The Doctrine of Free Agency Examined (Part 5)

In spite of these plain, positive statements of holy and inspired men of old we are told that man is a free moral agent. Such teaching tends to exalt man above that which is seemly and to reduce Christ to the status of being only a “would be” Saviour, or a co-saviour. Man by nature is estranged from the womb in a wicked condition, he is without spiritual strength and dead in sin. Yet we are told that even in that condition he can believe if he will. We are told that he can repent if he will. He can hunger and thirst if he will. He can love if he will. He can be righteous if he WILL. He can hope if he WILL. I am yet to find an advocate of free moral agency that does not, in the analysis, make these spiritual fruits dependent on the will. So for all practical purposes the doctrine of free moral agency is nothing more than the old doctrine of free will dressed up in a new suit and sent out to deceive the nations.

Is faith dependent upon the will? Is the will free? Upon the answers to these questions the doctrine of free will, or free moral agency, will stand or fall. And right here we can make a simple test that will prove that faith is not dependent upon the will and that the will is not free. I have in my pocket a ten dollar bill. Now let me submit this question to the reader, “do you believe this ten dollar bill is yours?” Do you? Of course not. Why do you not believe that it is yours? Because there is not any evidence or testimony that it is yours.  In the absence of such testimony can you believe it is yours? Of course you cannot. If you did believe that it is yours would that make it yours? Certainly not. The truth is if people get to believing that other folks’ ten dollar bills are theirs their belief is apt to get them in trouble.

Now this question: Are you willing to believe this ten dollar bill is yours? I would dare to say that you are willing to believe it is yours, but you cannot believe it is yours because there is not any evidence to that fact. Thus, what you believe about it is not necessarily dependent on what you are willing to believe about it.

On the other hand, let me ask, “Do you believe that many people will be injured and killed in car wrecks this year? Sure you do? Is it your will to believe that many people will be injured and killed in car wrecks? Of course it is not. On this point you do believe something, but you do not will to believe it. We should all rather not believe it, but the evidence points to the other way and we cannot keep from believing it. So again, faith, or belief, does not depend on the will.

Will the advocate of free moral agency tell us that faith that is not in harmony with the will avails salvation? He will be, of all men, most embarrassed if he does. The teachers of free agency build their entire theory upon a wrong application of the text “Whosoever will,” not realizing that the text says, “Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.” They teach that it means for the dead alien sinner to come and take life.

The text, however, is speaking of a thirsty child of God and invites him to come and take the water of life freely. Only a thirsty person can take water freely. And never in this world did a person will to take the water of life before he had the life. Will is an evidence of life. It springs from life, and as far as I know it can spring from no other source.

As a matter of fact however, the advocates of free moral agency do not actually believe in it. They just think they do. To substantiate that statement I now present the following for the consideration of the reader: recently this question was submitted to the famous evangelist, Billy Graham, for him to answer:

“In one of your radio sermons you said that man is a free moral agent. What does that mean?” – Signed, A. M. S.

Here is Billy’s answer:

“God created man with the freedom of choice. He did not make us puppets automations or robots. At the very best, this would have been a very low form of creation. But, He created us in His own image with the capacity to choose, to will to make decisions. That is what is meant when we say that man is a free moral agent. But, because of sin Bible calls the servants of sin. However, God still gives us the privilege of turning back to Him. We cannot do this in our own strength but God’s Holy Spirit is working in the hearts of men, urging them to repent and turn from sin and believe in Christ as Saviour. The Bible contains a series of events where men are urged to choose, to stand on God’s side and to accept Him. For instance in the Old Testament we find these words of Moses to the children of Israel: ‘I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’ In the New Testament John writes: ‘If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself.’ Almost the last verse of the Bible says: ‘And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely’. The choice is for you to make.”

                                                                 –Signed, Billy Graham.

What choice? To take of the water of life freely? I will agree with that, but, as I have already pointed out, that invitation is to the thirsty child of God. It is not to the dead alien sinner. As far as Moses’ admonition to the Israelites is concerned, had the evangelist read a little farther he would have noticed these lines: “for he is thy life and the length of thy days; that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give them.”

So the choice that was set before Israel was not whether or not to be born again, whether they should be obedient and live in the land of Canaan in peace, or be disobedient and be dispersed among the nations and live in confusion and suffering. Now, to whom was this choice presented? To the nations? No. To the Gentiles? No. It was to the Israelites – the covenant children of God.

