Everybody Believes In Free Will

After reading this blog post today on the Catholic's view of Pre-destination, I was struck by a very subtle comment made therein...

Catholic theology teaches that not only are the elect predestined to heaven, but also that mankind has a freedom of the will–a striking difference with Calvinism.

By the title of this post, I don't mean to suggest literally that actually "everbody" in existence believes in Free Will (whatever that means), because I am sure that I could soon find somebody who is completely fatalistic in their thinking. However, I am simply speaking about the on-going, common and sometimes controversial debate between Arminism and Calvinism (accepting the recent titles given to two different schools of thought) and that both sides on the issue believe in Free Will. Actually, the lines between Arminists (a.k.a. Pelagians) and Calvinists are not clearly defined at all, but even the categories that fall within the two extremes profess to believe in Free Will. I have never ran into anybody within this debate that said they don't believe in Free Will. So why do pelagian-leaning schools of thought always say that Calvinists do not believe in Free Will? I don't think the answer is as simple as saying that the logical fallacy of equivocation has been committed.

Calvinists believe that it is BECAUSE of our free will that we (humans) are bound in our present state of falleness (sin) without any hope of salavation apart from the saving, gracious act of regeneration by God through the Holy Spirit. That's right, I said "BECAUSE of our free will". I think primarily there are two issues that come into play here: Free Will and the Doctrine of Original Sin. And it is our understanding of these two issues that form the dividing lines between the pelagians, semi-pelagians, and the calvinists.

I believe that since we have a "Free Will", we have the ability to do whatever we as humans want. Well, at least within reason, I can't bench press 800 lbs., but I sure would like to! That is to say, our actions are not limited in any sense by a restriction in our own freedom of choosing, but it may be physically limited or limited by outside force or coercion. Taking it a step further, I think the essence of "Free Will" is that we MUST do whatever we want. That is, because we are free and have a free will, we absolutely and positively have to do what we want (doesn't sound very "free" to me). We cannot not do what we do not want to, we have to do it BECAUSE we want to and we have a free will. I don't believe there was ever a time when you did something that you did not want to do. I am writing this blog because I want to. You are reading this blog because you want to. If you think you are just reading this blog just to be nice to a friend but you really don't want to because it is boring and written poorly. Then I would say to you, at the outset of reading this blog, that you made a conscious decision to read for my sake and be nice to me. Puting it another way, you read because you WANTED to please me, or because you WANTED to read further because of the interesting title, or etc... But the bottom line is, you proceeded because you WANTED to and because you have a Free Will. The more you fight against this concept of Free Will, the more it will fight against you.

Combined with the Doctrine of Original Sin that states that man in his sinfulness is dead in sin, we are bound by our desires which are desperately wicked and want to sin. We as fallen human beings are a slave to sin. And therefore now it means, to be human is to sin. Mankind still has his free will that he had before the fall, but now it is a fallen free will in the sense that it is bound by a different set of desires than before the fall. Without the regenerating work of God to awaken us and make us alive, we remain dead and all of our actions, desires, and thoughts remain bound by our fallen sinfulness (Ephesians 2:1-9). God wakes us up and gives us the ability and desire to choose good things, and we place our faith in Christ for our salvation. For the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

Therefore, after all, both the Pelagians and Calvinists and anywhere in between all claim to believe in Free will (to my knowledge anyways). But the Calvinists don't believe that our free will gives us the ability to choose righteousness in our fallen state. That would be analogous to me having the ability to bench press 800 lbs. I think maybe somewhere or sometime ago Calvinists conceded to not believing humans have Free Will because of the concept of Free Will that their opponent possessed. So maybe sometimes Calvinists these days do say humans don't have Free Will, but I would argue that they only do so because of the majority of evangelical Christians today have a semi-pelagian concept of Free Will. And so they are trying to debate with definitions of the terms of their opponent to establish a level playing field, and to avoid the fallacy of equivocation. I guess by the opposeing concept of Free Will (opposeing the Calvinists), I mean any view that does not only admit we still have Free Will in the current state of sinfulness, but that are Free Will is completely bound by our sinful desires. And by completely, I mean utterley, absolutely, can't fight against it, complete.

To avoid the contention that almost always comes up with this topic, I would like to say that I welcome anybody's critiquing on my thoughts. As a side note, I really don't know when I am supposed to capitalize "Free Will" And when i Am not, or weTher it is supposed to be consistently capItalized or NoN-capitalized. You have proBably noticed that I Actually don't know anything about the ruLes OF capitalization. But please don't let that steal any credibility from me :)