6324	Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Free Will?	on: May 24, 2008, 10:55:16 AM
Quote from: toadbat on May 23, 2008, 09:53:43 PM You might argue that this is a simplistic way of looking at the subject, but if you consider a person who (for one reason or another) has just commited themselves to an irrevocable course of action (such as jumping of a cliff) and now has no choice but to reap the consequences of the action (i.e. a smashed-up body). You could say that up to that point, they had the perfect free will to make either decision A (Jump). Or decision B (Don't Jump). After he went and made decision A, he still has free will (sailing towards the ground at 32 feet per second doesn't change that), it's just that his free will doesn't do him a bit of good anymore; his choices have all been taken away and now he must go with what the inexorable force of gravity now dictates he must do - yet he still is a free-willed agent!" I rather feign that that is what our parents in the garden did for us. We still have the power to choose; the inexorable course they put us on when we were still "in Adam" made all of our choices to no effect; whatever we choose (in the natural) will always be under the dictates of sin (no matter what those choices look like from the outside). It takes a "Superman" if you will, to spot the man sailing through the air and rescue him from his decision. Of course, since as believers, we still sin, you would have to expand the analogy to have the man (now safe in the arms of Superman) look around himself and say: "Hey, I want to go flying too! - by myself!" At which point Superman has to do things like let him go for a moment - just to show him that that is not a good idea! I dunno, I just thought I would trot this analogy out and see whatcha thought.  I think what we are discussing here is the paradigm of resistance and whether there is a real equilibrium choice between staying put on the cliff or jumping off. We would say that it is impossible to jump off the cliff and resist the amount of speed of our fall enough to remain in one piece. So that the question is can we by our will resist that speed of the fall? Are we responsible to slow ourselves down? If every movement of the body is under the control of the will, then every movement is in our power to be responsible to have the power over our movements? My point is that we do not have control over every movement of our bodies by resistance through willing.And if we thought that we were responsible in this way then falling would be just as responsible as jumping off. How foolish would it be for us to conclude that the man was responsible since he could not decrease the speed enough to remain in one piece? And yet we measure the decision to jump by that same standard. If he is not responsible in the fall to have control over his own body by resistance then he is not responsible in the self determination through resistance to move his body to jump. Otherwise we would be hypocritical in our assessment of our own power by this comparison.  Read sinners in the hands of an Angry God, Adam has already jumped. Theres no question we bow down to Jesus.