Religion: Course 210RS
Boland 7
Religion: Course 210RS
Weekly Reflections
Week 4
"An argument for Free Will"
Mid-Term
Course: 210RS
Erin R. Boland, Sr.
Rev. Paul Hamilton
Saint Leo University
Salvation, predestined or our free choice?
I believe that the verses chosen clearly speak to us that our own salvation in in our hands and more accurately in our hearts. It is written in 1 Timothy 2:3-4 "For this is good in the sight of God our savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (Holy Bible, New King James Version) Nowhere here does it speak of God only desiring to save only some men. It does however refer back that not all men will be saved and this is due to our free will which St. Augustine has said "is the basis of all sin in this world," (Augustine).As
you see in the following God's desire is for us to desire a relationship with him and to Love in him. To desire and to Love requires free will and it is God's foresight, not predestination that knows not all men will be saved.
The first and probally most definitive argument for our salvation being of free will comes from Malachi 1:2-3, "I have loved you," says the Lord. "Yet you say, 'In what way have You loved us?' Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" "Yet Jacob I have loved; But Esau I have hated, and laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness." (Holy Bible, New King James Version) To understand this as such a major argument you must go back to the story of Jacob and Esau as it is written in Genesis 25:22-24. It begins with the brothers struggling in the womb...