7369	Forums / Theology Forum / The Snake Pit	on: June 04, 2007, 07:19:05 PM
You say everything that has been doen cannot be contingent because now is the unavoidable result of what has been, and I agree. And here we dive into Augustine. Augustine said that because (cause/effect) man is enslaved to sin, Jer 17:9, he no longer has liberty though he still has volition. Consider that carefully then read on. Very good point. I agree with you. Man does have a free will but not to choose any spiritual good. Man in his natural condition is dead to spiritual things. Yet he does choose moral good and the various likes and dislikes of this world. But Calvin gives very little attention to this kind of freedom. Because really it means nothing in comparison to the bondage of the will in a spiritual sense. Since a man cannot ever choose to be saved, though he may be acted upon by the revelation of God which Romans 1 clearly indicates that all men are and thus all men are guilty, a man's actions will be determined by his own heart. A man chooses his own way. A man's volitional decisions determine his direction, and in this we self-determine the outcomes of decisions and events in our lives. I agree that it depends upon the condition of the heart. The cause of mans action is the mind choosing what is most pleasing at the time of choice. If we dig a little deeper into the area of freedom or liberty, we do not mean that choice is not in the equaliberium state of arminian self determinism. In other words moral liberty equals the will being without cohersion of a cause that determines the choice prior to choosing. What we are saying that the will is determined by the strongest desire that comes from what the mind is most pleased with as to the objects of choice. If a person had two equal objects of choice with the will not leaning either way then that is not liberty of will but no will at all. Choosing is desiring one object over another. Or choosing according to what the person wants for themselves. That is using the subject and the verb properly. When we say that the choice is the mind choosing we are not saying that choosing is strictly in a rational paradigm. The minds view of the object is determined by what kind of understanding a person has by the pleasure one has about the object. In other words moral ability is more than rational understanding, we know what is rite, we do not always do what we know to do. So when we are talking about moral ability, we are talking about the understanding of an object of choice by what pleases us most about the object or what our strongest desire about the object by our forming  a view of the object in our understanding by our rational process and a spiritual process. We call this spiritual affections. So we believe that the forming of what we are pleased with most in our understanding comes as a result of divine knowledge , or from a supernatural source. So what i am saying it is not just the supernatural change in the soul that determines the choice, but it is the divine knowledge applied to the mind that is of a supernatural process that makes the desire strongest so that we understand the view of the object of choice to be most pleasing to us. Its our spiritual affections that are part of our rational process that affect our understanding of the object of choice that deterimines our view of the object so that our desire for that object is greater to choose the good over the evil. A mouth full but think about that .