FREE WILL....... or is it.

quote:

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So God has mercy on whom he will have mercy. No free will.

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I think it is important to bear in mind that Paul is reconciling his view of God's omniscience and mercy. God, being eternal and omniscient, cannot create Jacob and Esau without knowing that ultimately he will show mercy to one and not the other. In a sense, though Paul would never put it this way, it is God who does not have free will in this matter. Why? Because our will is only really free if we don't know all the consequences of our actions. If we really knew what punishments of hell awaited us, could we really do other than choose to avoid them?God however, in Paul's theology, is beyond this kind of cause and effect. Choosing to create one who will reject Him, is the same act as dealing with that rejection.

We probably agree on more than you might realize! But I do have some general issues with the idea that we can meaningfully express in human terms, details of our relationship with God, with sufficient accuracy to regard them as strictly normative.Predestination is a very very human term, because it is related to time, which God is beyond. The acts of creation and judgement cannot be separate to God, but must be indivisible - one and the same act, because He is unchanging and eternal. Creation, offering of love, our response, His response to our response - these are all one.In this sense, God's judgement is not a reaction to human sin as it happens, but an uttering forth of an eternal truth, "his will". This is why it may seem unfair - we think we change, but that eternal truth does not change in relationship to us, because the result of our changing is already part of that utterance, even before we are aware of it.