Debate: Do God's decrees violate Man's Free Will? with Matt Slick and Skylar Fiction

This is Apologetics Live with Matt Slick and Andrew Rappaport, part of the Christian Podcast with Matt Slick.

Debate Format and Housekeeping

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It was kind of up in the air. He's shaking his head no. Okay, he won't be at G3. He was trying to join with another ministry to get a table. Also let you guys know, if you listen to my Wrap Report podcast coming out Sunday, we're going to have a very interesting episode dealing with Ben Shapiro's interview of Gloria Aldridge dealing with feminism, marriage, and abortion.

It was a very enlightening discussion that they had, and we basically commented on that. So with that, the way we're going to do this tonight, basically the debate that we're going to be having is a formal debate.

So with that said, it's not going to be where they're just having a discussion. The topic is, do God's decrees violate man's free will? And the way we're going to do this debate is, Skylar's going to start off with a 10-minute opening, then Matt's a 10-minute opening.

Skylar's going to do the first of 15-minute rebuttals, then Matt. Then we're going to have two cross-examinations. That'll be 20 minutes each. Each person will be given one minute to ask a question.

The other person will have two minutes to answer, and then a closing 10 minutes each of Skylar, then Matt. So that is the format. Before we get started, I'm going to first bring in both of the debaters here, and I'll start with you, Matt, if you want to go and introduce yourself.

Actually, I should start with Skylar, since he's speaking first. That is true. So Skylar, go for it. And anything that you want to do, I know you've got a YouTube channel, or anything that you want to promote or introduce yourself, go for it.

Hey, everybody. I'm Skylar Fiction. I'm super excited to be here tonight. I have a YouTube channel called The Skylar Fiction Show. If you just type Skylar Fiction with an A-R, you will certainly find it out there.

I host discussions and debates with theists. We do biblical commentary. I've got a co-host named Dr. Josh Bowen who runs Digital Hammurabi. He's a biblical scholar. He co-hosts the show with me and is my partner in crime.

And, of course, all hail Raptor Jesus. So thank you for being on here tonight. I really appreciate the opportunity. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year to all my friends out there.

All right, Matt, you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, I'm Matt Slick, the founder and director of CARM .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. I've been doing it for 24 years. I'm a Christian apologist. I do it full time. And the website's had over 100 million visitors.

CARM .org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. I've been doing radio five days a week, Monday through Friday, for 15 years today. Today's the 15-year anniversary, and praise God for that. So hopefully we'll have an interesting discussion tonight.

We'll see how it goes.

All right. And so, folks, what's going to happen is when they get down to about a minute, you're going to see that clock pop in. I probably won't leave it up the whole time. But just so you guys know, that'll give you the idea.

So we don't have a buzzer or anything like that. I think these guys both have been doing enough debates. They'll stay to time. So, Skyler, you're going to start. You ready? Oh, I'm ready to go when you are, yeah.

All right. Let me get the clock going here. All right. All right. I'm good to go. All right. Hold on one sec. Don't worry, sir, please. Why is the clock not starting? Oh, it's the wrong clock. That's why.

Hold on.

All right. Go for it. So let me say that I'm super excited to have this debate tonight because this is a topic that I've talked with Calvinists quite a bit with on my channel. Talked a little bit about it with Matt Slick in our last two debates.

That wasn't, of course, the specific topic we were discussing. But it's been a struggle for me to get a Calvinist to actually articulate how people have free will with the concept of like God's decree of will.

So one of the things I think what we could start with is. And by the way, everything that I am going to go over and all the information that I'm going to give you definitions wise all come from Karm .org.

These are all Matt Slick's definitions. I didn't get them from anywhere else. I didn't go to other Calvinists. I literally took everything off of his website. So all of my arguments will be focused around those particular definitions.

So let's talk a little bit about what about God's decrees. Right. And perhaps I'll just go right into quoting his website. So the decrees of God are his eternal purpose, according to where by he has foreordained whatever will come to pass.

Now, what does it mean to foreordain something? On Matt Slick's website, it says it is the same as predestination, which means that God ordains what will happen in history and in salvation. So I think it's it's very important to start there.

So keep in mind that anything that happens throughout history, I don't I'm getting a lot of feedback. I don't know if maybe some could mute their mic, but there's a lot I keep hearing feedback from somebody on there.

