Turretinfan's Conclusion: The Bible Teaches Libertarian Free Will Debate (Part 10 of 12)
The first point that we should consider is that the
affirmative burden has not been met. If
fact, all that scripture does is speak about choosing, which both on
compatiblism and on LFW is the case. More significantly, scripture even speaks
of the will being exercised, choices being made and God determining those
things, hand in hand, which shows that those two things are compatible. That’s the strongest evidence that we could
get that those things are compatible and we haven’t had anything from the other
side. There’s no where in scripture that
says the other way, that they are incompatible.
Most of the argument has revolved around whether or not
something is a real possibility if unbeknownst to us, God has determined which
of the two possibilities we will choose.
In other words, what it comes down to is one side shouting more loudly
that such and such isn’t a real possibility if in fact God has determined we
will select the other possibility of the two possibilities. Or that in fact nothing is possible, given
the fact that everything is absolutely certain to occur.
Now, those points skip over the fact that the bible is
written in the common speech. And was we
elucidated at great and somewhat painful length, the ordinary sense of choose
doesn’t normally have reference to God’s decrees. We provided some examples in scripture where
they do have reference to God’s decree, but in those cases, the choice is one
way. In other words, in the Daniel case, there are certain things that he will
do, things that he will choose to do, he will exercise his will. But these are the things he will do, he will
exalt himself above the God’s and he will even blaspheme the God of god’s. These as things he will do, but God has
determined they will occur. Look in the
context, you can see this is a prophecy, these are things that are certain to
occur and these things are things God has determined. God is not suggesting fatalistically that only
the final judgment has been determined but the various enumerated items that
are going to occur, will occur.
The question from the libertarian free will side,
ultimately boils down to, not what does the scripture say; it comes down to
what philosophical structure we impose on those words. There is not one case of
the peg is square, the peg is square, the peg is square, where we are told the
square peg doesn’t go into this type of hole.
In other words, you have a choice, you have a choice, but you don’t have
a choice when God’s has determined. If it
has some sort of statement like that, perhaps we would have some sort of
compelling case for incompatibly. As it
stands, from the standpoint of scripture, they merely say that men can choose
and they say that these choices are compatible with God’s determination.
The classic example that I provided in addition to the
Daniel case, is the example of Christ’s crucifixion. Which was the choice of the Sanhedrin and yet
it was at the determinate council of God. Now maybe someone will say that freewill is
sometimes suspended, but these are acts (the ones that I identified, in fact
the 7 men I identified) which men were held responsible for, which God
determined what they would do. So
unless we are going to take an irrelevance position with respect to free will,
in which they can be held morally responsible for things in which they had no
free will, which would be a very strange point for a libertarian free will advocate to
take. If we grant they had
responsibility and that responsibility is tied to it being voluntary, these are
all voluntary acts and yet they were determined by God, which proves they are
compatible and it proves it from scripture, unlike trying to prove that the
philosophical meaning of possibility requires possibility not withstanding
God’s decree. Which isn’t the ordinary meaning, as we explained many times.
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