Peter Lombard’s on God’s Will: Sententiae, Book I, Distinctions 45-46

2018 ◽  
pp. 136-152
Author(s):  
R. Tkachenko
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Given ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theology Proper

The global Peter Lombard research continues, but the Master of the Sentences’ theology proper is still to be analyzed in detail. In particular, a more thorough exposition of the distinctions 45-48 of his Book of Sentences, which deal with the notion of God’s will and its relation to the human free will, has for some while remained a desideratum. The given article partly fills this lacuna and elucidates on the doctrine of the divine will as presented by the Lombard. In particular, it is shown that for him there exist two ways of speaking about God’s will: «simply and absolutely» and «not simply and absolutely» which may be identified with intransitive and transitive use of the verb «to will,» respectively. The will is primarily understood in terms of execution of one’s will (active willing) but its relation to one’s desires and inclinations (wanting) are downplayed or altogether omitted from the Lombardian doctrine of God. The divine will is by definition free and efficient but Lombard highlights that there is place for human free will, too. His explanation of the relationship between the divine and the human wills seems somewhat unconvincing but the unfolding of his theory on the basis of a few biblical texts should be acknowledged a peculiar theological exercise.

Davenant on the Will of God and the Divine Decrees

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Extended Treatment ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
God's Love ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Will Of God

This chapter discusses another important doctrine relative to John Davenant’s hypothetical universalism: the divine will. Observing that the doctrine of God’s will in early modern scholastic theology, including among Reformed theologians, involved a plethora of scholastic distinctions, the chapter shows that Davenant’s theology of the divine will was heavily influenced by these distinctions, which were themselves ways of making sense of apparent contradictory claims in Scripture. Davenant’s employment of these medieval distinctions, such as between God’s love of simple complacency and his absolute will, are given extended treatment. This chapter also gives attention to the difference between a divine conditional and an absolute will. Finally, tying all these distinctions together, this chapter explains how Davenant employs them to buttress his hypothetical universalism.

scholarly journals Love, the law and religion:

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo De Witt
Keyword(s):  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Church Father ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Basic Intuition

To the question “Are we as humans obliged to something because it is good, or because it is prescribed by God?”, the Christian Church father Tertullian answered: we obey because of God's will. Today, many are inclined to give the first answer, and even to distrust people who follow Tertullian. In this article, however, the author demonstrates the continuing relevance of Tertullian’s paradigm about reason/will in modern political philosophy: for example, in Thomas Hobbes’ “decisionist” maxim: not truth, but the will of formal authority establishes the law. Or in the democratic combination of rational discussion and decisive majority will. This gives modern democracy the character of a ritual instead of a rational machinery: a kind of secular divine judgement. Also another issue allows us to demonstrate the lasting actuality of Tertullian’s paired concepts: the issue that a political community not only needs democratic legitimacy, but also national unity. Here also the relationship with the question of violence becomes relevant. The author presents four “dangerous liaisons” between love and rational justice. The basic intuition here is that we “not only want to live in a world which we are able to consider just, but in a reality which we experience as valuable in and of itself” (Paul W. Kahn). Love can strengthen rational justice, and vice versa; love can get in conflict with justice; justice can try to expand itself at the expensive of love; and – the other way around – love can drive us to the universal and transcend legal boundaries. As a conclusion, we can distinguish clearly between nationalism and patriotism. And second, we must admit that, while love will always destabilize law, the opposite is also true: we have to make calculations, so that justice can also destabilize love.

Free Will, Responsibility, and Blame in Psychotherapy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Zürcher
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Freedom Of Will ◽  
Patient’S Autonomy ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Therapeutic Context ◽  
The Relationship

Freedom of the will is not only an issue in the attribution of moral and legal responsibility—it also fundamentally shapes how we look at ourselves and how we interact with others. This is essential in everyday life but even more so in psychotherapy. In the debate on freedom of will, the main controversy is concerned with the relationship between determinism and free will. In this chapter, different positions are presented and discussed. The compatibilist viewpoint, which claims determinism and freedom of will to be compatible, is defended against competing theories and applied to psychotherapeutic work. Mental disorders affect free will in many ways, as is demonstrated by the examples. Nevertheless, a compatibilist approach to free will can be used as a resource to increase the patient’s autonomy. As a result, it is justified and sometimes appropriate within the therapeutic context to ascribe responsibility and, within certain limits, to express blame.

La espiritualidad de la gracia. Agustín, De gratia et libero arbitrio (año 426)

Augustinus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-351
Author(s):  
Vittorino Grossi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Relationship

The article makes a synthetic presentation of the various stages of Augustinian thought about Grace, to later focus on the gr. et lib. arb., making a presentation of the Work and its contents. A discussion of the relationship that exists in gr. et lib. arb. between grace and continence is made. Later the most significant biblical texts used in the gr. et lib. arb. are explained (Jn 6:66; Zech 1: 3; 2 Par 15: 2; Ps 79: 8; Ps 84: 7; 1 Cor 15: 10; 2 Tim 1: 8- 9). Following the text of Cant 8, 5 according to the Augustinian interpretation, the relationship between grace and free will is discussed.

