Freedom to Choose Between Good and Evil: Theological Anthropology in Discussion with Philosophy

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Matej Kováčik
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Theological Ethics ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
Evolutionary Ontology ◽  
Complementary Approach ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Good And Evil

After a brief discussion of the terms determinism and free will, the paper sets out to compare some recent philosophical approaches to the problem of free will with a theological anthropology account of the notion. It aims to defend the claim, that even though different kind of questions are asked on both sides, they tackle similar issues and a complementary approach is needed. Recent philosophy considers the problem mostly from the standpoint of logic, naturalist evolutionary ontology and cognitive science. In the Christian theological tradition, the idea of free will has been discussed mostly from the perspective of the problem of sin and grace, thus on the grounds of soteriology, hamartiology and theological ethics. The paper shows similarities between the approaches, mainly between the problem of physical determinism and theological determinism and also divine foreknowledge.

scholarly journals God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evil ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense ◽  
Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

scholarly journals Edwards on the Incompatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will

Sententiae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Oleh Bondar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Fatalism ◽  
Nelson Pike ◽  
Necessity Of The Past

In the book “Freedom of the Will”, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) put forward a strong ar-gument for theological fatalism. This argument, I suppose, can be considered as the universal basis for discussion between Fatalists and Anti-Fatalists in the 20th century, especially in the context of the most powerful argument for fatalism, introduced by Nelson Pike. The argument of Edwards rests upon the following principles: (a) if something has been the case in the past, it has been the case necessarily (Necessity of the past); (b) if God knows something (say A), it is not the case that ~A is possible (Infallibility of God`s knowledge). Hence, Edwards infers that if God had foreknowledge that A, then A is necessary, and it is not the case that someone could voluntarily choose ~A. The article argues that (i) the Edwards` inference Kgp → □p rests upon the modal fallacy; (ii) the inference „God had a knowledge that p will happen, therefore „God had a knowledge that p will happen” is the proposition about the past, and hence, the necessarily true proposition“ is ambiguous; thus, it is not the case that this proposition necessarily entails the impossibility of ~p; (iii) it is not the case that p, being known by God, turns out to be necessary. Thus, we can avoid the inference of Edwards that if Kgp is a fact of the past, then we cannot freely choose ~p. It has also been shown that the main provisions of the argument of Edwards remain significant in the context of contemporary debates about free will and foreknowledge (Theories of soft facts, Anti-Ockhamism, theories of temporal modal asymmetry, „Timeless solution”). Additionally, I introduce a new challenge for fatalism – argument from Brouwerian axiom.

scholarly journals Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will

1985 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Future

If God knows everything he must know the future, and if he knows the future he must know the future acts of his creatures. But then his creatures must act as he knows they will act. How then can they be free? This dilemma has a long history in Christian philosophy and is now as hotly disputed as ever. The medieval scholastics were virtually unanimous in claiming both that God is omniscient and that humans have free will, though they disagreed in their accounts of how the two are compatible. With the Reformation the debate became even more lively since there were Protestant philosophers who denied both claims, and many philosophers ever since have either thought it impossible to reconcile them or have thought it possible only because they weaken one or the other.

scholarly journals The Vision of Islam

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-121
Author(s):  
John E. Woods
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Relative Weight ◽  
State University ◽  
Introductory Course ◽  
Good And Evil

The Vision of Islam forms part of a series, entitled Visions of Reality,designed to focus on religions as worldviews. According to the statement of theeditorial board on the flyleaf, each religion studied in the series will be presentedin the context of its own inner dynamic or ethos using a methodologyappropriate to itself. Murata and Chittick have succeeded admirably in livingup to this commiunent by allowing Islam to speak through abundant quotationsfrom the Qur'an and the hadith.The outgrowth of an introductory course on Islam taught by the authors atthe State University of New York at Stony Brook for more than a decade, Visionis organized in an innovative manner. After a brief introduction to the Qur'an,its translations, and the life of the Prophet, the authors recount the "hadith ofGabriel" transmitted by both al-Buk:haf1 and Muslim on the authority of 'Umaribn al-Kha.t.tab. According to this repon, the Prophet was questioned by anunknown stranger about the significance of submission (islam), faith (iman),and doing what is beautiful (Ihsan ). After explaining these concepts, the Prophetthen identified this mysterious individual as the angel Gabriel, the being throughwhom God revealed the Qur'an. The remainder of the book is structured aroundthese three elements or dimensions, as the authors term them.Dealing first with the several senses of submission, acceptance, or commitment,Part I describes the essential practices of Islam: the five pillars. An oftenmisunderstood sixth pillar, jihad or struggle, is also discussed cogently. Theauthors then explain the historical articulation of these practices in the formationof the Sunni and Shi'i schools (madhahib), the Shari'ah, and Islamic jurisprudence.Here and elsewhere, variations among the schools are noted.Part II, dealing with imiin, accounts for more than two-thirds of the book,an indication of the relative weight the authors give this dimension. The threefundamental principles of faith-divine unity, prophecy, and eschatology-arethe major topics of this section. The nature of God's absolute unity and transcendenceis explored through a discussion of His signs, attributes, and acts (asmanifested in creation), and Islamic angelology. Here, the text is infused withthe metaphysics of illuminationist philosophy. Notions such as good and evil,human free will and determinism, are linked convincingly with the concepts ofdivine unity and the hierarchy of creation. This argument, in tum, leads logicallyto an account of the role of prophecy and humanity's acceptance of ...

