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Free Will, Grace, and the God Who Refuses to Cancel Our Humanity

Jacobus de Bruyn

 

Introduction – where I come from

I still remember the years when I was a Reformed Protestant.  I remember the endless debates about free will, election, and double-predestination.  I remember how confidently we argued that man has no free will - and how suspicious we became of other Protestants who dared to say otherwise.  Because, ironically, even among Protestants there is no agreement on free will.  Some follow John Calvin closely, others lean toward Martin Luther, while many quietly disagree but lack the language or courage to challenge the system.

 

At the time, I believed this debate was about protecting grace.  If salvation is by grace alone, surely human freedom must be denied - or so I was taught.  But something began to shift when I started reading the Church Fathers, and when I began to take the Ecumenical Councils seriously - not as optional footnotes, but as binding witnesses to the Faith of the Early Church.

 

What finally broke my old protestant framework was this realisation that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man - He possesses two wills - a divine will and a human will - and the divine will does not destroy or override the human one.  And if He was/is fully human just as we are, with of cause the exception of sin, then it logically follows that we as humans must also have a free will. 

 

This truth changed everything.

 

1)  Protestants are not even united on free will

One of the great ironies of protestantism is that it presents itself as clear and biblical, yet on free will, as on many other issues, it is deeply divided. 

 

Classical Reformed theology insists that the human will is dead, bound, and incapable of cooperating with grace.

Other Protestants - Arminians, Methodists, many evangelicals - openly affirm a form of free will.

 

Yet the Reformed tradition often questions the orthodoxy of these fellow Protestants, precisely because they reject Calvin’s conclusions (and thus leans towards Catholicism).  This already raises a serious question - If Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura) is so clear, why is there such radical disagreement among those who claim to follow it most faithfully?

 

The answer, I would argue, lies not in Scripture itself - but in how salvation has been redefined in protestantism.

 

2)  How free will became a “threat” to salvation

For the protestant reformer Martin Luther, the issue was existential.  In The Bondage of the Will, Luther argued that if man possesses free will, grace is compromised - human freedom becomes competition with God.  In this regard Luther writes:  “Free will is a mere empty term whose reality is lost... Man’s will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills; if Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills.”

 

John Calvin goes even further.  In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin teaches that after the Fall the human will is not merely wounded, but enslaved, corrupted, and incapable of choosing God.  Salvation must therefore be entirely monergistic - God acts alone, and man contributes nothing, not even consent.  Reformed confessions echo this - the human will is spiritually dead;  faith itself must be irresistibly implanted;  grace cannot be cooperated with - it must overpower.

 

But here is the critical mistake – in protestantism salvation is reduced to a legal declaration, not a transformation of being.  Once salvation is understood primarily as a forensic act - God declaring sinners righteous - free will becomes a liability and participation is dangerous, while cooperation sounds like merit - and in this manner real transformation (thosis) is sidelined.

 

3.  Where Scripture is narrowed

Reformed theology appeals to passages such as Romans 9, Ephesians 2, and John 6 to deny free will.  These texts certainly affirm the primacy of grace — and the Catholic Church fully agrees with that.  What is missed, however, is the full biblical witness.

 

Scripture repeatedly assumes real human agency:

• “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24)

• “I have set before you life and death… therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30)

• “You resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7)

• “Work out your salvation… for God works in you” (Philippians 2)

 

And also 2 Peter 1 which indicates that after God has made us participants in His Divine nature, we should confirm our call and election. 

 

And then just as important: 

 

Sirach 15:14–17: 

“When God created man in the beginning,  he left him in the power of his own inclination.  He added his commandments and precepts;  if you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.  He has placed before you fire and water;  stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before a man are life and death, and whichever he chooses will be given to him.”

 

Wisdom 2:23–24: 

“For God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world.”

 

Yes, these Canonical Books speak explicitly of free will, yet protestants reject them, but the concept does not disappear with them.  It permeates Scripture. 

