Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:53:37.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plantingian theism and the free-will defence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2016

ERIK J. WIELENBERG
ERIK J. WIELENBERG*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana 46135, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I advance a challenge to the coherence of Alvin Plantinga's brand of theism that focuses on Plantinga's celebrated free-will defence. This challenge draws on (but goes beyond) some ideas advanced by Wes Morriston. The central claim of my challenge is that Plantinga's free-will defence, together with certain claims that are plausible and/or to which Plantinga is committed, both requires and rules out the claim that it is possible that God is capable of engaging in moral goodness. I then critically evaluate an interesting strategy for responding to my challenge inspired by some recent work by Kevin Timpe, arguing that the response ultimately fails. The upshot of the article is that Plantinga's brand of theism is internally inconsistent; furthermore, because the claims that are in tension with the free-will defence are ones that many theists are likely to find attractive, many theists are not able to appeal to Plantinga's free-will defence in responding to the logical problem of evil.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 451 - 460
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Marilyn Mccord (1999) Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Almeida, Michael J (2012) God, Freedom, and Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Bergmann, Michael (1999) ‘Might-counterfactuals, transworld untrustworthiness and Plantinga's free-will defence’, Faith and Philosophy, 16, 336–351.Google Scholar
Bernstein, C'zar & Helms, Nathaniel (2015) ‘A simpler free-will defence’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 77, 197–203.Google Scholar
Chisholm, Roderick M. (1968) ‘The defeat of good and evil’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 42, 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Samuel & Leibniz, Gottfried (1956) [1717] The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence, Alexander, H. G. (ed.) (Manchester: Manchester University Press).Google Scholar
DeRose, Keith (1991) ‘Plantinga, presumption, possibility, and the problem of evil’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 21, 497–512.Google Scholar
Esmail, K. H. A (2002) ‘Plantinga's defence of the free-will defence in chapter nine of The Nature of Necessity ’, Sophia, 41, 19–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finch, Alicia & Warfield, Ted A. (1998) ‘The mind argument and libertarianism’, Mind, 107, 515–528.Google Scholar
Guleserian, Theodore (2000) ‘Divine freedom and the problem of evil’, Faith and Philosophy, 17, 348–366.Google Scholar
Howard-Snyder, Daniel & O'leary-Hawthorne, John (1998) ‘Transworld sanctity and Plantinga's free-will defence’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 44, 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard-Snyder, Daniel (2013) ‘The logical problem of evil: Mackie and Plantinga’, in McBrayer, J. & Howard-Snyder, D. (eds) The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil (New York: Wiley-Blackwell), 19–33.Google Scholar
Kane, Robert (2005) A Contemporary Introduction to Free-will (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Langtry, Bruce (2010) ‘The prospects for the free-will defence’, Faith and Philosophy, 27, 142–152.Google Scholar
Lehe, Robert T. (1986) ‘God's perfection and freedom: a reply to Morriston’, Faith and Philosophy, 3, 319–323.Google Scholar
Mackie, J. L. (1955) ‘Evil and omnipotence’, Mind, 64, 200–212.Google Scholar
Manis, R. Zachary (2011) ‘Could God do something evil? A Molinist solution to the problem of divine freedom’, Faith and Philosophy, 28, 209–223.Google Scholar
Meslar, Sean (2015) ‘Transworld depravity and divine omniscience’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 77, 205–218.Google Scholar
Morriston, Wesley (1985) ‘Is God “significantly free”?’, Faith and Philosophy, 2, 257–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morriston, Wesley (2000) ‘What is so good about moral freedom?’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 50, 344–358.Google Scholar
Morriston, Wesley (2005) ‘Power, liability, and the free-will defence: reply to Mawson’, Religious Studies, 41, 71–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otte, Richard (2009) ‘Transworld depravity and unobtainable worlds’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 78, 65–77.Google Scholar
Pawl, Timothy & Timpe, Kevin (2009) ‘Incompatibilism, Sin, and free-will in heaven’, Faith and Philosophy, 26, 396–417.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1974) The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1977) God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1980) Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee WI: Marquette University Press).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1986) ‘On Ockham's way out’, Faith and Philosophy, 3, 235–269.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (2009) ‘Transworld Depravity, transworld sanctity, and uncooperative essences’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 78, 178–191.Google Scholar
Pruss, Alexander R. (2008) ‘The essential divine-perfection objection to the free-will defence’, Religious Studies, 44, 433–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pruss, Alexander R. (2012) ‘A counter example to Plantinga's free-will defence’, Faith and Philosophy, 29, 400–415.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Joshua (2004) ‘On creating worlds without evil – given divine counterfactual knowledge’, Religious Studies, 40, 457–470.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Joshua (2013) ‘On the value of freedom to do evil’, Faith and Philosophy, 30, 418–428.Google Scholar
Rowe, William (2004) Can God Be Free? (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Rowe, William & Howard-Snyder, Frances (2008) ‘Divine freedom’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/divine-freedom/>.Google Scholar
Smith, Quentin (1997) Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of Language (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Timpe, Kevin (2012) ‘An analogical approach to divine freedom’, Proceedings of the Irish Philosophical Society, 88–99.Google Scholar
Timpe, Kevin (2014) Free-will in Philosophical Theology (New York: Bloomsbury).Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (1983) An Essay on Free-will (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Windt, Peter Y. (1973) ‘Plantinga's unfortunate God’, Philosophical Studies, 24, 335–342.Google Scholar