i don't know if i'm misinterpetting you but we didn't gain free will from the tree we gained knowledge of self as i understnd it. as to the freedom to choose salvation, that's where the debate rose. do you have to "do", do accept the lord as your savior. I think free will is a gift. however i guess the bible doesn't say so
depends on what you mean when you say that. means different things to different people. anyone can take any text and attempt to twist it to mean something different. we can't read anything, the bible included, outside of our own experience and frame of reference.
Is it ok to interpret the Bible based solely on our own experiences? If not, then we should probably just leave it to the scholars to analyze this text and tell me what it all means.
You had the free choice to put on the clothes you wanted this morning, say the things you've said today, and go on Clutchfans. In my opinion there is alot of confusion about Free Will simply because it gets muddled in the discussion of predestination, God's soveriegn will, salvation, total depravity, and some other topics related. I think the entire Bible is written in the context of independent choices, and speaks directly to the issue. (Jesus asked people to follow him, some did others made excuses, some started and didn't stay with it etc) Maybe Free Will can mean to some Christians that God cannot intervene into the affairs of mankind. Or other Christians can use 'no' Free Will as a means to argue that man has no choice in salvation from sin, or following Jesus. Really I don't see a difference in free will and free choice. Typically my understanding is that those who argue against free will do so because based on the bible you cannot receive salvation apart from God's sovereign action- Jesus illustrated this by saying you must be born by the Spirit to enter His kingdom. Other verses say that salvation is not of human effort or work at all but a work of God. Thus the logic follows- only God can save, man cannot simply choose it, so man's will is not free. I think the bible is more clear and the way it should be put is- only God can save, man cannot simply choose it, so faith in Jesus is needed. (this is logical also because Jesus after His resurrection emphasized only one command to the disciples- go into the whole world and share the good news about Him to every person- thus in my logic He was looking for the same response or decision that the disciples who followed Him chose.) I think there are Christians who use the doctrine of total depravity to argue that God pre determines salvation. Why argue at all: It should be obvious to any conscious person that what comes out of their mouth, how they treat other people and every other choice they make is independent, it is a free choice, I don't mean there cannot be influences too strong for the person, for instance people who are addicted to behaviors may not have the power to choose independent of the addiction.
On the Tree of Knowledge, it's open to interpretation, I suppose. I don't see it as the birth of free will, but I have seen it argued that way -- that mankind departed from God's will in eating from it and had to choose between doing good and doing evil. I'm sure many people will feel like I've misconstrued the argument, since it seems like everybody believes something slightly different. I guess all I'm saying -- in long-form -- is I don't think there is a cut-and-dry answer to your question. There's plenty of evidence for both camps to make an intelligent argument, and you won't know for sure until you're dead, and maybe not even then. And, honestly, I haven't considered evidence about whether it is a gift (since I don't think it exists), but I would bet one could find Scriptural evidence for that too, if one wanted to make the argument. That may be, but at the end of the day, there is a truth to the matter. If that truth happens to be that there is a God, Jesus is his son, and people must choose to have faith in him to be redeemed, then the Bible has told us all that and there is a way of interpreting the Bible that is correct, and many others ways that are somewhere on the spectrum of less correct to apostasy. Attempts to twist the meaning may give you a temporal benefit, but probably won't give you any eternal one. Frames of reference seem irrelevant to God's perspective. If the Bible doesn't reflect that perspective (even if I can't see it because of my own frame of reference), then I see no value in it at all.
What if they were authored by men inspired by God, and must be interpreted and taken in context to apply to the questions we have now? I really don't like the word infallible thrown in there, because there have been times where we've found changes to the Bible that had been passed down through time. Those writings were still useful, but what we had considered the Bible until that point was proven "fallible". I know I'm analyzing word choice from a 2000-year-old letter, like I just said I don't like, but the main verse in the Bible that establishes its own authority is 2 Timothy 3:16. Paul doesn't tell Timothy that the scriptures are completely accurate or the exact word of God, he says that they are all inspired by God, and useful. If the Bible is good enough and accurate enough to show who Jesus is, and how to follow him, that's good enough for me. It doesn't have to be infallible (though I believe that it is, in a sense).
I've always believed that man has free will. God can command, but man can disobey. I'm sure there are others that believe otherwise. Maybe it is just me, but I've always felt the bible has leaned to the fact that people had free will. Heck, most of God's main men through the old Testament strayed away from time to time, and a lot of them argued with him directly. Also the fact that Jesus came at all and you choose to cloth yourself in him or not is up to you. I dunno. I don't have the answers, but its the way I lean. If we all didn't have a choice and were predestined, would we even know? If we didn't know, would it matter?
This is one thing that just blows my mind. I find it inconceivable that salvation could be determinate upon guessing right. Or, more to the point, upon having been born into the right religion. If the truth "happens to be" that people must choose to have faith in Jesus to be redeemed, then the majority of the world will not find redemption. And the majority of those 'damned' or 'left behind' or judged unworthy of God's eternal warmth and love, will be so because they happened to be born into another faith. The idea that a merciful God would damn most of the world for laying their bets on the faith of their nations and families instead of somehow figuring out that all they'd been taught to believe, all that comprises their faith, was wrong is just impossible for me to reconcile. Such a God would be, to the best of my reckoning, unmerciful, vain and unjust. If such a God exists (and really even if He doesn't), I feel bound by everything I can understand and feel about ethics and morality to oppose Him.
Because virtually everything we understand about Jesus' teachings is almost impossibly awesome. The ideas attributed to him changed the world forever and they continue to provide one of the greatest bases for positive change the world has known, as it evolves inevitably, continually becoming a more compassionate place. To me that's a pretty great reason to be a Christian. Even if you're an atheist.
The notion of "God" placing a "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" in a Utopian Garden with 2 naturally curious homosapiens that he created in his own image suggests he stacked the deck from the very beginning. Free Will my sack.
It's also interesting to see what science has to say about free will, and how it may not be as free people think. There was a story on NPR the other day from this guy who has done a ton of research on the roll biology and environment play on it. http://liberatormagazine.com/community/showthread.php?tid=1363 He pointed out about how Whitman who committed the murders from the UT tower had a brain tumor, and talked about another guy who had normal sexuality developed a brain tumor around the age of 40 and became attracted to children and a pedophile. The tumor was found and removed and all of those urges left. Then later it came back and sure enough they had missed part of the tumor. They went back in totally cleared it out, and his urges towards pedophilia were gone again. It isn't just brain tumors but all sorts of things dealing with genetics and the roll environment plays on those genetics that make people more likely to do certain things. It's kind of fascinating.
If god(s) were truly omnipotent they would in turn create perfect life forms; it would be impossible for them to create something that is flawed. And the fact that they cannot create something flawed means that they are not omnipotent. Christianity/Catholicism (and nearly every religion for that matter) is a random fairy tale created to gather an insane amount of followers and take advantage of them for monetary gain and to have some power. They draw in followers and they keep them from straying by telling them they will be saved; or threatening them with eternal damnation should they defect. The only exemption to this are "religions" that play more like philosophies rather than making their followers believe in some supreme deity. Buddhism and Confucianism for starters.
