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Does predestination mean that we are like robots bereft of any free will?

Something which comes up again and again in Christian circles is the question of free will and predestination. 

In this blog post, I would like to address one dimension of this. 

First of all, I should clarify that I am writing from the perspective of the "Five Points of Calvinism". While the theology of John Calvin, and Reformed Christianity as a whole, is far broader than this one issue, a central belief is that God has sovereignly chosen individuals to be saved in Christ, and has appointed the means by which that will be realised.

A very common objection raised against "Calvinism" is the false assumption that it must eliminate human free will. The whole situation can be, wrongly, understood in rather mechanical, deterministic terms, whereby God makes all the decisions and then implements them with humans cast in the role of "robots" who are coerced into believing in Christ and loving God. 

While, at times, "Calvinism" has been expressed and/or believed in a way that gets close to the caricature above, from very early on, the false view was explicitly addressed and repudiated in the historic confessions, in particular the Westminster Confession of 1647: 

"God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: (Eph. 1:11, Rom. 11:33, Heb. 6:17, Rom. 9:15,18) yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, (James 1:13,17, 1 John 1:5) nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." 

Likewise, in the earlier (1619) Canons of the Synod of Dordt (Article 16), we read the following words: 

"However, just as by the fall humans did not cease to be human, endowed with intellect and will, and just as sin, which has spread through the whole human race, did not abolish the nature of the human race but distorted and spiritually killed it, so also this divine grace of regeneration does not act in people as if they were blocks and stones; nor does it abolish the will and its properties or coerce a reluctant will by force, but spiritually revives, heals, reforms, and—in a manner at once pleasing and powerful—bends it back. As a result, a ready and sincere obedience of the Spirit now begins to prevail where before the rebellion and resistance of the flesh were completely dominant. In this the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consists. Thus, if the marvelous Maker of every good thing were not dealing with us, we would have no hope of getting up from our fall by our own free choice, by which we plunged ourselves into ruin when still standing upright."

This point was also made in the 1700s by Christian thinkers Jonathan Edwards and Andrew Fuller. 

The point being made is that God's action, in graciously reviving us from our state of rebellion against him, acts upon us in such a way that we want to be believe in him, and love him and obey him. In the words of the Synod of Dordt above, "a ready and sincere obedience of the Spirit now begins to prevail". 

Now this still means that it is all down to God's grace. Leaving aside alternative understandings of God's grace (such as Arminian theology), God's grace does not merely free us up to make our own choice one way or the other. Rather, in the Calvinist/Reformed understanding, God's irresistible (invincible) grace wears down our unwillingness and winsomely works on us so that we really want to believe. 

By way of analogy, imagine a young woman who has caught the eye of a young man. She, however is unimpressed and has not "fallen for him". Think what might that young man do to win the affections of his beloved. How patient would he be to everything in his power for her to requite his love? Has he "made" her love him, or coerced her? No. And yet, his actions have the effect of winning her willing love.  She might even speak in terms of being "unable to resist" his charms. And yet the response is hers. It is she who, eventually, loves him back. If it were otherwise, he would feel it wasn't "true love". 

A similar analogy could be given of the parent winning over a recalcitrant teenager son or daughter. 

There is a patristic saying, ascribed to Augustine, "God created us without us, but He will not save us without us." What is meant is that when God created us, we did not exist and he brought us into existence. But when God saved us, we did already exist. Saving us involved working with pre-existent material, including our human will. God does not simply "override" our will, or "program" us, or give us a new will to replace the faulty old one, but rather he works to revive and heal our wills - which in due course are then able to believe.

"All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out." (John 6:37 NKJV)
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