Saturday, April 15, 2023

 The author is asserting that both man's free will and God's divine sovereignty can co-exist, a belief known as synergism. He argues that in order for man's will to be truly free, there cannot be any outside forces influencing the will before a choice is made. However, the author then goes on to say that there is in fact a necessary weight upon the will, but man is still free to choose. When asked to clarify this apparent contradiction, the author claims that the necessity is synergistic in nature. Calvinistic necessity, which posits that the will is exercising its power, is not acceptable to the author because it would mean that the will is not truly free. He does not believe in the existence of the divine, because he believes that humans have the same amount of freedom as if said power did not exist. In his world, humans are free because, at the moment of choice, they have the opportunity to choose to be saved. However, because God forces a man to come to the "perfect equilibrium" decision, then you have God's necessary force coexisting with perfect equilibrium. That's like saying if a man was pushed off of the cliff but he had a unforced choice whether to go over the edge. In this way, he does not acknowledge a personal divine will. If someone has a will that is not restricted by anything outside of themselves, then they don't need to make any choices. If the will is free only in the sense that it is just as likely to choose good as it is to choose evil, then that is not a choice. A scale that is evenly balanced between two options is not moving. This is just practical. The only way to prove that someone has made a real choice is when the scale is tipped in one direction or the other. Therefore, choosing one thing over another always has a necessary cause.

No comments:

Post a Comment