Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!aplcen!haven!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: coatta@cs.ubc.ca (Terry Coatta) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Free Will Message-ID: Date: 27 Oct 89 07:05:56 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 61 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu The moderator's recent discussion of the positions of the RC church, the Reformers and most current day Protestants, with respect to faith, justification and free will has aroused my curiousity about a few things. Since the Reformers (at least so I am lead to believe) advanced the notion of sola scriptura (apologies for possible mispelling), what is the scriptural basis of election? It would seem to me that various portions of the gospels at least suggest some degree of free will (John 3:16 John 5:24 Acts 16:31 Mark 11:22 The first three all use the word ``believe'' or derivations of it. I don't know about the original Greek, but that word has connotations of personal volition associated with it for me. The last one I find most interesting because Jesus says ``Have faith in God''. He doesn't say ``Pray for faith'', but actually directs people to act, which seems to imply some degree of free will). Another item which I'm curious about is the notion that the only way one can be condemned is by rejecting Christ/God. If indeed this is an accurate assessment of salvation, I am curious about excatly what ``rejection of Christ/God'' is. Each denomination presents a different Christ/God and to reject any of these ``shadows'' of God is not to reject God himself. An extension of this type of argument would be that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a human to actually know God in completeness (the transcendance of God), and therefore, a person cannot truly reject God in this life. Is this type of argument representative of any branch of Christian theology? Terry Coatta Dept. of Computer Science, UBC, Vancouver BC, Canada coatta@cs.ubc.ca ``To conquer death, all you have to do is die.'' Jesus, in Jesus Christ Superstar [The best place to go for the Biblical background on election is certainly Romans. Probably you should read at least Rom 9-11. Parts that particularly suggest election are 9:10-18. This seems pretty clearly to suggest that God chooses those who he is going to reveal himself to, and makes the rest stubborn. That passage cites a lot of the OT evidence: Jacob and Esau and God's hardening of Pharaoh. There are some other ways to read these passages -- e.g. Rom 9 has to be taken in the context of Rom 11 -- but I do see where Luther and Calvin get their ideas. Remember that for those who believe in election, things happen on two levels at the same time. It does not remove decision: people do still make choices. It's just that God has arranged things so that they make the choices that he wants. It does still make sense to call on people to decide: your calling may be part of the means God is counting on to carry out his election. Anyway, I don't intend to go into all of this yet again, but just to point out that there is at least some Biblical basis for election. I don't know of any denomination that makes exactly the argument you ask about. Generally people acknowledge that there are disagreements, but not to the extent that they think different denominations are talking about different Gods. Within the American Protestant tradition at least, priority normally seems to be on following Christ as your savior, and salvation is associated with a commitment to Christ, not with holding a particular doctrinal view. To say that no one can be condemned because there is no agreement about what is essential is essentially an agnostic position. This might be congenial to some of the Unitarian/Universalist tradition, but I'm not up on that. --clh]