Let's Play GOLF!

A central feature of the “free will defense” as developed by Alvin Plantinga is his response to the claim that God can create a world containing creatures with libertarian freedom that contains no moral evil. Plantinga’s response appeals to the notion of “morally significant freedom” according to which free creatures, in order to do moral good, must be capable of moral evil. In this paper, I argue, first, that morally significant freedom is not required for free creatures to do moral good and, second, that other recent attempts to necessitate a creaturely capability for evil likewise fail. The upshot of my paper is that the free will defense simply won’t work because it is possible and feasible for God to create a world containing libertarianly free creatures capable of moral good and yet containing no moral evil.

Molinism’s Value in Easing Mistrust of God Stemming From Suffering and Divine Silence

One issue that sometimes produces mistrust of God in the life of a Christian is God’s perceived silence when He allows a trial to enter the believer’s life—especially when the believer has been faithfully praying that God would not allow it and there is no evident reason why God would not answer this prayer. This paper examines the nature of trust and some key reasons why it is difficult to trust God. It then argues that accepting the truth of human libertarian freedom and divine middle knowledge provides a powerful basis for thinking that God has meticulous providential control over the world without implicating God in evil, and this can help believers to trust God when they face trials and wrestle with His silence and apparent unresponsiveness to prayer.

Heavenly Freedom and Two Models of Character Perfection

Human persons can act with libertarian freedom in heaven according to one prominent view, because they have freely acquired perfect virtue in their pre-heavenly lives such that acting rightly in heaven is volitionally necessary. But since the character of human persons is not perfect at death, how is their character perfected? On the unilateral model, God alone completes the perfection of their character, and, on the cooperative model, God continues to work with them in purgatory to perfect their own character. I argue that although both models can make sense of all human persons enjoying free will in heaven on various assumptions, the cooperative model allows all human persons in heaven to enjoy a greater degree of freedom. This consideration about the degree of heavenly freedom provides a reason for God to implement the cooperative model.

Grace and Freedom

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

Introduction

This study of William Perkins’ thought on grace and free choice places his thought in the variegated tradition of the Reformation as established by writers like Calvin, Vermigli, Bullinger, and Musculus. More specifically, his thought can be placed in the version of that tradition exemplified in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and in the Elizabethan Settlement. Closer examination of Perkins’ thought in its context yields a window on the more technical understanding of the relationship of divine grace to human knowing and willing, which demonstrates its eclectic reception of late medieval scholasticism, its elaboration of the work of the Reformers, and its distance from modern theories of compatibilist and libertarian freedom. This work traces Perkins’ views on the nature of free will both as created and in the fallen and regenerate states of humanity, correlating them with the views of Reformed contemporaries, and lining out the issues that they sought to address.

Bolstering the Keystone: Kant on the Incomprehensibility of Freedom

In this paper, I give an explanation and defense of Kant’s claim that we cannot comprehend how freedom is possible. I argue that this is a significant point that has been underappreciated in the secondary literature. My conclusion has a variety of implications both for Kant scholars and for those interested in Kantian ideas more generally. Most notably, if Kant is right that there are principled reasons why freedom is beyond our comprehension, then this would release his ethical views from an undesirable explanatory burden. It would be a boon for Kantians if they could ground their lofty claims about the unique, elevated status of rational agency without committing to an implausible view of libertarian freedom. I also suggest that there are certain debates concerning moral motivation and transcendental idealism that might have to change in response to Kant’s claims about the incomprehensibility of freedom.

Libertarianism and Classical Theism: Historical and Conceptual Interrelations

This paper aims to highlight the historical and conceptual interrelations between libertarianism and classical theism (CT). In the first part of the paper, I show that the concept of CT was introduced in the contemporary philosophy of religion by the proponent of process theology Ch. H. Hartshorne to criticize European philosophical and theological tradition. Hartshorne himself thought that classical theism contradicts the libertarian understanding of free will. I further propose two hypotheses to explain the existing association between libertarianism and classical theism in the contemporary philosophy of religion. In the second part, I explore conceptual dependencies and contradictions between libertarianism and CT. I argue that although libertarianism is more suited to address the problem of evil and the doctrine of eternal damnation than theological compatibilism, it nevertheless faces serious problems on the way of reconciliation with CT. To explain evil and eternal damnation libertarian free will have to be understood as having a great value. However, the value of libertarian freedom might be challenged by exploring its contradictions with such divine perfections as divine goodness and divine foreknowledge and the doctrine of divine conservation. I further argue that to solve theological puzzles one needs to develop explicitly theological libertarian understanding of free will that depends on theological values and does not pretend to be compatible with naturalism and atheism.

Does Open Theism Explain God’s Planning of Creation?

In this essay, I assess Timothy Blank’s “The Open Theistic Multiverse.” In his article, Blank attempts to show that Open Theism explains how God can plan the creation of a multiverse containing creatures with libertarian freedom. I underscore some benefits of Blank’s article while arguing that, despite its strengths, his paper fails to provide a sufficient explanation of God’s precreational planning.