But anyways, it doesn't matter. The thing is, is there is anything that's ever happened throughout history is preordained by God. Don't no matter how awful, how good the fact that I'm having this conversation right now, preordained by God.

And just once again, what is preordained to be preordained by definition? This is the same as predestination, which means that God ordains whatever will happen in history or salvation. Now, last conversation I had with Matt, I gave some very explicit questions to Matt.

I said, hey, you know, when children are molested. Is that ordained by God or if God decrees a child could be molested, let me say it like that. Will it happen? And he said, yes. But this isn't the only thing.

It's any type of terrible, awful thing that's ever going to happen. 9 -11, you name it, you could fill in the blank with whatever, whatever awful thing you can think about within human existence. That's all preordained by God because of his wills.

Now, how is it if God, it's easy to think about it. Let's use an analogy, either God like a architect or a computer programmer. All right. God writes out the blueprint or programs to code. Now, people can't go against God's will because he's already preordained it.

I mean, you could use particular scriptures like, and he quotes these on his website. So let's do like Ephesians 1 -11. All things are done according to God's plan and decision. And God chose to use it to be, sorry, God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ before, because of his own purpose, based on what he has decided from the very beginning.

So all the things that I had mentioned, 9 -11, you know, child molestation, this is all because this is what God wanted. Everything's exactly what God wanted. In fact, let's look at a couple other definitions here.

What do I want to get into? Oh, here, let's do the decreed of will of God. The decreed of will of God is that which God's sovereign will that we may or may not know, depending on whether or not God reveals it to us.

The decreed of will is God's direct will. He causes something to be. So God causes these things to be. Not only does he cause it, he actually plans it. So, I mean, well, that makes sense. If you were to plan out all of human existence, if you were to actually plan out all of human existence, obviously, and people can't go against his will, it's going to happen exactly the way that God's planned.

Because, you know, God is sovereign. And what does it mean for God to be sovereign? According to Matt Slick, sovereignty is the right of God to do as he wishes. This implies that there are no external influences upon him and that also he has the ability to exercise power and control according to his will.

So everything is according to his will. Now, think about it this way. If God wrote the blueprint and everything's going to go along his blueprint, how could it be possible that people could have free will?

Free will, defined by Matt Slick on his website, is the freedom of self-determination. Well, people don't have self-determination under Calvinism. It's already predetermined, under predestination. It's the ability to make choices.

A choice is free if it is consistent with a person's desires and nature. Free will, actually, let's leave it right there. So how can someone freely choose to do something if God has already preordained it?

He wrote the blueprint. Now, what you'll oftentimes hear from Calvinists is this idea that somehow people freely choose to sin. Now, this is the aspect that I've never actually been able to hear Calvinists articulate.

And this is what I'm going to be looking for in this debate. And I hope that I've proven wrong. I've talked to a lot of them. I had to look at Calvinists last week. And no one can seem to say how God can preplan something with his decreed of will.

And he's got a couple different wills. But how God can preordain everything and at the same time someone can freely choose to do something. At best, what you're going to have is some kind of, like, illusion of free will, where the people involved think they are actually committing free choices.

Especially, once again, because people cannot go against the will of God. But if God decrees something, it will happen. Just like the example that I gave and the question I asked Matt in our last debate.

If God decrees a child is going to be molested, it is going to get molested. Now, Calvinists will oftentimes, like, argue there's, like, indirect decrees and direct decrees, right? But the slight difference is basically with an indirect decree.

Instead of just making man X do something, which I don't know how you would argue that you're not making X do something. Basically, an indirect decree would just set up the pieces so something would happen.

So how am I going to say this? So that's going to be, I think, the challenge for Matt Slick during this debate. How is he going to articulate freedom away from a blueprint or a computer program? A computer program can't rewrite the program.

A blueprint can't rewrite itself. Make sure I got everything covered before we keep going here. Decrees of God, sovereignty, decree of will. Oh, yeah, let me do this here, too. This is a really good part.

So this is a part where we kind of go, this is from an article from CARM or maybe it was a document. I don't know exactly. It talks about predestination and election, right? So what is election? Election is the sovereign act of God where he chooses people or individuals to carry out his purpose in the world.

