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Richard Muller’s Divine Will and Human Choice: First Impressions
Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought (Baker: 2017), is Richard Muller’s latest, and most comprehensive, addition to the literature on Reformed thought on freedom. Dr. Muller (Calvin Seminary) is a highly regarded historical theologian, and his influence is strong, especially among younger Reformed academics. Muller is a prolific author and there is no doubt that he has provided the Church in general, and the Reformed church in particular, a great service with his detailed historical work on early Reformed thought on all dogmatic loci. Despite this, his involvement in the debate on early Modern Reformed thought on freedom has always perplexed me. In this area, at least, and in my estimation, his work suffers from several defects, many of which I have discussed on this blog (use the search feature). Unfortunately, his latest book appears to be more of the same. This post will catalog some of my first impressions. These are gleaned from his introductory chapter, and so these criticisms must not be taken to necessarily reflect the overall quality of Divine Will and Human Choice.
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McCall on Theological Determinism & Compatibilism part 2b
(This is part 2b in a series on Tom McCall’s arguments against determinism and compatibilism in his recent book, An Invitation to Christian Analytic Theology (IVP 2015). Part one is here and part 2a is here.)
Last time, I looked at McCall’s objections to classical compatibilism. In this post I am going to interact with McCall’s criticisms of Frankfurt-style compatibilism. I was going to look at his evaluation of semi-compatibilism in this post, but this one became too long. In the previous posts I have described the nature and goal of McCall’s project in his book, readers may consult those posts for the relevant background. I also presented McCall’s two arguments for incompatibilism—what I called “the standard arguments”—in the previous post (2a), and I won’t repeat it again in this post, though readers are encouraged to go back and reread it.
Compatibilisms and the Standard Arguments: Frankfurt-Style Compatibilism
We saw last time that classical compatibilists tend to respond to the standard arguments by rejecting premises which state that if determinism is true, agents cannot do otherwise. Other compatibilists, notes McCall, object to other premises. McCall notes that these other compatibilists typically reject premises (1) and (5) of the standard arguments. I restate them now: (more…)
McCall on Theological Determinism & Compatibilism part 2a
(This is part two of a series that began here. In this series I am interacting with Tom McCall’s section on theological determinism and compatibilism in his book, An Introduction to Analytic Christian Theology (IVP 2015).)
Key: I will let FW&MR stand for Free Will and Moral Responsibility. I will let TD stand for the Theological Determinism, where God is said to, in some sense, determine all human actions.
In my last post, I made the point that the standard approach to dealing with the claim that FW&MR is compatible with TD is to cite some standard arguments against compatibilism. As I understood it, the standard arguments refer to those arguments that employ the standard definition of determinism as a premise. As I understood it, and as I demonstrated from the definitions McCall enlisted, the standard definition of determinism includes, as an essential component, among other things, the claim that the determining conditions lie in the “remote past.” Call this determinism, D+P. I then argued that many theological determinists—Calvinists, say—would not count as determinists at all on this understanding, since God’s determinative decree is timeless. However, once we allow this feature of classical TD to enter into the picture, the standard arguments are otiose for the purpose of showing that FW&MR is incompatible with TD. One upshot here is that those who argue against Calvinists (of the sort envisioned above) need to restate their argument for it to be relevant.
In the light of this, one might get the impression that I think the standard arguments for the incompatibility of FW&MR with D+P are good (sound and persuasive), while allowing TD to escape out the back door. However, this is false. Even here, I don’t think incompatibilists have made their case. So in this post and the next, I would like to comment on some of the arguments that McCall employed for the incompatibility of FW&MR with D+P. (more…)
McCall on Theological Determinism & Compatibilism part 1
(This is the first entry in a series of posts on Tom McCall’s discussion of theological determinism and compatibilism in his book, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology. I am not sure how many parts it will be, but I assume less than five.)
