Quote:
Originally Posted by aegsm76
I thought that the whole idea was that God gave us free will to choose?
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For me, that's an entirely valid point. It is a point however that does not negate God's sovereign election, foreknowledge and His use of these things to accomplish His will in a believer's life.
I see it as two sides of a single coin. Given the arrangement of our eyes within our human skulls, we cannot see both sides of the coin at once. It's just a physical reality. We can't do it.
Free will and determinism (predestination versus free will & etc) are on the two different sides of a "coin." Both sides coexist and the truths to be found on both sides are equally valid and important. However, they do represent a fundamental paradox. Given our human construction and the way that we perceive time, we simply can't process (or "see") both sides simultaneously to their fullest extant.
Some people have sought to alleviate this problem by mitigating the consequences of one side or the other. Calvin & Co. sought to emphasize the deterministic aspects and they may have been right to do so at the time given the authoritarian "works based" abuses they were confronting. But even they still had to admit that the individual choice of a single human being is a powerful thing to be reckoned with.
I prefer to accept both sides equally. It is paradoxical but I have found more satisfaction in doing so, in my spiritual pursuits and in the philosophical/intellectual realm as well.
Hybrid Mode
