There are many passages in the Bible and uniquely LDS scripture that
demonstrates to us the dynamic relationship between God’s power and the
free-will of man. John 6:40 is one such text:
For this is the will
of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have
eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. (NASB)
In the Book of Mormon, a great text showing this dynamic relationship is
1 Nephi 18:20. Speaking of Laman and Lemuel, Nephi wrote:
And there was nothing
save it were the power of God, which threatened them with destruction, could
soften their hearts; wherefore, when they saw that they were about to be swallowed
up in the depths of the sea they repented of the thing which they had done,
insomuch that they loosed me.
In this text, we read that (1) God’s power threatened Laman and Lemuel
with destruction; (2) that the power of God could be the only thing that could “soften their hearts” and,
notwithstanding, (3) it was not the monergistic
power of God that resulted in Laman and Lemuel repented but instead their own
free-will actions. In other words, it is not an “either-or” (here, either God’s
will only or man’s will only) but “both-and” (i.e., there is a dynamic
relationship between the will of God and the will of man).
For a fuller
discussion of the biblical evidence for this, see:
