SUSPENDING THE DEBATE ABOUT DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY AND HUMAN FREEDOM

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 2008 by Ciocchi, David M

As I will argue in the next section of this paper, there are excellent grounds for rejecting the first assumption. We do not know what sort of freedom is necessary for moral responsibility. We should, therefore, suspend the DSF debate while we work on the logically prior problem of determining what it is about human beings that justifies God in treating them as morally responsible agents.

Theologians, philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers working on this problem have generated three broad solutions to it. The first solution is not really a solution but rather a denial that the problem can be solved; it is the view that human beings are not morally responsible agents. Advocates of this view range from neuroscientists who argue that the conscious mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain's neural activity to philosophers who maintain that the concepts of freedom and moral responsibility are incoherent.7 The second solution is the view that there are facts about human beings that, while they do not permit a robust, traditional conception of moral responsibility, do justify some of our standard moral practices.8 Then there is the third solution, the view that the traditional conception of human beings as morally responsible agents is fully justified.

Christian thinkers should study all three solutions. They should study the first two solutions, even though they are inconsistent with Christian belief, because they raise problems that must be addressed by proponents of the third solution. And they must pay careful attention to the third solution, since it alone is consistent with Christian belief, so that the correct account of human freedom (whatever that may be) will be a version of this solution.

Participants in the DSF debate persist in working on their reconciliation projects because either (1) they are unfamiliar with the literature on freedom and responsibility, and so have no idea that there are disputes about what sort of freedom is necessary for moral responsibility, or (2) they are familiar with it, or with some of it, and they think it is obvious that one particular version of the third solution is correct. On both (1) and (2) the participants in the DSF debate retain the assumption that we know what sort of freedom is necessary for moral responsibility, and with it they have a rational basis for continuing their debate.

In the next section of this paper, I argue that long-standing disputes between supporters of competing versions of the third solution-i.e. accounts of the freedom necessary for moral responsibility-have generated an intellectual stalemate. I also argue that no appeal to biblical teaching has a chance of ending that stalemate. The conclusion is that it is not reasonable to claim that we can identify the sort of freedom necessary for moral responsibility. There is, therefore, no rational basis for continuing the DSF debate. For this reason that debate should be suspended.

II. THE STALEMATE ABOUT HUMAN FREEDOM

Taking the term "free will" to designate whatever sort of freedom is necessary for moral responsibility, we can classify traditional supporters of moral responsibility as either compatibilists (free will is compatible with determinism) or incompatibilists (free will is not compatible with determinism).9 Accounts of free will advanced by compatibilists are normally called "compatibilist," and those advanced by incompatibilists are called "libertarian."