I had the pleasure of picking up Tom McCall’s recent book, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (IVP 2015). It appears to be a fine work, and it seems to accomplish its goal of being an introduction to analytic theology for nonspecialists. Though what follows in this post is largely critical of one small section of McCall’s book, I hope that it won’t detract readers from its overall quality. I encourage you to get a copy, if you haven’t already. We need more (lay) analytic theologians (read the book to find out the content of that term!). (more…)
Continued Calvinist Confusions
Oliver Crisp mentioned that Donald Macleod endorsed “Libertarian Calvinism.” I briefly searched around the Interwebs and found this blurb by Macleod,
Neither of these statements is more careful or more evangelical than that of the Westminster Confession: ‘God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.’ This allows (indeed, requires) us to distinguish sharply between predestination and determinism. It also relates suggestively to the open universe described by modern physics. An event can be predestinated, yet free: indeed, it is predestination that guarantees freedom. Similarly, an event can be predestinated and yet contingent. Such, at least, was the perspective of Westminster Calvinism, leaving its adherents to be libertarians and indeterminists if that was where their phisophical predilections and scientific investigations led them.
Hays on the potentially “false dilemma” of “free will and determinism”
Steve Hays recently posted a provocative post whose title asks the question, “Is the freedom/determinism dilemma a false dilemma?” I’d like to make some comments, mostly in the form of questions, though some will be in the form of statements. These are mainly meant for the purpose of inquiry and clarification, not pointed refutation—for I am not even sure I understand either the many-worlds hypothesis or the particular applications Hays is trying to expand on or draw from the notion. (more…)
Libertarian Calvinism – 3
This is the third installment of a series on Oliver Crisp’s “Libertarian Calvinism,” a chapter in his new book, Deviant Calvinism. Part one is here and part two is here. In this post I’ll engage directly with libertarian Calvinism. I hope to show that even if the issues I raised in the first two posts could be addressed—which, I think, is by no means an easy task—libertarian Calvinism faces problems that not even Hal Jordan (a.k.a the Green Lantern) could overcome.1 (more…)
Libertarian Calvinism – 2
This is part 2 of a series I’m doing on chapter 3 of Oliver Crisp’s new book, Deviant Calvinism (part one here). First, to summarize the main point of the previous post: Crisp wants to argue that libertarian freedom is consistent with Reformed Theology, specifically as elucidated in the Westminster Confession of Faith. I argued that Crisp’s argument is incomplete, choosing to focus only on chapters 3 and 9 of the Confession. However, there are other chapters that confess propositions that arguably don’t support libertarian free will. Specifically, I cited the Confession’s teaching about the nature of God and his knowledge, and made the case that these claims are prima facie inconsistent with libertarian free will. I then argued that several standard ways of resolving these troubles may not be open to the libertarian Calvinist, since the Confession plausibly rules them out. There are other portions of the Confession that will be shown to spell trouble for Crisp’s case, and they will make an appearance in the next post. In that post (part 3 of the series), I will interact directly with Crisp’s case for libertarian Calvinism. But before I do that, I want to discuss two terms Crisp employs in the chapter but doesn’t elaborate on. These terms show up in debates over free will and the kind of necessity theological determinists have wanted to say attaches to free human actions. (more…)
Creating a Calvinist T-Shirt
Introduction
My friend James Anderson recently wrote two nice posts on theological determinism and compatibilism. I direct the reader to those posts for all the nitty-gritty details. The purposes of his two posts were to chop up the conceptual space surrounding the theses of divine determinism and compatibilism. In this post I want to add to his work of conceptual carving. I will add to the distinction between hard and soft determinism that James drew, the further distinction between hard and soft compatibilism. Before continuing, I want to add a caveat up front: I don’t take it that I’m offering any substantive criticism of James’ posts. I merely hope to add to his project of carving conceptual space. However, as you’ll (hopefully) come to agree in the end, I think my t-shirt will be both conceptually and aesthetically superior to James’! (more…)
Getting Clear(er) on Reformed Theology, Determinism, and Necessity
Recent conversations have again turned my attention to claims by Muller and the Utrecht school, to the effect that “Classic Reformed theology is not a species of determinism.” I find most of the substantive conclusions they draw perplexing. Aside from the fact that it is a live and open debate whether the intellectual progenitor(s)—whether Aristotle, Aquinas, or Scotus—of putative classic Reformed theologians were compatibilists or not, is that I have a hard time seeing how their conclusions follow even given what they say about the views of the classical Reformed theologians. (more…)
Analytic Theology, et cetera. 