God's election is not based on the quality, any quality in the individual or groups of people, nor is it based on any foreseen ability in them. It's not about what they're going to do in the future. It's just who he chooses, our group of people, nor is it based on any foreseen ability in them.

God is the one who elects people out of his sovereign will, whatever he wants, for his good pleasure. That's basically what sovereign means, as I read earlier. He is the one who chooses the people. People do not elect themselves.

Okay. So right there, actually, let me add this on. This will really kind of nail it down here, and then I'll probably wrap it up. I'll probably write about ten minutes. Let me look at my time here. Yeah, about a minute and a half.

So this is from that paper I was saying. You must note that God's predestined people, as in Ephesians 1 .11, 1 .5, demonstrate that this is, however, a controversy to the nature of predestination. In the Reformed Calvinist camp, predestination includes individuals.

In other words, the Reformed doctrine of predestination is that God predestines whom he wants to be saved and that without the predestination, none would be saved. The non-Reformed camp states that God predestines people to salvation, but these people freely choose to follow God on their own.

Now, what is it? So the people who aren't Calvinist, non-Reformed positions say that they would freely choose to follow God. That sort of sounds like free will there, but that's not what Calvinists believe.

But these people freely choose God. In other words, in the non-Reformed perspective, God is reacting to the will of the individuals. This is do they, you know, are they going to accept God? Are they the one who initiates the will?

That would be the choosing, the part where I talked about free will earlier. God is reacting to the will of the individuals and the predestining them only because they chose God using their will. Whereby contrast, the Reformed position states that people choose God only because he predestines them first.

So certainly, in that sense, people don't have free will in the idea of your election, not election, salvation. So you don't get to freely be elected, you don't get to freely choose God. God has to elect you.

Part of these wills, actually, part of these wills, funny enough, is that he puts everything. Your desire, what's going to happen, all these things are all built in. It's all part of the blueprint, exactly what's happening now.

Thank you, I appreciate the opening statement.

God's Decrees, Predestination, and Free Will

Right on time too, good job. All right, so I will bring Matt in. All right. I'm looking, hold on. His window's open. Where am I? Where is it? Where is it?

It's right over there to the left. You can see that on the left, right? It's on his left, right? Hold on. I don't see it. I thought it was down to the bottom. His window's open.

Hold on. Skyler, to help me bust on Matt, like double teaming. Oh, there it is, there it is. Okay. Okay, you ready?

Wow. Yeah, I got three large monitors and a bunch of windows open. I was taking notes. All right. All right, you can hear me okay? All right. Well, first of all, thanks, Skyler. I appreciate you going to my website and using it as a resource.

That's good. And I do appreciate that you're seeking to try and build a case. I will still urge you, and I'll say this again, that you're welcome to sit with me sometimes, and I can explain how these things work together better.

It could take more than just 10 minutes in a heated discussion. But nevertheless, I'm just going to go through my notes from what you said. How do people have free will along with God's decreed will? Because God decrees that they have free will.

And that may sound like a verbal juxtaposition here, but no, it's what it is. Free will. You didn't define it. Yes, you did. You actually did. You went to my site. Free will is the freedom of self-determination.

So that's good. That is what it is. And in the Reformed camp, and I believe the biblical camp, we don't deny free will. We don't say that people are forced to do anything by God. We don't say that he puts their hand on a gun and pulls a trigger and says, See, this is what you did, so therefore you're responsible for it.

And this is a common objection that Arminians make, and it's a common objection that atheists make. Atheists and the Arminians frequently argue in the same kind of sense, because they're man-centered, not God-centered.

Nevertheless, so you misapplied some stuff. God's decretive will, where God causes things to be. You misapplied the issue. You quoted decretive will but misapplied it in the sense that you failed to understand that there is also the decretive will, there's the permissive will.

God permits people to be able to do things against his, what we call the prescriptive will. God says don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, but he permits them to lie, cheat, and steal. They have their freedom to be able to do this.

He's not forcing them to lie, to cheat, and to steal. He does not want them to in the sense of his prescriptive will, but in another sense, it is within his will to ordain their permission or give them that ability and freedom to be able to lie, to cheat, and to steal.

