"Having been a
full blown free will believer, my world has been rattled to say the least."
Yes, I can definitely relate to having your world rattled by the notion of God's absolutely sovereignty over all things, to include salvation. While these can be extremely difficult and challenging concepts, let me encourage you with the fact that, in my humble and honest opinion, these are some of the most important and profound things that we must grapple with and, Lord willing, come to a biblical understanding of. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, these issues really lay at the very heart of who God is, and at the Gospel itself in terms of understanding the full scope and nature of Grace and the perfection of the work of Christ on the cross. Please note that I'm not saying that one must agree with the Reformed/Calvinistic view that I am going to set forth in order to affirm the Gospel. My point is that our understanding of the Gospel is made fuller and clearer through a Reformed/Calvinistic (i.e., biblical) understanding of these things. Couple of things to keep in mind:
1. You mention being a free will believer. I think the first thing to understand is that we must define precisely what is meant by such things as "free will," (and other terms such as "divine sovereignty," etc.). What I have discovered over the years is that a lot of the confusion over these issues lays in the fact that such terms are used without being clearly and carefully defined from a biblical standpoint. This is, in part, why people like the friend you mentioned see verses that seem teach both divine sovereignty/predestination and their concept of free will (please note that I said their concept of free will, not the biblical view of the will of man). Thus, we must ask the simple question "what is free will?" without merely assuming that we know what it is.
Unfortunately, when we hear the term "free will," we bring our own presuppositions into the equation, and those presuppositions by and large are based solely on what we have always thought about free will, even before we were believers. So, the concept that many have of free will is no different than the concept of free will that almost every single unbeliever has. How is this possible? Because when a person by God's grace comes to Christ, they simply import all of their preconceived notions about reality with them into the kingdom (which is one reason why Paul encourages us to be transformed in our thinking; Rom 12:1-2). Then, when we pick up the Bible, we simply funnel everything we read through our preconceived ideas, which were formed by any number of influences, such as the philosophy of the world, family upbringing, cultural sensitivities, etc.
When we become believers, we bring everything with us, to include all of the theological and philosophical baggage that contributed to actually making us the people we are in terms of our beliefs. The recognition that I am sinner who at some point God saved in no way changes all of my thinking. It's not like we're saved, and then "poof," all of our preconceived beliefs are wiped clean (wouldn't that be nice though! J). They are not, and the Christian life is in large part a pilgrimage in which we are having our minds conformed more and more each day from a man-centered perspective to a God and Christ-centered perspective; from viewing the world and the Bible through our own preconceived ideas, to viewing the world and the Bible through the lens of Scripture itself. And, as this process continues throughout our lifetime, what we discover is that some ideas--some ways of thinking--die harder than other ways of thinking, and the ideas that seem to die the hardest are the ones that keep man seated on the throne in one form or another.
2. Having said that, let me
state what is meant by the term free will by those that take the
Arminian/non-Reformed position on this. The
common notion of the will advanced by them is known as Libertarian Free Will.
What this means is that man's will is not determined by anything, either
inside or outside of the individual. When presented with more than one option,
the individual possesses the equal ability to choose
either option, and that choice in not determined by anything. John
Hendryx, in an outstanding article called 'Just Because':
Eleven (11) Reasons to Reject Libertarian Free Will (http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/libertarian.html)
states:
"Freedom as understood in the libertarian sense means that a person is fully able to perform some other action in place of the one that is actually done, and this is not predetermined by any prior circumstances, our desires or even our affections. In other words, our choices are free from the determination or constraints of human nature… Libertarians, therefore, when asked what caused the person to choose one action over another, will answer that a free act is when no causal, antecedent, laws of nature, desires or other factors are sufficient to incline the will decisively to chose one option or another."
Essentially, this view teaches that the will of man is autonomous; that there is nothing that governs it, and it is in a completely neutral state, meaning that it is not inclined to anything, either good or evil. It just "is." Thus, in the final analysis, there is really no reason for why a person chooses one thing and not another—the choice "just happens" (or, as Hendryx entitled his articled "Just Because…").
It is interesting, and quite telling to note that this position has zero biblical support. It is, as even Arminian scholars admit, primarily, if not altogether a purely philosophical theory developed by those that were/are opposed to Reformation/biblical teaching on the sovereignty of God and the nature of man. And in terms of biblical truth, this view is completely at odds with any notion of God's sovereignty, and even of any notion of God's omniscience. In order for this view of "free" will to be true, God simply cannot be sovereign in any meaningful sense, nor can He be omniscient, because if God already knows in advance what we will choose, then that means that our choices are determined beforehand, and if that is the case, then man's will cannot possibly be free in the Libertarian sense (I cannot commend to you enough Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will. He deals at length with this very thing, and shows how devastating such view is to biblical truth and any notion that God is sovereign or omniscient. Here is an audio sermon that provides good background/insight into this book: http://www.christfellowshipbaptist.org/sermons/20041031_pm_lawson.mp3).
