Some people wrote and spoke about free will prior to the Reformation, Pilgrim. It was not a theological term - it was a philosophical term.

I know many Calvinists tend to gravitate away from anything or anyone prior to the 16th century, aside from Augustine, but if you take a little tour of free will you'll probably have some good reading ahead of you. The dialogues of Plato are fascinating - I'm sure Calvin studied them closely when he earned his degree in Philosophy at the University of Paris.

Yes, you do appear to be in some kind of camp. But don't be afraid to explore the land around it. And to develop the analogy (I assume you're not actually in a real 'Reformed camp', though you never know these days), you may find the cities around you are older than your camp. In other words, free will wasn't foisted upon the Reformed tradition.

Quite the opposite, predestination was foisted upon the free will tradition. To be fair, I think it was a matter of the determinist position finding new friends in religion and politics.

Now, I know, Augustine wrote about what we call predestination in the 4th century. But you have to wonder why no one else, as far as I can tell, wrote about it until the 16th.

We've compared Calvin to CS Lewis. I'd like to draw an even clearer comparison between Augustine and Chrysostom. Chrysostom advocated free will.

Do you know much about Chrysostom? I'll provide some background if you need it, but suffice to say he believed in free will, and preached as much.

I'm sorry, but what is so comedic about taking scripture seriously? There was a free will offering. Why did they call it that?

Mike