Summer Debate
This summer, Matt and I were discussing topics that we have been studying on our own, and the topic of Freewill and Election came up. Now about 2 years ago, we had a 'small debate' on this topic. It only lasted about a week or two, and we concluded that we didn't agree, but we were not that far off. Matt believed that God chose, by His own good pleasure and will, those who would be elected to salvation, based on His total sovereignty. I believed that there was 100% freewill and 100% predestination, and they worked perfectly together. Well, this summer, our debate became quite large, and lasted all summer. We had over 50 pages of emails (in a Word doc) between us, and with it all said and done, it really didn't accomplish that much. We were both using scripture to defend our views, but it never went anywhere. It went round and round and round.
Romans
So, after attempting many different angles at how we could come together in our view, we finally decided that the best course of action would be to go through the book of Romans. We both agreed that the strongest 'argument' against freewill was in Romans 9. I held the view, however, that most took Romans chapter 9 out of context with the rest of the book of Romans, and with the rest of scripture. With that in mind, we were going to tackle Romans chapter 9 by studying through the entire book of Romans, to ensure when we got to chapter 9, we kept it in context with the rest of Paul's letter.
Discover the Truth
The entire point of going through the book of Romans was to discover the Truth of scripture. We wanted to put away all presuppositions and preconceived ideas, and really know what scripture was saying, not bringing out what we wanted it to say. This is critical in studying scripture, and is a lot harder than many even understand. This idea will actually be the topic of a future study.