This is within God's ordination and his, what we say, his decrees in that sense to be able to provide the circumstances by which people are freely able to rebel against God. You may say, well, they're not free if it's decreed.

Nothing that you have said means that they cannot have freedom if God has decreed something to be. If God has decreed a free will choice, it's still free by the very definition of it being decreed to be free will.

For example, I can cause you to freely do something. Now, if I can demonstrate that I can cause you to freely do something, and it's still free will, but yet you've been caused to do it, your whole objection fails.

Let me give you an illustration of something. Skyler, if I was sitting in a room with you, and we were discussing this, and you wear a hat, and I wanted you to take your hat off, and I didn't tell you that I want you to take your hat off, but that's what I want you to do.

I could do a number of things to get you to take your hat off, to cause you to take your hat off freely. For example, I could say, what the heck is that on top of your hat? I hope that thing's not going to sting you.

You could go grab that thing and look. Now, here's an example. If I were to say that, does it mean then that though I caused you by my action to do something I wanted you to do, does it mean you did not have free will in the process?

Of course not. You freely chose to do what you desired to do in light of the circumstance that I brought into existence and said, this is what I want you to do. I could do all kinds of things. We'll just call that the take your hat off your head illustration.

But I could cause you to take your hat off of your head. But the causing of it is not forcing you to, but it is causative. In that, the actions that I put in place will bring you to your free will choice to be able to do what I want you to do.

Your free will is not violated. You have free will. I have caused you to do what I want you to do. So you see, it is certainly possible to have someone be caused to freely act. Your criticism is that God, if he decrees somebody to do something, that it means they're not free to do it.

Well, first of all, you have to understand there's what's called the direct and the indirect decrees of God. The direct decrees of God are the direct causative decrees of God. Let there be light, etc.

Where when God decrees and declares certain things to happen because that's what he decides and by his direct action, that's what occurs. He can have an indirect decree, for example, in the Garden of Adam and Eve, where he allows the enemy, the serpent, to come in and deceive Eve.

And by that, Adam and Eve disobeyed him. It was not God's prescriptive will that they disobey him and that he prescribes them to obedience and moral fidelity to him. But it was within his permissive will to allow them the freedom to be able to do that.

And they certainly freely chose to rebel. Now you might come back and say, well, wait a minute. God put all the pieces in place. Yes, he did. Undoubtedly. He put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there.

He put the tree of life there. He allowed the serpent to come in. He allowed the discussion to occur. Well, then God's responsible. No, he's not responsible for the moral failure of Adam and Eve. And the reason he's not responsible for the moral failure of Adam and Eve is because they freely chose to rebel.

God did not force them. If God had done some chemical thing in their brain that forced them to be able to say something and do something, then God would have been directly responsible for their rebellion.

But that's not the case. What we do have there, as the scriptures itself teaches, that God arranged and allowed the circumstances by which Adam and Eve freely chose to rebel against God. By definition, it was free.

If you say again, just to reiterate, he put the pieces in there. They had no choice. Well, there's a sense in which they had a choice. There's a sense in which they don't have a choice. If God foreordains whatever shall come to pass, why is it that is foreordained?

Is it because he knows what they're going to freely choose? Well, that's one position. The Armenians tend to go with that, and I have problems with that. That's another discussion. I would say that whatever is potentially existing, God, out of an infinite number of potential possibilities, brought into existence the actuality that he chose.

And that actuality includes the free will choices of those individuals. So therefore, he knows exactly what those free will choices, and he caused so-and-so to remove the hat by saying what's on top of your head.

Because that's what God chose to happen, and yet the freedom of the one who removes the hat is still in place. God can certainly do this in creation. He is the sovereign king. He is the one who can work all things after the counsel of his will, as Ephesians 111 says.

Now, you said the reformed doctrine of predestination, God predestines those whom he wants to be saved, and without this, none will be saved. That's correct. Jesus says in John 6, 65, you cannot come to me unless it's been granted to you from the Father.

That's what Jesus says. Now, if you don't like what Jesus says, you don't like that doctrine, well, then you can just take it up with Jesus. But that's it. It's not just simply a Calvinist teaching. It's what the scriptures teach.

And that's why I hold to what we call Calvinism, because it agrees with the scriptures, and that's the only reason. So people who are not Calvinists say that people can freely choose to follow God. All right.