 

The problem is not that Protestants lack verses.  The problem is that they read Scripture through a late medieval anxiety about merit, rather than through the living tradition of the Church.  And, of cause, they have a very narrow view of what salvation is and what it is for – namely theosis, but we will come back to it. 

 

4.  The councils forced me to rethink everything

My real turning point came when I studied the Church’s Christological teaching.  The Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) affirmed that Christ possesses two wills, divine and human, united without confusion or coercion.

This is decisive.  Christ’s human will is not overridden by His divine will.  It is aligned, and freely obedient.  If Christ is truly human in all things except sin, then human nature includes a will that can freely cooperate with God.

 

If Calvin is right - that the human will is destroyed or meaningless - then Christ’s humanity becomes a problem.  The councils do not allow that conclusion.  This alone dismantled my old framework.

 

5.  Theosis:  the missing vision of salvation

Everything finally fell into place when I discovered theosis.  In Catholic and Orthodox theology, salvation is not merely forgiveness - it is participation in divine life.  God does not merely declare us righteous - He makes us new.  God does not merely save us from sin, but to be participants in His own divine nature (2 Pet 1:4).

 

Even if the will is wounded - even if it is spiritually dead - God raises it, heals it, and empowers it.  Grace does not replace the will.  Grace restores the will.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, human freedom is not abolished by grace but perfected by it. God’s initiative always comes first — always — yet He dignifies us by allowing real cooperation (CCC 1731, 1742, 1999, 2001-2002.  This is why Catholics speak of synergy, not competition.

 

6.  The Fathers never denied free will

When I read the Fathers - Augustine, Irenaeus, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa - I discovered something startling.  They affirm - the necessity of grace;  the reality of sin;  the weakness of fallen humanity - yet they never conclude that free will is eliminated.

 

Even Augustine, often misused by the Reformers, insists that grace heals the will so that it can truly choose the good.  The early Church never feared free will - because it never feared transformation.

 

7.  What Calvin and Luther ultimately miss

To say this respectfully but honestly - Calvin and Luther may have reacted against real abuses - but in doing so, they collapsed salvation into a single moment, stripped it of ontology, and turned grace into a force that bypasses humanity rather than fulfilling it.

 

They confuse:

• merit with cooperation

• participation with pride

• transformation with self-salvation

 

The Catholic Church avoids this false dilemma.

• God saves us.

• God initiates.

• God empowers.

• And yet — mysteriously, beautifully — He refuses to save us without us (Augustine).

 

Conclusion – why free will matters

Free will is not a threat to grace.  It is the sign that grace has truly healed us.  A God who destroys the will does not redeem humanity - He replaces it. But the God revealed in Christ does something far greater - He restores us, elevates us, and invites us into His own life.  Once I understood salvation as theosis, the question of free will no longer frightened me.  It finally made sense.  And perhaps that is the deepest difference of all.

 

Sources

Sacred Scripture

• The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition (RSV-CE).– Deuteronomy 30; Joshua 24; Philippians 2; Acts 7

• Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 15:14–17; 31:10.

• Wisdom of Solomon 1:13–15; 2:23–24.

 

Magisterial Documents

• Catechism of the Catholic Church.

• Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992. – §§1731, 1742; 1999; 2001–2002.

• Third Council of Constantinople (Sixth Ecumenical Council). – Definition on the two wills of Christ (Dyothelitism).

 

Protestant Reformation Sources

• The Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther.  Trans. J. I. Packer & O. R. Johnston.London: Fleming H. Revell, 1957.

• Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin. Trans. Henry Beveridge. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008.

• A Treatise on Christian Liberty, Martin Luther.

• Westminster Confession of Faith.

 

Patristic Sources

• Augustine of Hippo, On Grace and Free Will.

• Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies.

• Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua; Disputation with Pyrrhus.

• Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man.

 

Catholic & Orthodox Theology

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, esp. I–II, qq. 9–17 (on will and freedom).

• John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.

• Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 1.London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

 

Secondary & Interpretive Works (optional but helpful)

• Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification.

• David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea; You Are Gods.

• Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity.