Hi @alison ,
I first got introduced to the concept during our time at a PCA church several years ago. Though I may struggle to defend TULIP myself, what I have loved about the reformed view is a high view of God’s Sovereignity which helps to accept trials in life better and fosters a culture of humility in the church.
The reformed view understands free will a little differently than how we commonly understand the term. It differentiates between free will and free agency. Because we humans are enslaved to our sinful nature, we are not really free to choose what is moral. We need to be set free by Christ to follow the Lord. So in this sense we are not truly free and humans lack true free will according to the reformed view. What we continue to posses despite the fall is free agency, which can be seen as the ability to make voluntary choices following our natural desires.
JI Packer explains it this way -
Free agency is a mark of human beings as such. All humans are free agents in the sense that they make their own decisions as to what they will do, choosing as they please in the light of their sense of right and wrong and the inclinations they feel. Thus they are moral agents, answerable to God and each other for their voluntary choices. So was Adam, both before and after he sinned; so are we now, and so are the glorified saints who are confirmed in grace in such a sense that they no longer have it in them to sin. Inability to sin will be one of the delights and glories of heaven, but it will not terminate anyone’s humanness; glorified saints will still make choices in accordance with their nature, and those choices will not be any the less the product of human free agency just because they will always be good and right.
Free will, however, has been defined by Christian teachers from the second century on as the ability to choose all the moral options that a situation offers, and Augustine affirmed against Pelagius and most of the Greek Fathers that original sin has robbed us of free will in this sense. We have no natural ability to discern and choose God’s way because we have no natural inclination Godward; our hearts are in bondage to sin, and only the grace of regeneration can free us from that slavery. This, for substance, was what Paul taught in Romans 6:16-23; only the freed will (Paul says, the freed person) freely and heartily chooses righteousness. A permanent love of righteousness—that is, an inclination of heart to the way of living that pleases God—is one aspect of the freedom that Christ gives (John 8:34-36; Gal. 5:1, 13).
It is worth observing that will is an abstraction. My will is not a part of me which I choose to move or not to move, like my hand or my foot; it is precisely me choosing to act and then going into action. The truth about free agency, and about Christ freeing sin’s slave from sin’s dominion, can be expressed more clearly if the word will is dropped and each person says: I am the morally responsible free agency; I am the slave of sin whom Christ must liberate; I am the fallen being who only have it in me to choose against God till God renews my heart.
There are different perspectives on this. With the help of evidence, one may intellectually assent but a reformed christian would insist that regeneration of the heart precedes faith. The key verse is - even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace have you been saved)" (Eph. 2:5). Basically a dead man does not have the ability to cooperate with God’s grace. Another verse on this point is - natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:14). It is God who makes the grace irresistible by regenerating the heart that once resisted grace of God. Steadfast faith is seen as evidence for being born again.
There are so many questions to consider in the Calvinism - Arminianism debate. Its been a while since I have thought through this subject. I am going to stop here. I may not do justice to the discussion if I discuss at length without spending time studying it. I look forward to reading others replies on this.