We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.
Free Will: What is a free agent?
What does it really mean to be a free agent? In this reflection, Greg offers some thoughts on free agents and how it can be that they are not exhaustively determined.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Calvinism, Determinism, Free Will, Open Theism, Philosophy
Topics: Free Will and the Future
Related Reading
The End and Beginning of Faith
Eduardo Amorim via Compfight Micah J. Murray shared the story of how his doubts and loss of faith led him to a truer, deeper faith. While we fear the doubts that sometimes sneak in, sometimes those doubts lead us to a place of goodness. Be not afraid. From Micah’s story: Eventually I gave up on…
What is the significance of 1 Samuel 15:35?
“…the Lord was sorry that he made Saul king over Israel.” (see 1 Sam. 15:12). Once again, the Lord expresses his regret over having made Saul king of Israel, an emotion which is inconsistent with the classical view of God’s foreknowledge. It’s important to note that Samuel had prayed all night trying to change the…
How do you respond to Romans 9?
The Deterministic Interpretation of Romans 9 Many people believe that Romans 9 demonstrates that God has the right and power to save whichever individuals he wants to save and damn whichever individuals he wants to damn. I’ll call this the “deterministic” reading of Romans 9, for it holds that God determines who will be saved…
When God Needs an Intercessor
In the previous two posts, we have been exploring biblical narratives that point to how God’s knowledge is temporally conditioned and thus supports an open view of the future, or open theism as it is commonly called. The first addressed how God regrets and the second how God discovers. In this post, I want to…
If salvation depends on our free choice, how are we saved totally by grace?
Question: I’m an Arminian-turned-Calvinist, and the thing that turned me was the realization that if salvation hinges on whether individuals choose to be saved or not, as Arminians and Open Theists believe, then we can’t say salvation is 100% by grace. If we have to choose for or against God, then the credit for our…
A Calvinist and an Arminian walk into a bar…
Toby Bradbury via Compfight Roger Olson posted A Conversation between a Calvinist and an Arminian about God’s Sovereignty that we thought was dead on. In fact, we kind of wonder if Roger is bugging some of the conversations we’ve had. Déjà vu much? And since Roger has argued that Open Theism should be included under the broader umbrella of…