Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):
How have you come? You have come by believing, but you haven’t yet come through to the end. We are still on the road. We have come, but we haven’t yet come through. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him with trembling, lest ever the Lord be angry, and you perish from the way of justice (Ps 2:11-12). When you arrogate to yourself the discovery of the way of justice, be afraid of perishing from the way of justice through this very arrogance. “I have come,” he says, “I’ve come of my own accord, I’ve come of my own free will.” Why this huffing and puffing? Do you want to hear that even this much has been bestowed on you as well? Listen to him calling: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (Jn 6:44).
(Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 30.10; trans. WSA, III/2:129.)
Charles Spurgeon:
The thought struck me, “how did you come to be a Christian?” I sought the Lord. “But how did you come to seek the Lord?” The truth flashed across my mind in a moment,—I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I; but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them; but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith; and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.”
(Charles H. Spurgeon, The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon: Compiled from His Diary, Letters and Records By His Wife and His Private Secretary, [Cincinnati Curts & Jennings, 1898], pp. 168-169.)
Charles Spurgeon:
God does not violate the human will when he saves men. They are not converted against their will, but their will itself is converted. The Lord has a way of entering the heart, not with a crowbar, like a burglar. But with a master-key, which he gently inserts in the lock, and the bolt flies back, the door opens, and he enters.
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “A Stanza of Deliverance,” No. 2241, Delivered on July 31, 1890; In: The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Vol. XXXVIII, [London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1892], p. 52.) Preview.
Charles Spurgeon:
The next thing she was commended for was this—it was her own choice—“Mary has chosen the good part.” Some of our captious friends will be saying, “Ah! Ah! Are you now going to preach free-will and tell us that it is man’s choice?” Oh, Brothers and Sisters, you know what I think of man’s will—that it is a slave, bound in iron fetters—but yet God forbid that I should alter Scripture to suit anybody’s Doctrine, or even my own! Mary did choose the better part, and every man that is saved chooses to be saved. I know that at the back of his choice, and as the cause of his choice, there is God’s choice, but still, the Grace of God always imparts Grace to the man’s heart. No one is dragged to Heaven! Nor does anyone ever go to Christ against his will—the soul must be made willing in the day of God’s power. This is the triumph of God’s Grace—not that He takes men to Heaven as we might carry machines there, but that He expressly acts upon the human mind, leaves it as free as ever it was, and yet makes it perfectly obedient to His own will! Mary chooses. God had chosen her in old eternity and, therefore, she chooses Him—“Chosen of Him ere time began, I choose Him in return.”
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “Martha and Mary,” No. 3469, Delivered, July 29, 1915; In: Spurgeon’s Sermons Volume 61, [1915].) See: ccel.org.
The Westminster Confession of Faith:
All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by His almighty power determining them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.
(The Westminster Confession of Faith, 10.1; In: Robert Shaw, An Exposition of the Confession of Faith of the Westminster Assembly of Divines: Eighth Edition, [Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1857], pp. 118-119.)
Charles Spurgeon:
Blessed be the God of grace that it is so! He has a people whom He has chosen from of old to be His peculiar portion. These by nature have wills as stubborn as the rest of the froward sons of Adam; but when the day of His power comes and grace displays its omnipotence, they become willing to repent and to believe in Jesus. None are saved unwillingly, but the will is made sweetly to yield itself. What a wondrous power is this, which never violates the will and yet rules it! God does not break the lock, but He opens it by a master key which He alone can handle.
Now are we willing to be, to do, or to suffer as the LORD wills. If at any time we grow rebellious, He has but to come to us with power, and straightway we run in the way of His commands with all our hearts. May this be a day of power with me as to some noble effort for the glory of God and the good of my fellowmen! LORD, I am willing; may I not hope that this is a day of Thy power? I am wholly at Thy disposal; willing, yea, eager, to be used of Thee for Thy holy purposes. O LORD, let me not have to cry, “To will is present with me, but how to perform that which I would, I find not”; but give me power as Thou givest me will.
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Faith’s Checkbook, [Chicago: Moody Press, 1987], Sept. 20: Perfect Willingness, p. 140.)
Thomas Aquinas:
Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.
(The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I. QQ. LXXV.—CII., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, LTD., 1922], Q. 83, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3, p. 149.)
C. S. Lewis:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
(C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, [New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1955], p. 221.)
Cf. C. S. Lewis:
What I wrote in Surprised by Joy was that ‘before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice.’ But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. I was decided upon. I was glad afterwards at the way it came out, but at the moment what I heard was God saying, ‘Put down your gun and we’ll talk.’ …I would say that the most deeply compelled action is also the freest action. By that I mean, no part of you is outside the action. It is a paradox. I expressed it in Surprised by Joy by saying that I chose, yet it really did not seem possible to do the opposite.
(C. S. Lewis, “Cross-Examination;” In: C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 261.)
Note: See further: Free Will (Libertarian?)
καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria
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