Free Will

Calvinists love to defend their gospel with the unbiblical assertion that humans have no free will to accept the gospel. Unfortunately, their gospel is another gospel that does not save.

Beginning with God, we know that God created everything in perfection. God cannot be the author of sin and evil, as we know from 1 John 1:5 that in God there is NO darkness at all. However, we do know that God allows sin and evil to exist. When God created Satan, He created Satan perfectly without spot or blemish. In Ezekial 28, we see that Satan was created "full of wisdom, perfect in beauty." The fact that Satan rebelled and disobeyed God is evidence that God had created His angels with the power of freedom and free will. Satan exercised his free will to sin, and thereby became the author of sin. Now if God had from eternity past "forced" Satan to sin, then it really would be God sinning against Himself. We must conclude, then, that Satan in his own volition decided to act contrary to God's perfection.

The Calvinists would most likely agree with me up to this point. Where they begin to diverge is the point where they believe that due to the introduction of a sin nature, we can only choose sin/evil and not the Gospel despite being given the freedom to accept/reject the gospel. If we analyze this, we would see that what they advocate isn't free will at all. Firstly, if we can ONLY choose sin, then by definition, we are not free as we have no freedom to choose God/good. If we are not free to choose to accept the Gospel, then we are ALSO not free to choose sin/evil. Why are we also not free to choose sin/evil? Let's examine this.

If we are not free to choose to accept the Gospel, then it means we are not really free at all because there is something we have no ability to choose in. And if we are not really free at all, then it means we are inanimate objects without the freedom of choice. Therefore, we cannot choose anything, whether good or evil, sin or God. Without the freedom to choose anything, God must make our decisions for us. Inevitably, this is what Calvinism's theology brings us to.

Why did God create Satan, His angels, and humans? Because He desires love, worship, loyalty, obedience, and etc. In order for us to do those things, God had to provide us the free will to do those things. Without free will, we would not be able to choose to love God, and on the flip side, choose to not love God. We would not be able to choose to worship Him or choose to not worship Him.

In the context of the gospel, God has given every human being the capacity and free will to accept or reject the salvation He provides. And if humans had no free will to accept the gospel, they would have no free will to reject the gospel. Furthermore, God would be unrighteous to hold man accountable for not accepting the salvation provision He provided, yet absolutely withholding man the capability to do so.

Total depravity is men lost in sin, in bondage to sin, separated from God, and therefore unable to save themselves. Without the external wooing of God, it is true that men would be hopelessly lost in sin and not choose God. However, God convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. God draws all men unto Him, that they may come to believe in Him as Savior. This means that through the preaching of the Gospel, existence of the church, and proof of the ageless Bible that God has revealed Himself to all men. Therefore, all men are accountable in their free will to accept the Gospel.

However, what Calvinists believe is that even with the existence of God's revealing Himself and convicting the world, men STILL cannot on his own free will accept the Gospel unless God chooses him to believe because he is so totally depraved. At this point, we can see that according to Calvinist theology, man actually has no free will, because he cannot on his own free will choose to accept the Gospel unless God has chosen him to. False.