Christians Struggle With the Dichotomy Term Paper

According to the author, the passage indicates that the authors of the Bible wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but that they did not receive exact dictation from God. They were inspired to write as they wished, but the outcome was still determined by God's ultimate will: "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (2 Peter 1:21). In the same way, the words of the prophets were their own, but the message behind these words was inspired by God. This is the nature of the interaction between God's will and human freedom in terms of the Bible.

In this way, Feinberg uses the Bible to substantiate everything he says about divine and human will, and I am therefore convinced that his arguments are superior to those of Reichenbach in terms from a biblical viewpoint.

In contrast to Feinberg, Reichenbach approaches the topic from a philosophical rather than a biblical viewpoint. The central argument of his article is that, in order to allow choice and free will on earth, God is inclined to limit his power. Reichenbach argues that causal elements are not sufficient to determine the actions of a person if such a person is indeed free to choose. He denies that any internal or external forces should have an impact on how a person acts. Only in such a case, according to Reichenbach, does human freedom exist. This argument is based not upon biblical evidence, but rather upon an intuitional philosophy: Reichenbach holds that human beings "feel" that they have a choice to act, and that they have the ability to be either wrong or right in these choices (Reichenbach 104).

This position creates a problematic dichotomy for Reichenbach: God's sovereignty is clearly implied in the Bible and indeed Reichenbach cites passages to this effect (Reichenbach 107). The way in which he handles this dichotomy is however decidedly unbiblical.In order to provide human beings with the freedom that is clearly evident in the world around us, according to Reichenbach, God limits his sovereignty and his omnipotence. Human freedom, according to this view, cannot exist simultaneously with divine sovereignty and omnipotence. If this were the case, human life, as mentioned above, would be simply a number of predetermined actions with people being little more than drones. Since this is clearly not the case, Reichenbach attempts to form an entirely unbiblical concept of God's nature. As such, the author claims that God indeed does not know everything, as he is not aware of the choices that people will make. The reason for this is that God has granted human beings with complete freedom of choice. According to the article, this is God's self-imposed limitation.

When regarded from the biblical viewpoint, the above claim is certainly not true. The Bible makes repeated references to God's sovereignty and omnipotence. Clearly, passages such as Psalm 115:2-3 indicates that God imposes no limitations upon his own power or knowledge even in the face of non-belief: "2 Why should the Gentiles say, / 'So where is their God' / 3 but our God is in heaven; / He does whatever He pleases." Psalm 139:16 states that God knows absolutely everything regarding the outcome of events: "...in Your book they all were written, / the days fashioned for me, / When as yet there were none of them."

Surely what Reichenbach attempts to prove is directly in contradiction to the above. In the light of this, therefore, I believe that Feinberg presents a much stronger biblical argument for the manifestation of human freedom and its interaction with God's will. The Bible contains no passages that indicate God's limitations; either self-imposed or otherwise. In contrast to Reichenbach, Feinberg accepts God's unlimited knowledge and power and basis his….....