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Particulars of Christianity:
307 Free Will and Calvinism


Illustrating How Freewill Works

Calvinism and Logical Fallacies (Part 1)
Calvinism and Logical Fallacies (Part 2)
Romans 9: God's Irresistible Will?
The English Word Predestined
Freewill Belief: Is It a Saving Work?
John Calvin: His Life in Geneva
John Wesley Defines The Issues
What Does It Mean to be Spiritually Dead?
"Dead IN Sin" vs. "Dead TO Sin"
The Apostolic Origins of Freewill Doctrine
Isaiah 64:6: Are Man's Best Efforts at Righteousness Filthy Rags?
Illustrating How Freewill Works



When we begin to consider the Calvinism-Freewill debate, Calvinists insist that so long as man can freely choose to accept or reject God's salvation, that somehow God's sovereignty is denied. Proponents of Freewill (sometimes called Arminianists) believe that God can be sovereign without negating that man can freely make his own choice regarding salvation.

There are several Biblical parameters raised by each side which Calvinists believe are incompatable. First, Romans 9 clearly indicates that man's salvation depends entirely on God's choice to have mercy and provide for our salvation.

Romans 9:15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

Here we find what the Calvinist sees as a proof text that man's will has nothing to do with our salvation. As detailed in our two part article "Calvinism and Logical Fallacies" (in our In Depth Study section), Calvinists here commit the fallacies of False Dilemma and Complex Cause. Calvinists assume there is no way that human salvation can entirely depend upon God and at the same time be open for men to choose for themselves.

Proponents of Freewill believe these two can coexist without conflict. Our salvation can depend entirely upon God's choice to show mercy and we can have freewill to accept or reject that mercy as well. The illustration that follows is an attempt to demonstrate how this is possible.

Because this theological debate is somewhat abstract, meaning that it consists of things we cannot see and do not know from personal everyday experience, it is helpful for us to translate these theoretical ideas into something we can more easily understand and relate to. For that purpose, we have attempted to construct the following illustration. The goal of the illustration is to use something that we as humans are already familiar with to demonstrate how a relationship can only come about by the will of one party while maintaining the freewill of the other party to accept or reject that relationship.

Before we begin, a brief word on the use of illustrations in arguments. It is one thing to illustrate your premises. It is another thing to have the illustration as part of your premises.

When an illustration becomes part of the proof of a conclusion, it ceases to be an illustration and instead becomes one of the premises. Any conclusion that has an illustration as part of its premises is on shaky logical ground. For that reason, any illustrations used in this study will be used only to illustrate premises. Our illustrations will not be used to establish our premises or prove our conclusions.

With that being said, we would like to explain our model of the joint determinism of salvation with the following illustration.

Let us imagine a historic culture where by law all marriages had to be initiated by the man. By law, once the man chose to extend the offer of marriage, then the woman could choose to accept or reject the offer. In such a scenario it would be accurate to make the following observations:

1. The marriage ultimately and initially depends on the man's decision to extend the offer according to his own good pleasure. Unless the man first chooses to extend an offer, the woman would have no choice. Because she could not initiate the marriage herself, a woman is entirely dependent on the man for the marriage to occur.

2. Once the offer is extended, the woman has it within her power to accept or reject the offer.

3. Niether the woman's acceptance nor her rejection would negate that it was the sovereign prerogative of the man to initiate marriage. Even if she rejects the offer, it was still the man's choice to extend it, knowing full well that it might be rejected. The failure of the man to obtain acceptance does not negate that he alone had ultimate control of whether or not a marriage could happen. The possibility that his will maybe rejected is also under his control since he can choose whether or not to give the woman that ability by extending or not extending the offer. So, not even the woman's rejection would negate his control.

In this simple illustration we have preserved both the ultimate control of the first party (the man) as well as the free choice of the second party (the woman). If we were to make this model more generic and remove the concept of a man, a woman, and a marriage arrangement we could easily replace the first party with God, the second party with any human individual, and the relationship in question with a saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This then illustrates our model how both God and men together determine who will be saved.

For a more comprehensive analysis of the doctrines and key Bible passages involved in the Calvinism-Freewill debate, please visit our In Depth Studies section. For a comprehensive evaluation into the implications of the potter's clay metaphor found in Romans 9, please visit our article entitled "What We Need to Know about Pottery" also found in our In Depth Studies section.