Was in a bible study and no one could give a clear answer. they were debating whether god gave free will or is everything planned.
Unfortunately, I'm not schooled enough in the text of the Bible. However, given that he told Moses to write the 10 commandments, my guess would be No. Although, I don't necessarily believe or agree that God would not want you have free will. For some reason I've formulated a concept that God wants us all to 'collectively be'. Probably because it conveniently suits whatever agenda I've got going on in my head...lol.
It does in some measure. I can argue both side of the free will/predestination (two extremes in the discussion)...I don't imagine that Paul or Peter (or any other authors of letters in the NT) envisioned that every word they wrote would be picked over for 2,000+ years...or used to support the arguments it's been used to support. As for what I believe...I believe the truth is somewhere in between the 2.
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If I remembe correctly when Pontius Pilot gave the freedom choice to the people they chanted "Free Barabas" more than they chanted "Free Jesus". So I imagine even fewer chanted "Free Will" because if I remember correctly Pilot never gave the people that choice. So "Free Will" never doesn't actually exist.
I was always taught that we kinda had both. Like, everyone was going to heaven b/c Jesus died, so even though you had free will to follow Jesus' teachings or not, you'd still go to heaven.
I would think the Bible's teachings on Adam and Eve would demonstrate that the Bible says we have free will, but I agree with Donny about the Zen of the Bible... it's all in there somewhere for the picking. The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your ****ing mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions." -- Frank Zappa, interview, Playboy, May 2, 1993
That is a subject of denominational disagreement. Baptists would tend toward believing in free will (you must choose to follow Jesus), whereas more conservative Calvinist types would hedge toward foreknowledge, limited free will (because God chooses the saved), and even predestination (numerous Biblical examples of people not having free will). I would think it would demonstrate the opposite. That story is fatalistic -- you know they must eat of the fruit so that God could send his Son and redeem his People and glorify his Name, and all that.
hmm, what would you say about catholics, and i'm catholic schooled raised and really couldn't tell you. i guess all that confessing they would have to believe in free will. i think most christians do.
No where does it tell you in plain Greek that you do or do not have free will. But, there are numerous things in the Bible that imply things about the freedom of your will.
this is where i'm coming from. I was going to interject that free will is a gift from god. but then i realized i didn't know anything about free will in the bible. lets say it implies it, is free will a good thing according to the bible?
This is exactly right. To argue free will or predestination, people take letters that evangelists wrote to pastors, or churches, or even the church as a whole, for a specific purpose, pore over minutae of word choice, and assign it value that it wasn't intended to have. I mostly believe in free will, because it makes more sense to me logically. I don't pretend that literary devices that the Apostle Paul used prove me right.
I don't see that to be problematic if you start from the axiom that the Bible is the divine Word of God. Obviously, a meaning that wasn't intended by God isn't going to be useful or good. But, if God authored the Bible, and if he knows how it will be understood and used (being omniscient and all), he would have inspired it in such a way that such meanings could be deduced. (Notice that understanding implicitly denies free will, since the writers don't have authorship of what they write.) But, the alternative -- that the writings were authored by men in a particular time and place and can't legitimately be applied to questions we have now -- kinda takes the teeth out of the Christian God. Why be a Christian if the Bible isn't the infallible Word of God? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is what Adam and Eve allegedly ate from. I think this is where most free will types find evidence of free will. So, gaining free will from the Tree results in the curse (death, work, and suffering). Still, I don't think those advocates would see it as a bad thing because argument around free will and the Bible tends to center around the freedom to choose to have faith in Jesus, and to a lesser extent choosing to do God's will in your sanctification thereafter. But, it either is or it isn't. If God chose to not give us free will, would you say God did a bad thing?
2 Cor 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! Free Willy, Free Willy!
