Very enlightening discussion. As one MEEN ag stated, it all comes down to the nature, or character of God. As Scripture says, God is love. Due to His perfect nature, He can not arbitrarily "hate" a person He created for no reason. That would be sin and honestly is blasphemy to me.
As Oswald Chambers says "The root of all sin is the suspicion that God is not good". In my opinion, all Scripture should be read with that in mind.

Agree, I have enjoyed the discussion and always pick up some new things even from those I disagree with.

There are pieces that Zobel and MEEN are saying that I track with, but we fundamentally disagree on the fact that there is a choice being made.

I'm not sure how to respond to both since there is so much there to go through; feels almost like a "gish gallop" strategy

But I do appreciate the comments!

Have a great day my brother in Christ!

I think one of the issues with the protestant discussion of free will is that the term free will begs the question - free will to do what exactly? And so the full answer is the free will to go and sin. Which means the free will to reject God. There is this modern idea of a neutral free will that isn't in the text.

In the garden the will is free to either chose to honor God or chose to rebel against God. Thats the decision point. And what is downstream of that fork is mans future alongside the rejecting perpetually regenerative love and blessings of God (and theosis) or sin, separation from God and death.

In our fallen state on earth this doesn't change. Free will is not this idea that a clockwork God sits back and doesn't meddle in your life. You are not free from the influence of God. God is trying to draw out our repentance and salvation but we have to take the first step.

So when it comes to things like, 'Esau and Jacob didn't have free will, it wasn't up to them' it kind of falls flat. You either grow closer to God and receive blessings (even if they don't look like blessings) or grow further apart from God and suffer the consequences of sin and ultimately the second death.

I want God to work with me and through me to overwhelm my will to sin and rebel. That is an incredible state of Theosis. Was Mary, John the Baptist, and Elijah by any means punished by receiving an extra dispensation of grace from God - making their wills aligning to God easier? Was their free will removed? The holy spirit is the helper of mankind to help regenerate us from the inside, giving us a new heart. Does having the holy spirit interfere with your free will? If it does, is that a bad thing?

Esau and Israel through their descendants own actions spur this prophecy. With one, their is rejection and rebellion and ultimately the removal of God's hand. With the other there is a faithful remnant that through being a lover of God and a torah keeper allows for the fulfillment of the messiah to come from Israel. Its the story of the prodigal son. You take the first step towards God and he comes running with a thousand to you.

I was mainly using that term a bit in jest, as you usually always have quality responses. But I counted roughly 15 question marks, albeit some are rhetorical. Just too much to expect someone to break down in this kind of forum.

one MEEN Ag said:

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I think one of the issues with the protestant discussion of free will is that the term free will begs the question - free will to do what exactly? And so the full answer is the free will to go and sin. Which means the free will to reject God.

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The freedom to please God, in our fallen, depraved state. Obviously reformed theology would maintain that man would never choose God in their sin-stained lives and needs God to initiate the conversion. An example would be in Acts 16:14 with Lydia's conversion.

An understanding of "freedom" is helpful as well. It isn't "the ability to do whatever you want" but instead something more like "the ability to achieve the end that is proper to your nature".

Which is why this immediately becomes a Christological issue. Christ took on human nature, He became Man. Like us in every way, excepting sin. So that means that our nature as we have it cannot be wholly fallen, because then there would be nothing linking us to Him - His incarnation wouldn't have been to our nature but to some other pre-fall nature we no longer share with Him. And this means that the dignity to mankind that comes from the union between the divine and the human nature in the person of Jesus Christ is no longer a reality.

Once you get there, the question can come back to freedom by saying - what is the end proper to human nature? Which is theosis, to become partakers of the divine nature by grace, to grow up to the full measure of the stature of Christ.

Are humans free to do that? Not without grace, not without our savior reaching toward us. Here I think we can all agree.

But we also must confess, because our nature was not fallen to the point that Christ could not take part in it, because that "except sin" still left something for us to share with Him, that we do have some small role in to play in that end. Not alone - apart from me you can do nothing - but also not without our own will.

Zobel said:

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An understanding of "freedom" is helpful as well. It isn't "the ability to do whatever you want" but instead something more like "the ability to achieve the end that is proper to your nature".

Which is why this immediately becomes a Christological issue. Christ took on human nature, He became Man. Like us in every way, excepting sin. So that means that our nature as we have it cannot be wholly fallen, because then there would be nothing linking us to Him - His incarnation wouldn't have been to our nature but to some other pre-fall nature we no longer share with Him. And this means that the dignity to mankind that comes from the union between the divine and the human nature in the person of Jesus Christ is no longer a reality.

Once you get there, the question can come back to freedom by saying - what is the end proper to human nature? Which is theosis, to become partakers of the divine nature by grace, to grow up to the full measure of the stature of Christ.

Are humans free to do that? Not without grace, not without our savior reaching toward us. Here I think we can all agree.

But we also must confess, because our nature was not fallen to the point that Christ could not take part in it, because that "except sin" still left something for us to share with Him, that we do have some small role in to play in that end. Not alone - apart from me you can do nothing - but also not without our own will.

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Quote:

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Which is why this immediately becomes a Christological issue. Christ took on human nature, He became Man. Like us in every way, excepting sin. So that means that our nature as we have it cannot be wholly fallen, because then there would be nothing linking us to Him - His incarnation wouldn't have been to our nature but to some other pre-fall nature we no longer share with Him. And this means that the dignity to mankind that comes from the union between the divine and the human nature in the person of Jesus Christ is no longer a reality.

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Wow! You just explained something that I knew intuitively but have long struggled to articulate. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Going back to the most basic and immutable truths of the Christian faith, the Trinity and the Incarnation, seems like the best method for discerning truth from error. Total depravity is wrong because by necessity it must be error because it violates the Incarnation. PSA is wrong because it must be wrong because it violates the Trinity.

I agree that total depravity and penal substitutionary atonement are incorrect.