Well, that's rather a humanistic idea, in that they think that man is somehow free in and of himself, in an independent fashion from God's sovereignty and control, in spite of Ephesians 111, which says God works all things after the counsel of his will.

Even the free will choice that the Arminians like to argue on the same side as atheists about this issue against the Calvinists and God's sovereignty. They certainly can argue, but they have to argue against the scriptures and with the scriptures.

Now, if you want to have an Arminian discussion, as you brought up, we can discuss that, and I can discuss why their failure to understand the biblical position is apparent. And I would invite Arminians to come in and discuss this with me.

We can go through the scriptures. But you don't affirm the scriptures, Skyler. So I have to use logic and it's scripture as well. So nevertheless, I don't know how much time I've got left, but I would say this, that I have demonstrated logically, thank you a minute left, that God certainly can bring about whatever he desires and still maintain the freedom and the free will of those individuals who are made in his image, just as I can cause you to take off your hat in any number of ways, Skyler, by saying there's a scorpion, a spider, a bug, or whatever it is on your hat and you take your hat off.

And I can cause you to do that. And yet your free will is not violated. And God, who is a sovereign above all things, can certainly bring about circumstances by which free will individuals will certainly do whatever God decides and wants them to do.

And to call it a computer program is a misrepresentation of the issue. To call it a blueprint is a misrepresentation of the issue. God allows us our freedom, but he's above our freedom nonetheless. And as Proverbs 121 says, God moves the heart of the king where he wishes it to go.

God is a sovereign. This is consistent with Christian theology and the nature of God himself. Amen. All right.

God's Sovereignty and Compatibilist Free Will

That's time. All right. So bring Skyler in and we're going to have 15 minutes for rebuttal. Let me just reset our clock here. All right. Are you ready? Skyler, are you ready? I don't know if you muted yourself.

Hold on. Sorry about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. Yep. No, I'm good. Yeah, I don't want you talking for 10 minutes and on your rebuttal, no one hears it. No, no, that wouldn't be good.

All right. You got the floor. All right, my man. All right. So I guess now so far I haven't actually heard that mechanism yet to how people have free will and God can preordain everything, right? Just simply saying, let me see, God decrees they have free will doesn't mean anything because it contradicts what's actually happening.

Let's once again look at what it means when God predestines things. Predestination is the doctrine that God has foreordained all things which will come to pass. Now what does it mean to foreordain is the same as predestination, which means that God has ordained what will happen in history.

History, it's a key, and salvation. He's written like the blueprint. I don't know why he said it's not a good analogy, but it's exactly what it is. You could say written a book, you could use a computer program, but everything is preordained by God.

Everything that has happened is exactly the way it is supposed to happen. It's not a matter of like him allowing things to happen. They're going to happen because he used his will to make it come, and what he decrees must happen.

People cannot go against his decrees. As I said before, like in the last debate, when I asked Matt if God decrees is a child going to get molested, that child is going to get molested. It cannot go another way.

What I haven't heard at all during this is how besides just saying people, God decrees they have free will, which it's meaningless because they don't have a way to go against it. If you don't have a way to go against free will to make another choice, the only thing you have is the illusion that you actually have a choice in this situation because once again, what is free will?

The freedom of self-determination. You don't have self-determination. Things are determined by God as I read earlier in Ephesians 111 as he quoted, all things are done according to God's plan and decision, and God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ because of his own purposes based on what he has decided from the very beginning.

He's already decided all this. Now if you're arguing that people can go against his will, you have an argument, but that's not what you're saying. You're saying the will has to be followed, and according to your website, that's exactly what you're saying.

So I'm having really difficulties trying to like, this is the same thing I run into all the time when I talk to Calvinists is nobody seems to be able to articulate. I will say that you've given a different answer, but I think it's less satisfactory than the answers that I get.

Most people with Calvinists will just point to Romans 9 and say, hey, who are you? The clay to tell the potter basically what to do with it. And once again, when we talk about free will, listen, yeah, of course I'm not Narminian, I don't believe in your religion, I'm a raptor bait, all hail raptor Jesus.

But the thing is, I can still show what you're saying. You're saying that the difference between Narminian and a Calvinist is that people freely choose to accept Jesus, and that they on their own volition can make that choice.

