point about God using one soul or "will" to help save other souls or "wills". I initially saw this as the "pool of souls" idea that was a sort of compatibilistic idea of God trying to save people but I didn't even consider that God's actualizing of worlds could have the same sort of notions of Him using one soul to influence the choices of another's. In a sense, I realize that compatibilism is almost identical with the Molinist understanding of free creatures but with the major difference of choices being ultimately up to a sort of "spontaneous" will and God actualizing a world in which he knows ahead of time what those "spontaneous" choices will be.
Alexandru Ghioroae - I really like the first part of your response, where you pose the question, “How do we know what is ‘good’”, the implication being that perhaps it is necessary for there to be souls who reject God in order to achieve such a high amount of ‘good’, whatever that means exactly.
But regarding your second point, I am highly skeptical. You suggest that for God to not create a free creature on the basis on his knowing what that creature would do is itself a violation of that creature’s freedom. Given that, God must create such a creature. But if this is the case, then you have to believe that this is the only possible world of free creatures that God could have created, because if you grant that God could have created a different world with different free creatures, you admit that God could have created others but chose not to. The implication here is that God cannot create any more or less free creatures than he does, which places a sever limitation on God’s own freedom. What then determines which creatures God will create and which he won’t? Or is there some pre-determined set of creatures independent of God that must be created, regardless of his own prerogatives? It seems to me this answer causes much more problems than it seeks to solve.
@@micahscanz Your response gives even more clarity on this, thank you!
Amazing!
So in the beginning we have been presented with a question, Dr Craig presented a few possible alternatives but did not give an answer to the initial question. Am I correct ? Or have I misunderstood something. If he has given an answer can someone point me to the exact moment in the video where he did that ? Thank you
You’re correct. He’s just taking time to explain the competeing views, here focusing on reformation thought, a view he doesn’t personally ascribe to.
My sentiments and beliefs are more in line with that of the Irish monk, Pelagius.
WLC, you just left us off with the worse and most depressing soteriological system ever espoused and said, “have a blessed week.”
Don't worry, bud - he'll give the better one next week! Haha
what is depressing about it?
LinebackerTuba Well, that everything is determined, even sin, by a God who calls everyone to repent but only appropriates the ability to do so to a few selected individuals and then condemns everyone else to eternal torment for his own glory even though they had absolutely no choice of their own to repent and love him.
Has your belief changed in the last 3 years?
A man wills to do as he pleases. But does a man will WHAT he pleases? Or in other words, is it it within man's will to define his will? Or does the will occur in a person in unison with their nature?
Freedom of the will does not imply that there are no influences upon the will. For example, it's difficult to see how a child could choose to have pistachio flavored ice cream if they've never had it before and do not know it exists. Rather, freedom of the will simply means that if a choice is free, it is not causally necessitated by antecedent conditions over which the person has no control. - RF Admin
When dealing with any biblical subject start with the eternal words of the eternal Word, and then see His taught truth corroborated in the rest of the bible, and never use the equivalent of the Talmud to substantiate anything, so let's listen to every word He spoke in Luke chapter on the subject of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, three lost things, a lost sheep, a lost piece of silver, and a lost son. in the first case, the sovereign shepherd leaves the ninety and nine sheep, who are not lost, and are the equivalent of ninety and nine people, who do not need to repent, to seek and find the lost sheep, presumably it had strayed from the fold, the Shepherds Seeks, the Shepherd finds, and Shepherd carries it on His shoulders back to the safety and security of the fold, in the second case, the woman loses one of her pieces of silver, we are not told how, but we know that a piece of silver is inanimate, and could not possibly lose itself, the Woman lights a candle she supplies the Light, she sweeps and she searches until she finds it.In the third case the younger son rebels against His father service, see the dedicated and devoted service of the elder son, he demands his inheritance, and deliberately decides to embark on the pursuit of his own pleasure wasting his wealth on wantonness, finally bankrupt and bereft, sells himself to feed swine to stay off starvation, until at last, he decides to retrace his rebellious steps, pleading for pardon, and is willing to take the place of a day laborer, but to his astonishment, the Father whos will he despised and whose ways he reject runs to meet him in Amazing Grace, and covers him with kisses, and clothes hIm with the best robe, gives him the ring of a restored relationship and provides him with a walk suitable with both,
According to Luther, we do not have free will or free choice but we are in captive of either the will of God or that of devil. He wrote: On the other hand in relation to God, or in matters pertaining to salvation or damnation, A MAN HAS NO FREE CHOICE, but is a CAPTIVE, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan (Luther: Bondage of the Will, Luther's Works, Vol. 33, page 70) and: For if God is in us, Satan is absent, and only a good-will is present; If God is absent, Satan is present, and only an evil-will is in us (ibid, page 112).
Meh. Luther wasn't right about everything. I'm about to go through Luther and Erasmus's argument, myself. :)
i went to the reformed camp kicking and screaming but i do believe it´s the biblical answer to this question. God's sovereignty and free will are two sides of the same coin, therefore, by my lights, compatibilism makes sense for the ''below/worldly'' things. and predestination for the ''above/heavenly/salvation'' things. but i'm open for correction.
The fact that you went there "kicking and screaming" should tell you something about the systematic. If it was as recognisably good as God is, you wouldn't dislike it.
MyLifeForAuir87 - With a litmus test like that, what does one do with the doctrine of eternal damnation?
Gahhhhh. Calvinistic"sovereignty" is a mutilation of God, and it's such an immature and unbiblical understanding.
Great video! Makes god out to be an authoritarian, and a terrible parent figure.
The whole point of life is to be better then your creator, be better then what was meant for you. Human defience need not be like the devils, we may defy by being better!
Refers to Scripture as data🤦🏽♂️
No one will come to Jesus Christ and His Salvation unless they first desire to. Therefore, the will must be in subjection to desire. How then will a person get a desire for Christ and His Salvation ?
There seems to be only two possible ways: -
1. God Sovereignly gives a desire to a person to want Christ and His Salvation.
2. God has created the person in such a ‘particular way’ that the person’s desires are in accordance with how God has created them. So, if a person desires Christ and His Salvation, then is because God has created him or her in such a way that he or she will desire Christ and His Salvation.
Therefore, there can be no free will to choose Christ nor any free will in regard to everyday earthly things. The person’s will is in subjection to their desires and their desires are in subjection to the way that God has created them. Freedom of the Will is not possible as long as a person is a result of God's creative act in their essence and nature.
But you’ve left out the obvious third alternative.
3. That God creates a person and places them in such circumstances where they will freely desire and choose him.
With this, he neither gives them the desire nor the will, but places them in conditions such that their will naturally conforms with their desire for him, a desire he has divinely orchestrated through circumstances but is neither coercive nor forced.
@@micahscanz --- Your third alternative is included in my second alternative. God creates people in such a way that they will have the desires that they do.
As I wrote....
2. God has created the person in such a ‘particular way’ that the person’s desires are in accordance with how God has created them. So, if a person desires Christ and His Salvation, then is because God has created him or her in such a way that he or she will desire Christ and His Salvation.
Therefore, there can be no free will to choose Christ nor any free will in regard to everyday earthly things. The person’s will is in subjection to their desires and their desires are in subjection to the way that God has created them. Freedom of the Will is not possible as long as a person is a result of God's creative act in their essence and nature.
So when we are supposedly made in the image of God, your response is "lol jk not after the fall." Yuck. Calvinists and their invisible words and scripture twisting!
Oh nice@@micahscanz