HQ

Apparently, a determinist can believe anything he wants, but he cannot live a ny way he wants: "A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true! Thinking that you’re determined to believe that everything you believe is determined produces a kind of vertigo. Nobody can live as though all that he thinks and does is determined by causes outside himself. Even determinists recognize that we have to act “as if” we had free will and so weigh our options and decide on what course of action to take, even though at the end of the day we are determined to take the choices we do. Determinism is thus an unliveable view." The main point is found in the first sentence: " A determinist cannot live consistently as though everything he thinks and does is causally determined—especially his choice to believe that determinism is true!"  The argument goes something like ...

Alexander Pruss argues for the following : "given soft determinism, it is in principle possible to avoid culpability while still getting the exact same results whenever you don’t know prior to deliberation how you will choose. This seems absurd, and the absurdity gives us a reason to reject the compatibility of determinism and responsibility." Pruss asks us to suppose, for reductio, that determinism is true and that we are morally responsible for our actions. Then he tells the following tale: ...imagine a device that can be activated at a time when an agent is about to make a decision. The device reads the agent’s mind, figures out which action the agent is determined to choose, and then modifies the agent’s mind so the agent doesn’t make any decision but is instead compelled to perform the very action that they would otherwise have chosen. Call the device the Forcer.  Suppose you are about to make a difficult choice between posting a slanderous anonymous accusatio...

The most common objection to Divine Determinism is that if God determines everything, then human beings are not morally responsible for their actions. In other words, for a human agent to be morally responsible for their actions, they can't have been determined to carry those actions out. The defender of libertarian free will will often say: "No LFW, no moral responsibility." This is perhaps the strongest argument against determinism (although there are good responses ). However, some argue that there is an additional feature of human life that would not be possible if there is no LFW – love. Love, it is suggested, is only possible if a human being has LFW. It is often suggested that if human beings had no LFW, then love would be coerced. Loving God, then, would be something one is forced to do. [1] It would be like trying to get a girlfriend by dating her at gunpoint. I will argue that love does not lend anything to the LFW proponent’s case. Either what is meant...

In his hour of agony on the cross, Christ cried out to his Father, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). What did he mean? Did the Father reject the Son in such a way that the Triune God was temporarily broken? Does the Son suffer the rejection of his Father as the Son or is Christ forsaken in an entirely different way? Tom McCall argues that the forsakenness of Christ does not mean a rupture in the unity of the Trinity, but that the Father forsakes the Son to his death at the hand of sinners for the purpose of our salvation. [1] McCall contends that the godhead is not at odds with itself, love is not opposed to wrath, and that Christ’s death was part of the plan of God for our salvation. McCall rejects the “rupture view,” the view that the Father breaks a once close and loving union by intentionally rejecting his Son. On rupture view, the Father forsakes the Son through relational enmity. The Father abandons, rejects, hides and separates himself from his Son. ...

Just what, if one is a Calvinist, can be meant by human free will? And how, given that everything that happens is decided in advance, makes a human beings responsible for their actions? These are the most common questions aimed at those who are committed to a strong doctrine of sovereignty,  one that features the idea that God determines all that happens in advance. Determinism is the idea that for everything that happens there are antecedent conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could occur. For a Calvinist, the antecedent condition in question is ultimately God's will. God's will is such that every event in creation is determined by God in advance of the event. We call this Divine Determinism (DD). The debate over free will hinges on whether or not free will is compatible with any kind of determinism . One is either drawn to compatiblism or incompatiblism. This leads to two distinct views of what free will is. ...