There are two views on free will. There is the humanist view, which is that man has a completely free choice to do something with no prior inclination to do so. There is no prior dispensation. The second view is that we do. Because as humans we do have a prior inclination and its towards wickedness.
Edwards says that “free will is the mind choosing” What he is saying that is that they are inseparably related. Without the mind, there is no choice. The will isn’t something that acts apart from the mind. But it acts in conjunction with the mind. What ever the mind deems as being desirable is what the will is inclined to do. Edwards declares this, “free moral agents always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice.” To put it in simpler terms, at the moment when one decides to sin that desire is stronger than your desire to obey Christ. The antithesis then would have to be that if our desire to obey Christ was greater than we’d obey Christ. Paul in Romans says this, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”
When bringing this up we then must talk about the state that Adam was in at the time of creation until the fall. Augustine puts up four distinct kinds of freedom. posse pecarre—referring to the ability to sin. posse non-pecarre—referring to the ability not to sin, or to remain free from sin. non-posse pecarre—referring to the inability to sin. non-posse, non-pecarre—referring to the inability not to sin. At the time of creation, Adam was given a choice, posse pecarre and posse non- pecarre. Adam possessed both the ability to sin and the ability to be free from sin. God is non posse pecarre which means that he does not have the ability to sin. This is because he has no desire for sin. When Adam fell the choice between sinning and not sinning was taken away. As Dr. R.C. Sproul says in his book titled How Can We Know the Will of God in the fall we lost something very vital to moral freedom. At the time of the fall humanity was plunged into a constant state of non-posse, non- pecarre. Humanity lacks the ability to not sin.
Edwards mentions in his book, On the Freedom of the Will, that as humans we still have the natural ability to choose. We make choices every day. We choose to walk, we choose to eat, etc. The thing that we lack is the natural ability of choice when it comes to morality. Edwards states that, “All of the equipment necessary for the making of choices remains. What fallen man lacks is the moral disposition, the desire, or the inclination of righteousness.” We can no longer choose, as said above, not to sin.
At the fall man was brought into this state of Death. This death although not immediate and maybe not even physical was that of separation from God. So, this raises the question, if we are dead then what can we do apart from God? This is where the doctrines of grace take over. These doctrines can be summed up in an acronym, T.U.L.I.P.
Common misconceptions come up when talking about total depravity. When I say total depravity, I mean that the “original sin” covers the whole of a person. This does not mean that we are unable to do good. Rather, it means that in the natural fallen state we are born into we are unable to do any spiritual good that will please God and we cannot come to God by our own strength. This is why some theologians refer to this point, perhaps more accurately, as total inability. Scripture teaches that in our fallen state we are dead in our trespasses (Eph. 2:1-2) and slaves to sin (John 8:34). Unbelievers are said to be ‘darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart’ (Eph. 4:18). Paul says that ‘those who are in the flesh cannot please God’ (Rom. 8:8) and Isaiah states that ‘all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment’ (Isa. 64:6). This is why Jesus said, ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (John 6:44).
In the book of Romans, we find a discussion of this difficult concept. Romans 9:10–13 reads: “And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’” Wayne Grudem in his book Systematic Theology clears up some of the common misunderstanding of Election. He says that Election is neither fatalism not mechanistic.
Fatalism eliminates our decision. It says that our choices do not matter and thus do not affect anything. That our choices are futile because everything that was preordained will come to pass. The other side of that is that election is mechanistic. God chose us to be saved so we become robots. Election is not based on God’s foreknowledge. This thought process means that our salvation ultimately lies with us and not God. God still has a foreknowledge, its just of the person not the fact. We can conclude on that fact then that the reason for election is God’s sovereign choice. Ephesians 1:5 says that “ He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
Most Christians today do not like the idea of a limited atonement. One might ask why one would think that the death of Christ was limited. If Christs death wasn’t limited, then universalism would arise. This saying that Christ died for all thus all would be saved. But this is just simply not true and to simply unbiblical. A limited atonement is probably better translated as a particular redemption. Christs death was sufficient for all but only efficient for some. One of the more common texts that is used to combat limited atonement is 2 Peter 3:8-9, it reads 8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. The immediate antecedent to the word any is the word us. Here I believe Peter is talking about us, meaning believers. That any in the text is talking about any believers not all of humanity.
Regeneration precedes faith. We also believe that regeneration is monergistic. Now that’s a three-dollar word. It means essentially that the divine operation called rebirth or regeneration is the work of God alone. An erg is a unit of labor, a unit of work. The word energy comes from that idea. The prefix mono- means “one.” So monergism means “one working.” It means that the work of regeneration in the human heart is something that God does by His power alone—not by 50 percent His power and 50 percent man’s power, or even 99 percent His power and 1 percent man’s power. It is 100 percent the work of God. He, and He alone, has the power to change the disposition of the soul and the human heart to bring us to faith. In addition, when He exercises this grace in the soul, He brings about the effect that He intends to bring about.
When God created you, He brought you into existence. You didn’t help Him. It was His sovereign work that brought you to life biologically. Likewise, it is His work, and His alone, that brings you into the state of rebirth and of renewed creation. Hence, we call this irresistible grace. It’s grace that works. It’s grace that brings about what God wants it to bring about. If, indeed, we are dead in sins and trespasses, if, indeed, our wills are held captive by the lusts of our flesh and we need to be liberated from our flesh in order to be saved, then in the final analysis, salvation must be something that God does in us and for us, not something that we in any way do for ourselves.
The term irresistibility gives away this feeling of not be able to resist God’s grace. But that’s not true we as humans are able to and will resist God’s grace. That’s our very nature. The idea is that God’s grace is so powerful that it has the capacity to overcome our natural resistance to it. It is not that the Holy Spirit drags people kicking and screaming to Christ against their wills. The Holy Spirit changes the inclination and disposition of our wills, so that whereas we were previously unwilling to embrace Christ, now we are willing, and more than willing.
