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Calvinism and Arminianism

Sovereignty of God
Election and Predestination
Human Responsibility and Free Will

What does the Holy Bible teach about the sovereignty of God, election, predestination, human responsibility and free will? How can we reconcile the apparent tension between these doctrines so that they make sense? How can God hold us responsible and accountable for our decisions and actions unless we have free will?

From the Westminster Confession of Faith:

CHAPTER 9
Of Free Will

1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil.

2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.

3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.

4. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by his grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.

5. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only.

Free Will and Divine Sovereignty: Willing to Believe with R.C. Sproul

The Sovereignty of God in Salvation by Jonathan Edwards

Freedom Of The Will by Jonathan Edwards

Election - God Never Asks for Permission to Save Anyone. He Saves Whom He Wants! by Charles Spurgeon

"What is Calvinism and Where Does it Come From?"

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