Free will simply means that there is an entity, me, that is free from external influences and can make decisions based on the person's own internal makeup. Dictionary it states, "the ability to act at one's own discretion."
Dictionaries in general give a meaning according to use of the term. To provide not-too-long definitions sometimes, as with this one, they are necessarily vague. This definition you give can be taken to include what has been described to me as "libertarian freewill" (i.e. uncaused choice), or if I didn't know there was such a notion, I could take it to mean only what I think: I say that I believe in Free Will, but all I mean by that is that our choices are real, with real, even eternal consequences. It does not mean "uncaused" choice.
So what does the dictionary mean by "free from external influences"? Is it merely a tautology—reiterated as "based on the person's own internal makeup."? Or does it mean that a person can choose without their choice being specifically caused, rendering Free Will a fiction?
According to Calvinism, because it is according to Scripture (See John 1), "ALL things were made by him".
So, to return to your OP, I'd have to answer your question about free will by bringing up the concept of God's decree. In the Westminster Confession of Faith we find this beautifully written statement in Chapter 3:
"God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." God did ordain whatsoever comes to pass.
People certainly do choose according to their own internal makeup, but there is no reason to pretend that their own internal makeup was not predetermined. Every detail is decreed. Even Satan's choices are the result of his evil desires and plans, specifically decreed in every regard.
Logically also,
there is no such thing as absolute spontaneity in the creature, because all things are caused, descending by the "chain of causation" by First Cause, God.
Let me also introduce here, the fact that First Cause is by definition the only "brute fact" (that is, the only thing that "just is"). God is the only thing that exists in and of himself. All other things are caused to exist, to include every tiniest detail. God "invented" all fact, and indeed, reality itself. He is not subject to it, but it to him. Nothing —certainly not our choices— exist by other means outside of God's 'say-so'. "There are no little first causes trotting about the planet." This is Sovereignty.
I am not too sure what you mean by the second answer. From my understanding each person has his own desires that he gets, not from God, but from his personal nature. For instance satan is satan. satan gets his nature from what he is naturally. god didn't make satan to have those desires rather that is what he is. he is a lover of lies. When you state that "he himself does the tempting" was that a mistake on your part.
How do you know God did not make Satan to be as he is, and that, in every way? You seem to use the word, "naturally", to imply that there is something that "just is", apart from causation from first cause. True, Lucifer was not originally as he is now. But what he is now was established, and that, in every detail, by God's decree.
You misquote me, to leave out the context of what little you did quote: "he himself does the tempting". But I suppose I could have written the entire sentence more clearly or simply. Let me try again: {God causing that specific temptations occur} is quite a different thing from {implying that God himself does the tempting}. I do not say that God does the tempting, as Scripture says that he does not tempt anyone.
My main point with including Acts 7:51 was to point out that it seems that man does have freedom to resist the Holy Spirit. This implies free will. I never said anything about irresistible. But if you affirm that people can resist the spirit then it is from their own freedom that they are doing it.
It is an assumption, unproven, if you think that "resist the spirit [is] from their own freedom" means that this resisting is uncaused by God. God himself is the only 'fact' that does not descend causally from first cause. And by the way, the notion of unGodliness caused by God is not without example in Scripture. We harden our hearts, but so does God harden our hearts.
My main purpose here is simply to learn. I am going to a Calvinist church right now and really have never studied on it much.
FWIW, I am far from the only one who arrived at what is essentially called Calvinism from outside of it. I didn't even know that what I had come to believe was essentially Calvinism, or Reformed Theology, until it was pointed out to me.
Also what is the Calvinist opinion on the response below from Dr. Craig. You can find the full answer here if you would like:
Is Faith a Gift of the Holy Spirit? | Reasonable Faith
Dr. Craig Quote:
"Since we should not think, with our Reformed brethren, that saving faith is the result of unilateral divine determinism, the act of saving faith must involve the free response of the human will to the Holy Spirit’s conviction and drawing. This understanding does not make saving faith a work that we perform, as our Reformed brethren allege. As I emphasize in my Defenders lectures on Doctrine of Salvation, Paul consistently opposes faith to works; he does not think of faith as a kind of meritorious work. The Christian philosopher Eleanore Stump has given a good account of the relationship between human free will and the work of the Holy Spirit in producing saving faith. On her account faith is not even a positive act of our will to accept God’s grace in response to the convicting and drawing of the Holy Spirit. Rather it is the purely negative act of ceasing to resist the Holy Spirit and so allowing Him to produce saving faith in our hearts. On this view saving faith is wrought by God, a gift of the Holy Spirit, but it is not something that overrides human free will.
Bear in mind that William Lane Craig not only hails from a Wesleyan background, that in essence has all eternity hinging on the will of man, but also from what he has arrived at —the notion of "middle knowledge"— which contradicts God omnipotence, rendering him less than First Cause. Molinism claims that there are things possible in and of themselves, apart from God's decree. This means there are things possibly existing co-eternally with God. Thus, it, as with Open Theism, renders God not the only first cause.
WLC, cont. (MQ) : So I think that we can take faith to be something that is supernaturally given by the Holy Spirit without falling into the clutches of the Charybdis of universalism or of the Scylla of a less than all-loving God."
This statement is typical of those who want their readers to discard their opponents' assertions, without proving their opponents wrong. They wax poetic, implying something monstrous about their opponents' beliefs. Here WLC tosses into the ring only two choices, as if that is all that opposes his narrative —implying that the only alternatives to Molinism are Universalism and the [supposedly Calvinistic] "less-than-all-loving" God. What does he even mean, by "all-loving God"? That's a sweet-sounding phrase, and it would seem anathema to oppose it, but exactly what is really implied by it? Notice here, too, that by leaving them out of his equation, WLC doesn't show any difference between Molinism and Arminianism or Open-Theism, or even Pelagianism. In the end analysis, there is no real difference. They all deny God's omnipotence.
It is an arminianistic notion that God is not particular. It is self-determinism that supposes anything can happen apart from God's decree.
