Puppets, or People?
Are you free to choose? Some say every choice you make was fixed before you were born, by your genes, your upbringing, or God's decree. Others say you are the master of your fate and need no one's help. Scripture rejects both answers.
Paul told the philosophers of Athens that God now commandeth all men every where to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world (Acts 17:30–31). A command given to all assumes that all are accountable. And when God commands a sinner to repent, He is not mocking him. Through His Word and His Spirit, He makes a real response possible.
This doctrine stands beside God's sovereignty, not against it. God sovereignly decided that salvation would be received by faith, and He sovereignly holds every person responsible to believe (see The Sovereignty of God and Election and Foreknowledge). This article looks at the human side of that truth: what it means to answer to God, and why the sinner who refuses Christ has no one to blame but himself.
God has spoken to you through creation, through your conscience, and through His Word. What have you done with what He said?
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For Deeper Study
- Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological CritiqueAmazon David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke, eds.Mostly non-Calvinistic Baptist scholars, with a few Arminian contributors. Opens with Adam Harwood's critique of total depravity.
- The Potter's PromiseAmazon Leighton FlowersPopular-level non-Calvinistic Baptist (Traditionalist) reading of Romans 9 and related texts on human responsibility.
- Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist ApproachAmazon Kenneth KeathleyNon-Calvinistic Baptist. Relates God's sovereignty to genuine human freedom; affirms eternal security.
- Chosen But FreeAmazon Norman L. GeislerSelf-described moderate Calvinist whose conclusions on free will are close to the view taught here.
- Freedom of the WillAmazon Jonathan EdwardsCongregationalist and Calvinist, unlike this platform. The classic defense of compatibilism and moral inability; demanding but important.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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Election and Foreknowledge
Before the foundation of the world, God chose in Christ to save all who believe, according to His perfect foreknowledge, and predestined them to be conformed to the image of His Son.
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