Scotus and Ockham

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-108
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Divine Commands ◽  
The Right

Scotus and Ockham reject the Aristotelian outlook, as Aquinas presents it, and develop a voluntarist account of the will and of morality. In their view, determination by practical reason does not ensure free will; a free will must be wholly undetermined by reason. Nor can it be determined by the desire for one’s ultimate good; the impulse towards the right is separate from the impulse towards happiness. If we apply these principles to the freedom of the divine will, we find that God could not be free if the nature of right and wrong were independent of the divine will. We must infer that moral rightness and wrongness are ultimately constituted by divine commands.

“Trust in Providence and Keep Your Powder Dry”

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
James P. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
God's Will ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The North ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Relationship

Both sides finally got what they wanted in July at the First Battle of Bull Run—here was a real battle, giving both sides the chance to face off against the enemy. Here also was the first providential test of the war, the first indication of which side God would take once the fighting started. For many southerners, Bull Run (or Manassas, as southerners called the battle) confirmed their reading of God’s will; for many northerners, Bull Run stirred disillusionment and a call for of the nation to rededicate itself to God. The battle also provoked revaluations of several key biblical texts, including Exodus in the South and Romans 13 in the North, with both sides trying to tease out the relationship between the Bible and Bull Run.

scholarly journals Obedience as a Religious Virtue

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-179
Author(s):  
Rudi te Velde
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Person ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Theological Virtue ◽  
Made In

Summary This essay explores Thomas’ thoughts about the virtue of obedience (based on STh II-II, q.104), which is particularly valued as a link between the moral virtues and the theological virtue of charity (love of God). Obedience generates in the human person the moral disposition required for all the other virtues, a disposition which consists in the readiness of the will to submit itself to the rule of God’s will. Reflecting on the question whether one should be obedient to God in every respect, Thomas is confronted with an objection pointing to the story of how God commands Abraham to kill his innocent son, which is prohibited by natural law. I use the scarce but intriguing remarks Thomas made in response to this objection to propose a meaningful interpretation of obedience as a religious virtue, essentially different from its distorted imitation which consists in an immediate identification of one’s own will with the presumed divine will.

scholarly journals God’s Will as the Foundation of Morality: A Medieval Historical Perspective

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
Janine Idziak
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Ethical Status ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Voluntarism

Theological voluntarism places the foundation of morality in the will of God. The formulation of such a thesis warrants further refinement. Different formulations of theological voluntarism were put forward in medieval philosophical theology involving the relation of God’s will to the divine intellect (reason) in determining ethical status. The fourteenth century Franciscan Andrew of Neufchateau maintained a purely voluntaristic theory in which it is God’s will alone (and not the divine intellect) that determines ethical status. Subsequently Pierre d’Ailly worked with a divine will which is identical with the divine intellect in a strong sense while still maintaining that it is properly assigned to the divine will to be an obligatory law. Later, Jean Gerson, a student of Pierre d’Ailly, spoke explicitly of God’s will and reason together as involved in God’s activity in the ethical realm. In this paper, we set out these three different formulations of theological voluntarism, tracing the evolution of medieval formulations of theological voluntarism. Although the paper is historical in nature, we conclude with some reflections on how contemporary philosophers and theologians interested in theological voluntarism might profit from study of this historical literature.

The Voluntary Act

1975 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Psychotic Symptoms ◽  
Criminal Behaviour ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Actus Reus ◽  
The Will ◽  
Evaluation Of Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Considerable Complexity

The importance of the actus reus in the analysis of criminal behaviour has only gained ground in recent years. The defence that the act complained of was involuntary raises directly the question ‘What is meant by voluntary conduct?’ In its earliest formulations the general acceptance of the doctrine of free will led to a ready acceptance of voluntary as simply meaning being a product of an exercise of the free will. More recent investigations, and in particular those following the development of ego psychology, have shown that the mechanism precedent to the operation of the will is of considerable complexity. Perception, cognition and evaluation of data must each be considered in an analysis of voluntary behaviour, so that what may seem voluntary may well flow from a defective capacity in any or all of these functions. The relationship between defective psychic functions such as those described and the pervasive concept of ‘insanity’ in the criminal law, it is suggested, may have led to the neglect of a study of voluntarism since many cases of psychic malfunction have displayed psychotic symptoms. It is argued that the distinction between self-induced and other-induced as a basis for attaching responsibility in law, as is strongly suggested in the cases, is unsatisfactory. The merit of the recent discussions of the nature of voluntary conduct is that the limitations of a pre-Freudian theory of conscious behaviour enshrined in McNaughton will be recognized within the debate on the nature of voluntary and, more particularly, involuntary conduct.

‘He Brought the Cold Death on my Harandra’: The Cosmic Trilogy and the Ecotheology of Laudato si'

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Maria Poggi Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Space Travel ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
The Relationship

In his trilogy of space travel novels, published between 1938 and 1945, C.S. Lewis strikingly anticipates, and incarnates in imaginative form, the insights and concerns central to the modern discipline of ecotheology. The moral and spiritual battle that forms the plot of the novels is enacted and informed by the relationship between humans and the natural environment, Rebellion against, and alienation from, the Creator inevitably manifests in a violent and alienated attitude to creation, which is seen as something to be mastered and exploited. Lives and cultures in harmony with the divine will, on the other hand, are expressed in relationships of care and respect for the environment. The imaginative premise of the Trilogy is that of ecotheology; that the human relationships with God, neighbour, and earth and are deeply and inextricably intertwined.

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