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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
The philosophical problem of whether God can create free men has a special form for Christian theologians. Among the many kinds of freedom that might be claimed for men, theologians are most interested in the kind that involves the human response to God. For Christians the important response is to God's revelation in Christ. The form of the problem of creation and freedom of chief interest to Christian theologians, therefore, is whether these two doctrines are compatible:
1. that God is the creator of everything finite and contingent, including men and their responses, and
2. that through the gospel of Jesus Christ God addresses men who may respond freely.
1 See Hodgson's, Peter C.Formation of Historical Theology: A Study of Ferdinand Christian Baur (New York: Harper & Row, 1966)Google Scholar for a detailed analysis of one part of this shift in interest.
2 See for instance his Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Mentor, 1958), 395Google Scholar; A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), 311ff.Google Scholar; Pragmatism (New York: Meridian, 1955)Google Scholar, Pragmatism and Religion, esp. 192; also The Will to Believe and Other Essays (New York: Dover, 1956)Google Scholar, Reflex Action and Theism, esp. 134–36.
3 For instance, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 519–33Google Scholar; and Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan, 1926).Google Scholar
4 For instance, The Divine Relativity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948)Google Scholar; and The Logic of Perfection (Lasalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1962)Google Scholar. Hartshorne has a great many articles and other books devoted to this theme.
5 For instance, Modes of Being (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958)Google Scholar, Introduction and chapters 4 and 12; also The God We Seek (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.
6 See A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965)Google Scholar.
7 See Christ without Myth (New York: Harper & Row, 1961)Google Scholar, chapter 4; and The Reality of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1966)Google Scholar.
8 See Tillich's, PaulThe New Being (New York: Scribner's, 1955)Google Scholar. The Paradox of Prayer, 135–38.
9 I have defended this supposition at length in God the Creator (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), chapters 1–4Google Scholar.
10 See ibid., 264–72
11 See the splendid elaboration of this point in Hartt's, Julian N.Christian Critique of American Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), Part IIGoogle Scholar.
12 That having these freedoms means one is genuinely free is a matter requiring much qualification and long defense. Since I am preparing a book to do just that, the thesis will be assumed here, recognizing that it lies at the core of the controversy.
13 This is defended with proper qualifications in Creation and the Trinity, Theological Studies (March, 1969)Google ScholarPubMed.
14 For a more extended explanation of the phrase “normative expression of the Creator” see ibid.