Forest Gump was just doing what he was told by Jenny, when you get to Vietnam don’t try to be brave, you just run. Well he didn’t entirely listen, he needed to find his best good friend Bubba who was wounded on the battlefield. Along the way he kept finding others that asked Gump to help them out of there. On one trip back he encountered Lieutenant Dan who had was in bad shape. He told Gump to leave him there it was his destiny to die on the battlefield with his men, Gump ignored his order and took him out of there.
We all have choices. We choose what we wish to do, what we wish to say, what we wish to wear or where we choose to go. We have a will of our own that we use everyday. If we don’t feel like going to work, we can certainly choose not to go, there may be consequences for our choices, but they are ours to make. As far as salvation goes, there are two modes of thought:
- We have free will and seek salvation for ourselves
- We are bound by our will and can only be saved by grace and faith
Erasmus would argue the first is the way to salvation. He believed that free will as “a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation or turn away from them”. Erasmus proposed a synergistic view, where divine grace initiates, leads, and assists human effort, but the human will must act in cooperation with this grace to achieve salvation. Erasmus argued that many passages in Scripture suggest a partnership between God and humans, and he favored a traditional, moderate interpretation over the extreme views presented by reformers. He believed that denying free will undermines human moral responsibility, arguing that the promise of rewards and the threat of punishments necessitate that individuals have the power to choose their actions.
Unlike Luther, who argued that sin completely enslaved the human will, Erasmus believed that human nature is fallen and weakened, but not totally incapacitated. The will remains capable of choosing to follow God’s commands, which he argued are pointless if humans lack the freedom to obey them.
Luther on the other hand believed that humans cannot save themselves, they can only be redeemed by grace from God. Our will is corrupted from original sin, we are far removed from God and are simply slaves to the world and sin and have become hedonists by seeking pleasures of the world and not salvation.
This would make sense, we cannot will our will upon the world, what I mean by that is we cannot create the living things around us, the mountains and oceans and creatures, we can only observe the manner in which these things exist and empirically study and manipulate them. We cannot of our own will define things as such, they were created without our assistance. God did not have to ask us for permission, He just did it.
But Erasmus does have a good point, if we are only saved by grace and not our free will to seek God, what is the point of worship and absolution, we get it for free? I think not, I get Luther’s point that we cannot save ourselves, we are not saved by works. If that were so the rich man would be able to fit through the eye of.a needle and absolution could be purchased. However we must keep our faith strong to tune into the spirit to obtain our salvation, if not we get left to perish and forever be lost.
Author: admin
Obviously my interests include philosophy. I think thinking and thought are the beginning of every great thing. It’s how we understand and perceive the world. Periodically I’ll change things up and blog about something math or computer science related or even a blog about mythology. I am not political, trendy, or savvy, but I do like a good story. That is why I try and find a movie clip that hints or encompasses what I want to blog about. Sometimes the relevance is there, sometimes it’s a reach and I just really love the movie that I put in the post. The intent and purpose of my blog is to make you think, make me think and together our thoughts can be shared in a collection of material.