This is why many who hold to the Libertarian view of the will end up embracing Open Theism (which Luther more or less predicted would happen in his response to Erasmus), which denies God's absolute sovereignty and God's omniscience by stating that God does not know the future exhaustively, hence, they say that our choices are truly free. There are many other problems with the Libertarian view which John Hendryx summarizes in his article. I would also commend to you the following works that deal with this topic:
http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Free-Will/Essays/ - numerous articles here.
https://store.ligonier.org/products.asp?idDept=All&idCategory=TH&whichpage=77&pagesize=6 – this link will take you to Dr. R.C. Sproul's site. You can purchase the series called "Willing to Believe" either in audio or video. It is well worth the price.
The opposite view of the will of man is called " Compatiblism."
This is the view that the Reformers taught over and against
"But let us now inquire, What is the human will? Is it a self-determining agent, or is it, in turn, determined by something else? Is it Sovereign or servant? Is the will superior to every other faculty of our being so that it governs them, or is it moved by their impulses and subject to their pleasure? Does the will rule the mind, or does the mind control the will? Is the will free to do as it pleases, or is it under the necessity of rendering obedience to something outside of itself? "Does the will stand apart from the other great faculties or powers of the soul, a man within a man, who can reverse the man and fly against the man and split him into segments, as a glass snake breaks in pieces? Or, is the will connected with the other faculties, as the tail of the serpent is with his body, and that again with his head, so that where the head goes, the whole creature goes, and, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he? First thought, then heart (desire or aversion), and then act. Is it this way, the dog wags the tail? Or, is it the will, the tail, wags the dog? Is the will the first and chief thing in man, or is it the last thing-to be kept subordinate, and in its place beneath the other faculties?… To will is to choose, and to choose is to decide between two or more alternatives. But there is something which influences the choice; something which determines the decision. Hence the will cannot be Sovereign because it is the servant of that something. The will cannot be both Sovereign and servant. It cannot be both cause and effect. The will is not causative, because, as we have said, something causes it to choose, therefore that something must be the causative agent. Choice itself is affected by certain considerations, is determined by various influences brought to bear upon the individual himself, hence, volition is the effect of these considerations and influences, and if the effect, it must be their servant; and if the will is their servant then it is not Sovereign, and if the will is not Sovereign, we certainly cannot predicate absolute "freedom" of it. Acts of the will cannot come to pass of themselves--to say they can, is to postulate an uncaused effect. Ex nihilo nihil fit--nothing cannot produce something." (pp. 130-131, emphasis mine).
Though our will is a subservient faculty bound to our nature, and it is indeed subject to God's Providential governance, and as such is not "free," (i.e., self-governing), nevertheless the choices we make are said to be free because every choice we make is made in accordance with our strongest desire at the moment (see James 1:13-15 and James 4:1-2. Both of these texts speak about the power of our desires). We choose what we choose because that is what we want to choose in accordance with our desires. As Jesus said in Matthew 15:18-19:
“…those things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart… for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”
In other words, to use biblical language, the choices we make flow from our heart and desires, and it is the Lord that determines our steps (Matt 5:19; Prov 16:9). Nothing forces us to make the choice that we do. We choose precisely what we want, and all of that is in accordance with God's sovereign plan, decreed before time even began.
Someone might argue that this is not always the case; there may be a situation where we are forced to make a choice for one thing over another. For example, let's say that someone held a gun to my head and told me to choose the blue pill instead of the red pill (to borrow from the movie The Matrix J). If I choose the blue pill to avoid getting shot, does that mean that my choice was coerced or forced? No. I still chose in accordance with my strongest desire at the moment, and in this case my strongest desire was to live. If I had a desire to die (or a desire to be rebellious, etc.), I would have chosen the red pill. In the Matrix, when Neo was presented with the option of the blue or the red pill, even if he was conflicted as to which pill to choose, nevertheless he made his choice based on his stronger desire to experience everything Morpheus told him (which in this case was simply "the truth"). The point is that there is always a reason for the things we choose, and our will is governed by our heart and our desires. The will does not steer the individual; rather, the will is steered by the desires and motivations of the heart. The will must move in whatever direction the heart moves it, and this all takes place within the foreordained boundaries established by God. This is precisely what the Libertarian view of the will denies.
As
the term "Compatiblism" suggests, the fact that we make choices that
are free because we make them according to our desires, and that God has
foreordained all things that take place, to include the choices we make, are
compatible concepts; they exist together in harmony,
albeit in a manner that we do not fully comprehend.
I made the following comments with regard to this in a paper I wrote for
one class I took (http://www.geocities.com/johnandursula/sovereigntyfreewill.
