Faith and Philosophy

This paper seeks to rehabilitate St. Augustine’s widely dismissed response to the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. This requires taking a fresh look at his analysis in On Free Choice of the Will, and arguing its relevance to the current debate. Along the way, mistaken interpretations of Augustine are rebutted, his real solution is developed and defended, a reason for his not anticipating Boethius’s a temporalist solution is suggested, a favorable comparison with Ockham is made, rival solutions are rejected, and the aporetic nature of the problem is explained.

The paper considers the possibility of an alliance between natural theologians and environmental ethicists in so far as both uphold the goodness of the natural world. Specifically, it examines whether the work of Holmes Rolston III can contribute towards the natural theologian’s treatment of two issues: the nature and extent of the world’s goodness, and the reasons why we may fail to register its goodness fully. The paper argues that the holism and non-anthropocentrism of Rolston’s work throw new light on the values in nature, and on the multiple achievements which are presupposed in any informed appreciation of its goodness.

Richard Swinburne claims that Christ’s death has no efficacy unless people appropriate it. According to religious inclusivists, God can be encountered and his grace manifested in various ways through diverse religions. Salvation is available for everyone, regardless of whether they have heard about Christ’s sacrifice. This poses the question whether Swinburne’s view of atonement is available to the inclusivist. I develop an inclusivist interpretation of the atonement that incorporates his four features of atonement, along with a subjective dimension that need not include specific knowledge of Christ’s sacrifice.

In recent years a number of sophisticated versions of soteriological universalism have appeared in the literature. In this essay I offer some critical retlections them. In particular, I argue that universalism offers no explanation for the fact that God puts human creatures through the earthly life, and that if there is no such reason then the earthly life and the evil it contains are both gratuitous. Finally, I argue that universalists are obliged to deny that human beings have a centrally important feature of human freedom.

This paper examines the dilemma of heavenly freedom. If there is freedom in heaven, then it seems that there is the possibility of evil in heaven, which violates standard intuitions. If there is not, then heaven is lacking a good significant enough that it would justify God in creating free beings, despite the evil they might cause. But then how can God be justified in omitting such a good from heaven? To resolve this dilemma, I present the Proximate Conception of freedom, which holds that actions may be free though determined, but only if they have in their causal history some undetermined free actions by the same agent. I show how this conception resolves the dilemma, defend it against objections, and comment on its implications.

David Widerker has forcefully argued that a libertarian is on firm ground in believing that the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) is true. Eleonore Stump has argued that not all libertarians need accept PAP, and that its acceptance is not required for a rejection of compatibilism.This paper is a defense of Widerker against Stump. I argue that it is not at all clear that Stump’s view of freedom is libertarian in nature, and that she has not provided a good reason for thinking that a libertarian can abandon PAP.

This paper responds to Swinburne’s recent article “Dualism Intact,” which defends his argument for a body/soul dualism. It pays particular attention to his defense against the charges of Alston and Smythe, especially the appeal to the “quasi-Aristotelian assumption,” on which the essence of a thing is necessary to its being the thing that it is. I argue that this defense does not save the argument, but only makes clear that its apparent plausibility rests on an ambiguity between two understandings of the nature of logical possibility. Swinburne’s argument draws on and requires both understandings at different points in his argument, but the two are incompatible at the key point.

According to the Westminster Confession, “God from all eternity did ... freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet ... thereby neither is God the author of sin or is violence offered to the will of the creatures.” It is hard to see how these two points can be consistently maintained. Hugh McCann, however, argues that by placing God’s decisions outside of time, both propositions are perfectly consistent. I agree with McCann that God’s determining decisions do not make him the author of our sins. But I think that God’s determining decisions, whether temporal or outside of time, preclude our possessing the libertarian free will that McCann’s believes we do possess. In fact, so I argue, if we possess libertarian free will, then elevating God’s determining decisions outside of time only results in God’s eternal decisions being within our power to determine.

Gordon Knight recently challenged my assumption, which I made for the purpose of organizing and classifying certain theological disputes, that a specific set of three propositions is logically inconsistent (or necessarily false). In this brief rejoinder, I explain Knight’s objection and show why it rests upon a misunderstanding.