scholarly journals Sociality and Magical Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Good And Evil

On a certain reading, the respective theories of Freud and Nietzsche might be described as exploring the suffered relational histories of the subject, who is driven by need; these histories might also be understood as histories of language. This suggests a view of language as a complicated mode of identifying-with, which obliges linguistic subjects to identify the non-identical, but also enables them to simultaneously identify with each other in the psychoanalytic sense. This ambivalent space of psychoanalytic identification would be conditioned by relational histories. On one hand, this might lead to conformity within a system of language as a shared, obligatory compromise formation that would defend against the non-identical; magical language, typified in Freud’s critique of animism and in Nietzsche’s critique of “free will” guided by absolute normative signifiers (“Good” and “Evil”), would be symptomatic of this sort of defense. On the other hand, given other relational histories, it may produce the possibility for more transitional modes of identification, and thereby modes of language that can bear its suffered histories, and lead to proliferation of singular compromise formations. It is suggested that while the former is historically dominant, Nietzsche and various psychoanalytic thinkers contribute to conceiving of the possibility of working ourselves towards the latter.

Time in Action

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Motor Processes ◽  
Bodily Movement

This chapter links phenomenology with cognitive science. It deals with the “intrinsic temporality” in both bodily movement and action, some of which is experienced, but some of which happens at the subpersonal levels of analysis. The chapter begins with Husserl's dynamic model of retention and protention, extending it to unconscious motor processes too. Bringing empirical studies to support the claims throughout, the discussion then focuses on various timescales in an effort to show how the concept of free will becomes important.

Open theism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
No Value ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Open Theism ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Contingent ◽  
The Future

Open theism is the name for a model of God which emphasizes divine love and responsiveness to creatures. It arises from a family of theologies known as free-will theism which accentuate the divine gift of freedom to humans and hold that God does not micromanage the affairs of the world. The name open theism was coined in the 1990s by a group of philosophers and theologians in order to distinguish it within the free-will theistic family. God is ‘open’ to creatures in that God is affected by what creatures do and God genuinely interacts and enters into dynamic give-and-take relationships with creatures. These reciprocal relationships mean that God has a history which includes changing mental and emotional states. As a consequence, open theists affirm that God is temporal and everlasting rather than atemporal and timeless. Open theists believe that God is omnipotent but chooses not to exercise tight control over creation. Instead, God grants to creatures great latitude to act within boundaries. Because God chooses to elicit our free collaboration in divine plans God takes risks that we will act in ways contrary to the divine intentions. According to open theists the future is ‘open’ as well because it contains multiple possible futures that may or may not come about rather than solely one unalterable future. The future is not a blueprint or script but rather a set of possibilities, and God solicits the cooperation of creatures in order to bring some of these possibilities into existence. Since the future is not determined and humans have genuine free will, God does not know with certainty future contingent actions. Rather, God possesses ‘dynamic omniscience’ in which God has exhaustive knowledge of the past and present and understands what we call ‘the future’ as the possibilities which could occur along with any events God has determined to occur. Divine omniscience is dynamic in that God constantly acquires knowledge of which possible future actions creatures select to actualize. Open theists reject standard accounts of divine foreknowledge because they believe that they are incompatible with human freedom, they are of no value to God in terms of planning and acting in world affairs and they fail to correspond with the biblical portrayal of God.

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