clarifying free will

I'm often amazed at the drive of the defenders of "free will". I love many "Arminians" but the logic escapes me in addition to what I see as the Scriptural gap. I find that the issue typically boils down to one of defining terms. Once we define the term free we find that they really do not mean free, that they agree with me, and then these wonderful friends of mine become frustrated with themselves. Ultimately throwing up their hands and they say something to the effect of, "yeah, well, we're still free to choose." Then I chuckle.

Here is A.W. Tozer from God's Pursuit of Man.

God has made us in His likeness, and one mark of that likeness is our free will. We hear God say, "Whosoever will, let him come." We know by bitter experience the woe of an unsurrendered will and the blessedness or terror which may hang upon our human choice. But back of all this and preceding it is the sovereign right of God to call saints and determine human destinies. The master choice is His, the secondary choice is ours. Salvation is from our side a choice, from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest of the Most High God. Our "accepting" and "willing" are reactions rather than actions. The right of determination must always remain with God.

God has indeed lent to every man the power to lock his heart and stalk away darkly into his self-chosen night, as He has lent to every man the ability to respond to His overtures of grace, but while the "no" choice may be ours, the "yes" choice is always God's. He is the Author of our faith as He must be its finisher. Only by grace can we continue to believe; we can persist in willing God's will only as we are seized upon by a benign power that will overcome our natural bent to unbelief.

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