Peter Liao in responding to a blog comment on By Way of Beauty that argued free will is non-existent left the following:
Our will is indeed free. You can very easily will yourself to become an elephant; the fact that you do not actually become an elephant is not a restriction of your will but rather a limitation of the influence on your will outside of your mind. This is a limitation not on the freedom of your will, but rather on it’s power; God can will things into being because he has the power to do so. We cannot, not because we lack the freedom to will it, but because we lack the power.
The will is a faculty of the mind, and is not limited by its external influence. If we were to measure our free will by what our wills have power to “do”, then a person who is paralyzed has barely any free will at all compared to an able bodied person; according to your definition, they not only lack the “free will” to will themselves to go to Mars, but they lack even the “free will” to will themselves to stand up or wiggle their pinky toe. That a person can no longer have a free will because they have a spinal injury, however, is absurd. The power demonstrated as a result of our will has nothing to do with the freedom of our will itself.
“Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.” —Karl Barth
In order to preach effectively, you must be willing to become all things to all people. You must be able to engage the pagan on their own ground, communicate the truth of the faith in a way that a nonbeliever can begin to understand. If you believe your faith to be true, then it follows that it can be explained reasonably and argued reasonably. Apologetics is not superior to evangelization, but it is an important part of it, as it edifies the believer and affirms the universal truth.
