Before I begin, I need to state that I'm about to descend into a technical theological discussion for which I'm assuming a certain amount of background. Within evangelical Christianity there are two major poles when it comes to the free will versus God's sovereignty debate. On the side of free will you have a position called Aminianism. On the side of God's sovereignty you have a position called Calvinism. There are a number of variants of each of these and more and less extreme views, etc., but these are the two major positions. Anyway, I'm not going to explain a lot about the terminology, so I recommend following the above links if you need additional explanation.
Basically, I want to establish that the Calvinist versus Arminian debate is very important to the Christian life. I've heard it said a couple times in the last month or so by fellow Christians that this debate doesn't matter very much to the Christian life. However, I think this indicates a failure to critically understand the debate itself and the ramifications this debate has.
As a simple and perhaps shocking example to the mainstream Christian, it is a fairly common statement in postmodern (Arminian) evangelism to say, "Jesus died for your sins, will you accept Him into your life as your personal Lord and Savior?" However, a Calvinist cannot make this statement, at least not without some sort of special gifting. A true Calvinist doesn't believe this is the case for every person; Christ died for his elect only. Instead, the Calvinist says, "Christ died for the sins of his chosen ones. If God is drawing you to Him, pray and ask Him to become your personal Lord and Savior." This is an important distinction.
However, the debate goes really much deeper and the position a Christian takes often shifts their views in many other doctrines. The key to the debate is about whether or not God's will or man's will is supreme. In the postmodern church, Arminianism is currently the most popular view. The reasoning for Arminianism is thus, God is not a tyrant and God doesn't want us to be automatons. Therefore, He granted his creations ultimate creativity and free will and then merely presented evidence of Himself to mankind. Those who see this evidence and choose to believe it and follow Him are "saved." God doesn't work to compel or otherwise force anyone to believe and when the Bible speaks of the "elect" or "predestination" these are merely terms referring to the fact that God foreknew what each person would do and, therefore, predestined those people to be saved.
Calvinists on the other hand reason that God is sovereign and does not restrict himself from interfering with man's will. In fact, according to Calvinist's men hate God so much that they cannot turn to God on their own, it's simply not in their nature. Rather, man has free will to act, but he will never act in a way that is opposite of his nature. Instead, God reaches down, so to speak, into the lives of those men and women he's elected and changes their nature for them. The men and women involved don't have any choice in the matter and are compelled to be "saved." On their own, men will use their free will to always make the wrong decision, regardless of the evidence.
I've purposely avoided giving any specific Scriptural evidence for either position and I've tried to present these views fairly because I'm more interested in demonstrating that there is a very important difference between these two ideas. (And to do anything less would be dishonest.) This difference has ramifications on almost every aspect of the Christian life.
For example, those who believe in Arminianism generally have a hard time saying that a person who becomes saved can be sure that she will stay that way. If it's up to the person to come to faith, then why should God then restrict a person's free will if she wants to then fall away? Calvinists on the other hand believe a person is either elect or not. The elect person can't really help but first become saved and then to stay saved even if she backslides horribly. Either that, or the backslider only gave the appearance of salvation without ever having it. Which is the case, only that person can know for certain. Both Calvinism and Arminianism accept that a person demonstrates faith through the fruit of her labors, but the meaning of falling away has drastically different meanings to each point of view.
Stating that it doesn't really matter which one believes is a cop out. One cannot be a Christian without knowing whether one believes that she saw the evidence and believed for herself or that God reached into her life and changed her. And to state that the ramifications of this belief aren't important is also a cop out. The problem is that Scripture has a great deal to say on the topic and I don't believe that this is one of those "mysteries" in the Bible that isn't really clear and cannot be resolved.
In my opinion, there are two major reasons for taking the "it doesn't matter stance." I will consider the ignoble reason first: laziness. A lazy Christian can make this statement and not need to bother searching out the Scriptures to determine what the Bible really says on the topic. If it doesn't matter, why should I work to find it out? I hope this is the minority of Christians taking this stance.
The second reason is actually a noble reason: unity. Unity is an important reason why this distinction cannot fought too fractiously. The Church has broken into thousands of sects since the Reformation. Churches have divided strongly over every silly doctrine there is and even stuff that isn't doctrine (such as the infamous divisions over "What color should the carpet be in the new building?"). Well, as with many other doctrines, I believe this is a discussion the Church needs to have, but doesn't need to divide over. It is important, but it is not primary. The outcomes of each position are similar enough that we don't need to denounce each other over it. However, I do not see how this lessens the importance of knowing your stance, searching out the Scriptures, and understanding the ramifications.
The ultimate purpose is this: Knowing God. The purpose of existence is to know and glorify God. I believe every Christian can agree with that. God has given us all kinds of information about Himself if we will just seek out a Bible and read it. This should be a topic that every Christian should be searching out because the Bible speaks quite a bit on this topic.
In conclusion, I can cope with a Christian who has studied Scripture to search out the truth of this issue amonst others and disagrees with me. However, I find it most painful to see Christians who aren't working to understand the depth of knowledge ready for the taking to anyone willing to search it out. All I can say is that knowing what a great gift it is to be Christian should spur us on to ever greater heights of knowledge of and obedience to and worship of our God. Amen.
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