A key element of the arminian/reformed conflict revolves around the idea of freedom. One of the things I think we are seeing today is our beginning to understand the complexity of freedom, in particular the limitations of our own freedom. The modern discipline of psychology has created a science of predicting human behaviors the authors of which can’t help but assume to be simply “free”. Sociology has done the same thing. Demographics likewise and now we add to it evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology and discoveries in studying the brain. The 20th and 21st centuries have brought forward a vast body of evidence to indicate that we are no where as free as we have imagined ourselves to be.

I think it is also fairly easy to say that our freedom is a diminutive shadow of the larger source freedom we inherit from our creator. God is FREE in a way our own freedom aspires to become. This, like many comparable human limitations is difficult for us to come to emotional terms with, the outcome of which is usually our rebellion and resentment towards God.

I think that Calvinism also is very right in wanting to emphasize that whatever our participation “salvation is of the LORD”. Arminians of course say this too. I remember being in Seminary going through the Canons of Dort on Soteriology with Plantinga and thinking that all five points are like fingers connected to the palm of the hand which is basically this point. Salvation is ultimately something God does FOR us and TO us in a way that probably mirrors a blog post I wrote years ago thinking about prayer while pushing a Costco cart while my then small son Ben thought he was doing all the work. (https://paulvanderklay.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/prayer-pushing-the-costco-cart-with-ben/)

The issues of our participation in our rescue (which I think Paul and Jesus clearly assume) very quickly get complicated by our inability to both understand what freedom means for us and how in fact God works through history and through his Spirit in our minds and hearts. CS Lewis in Mere Christianity gets into this (really must know that book better!) when he notes that we don’t work with God like two guys making a brick wall. The interplay is much more intimate and complex than that. It’s really tough to say “I did this, God did that” not because God’s work is confusing or mixed, but because of our limitations in knowing our own freedom. The tougher part is really saying “I did this”. Did you really or were your actions easily accountable to heredity, upbringing, your training (sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology, brain chemistry, etc.)

None of this limits human agency and we understand this. We ARE real agents and we ARE responsible for our words and actions, but our agency is always qualified by the world of things that we are subject to in ways that God can never be.

CS Lewis also in “The Great Divorce” and “Mere Christianity” if I’m not mistaken has a terrific section on freedom. I think it is in the Great Divorce when the dragon on the shoulder of the pilgrim gets dealt with by the angel. That decision was most free and every free moment was bound up in it.

One of the things I love about Calvinism is how little sense it makes of this because I think we are correct in our limitations in making sense of this. We are terribly confused creatures and the more we learn, even with science today, the more we begin to see how confused and limited we are, even while we grow in understanding and power. God’s freedom is therefore so much more great, and our freedom dependent upon his own. He makes us free because he is free. Rebellion itself, however, confuses us because in it we imagine ourselves to be stepping towards freedom when in fact we are walking away from it. pvk