To find out the truth about free will. We should start at the garden of Eden. Did God give man a freewill to choose for himself?
Discussion
50 comments
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Yes.
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? percent Agreed
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Yap that is why God has given them a law to obey or not to obey..
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Will give you a gift, it’s up to you to open it or not
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Giving us “free will” is the reason, God had to send His Son to pay the price for sin.
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Yes He gave man free will to choose, but God knew in advance what man would choose, and so God put into place His Eternal plan for mans’ salvation through Jesus Christ in the annals of eternity before time existed !
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Yes, Adam was told not to eat from the forbidden tree yet he chose to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit. Man’s total depravity seen in Adam
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Just asking,,, why they are accountable since they are free?
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in the garden (eden)
prior to the fall it is God who defines what is right and wrong for Adam and Eve. man was not created
autonomous (that is, free to be a law to themselves)
but theonomous – subject to God and his law.
you cannot claim freedom
if you are under someones
power and authority besides free will can only be ascribed to God because he cannot be influenced by someone.
He alone can do what pleases him. man after the
fall in all aspect of his being is in bondage to sin,
satan and fleshly desires. -
Before fall yes. After fall slave to sin.
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only hint that man has free will.
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Bud’z Hour of course God gave us free will. God could have made the tree containing the fruit higher, He could have placed the tree outside the garden, or He could have placed an angel there to protect it. God knew His creation would eat the fruit, yet God let them because He chose to give us free will
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God knew what what would happen.
Now read Job and discuss free will from that POV -
Our condition at the garden is different than now. Adam was perfect and he had perfect free will. Our condition is flawed and bound to sin. Our will is bound. We fall short until the day that Christ returns and we are gloried with him.
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We now have s limited free will influenced by our sin nature. Only God has autonomous free will.
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There is a confusion which mixes up the ability to choose with “free” will. They are not the same.
Free will is an illusion. It does not exist.
We can indeed choose, but our choices are not made from a place of full and complete freedom from any and all internal and external factors that influence and determine our choices.
This can help in understanding these matters…
“Psychologists need to comprehend that the logic of the physical universe – indeed, any possible universe – rules out free choice, and irrespective of the indeterminism of quantum theory. Why? Well, because who a person happens to be from a moral point of view cannot possibly be under his or her control. To be responsible for how they act they would have to be responsible for how they are, and to be responsible for how they are they would have had to have created themselves, and no one can be the causa sui, the ultimate ‘cause of oneself’, because in order to do so, he or she would have to be in every sense his or her own parent, his or her own author. If you try to argue that a person has created himself or herself then you have to posit an earlier self that creates the later self, but then you note that the earlier self could not have created itself but must have been created by an earlier self, and you end up with an infinite regress of selves needed (Strawson, 1994). Yet, ultimately for libertarian free will you need an initial creator self, a ‘prime mover’ self, which is impossible to get to because how would it have come into existence?”
– Excerpt from an essay on free will“Present-day libertarians tend to pin their hopes for free will on quantum mechanics, but the random chance of quantum theory has no connection whatsoever to the concept of ethical freedom; the freedom to choose, the freedom to will. Doing something because (hypothetically) a subatomic particle randomly moves inside your skull offers no more freedom than doing something because genes or culture dictate it. The quantum event may be uncaused, but your (hypothetical) resulting action would itself be caused by the quantum event. The action is therefore not uncaused, and it is most certainly not chosen or willed. Indeterminism cannot save free will for humankind, because if the mind is, at least in part, undetermined, then some things ‘just happen’ in it outside the laws of causation for which, by definition, nobody and nothing is responsible. An individual is not responsible if their actions are caused, because those actions were ultimately set in motion before they were even born. But an individual is also not responsible if some of their actions are uncaused, because those actions just came out of nowhere. To be freely choosing an individual would have to be free from both deterministic effects and indeterministic effects. Free from both A and not-A, as a logician would put it. To be freely choosing you cannot have A, but you cannot have not-A either; free choice requires something that cannot logically exist in this or any possible universe.”
– Excerpt from an essay on free willNo choice or decision is ever made in a vacuum “free” of all internal and external factors that influence and determine that choice or decision. And sovereign over all those factors is God’s rule. By command or permission every factor is always where, when, and how God wills it to be.
The true definition of “free” will is that you can make choices and decisions free of any internal and external influencing factors. That is not possible. Only if you existed in a vacuum free from all such factors could you really make a free choice or decision. But if you did exist in such a state you would not exist at all.
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Short answer, no, Adam was on probation – having the freedom of His will to uphold.
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Yrs
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Well yes! That’s what the fall of man is about
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Yes. There were other trees that they could have eaten from.
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Kevin Zadai’s Testimony is perfect for this.
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I guess we haven’t talked about this subject enough in this group? Yes, man has a free will, yes God is sovereign. You can believe both because both are true.
