We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Why believe in free will? [Video]

Why believe in free will? [Video]

In this video excerpt from his April 29, 2012 sermon tracing the Pietistic influence on Woodland Hills Church’s origins, Greg explains why they—along with John Wesley—believe that God does not control everything, but rather gives human beings free will.

Interested in exploring this subject further? Check out some of Greg’s essays and Q&As on predestination and free will.

Or even better, buy his book Is God to Blame?


Video sourced via DeepCoffee.

Related Reading

Predestination Part 2: Seeing Destiny Rightly

For Part 1, click here. In Ephesians Paul teaches that God “chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph 1:4). In Christ, Paul continues, God “predestined us for adoption to sonship…to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in…

Why Did God Allow Evil?

Is it possible to force people to love? Powerful people may be able to force others to do just about anything. Through psychological or physical torture, they may succeed in forcing them to curse their own children to deny their faith. They may even succeed in forcing others to act and say loving things to…

Sermon Clip: Does Romans 9 predestine you to Hell?

Did God predestine you to Hell? Can he even do that? In this short sermon clip, Greg Boyd talks about his own struggles when trying to understand Romans 9 which on the surface seems to imply that God determines who goes to heaven and hell. In the full sermon, Greg takes a deep look at…

What Does It Mean that God Hardens Hearts?

Some argue that passages which speak of God hardening human hearts (Jos 11:19-20; Ex 7:3; 10:1; Rom 9:18) demonstrate that God controls everything, including people resistant to this declared intentions. He hardens whomever he wills, they argue. He could just as easily have softened their hearts, but for his own sovereign reasons he chose not…

The Future is Not Like the Past For God (or Us)

Image by seier+seier via Flickr Everyone agrees that we are not free to change the past. No sane person would claim, for example, that I can now make any free choices about whether John F. Kennedy will be assassinated or not on November 22, 1963. This deed, like all past deeds, has already been accomplished. Now consider,…

Isn’t the World Unsafe If God Doesn’t Control Everything?

If God isn’t in control of everything, the world feels unsafe. If the future is open and if things can happen outside of God’s will, what guarantee is there that there is a point to a person’s suffering? Maybe it’s all just bad luck. My experience has been that many of those who honestly examine…