I encourage you to read this in its entirety as I provide more
information on the will):
The fact that God is sovereign and knows the end from the beginning because He has decreed all things does not contradict the notion of the will of man that I believe the Bible teaches and the fact that we make choices that are said to be free. Instead. God's sovereignty ensures both our ability to make such choices, and the reality and certainty of our choices, as the Scripture declares, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
God accomplishes His determined purposes through the free choices of humans (Acts 2:23), He exercises His sovereignty over and in those choices (Prov 19:21), and He directs men where He wills (Prov 16:9). Just because God is sovereign over and in the choices of men, and has even told us what will certainly occur in the future, doesn’t mean that those choices are not free, i.e., that the person himself did not make the choice according to his nature and desires.
For example, Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him three times. Peter swore he would not. Was Peter exercising his will when he denied Christ, something that Jesus said would surely come to pass? Yes, because Peter did precisely what he wanted to do according to his strongest desire at the moment.
Many more examples could be offered besides the one of Peter that I offered in that paper. Take for example every human choice in the history of mankind and how it relates to biblical prophecy and/or God's omniscience and sovereignty. The point is that even though God has ordained all things that to come pass, the reason that our choices are said to be free is because we actually made the choice, and we made the choice based on what we wanted. This is why the fault for wrong choices (sin) always rests with the individual who made the sinful choice and engaged in the sinful behavior, and not God. I will speak more to that a bit later.
Hence, in conclusion of this point, when things such as man's will and human responsibility, and divine sovereignty are viewed within a biblical context, we discover that the two concepts, biblically understood, are not mutually exclusive, and are in fact compatible. Note: as for the term "free will," the great Reformer John Calvin makes these very appropriate comments:
“If you mean by a free will a faculty of choosing by which you have the power within yourself to choose what you desire, then we all have free will. If you mean by free will the ability for fallen human beings to incline themselves and exercise that will to choose the things of God without the prior monergistic work of regeneration then…free will is far too grandiose a term to apply to a human being.” (http://www.bible-researcher.com/sproul1.html)
Calvin again states:
“If any one, then, chooses to make use of this term (free will) without attaching any bad meaning to it, he shall not be troubled by me on that account; but as it cannot be retained without very great danger, I think the abolition of it would be of great advantage to the Church. I am unwilling to use it myself; and others if they will take my advice, will do well to abstain from it.”
It should be stated up front that neither I, nor anyone else who subscribes to this view and Reformation theology as a whole, claims to understand precisely how these concepts work together. The simple fact of the matter is that there is much that transcends our reason. However, the fact that these concepts are compatible is the clear teaching of Scripture. Our job is not to reconcile those truths with our own finite reason, logic, or faulty presuppositions. Rather, we are called simply to submit to God's revelation.
Now, having said that these truths transcend our reason and our ability to fully comprehend them does not imply in any way that these truths go against reason or are contradictory. They do/are not. Saying that something goes beyond our ability to fully understand is different from saying that something is inherently irrational and contradictory. We are not called to embrace contradiction, the ridiculous, nor the irrational; however, we are called to embrace those things that while not irrational, ridiculous, nor contradictory, nevertheless go beyond our ability to completely explain or understand. We do this all the time and in many different ways. For example, there are many things in nature that transcend our ability to fully comprehend. Take light for instance. We do not understand if light is wave, particle, or a mixture of the two (or something else). Yet, because the existence of light transcends our reason and ability to fully understand, we do not deny its existence, or try to explain away the aspect of light that causes us the most consternation.
Thus, the fact that we cannot fully understand how God's absolute sovereignty and man's will work together should not cause us too much distress for a couple of reasons. First, because the opposite view (Libertarian Free Will) is a self-defeating theory because it can't possibly be true, both because it is not taught in the Bible, and because it presents a view of man's will and nature (and by extension, of God) that truly is a contradictory, irrational, and incoherent view for a number of reasons (again, see Hendryx' article). Secondly, there are many truths in Scripture that we do not fully understand and that defy our ability to completely reconcile (yet are not irrational, contradictory, and incoherent). For example, we do not fully understand the Trinity (how can there be one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons), or the person of Christ (how can one person have two distinct natures, being 100% God and 100% Man), and many other truths, yet, we believe them because the Bible teaches them, and we also realize that though these truths are complex and go beyond our ability to fully understand, nevertheless they are able to be grasped and comprehended to various degrees.
One final word about the will of man. I have not mentioned maybe the most important consideration to take into account, namely, the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. I touched on this important aspect in the previous correspondence I sent Bro Redd regarding the will of man (he had asked me if his comments to you were correct, and if I would interact with you given your interests. I have attached the response I gave him, which addresses a number of important issues, especially the whole concept of original sin and how it affects us today. I would highly encourage you to read over those things). I have created a link for it here: http://www.geocities.com/johnandursula/ryanwill.