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To have free will, there has to be temptation,
Also if we say no that adam didn’t would mean he didn’t love God he was forced to love God. -
Yes He did
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Certainly yes..m
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No.
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NOPE
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You may eat from any tree in the garden, but don’t eat from that tree for it shall bring you death. I believe this wasn’t a command to not but a warning. Genesis is where we not only learn about creation but find the first instance of shame.
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Certainly, Adam made a personal choice.
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Man’s will and God’s will meet in heaven. It’s shaded from us.
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Free will generally speaking is different than free will in a soteriological sense of the word.
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I would say NO, because God told Adam ‘DO NOT EAT’… Besides, if Adam has a free will then why did God consider it disobedience. If it was a free will it shouldn’t be disobedience. How could you be free if you’re restricted?
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yes. And Adam’s mistake shows us that free will doesn’t work without God’s guidance.
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Yes, Adam and Eve had free will in the Garden of Eden.
“And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.
And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.
Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.” 2 Ne 2:14-16 -
Everything that breath has the power of choice
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Yes, I absolutely believe that God did give the GIFT of free will and that started in the Garden of Eden.
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Yes, and when given the opportunity to be like God and think that It’s possible we go for it.
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God gave Satan a free will. In fact, God made Satan just to let us be tempted. Without temptation, we would not have a choice. Try asking a corpse or a rock if it wants a fifth piece of chocolate cake or a hooker? The possibility to sin means nothing if we aren’t purposely rejecting to trust and obey God. You need the potential to do wrong and if you don’t have temptation, there’s no potential.
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Ever hear of the Fall? Man lost our autonomous free will. We have a sin imprisoned free will
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God gave Adam and Eve the choice between the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which He told them led to death. Yes, God gave them the freedom to choose.
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Good point. Yes we have free will within Gods plan. I don’t think free will refutes that God chooses His people. Indeed, it is clear complicated, Gods physical universe is marvelous and complicated, so to is his spiritual universe. Indeed there is tension in the scripture. To large degree incomprehensible to small human mind
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Yes, He knew what he’d choose and hence put in motion the cure then. Man’s choices had consequences for him and others. Disagree just wait till your kid drives your car.
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Nope, but thankfully it was a metaphor.
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Yes
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Free will? You mean to have the ability to choose good from evil? Before the fall yes, after the fall no.
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Adam was already immortal, but he was an immature failed the temptation which in contrast Jesus was a mature son of God and he overcame the temptation from Satan. Genesis is pretty vague when it comes to many of these questions being asked and much which is taught is assumed and not based on scripture. But Ps 90:1-3 and Romans 8:20 are not assumptions they are scripture we should be basing our understanding on.
Ps. 90:1-3. “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You have formed the earth or the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. You (God) turn man to destruction; and say return you children of men.
(NIRV) Romans 8: 20 The created world was bound to fail. But that was not the result of its own choice. It was planned that way by the One who made it. God planned to set the created world free. He didn’t want it to rot away completely. Instead, he wanted it to have the same glorious freedom that his children have
Adam was already immortal for he walked and talked with God in the garden, he was created in God’s image and likeness on the sixth day. He faced God face to face this is a far cry from where mortal carnal man cannot look upon God’s glory as demonstrated with Moses who had to put a veil over his face when he returned from the mountain of God and the Children of Israel could not look at God’s glory. In fact Adam saw more of God then Moses who also was mortal who only say God’s backside if I remember.
What you are missing is the process of redemption, if Adam did not sin Adam would
The following was written by George Hawton: No corrupt and dying blood flowed in the veins of these inhabitants of Paradise. No death-dealing carnal mind corrupted them to bring their members under the power of death and sin. They lived in a realm long since closed to the human race. They were clothed upon not with garments of wool and cotton or even seamless robes, but, because of their heavenly brightness and their blessed communion with God, they lived in a realm of transfiguration and were no more in need of earthly garments than an angel. All creatures of that perfumed, effulgent paradise were under their wise and loving control. No timid creature raced in terror from snarling ravenous beasts. The pitiful cry of a dying thing was never heard. Peace reigned supreme and love without alloy. Had this blessed son in his unfallen state walked the earth centuries later, he, too, would have stilled the waves, raised the dead, and healed diseases as did Christ, the last Adam. But this was not God’s plan.
What we do know from the Garden of Eden it was God made Adam innocent, it was God who planted the tree of good and evil, it was god who put a liar a murderer a manslayer in the garden. God totally knew what he was doing with Adam and Eve. Adam had no choice.
Why did God do such a thing?
Romans 5:18-20 (Weymouth’s)
It follows then just as the result of a single transgression is a condemnation which to the whole race, so also is the result of a single degree of righteousness is a life giving acquittal which extends to the whole race. (19) for as thought the disobedience of one individual the mass of mankind were constituted as sinners, so also though the obedience of one, the mass of mankind will be constituted righteous. Now law was brought in later on so that the transgression might increase, but sin increased, grace is overflowed.
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