Chosen But Free

Anyone else read Geisler’s Chosen But Free? It was mentioned positively by someone in my church and so I am wading through it right now. All I can say is…wow, just wow. It is full of misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, poor scholarship, and straw man arguments. I don’t think I can say it any better than Phil Johnson:



A blurb on the back cover of Norman Geisler’s Chosen But Free boasts that it is “the definitive work on the relationship between divine election and human choice.” One would not have expected anything less from a seminary professor of Dr. Geisler’s stature and reputation.

Unfortunately, Chosen But Free is a disappointment. More than a mere letdown, actually. It is a stunningly inept treatment of the subject it undertakes. Dr. Geisler manages to misrepresent his friends and foes alike. He utterly mangles the doctrines of divine sovereignty, election, and free will—and in the process he obscures and redefines the historical positions of both Calvinism and Arminianism. The reader who has the regrettable persistence to follow Dr. Geisler to the last page of his work is certain to be hopelessly befuddled at the end of the effort.

The fact is, if Dr. Geisler were not a teacher of such stature, there would be no reason at all to pay any attention to his book. It is a bad book by any measure.