Under Calvinism, they can't make that choice. The only way that they can come to God is if God offers that grace, and it isn't based on anything. It's not based on you're going to act or anything that they've done.

It's just predetermined before they're even born. Of course God knows what's going to happen in the future because he wrote out exactly what was going to happen in the future. Let's talk about the hat thing.

If God preordains that my hat is going to come off my head, it's going to come off my head under your belief system. It doesn't matter the methodology, how you choose to do it. The point is he's the ultimate cause.

He's the one who caused it to come off my head. And there's no way I could have kept it on there. It doesn't matter if it's whether you're trying to take it off, you're lying to me and pretending there's a bug on top of it, whatever you said there, which God wouldn't lie, of course.

But the point is that he preordains the hat will come off, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Now I could have yelled at him, but I'm looking for the mechanism here, and just telling me that somehow God decrees free will, but then free will is not actually happening, it's confusing, and it's frankly I don't think a satisfactory answer by any means.

So now you said something, and I'll be interested later on when we get to the back and forth about in one sense they have a choice, and in one sense they don't. So I'll be interested to see what the choice, in what sense they have a choice, and what's the sense they don't.

I'm going to imagine the sense they don't have is they can't go against the will of God. What else do I got here? Freely choose to do something. Oh, I was going to hit on your permissive will. Let's go and I have the, let me pull up, because that was something I did not have up for your.

The permissive will of God is that which God does not decree to occur, nor is it his will since it is not in accordance with his law. God's permissive will is his will to permit sin to occur. Now this is once again a contradiction.

How are you going to say that God permits something to happen, but God plans it out? Because as your website said, once again, he has planned out all of human history. Everything that has ever happened is because this is exactly the way that God wanted it.

So how can one permit something to happen? Well, I mean, I guess in the sense you could write out the plan, the blueprint or the computer program, whatever's going on here. He could write it out and then he could sit back and let his plan go through.

Like in that sense, he could permit it to happen. But in the context and what we would use, like I permitted my child to play video games or I permitted, I don't know, my dog to go outside. We wouldn't use permit within that kind of context here.

So it doesn't really, saying that he permits something was permissive. Well, I really, I actually think this is just a direct contradiction, frankly. I mean, that's not the topic of the debate. I'd love to debate that another time.

But it's frankly just it is a contradiction. Let's go back. Let me just make sure I haven't missed anything here. I mean, one more second. Let me just make sure I got everything that I want to see here.

For instance, if people could do otherwise, then God's plan would be contingent on mankind's decisions. And mankind would have to get some kind of glory for God's plan in succeeding. God would be depending on mankind.

So it's obviously not up to their decision. This is God's plan here. So the God's plan would be contingent. If it was up to them, it would be contingent on them. And obviously, under your theology, you guys don't believe that.

What else do I want to hit here? And I'm just going to once again, I'm going to go over some of these terms once again, just so it's very clear for the audience. What is the decree of will? The decree of will of God is that which is God's sovereign will that we may or may not know, depending on whether or not God reveals it to us.

God's decree of will is his direct will where he causes something to be. He is causing everything to be. He is the ultimate cause. He is the one who planned it out. Once again, what does it mean to be sovereign?

Sovereign is the right of God to do as he pleases. That implies that there is no external influence. Humans aren't influencing. There are no external influences on him. This is all part of God's plan.

The decrees of God are his eternal purpose. Everything that is happening throughout history is his eternal purpose, according to his will, whereby he foreordained whatever will come to pass. Foreordained, which means that God ordains what will happen in history and in salvation.

Not just salvation, in history. The Holocaust, 9 -11, whatever. Think about whatever awful thing he planned it out for his glory. And then he holds people responsible for the way they can't go against.

So I would just say that these are some things we really need to think about. And once again, what is free will? Free will is the freedom of self-determination. Human beings don't have self-determinations and actions independent of external causes.

Well, how are your actions independent of external causes if God's decree was for you to do action X? How could anything human beings do be independent of external causes if from the very beginning God has planned out everything?

Now, the reason God knows what's going to happen is because he wrote the plan. So I think that there are quite a bit of problems when we get into this idea of free will and predestination, election, and Calvinism.