In this connection, if the great evangelist, Billy Graham, or anyone else on earth, knows of a text anywhere in the Bible in which God ever has, or does today, offer eternal life to anyone for them to accept or reject on any condition wherever, I am now calling on them to produce it. Failure to do so will be considered by me as evidence that it cannot be done. Unless and until it is done, free agency falls, never again to be resurrected. The scholarship of the world awaits the answer.

From a study of Billy’s answer the careful reader will notice the following:

1. He fails to give a proper definition of the term “free moral agency.”
2. He has not proven more than I am contending for.
3. He has surrendered his doctrine.

For the sake of brevity and in order to save space I will notice only item number three at this time. Let me now copy again from Billy’s letter:

“But because of sin in our hearts, the result of our inheritance and also of our choice, we are now what the Bible calls the servants of sin. However God still gives us the privilege of turning back to Him. We cannot do this in our own strength but God’s Holy Spirit is working in the hearts of men, urging them to repent and turn from sin and believe in Christ as Saviour.”

Now notice, speaking of turning back to God, Billy says, “we cannot do this in our own strength.” To which statement, the earnest seeker of truth will answer, “why can’t we, if we are free moral agents?” Here Billy Graham gives up the very point he was trying to prove and thus surrenders the cardinal premise upon which his doctrine is built.

Man is a free moral agent – yet a sinner by inheritance and cannot turn to God. A flat contradiction. I do not expect to ever live long enough to see harmony brought out of the two. If a person cannot turn to God in his own strength he is simply not a free moral agent. The proposition is not that he does not have a legal right to turn to God, but rather, as we will see later, he has not the ability, neither has he the desire to do so.

So Billy says that God’s Holy Spirit is working in the hearts of men urging them to repent, etc. To which I reply, Correct, Amen, I will go along with that, that is right, but the question is: “What is the condition of those in whose hearts God’s Holy Spirit is working?” Let Paul answer: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God;” and “The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, “ Romans, chapter eight.

Unless Paul has misinformed us, and unless the Spirit bears false testimony, all those in whose heart the Spirit of God is working are children of God. If children of God, they are sons of God and are already saved from the standpoint of the new birth. By Billy’s own admission, without the Spirit they cannot turn to God. But these are the people he is trying to appeal to. And they cannot come. His preaching is therefore in vain. The Spirit obviously must work ahead of the preacher.

Here then is where free moral agency leaves us: Man is a sinner by inheritance and choice, yet a free moral agent. He must turn to God or be lost forever. Yet in his own strength he cannot turn to God. His salvation therefore is dependent on his doing that which he does not have the strength to do. If this be true the entire human race will be lost. That, my friends, is free moral agency. And these people call Primitive Baptist “Hardshells!” This is another absurdity to which a false doctrine reduces itself when examined. Free moral agency and depravity are incompatible. The Bible teaches depravity. It does not teach free agency.

“But the natural man recieveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” writes the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians 2:14. One has only to introduce the plain language of this text to prove that man is not a free moral agent. Here is something the natural man cannot do; he cannot know the things of the Spirit of God.

Now if the gospel is a thing of the Spirit of God, which it is, and if Paul told the truth in this text, which he did, then the natural man does not receive the gospel, it is foolishness unto him, and he cannot know it. If the gospel then is necessary to his salvation, he will never be saved. Free agency? Not exactly. On the other hand, if the natural man receiveth not the gospel, then those who do receive it are not natural men. They are spiritual.

Lest there be, in this day of modernism, some question as to the meaning of the term “natural man” in the text, the reader is referred to the celebrated Revised Standard Version of the Bible which renders the text as follows: “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Then the marginal rendition of the word UNSPIRITUAL is NATURAL.

The American Standard Version says “natural.” The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament by the late George Ricker Berry, Ph. D. of the University of Chicago & Colgate University Department of Semitic Languages renders the original as “natural.” I take the position therefore that it means natural.

Webster says that natural means “pertaining to, produced by, or in the course of, nature.” It is obvious then that a natural man is a man produced by, or in the course of, nature. Such a character cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. He therefore is not a free moral agent. So long as this text is in the Bible, no man will ever be able to establish the doctrine of free moral agency. He may teach it, but he will never prove it.

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” John 3:6. And “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other,” Gal 5:17. This is the reason that the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit. He is born of the flesh and is fleshly. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and is contrary to it. The natural man is not compatible to the Spirit, his nature is inclined the other way. The man who tries to prove free moral agency has undertaken the hardest job in the world. He tries to harmonize flesh and spirit, which thing is a spiritual and physical impossibility.