How important to you is real personal agency, free will?

It seems to me that most Christians are not, and never have been, sufficiently 'bothered' by the absolute requirement in Christianity that each Man personally must be able really to make the choice for Jesus Christ. 

It is this requirement for agency which (as far as I know) sets Christianity apart from the other religions: Christians must believe-in the reality of free will - and, in practice, that means that Christians will usually need a coherent explanation of how free will is possible. 

The Big Problem is that the standard theology enforced by the Catholic and Protestant churches has no place for human agency. 

By which I mean - all will correctly assert that free will is real and necessary - but none have a coherent explanation of how it is possible. 

All the 'usual' explanations are wrong - make no sense - and many are just dishonest...

('Kicking the can further down the road' type explanations - which just delay the point of explanation, in hope the enquirer will get fed-up and go-away!)

The problem is that if there is (as all mainstream Christian denominations assert) one God, omnipotent, omniscient and who created everything from nothing; then every-thing is God; and the whole of creation is Just God's Puppet. 

There is nothing else for it to be. 

God made every-thing, God gave every-thing all of its characteristics, God made all the laws by which every-thing happens... 

All is accounted-for by God and there is simply No Room For Personal Agency. There is nowhere other than God for personal agency to come-from. 

I do not regard this as a proposition for debate - once one has seen this incoherence, it is as clear a 'fact' as any. 

I realize that there are many, many people who do Not 'see it' - but that is simply an omission or failure on their part. The world is (and always has been) full of people who do not see problems - especially when not-seeing has important advantages. 

But once seen, one knows.

And from then it is a matter of honesty.   

This elimination of the possibility of agency is just a plain and unavoidable consequence of the concept of God that has been accepted and enforced (apparently) since early in the history of the Christian Church.   

Thus we have a truly colossal flaw at the very heart of mainstream Christian theology - moreover one that is very obvious to anyone who takes seriously the need for free agency. 

It has never been solved, never been explained by classical mainstream theology; it can only be obfuscated or made into a mystery - by asserting that both God is Like This and also There is Free Agency - and how it works is a mystery that must be accepted. 

Much hinges on whether a person is happy to accept that the core necessity of Christianity does not make common sense and cannot coherently be explained - but must be accepted as a mystery. 

Apparently there are plenty of Christians who simply see no problem in this state of affairs. And cannot be made to see that it is a problem - despite that it is (perhaps?) the main reason why non-Christians cannot become Christian. 

But once one has seen a vast incoherence at the root of the religion - as commonly expressed; it does not go down well to be told either that it doesn't exist or that one should not worry about it! That does not create a 'good impression'! 

What is the conclusion? 

Well, if you agree that personal agency/ free will is absolutely necessary to Christianity - that people really Must be able to make the choice of Jesus from themselves - then you cannot accept the assumptions of mainstream, classical, traditional Christian theology - whether Eastern or Western Catholic, or Protestant. 

(You may well accept the religions, the denominations, the churches, their practices - but you cannot in honesty accept as necessary and true the assumptions of their theology.) 

Because these systems have no space for agency; they simply Must Be Wrong - and once one has known this for oneself, it does not matter how many hundreds of years they have been wrong, nor how many great theologians have been wrong in this way. 

Then one must either find or devise a coherent explanation for how real personal agency/ free will is possible. 

Find or devise a Christian theology which includes and entails agency*.  

And, as usual; this is a matter of absolute importance and extreme urgency. 

+++

* For instance.

Note: It is a secondary issue - but it may be regarded as important to have some reasonable explanation as to why so many people have been so wrong for so long - how it is that they apparently could not see this 'fatal flaw' in mainstream Christian theology. I believe the answer is to do with the development of human consciousness; and that Men of the past thought and experienced differently from us. In particular, they did not experience themselves as distinct individuals but instead (to a significant extent) as secondary-to, derived-from, the group to which they belonged. For Men of the past, mostly, group identity came first; and much of their knowledge came unconsciously, passively, absorbed from the group as tradition. In such a world, obedience and loyalty to the group/ church were primary -  and regarded as sufficient for salvation. Such questions as the necessity and consequences of individual free will were much less obvious, and were often neither spontaneous nor urgent. Indeed, Men of the past did not experience - and in that sense did not possess - personal agency to the same extent that modern alienated Man does (whether we like it or not!). This difference in consciousness is why it was possible, and probably inevitable, that the idea arose and was accepted that a Man could not relate directly to God, but must be mediated by a group: i.e. by the church of which he was a member. Salvation was then seen and experienced in group-terms. Modern Men are different from this (and by God's destiny); so we now perceive and experience differently; and we cannot honestly pretend otherwise.