Do humans have free will to choose God? Can a starving vulture freely choose a fresh salad over rotting flesh?
Picture a gaunt vulture released into a room where two heaps of food await. One is a pile of fresh vegetables like kale, carrots, and spinach. The other is a mound of decaying carcasses with the stench thick in the air. Which will the vulture choose? Without hesitation, it will lunge toward the rot and feast as though the greens beside it do not exist.
The vulture is completely free to choose. No constraints. No one compels it. No invisible hand guides or restrains it. Two choices lie before it, and with conscious volition, it chooses freely according to its nature.
So in what sense is the vulture free? And in what sense are humans free to “choose” God?
In light of the metaphor, some Christians hold to the idea of “omnivorous vultures,” as if the unregenerate person has a neutral appetite, able to choose the things of God. But Scripture paints a different picture. The human will is enslaved to its desires, and those desires are bent. Left to ourselves, we do not desire, honor, or acknowledge God (1 Corinthians 2:14; 2 Corinthians 4:4, 2 Corinthians 5:17).
We “choose” God only because God first chooses us. Because He softens our hearts, opens our eyes and ears, and changes our very nature so that our desires are transformed. Only then are we truly free.
Consider God’s sovereignty even at the cellular and molecular level. How does the sovereign God of the universe choose to order and govern every biological molecule in every cell? He doesn’t coerce the molecules in any sort of way. Rather, he just lets them move and react according to their innative physical and chemical properties, i.e. according to their nature. Inside a cell is a vast soup of water, ions, proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and countless other small molecules. Everything is moving “randomly”, and there are chance encounters of molecules guided by physics and chemical compatibility (like size, shape, charges, hydrophobic/hydrophilic regions). Reactions occur, proteins fold, and complex structures form. All of this is mind-blowingly complex, and yet in this “random” soup, intricate biological processes emerge and God governs this vast complexity without violating the intrinsic properties of any atom, cell, or molecule.
So what’s the connection between the vulture and a molecule? Just as the vulture freely chooses the flesh according to its nature, and just as molecules freely interact according to their chemical and physical properties, God knows the nature, desires, and properties of every being and molecule and He positions circumstances so that His will is accomplished without ever overriding the freedom intrinsic to creation. The omniscient God knows what any truly free creature or molecule would do in any given circumstance (i.e. molinism).
The are also clearly moments when God steps in to override and alter the physical and chemical nature of the created world, something we call “miracles” (e.g. water becomes wine, a wooden staff becomes a snake, multiplication of bread and fish, the dead coming back to life).
He acts in a similar way when He transforms the hardened hearts of sinful, rebellious humans. The salvation of every Christian is therefore a miracle: a divine intervention that changes the very nature of the person such that they can truly choose Him. Soli Deo Gloria.