Dr Paul Allen

The question of free will has plagued the minds of philosophers, theologians, and ordinary people for millennia. The debate over what free will is and whether we as humans possess such a trait has not abated. If anything, it has increased in recent years. But what does the Bible say?  Can we find any help in God’s Word to answer the question of what it means to freely choose our actions and to be responsible for them? Since the time of the Reformation, the two basic answers that Christians have provided to this question have primarily centred on the theological legacies of Calvinism and Arminianism. The view of free agency associated with Calvinism is called compatibilism. The view advanced by Arminians and others, known as free-will theists, is called libertarian free will. Proponents of libertarian free will offer two planks to their definition of free will. First, for any choice to be truly free, it must be sufficiently unmoored from the constraints of outside causal forces. Tha...

The Westminster Confession of Faith is one of the most important Protestant confessions, for it gave a substantial definition to Reformed theology in the seventeenth century. It is often compared to similar confessions of faith, such as the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Scots Confession, and the Thirty-Nine Articles. There was an internal debate about where to begin a study of Reformed theology: with the doctrine of God or Scripture. Significantly, the Westminster divines began their confessional statement with sacred Scripture. They were concerned about two principles.  One, at the very heart of Christianity, is the concept of divine revelation. Christianity is a revealed religion, constructed not based on speculative philosophy but in response to what God Himself has made manifest. Second is the principle of sola Scriptura, developed by the Reformers.  It acknowledges that the final authority in all matters of theology and in all controversies of faith and...

Does God plan everything ahead of time? If so, does that mean humans lack free will, that we are like robots? Such topics lead to questions about salvation: Does God save only those he’s chosen in advance? And, if so, how is that fair? These are the kind of questions that pop up whenever we broach the doctrine of predestination. These questions are not just extra-biblical speculation. Christians mainly talk about the doctrine of predestination because they’ve encountered it in the Bible. The doctrine of predestination derives from several biblical passages, including Romans 8:28–30 Romans 9:9–23 and Ephesians 1:11Open in Logos Bible Software (if available): “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”1 To answer our questions correctly, we must first understand some key terms. The different categories used to explain predestination and its related topics, as well as how other...

Why does so much evil exist in the world? Why do men murder? Why do countries go to war? Why do people exploit others? Why do we live in a world marked by human evil? Foundational to answering these questions is the doctrine of original sin. Original sin means that all human beings inherit the corruption of sin.  Due to this inherited corruption, all people sin and are liable to judgment. At the most basic level, therefore, original sin describes an ongoing desire for evil that blooms into additional sins and makes one liable to greater judgment. To understand this often-neglected doctrine better, the following article answers some key questions related to the doctrine of original sin. Table of contents Does the Bible support the idea of original sin? Why does everyone die? Why does everyone sin? How does original sin affect us? Are people born with original sin? Does original sin make us liable for judgment? Is original sin a sickness? So is original sin transmitted? How is origin...