Saturday, September 6, 2008

Free Will & C.S. Lewis

I know of no argument for free-will except the bible and even there it is difficult to prove it. I daresay that Luther won the argument against Erasmus, and I'd held the Reformed view of Free Will, I think Edwards explains it well. I don't know how it can be reckoned to Catholicism or even Arminianism. However aside from this un-endable debate I'd like to address one reason why I was always uneasy about free-will. C.S. Lewis illustrates it here well, and that reason is fear. Even though Reformed theology always pins the blame on the person even if they had no choice, I always fell on the more Modern Philosophical ideas I'd been taught at school, that if you had no control then you had no blame or at least it would be taken into consideration. All I'd have to do to be justified in Protestantism is admit that I am scum and Christ is the opposite, etc. To actually have to choose Jesus every day over myself is really hard, and it shows my level of real commitment. C.S. Lewis wrote this on the subject (which I stole from Criffton's blog):

“Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other." - C.S. Lewis

how's that for works-righteousness/works based salvation.

'...and the crowds of angry reformers dropped their rocks, as they looked upon the offender, who incidentally, had written some of their favourite books... to depart in disappointment of the now unmasked Author...oh how the mighty have fallen'.

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