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Flew and the Free Will Defence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Richard L. Purtill
Richard L. Purtill
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Western Washington University
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Extract

In a recent paper Anthony Flew gives an argument which can be outlined as follows:

1. Any attempt to give a ‘free will defence’ (to rebut the argument from evil against God's existence) must be based either on a compatibilist notion of free will or a libertarian, incompatibilist, notion of free will.

2. A free will defence based on a compatibilist notion of free will must fail, for on a compatibilist view of free will, God could make creatures who were free but never chose evil.

3. A free will defence based on a libertarian notion of free will might have other difficulties, but on a libertarian view of free will God could not both leave men free and bring it about that they never chose evil.

4. But a free will defence based on an incompatibilist, libertarian notion of free will can be rejected, since:

(a) It is not clear that the ordinary use of such key terms as ‘action’ and ‘choice’ carry any implications of libertarian free will.

(b) If such terms did carry the implication of libertarian free will it becomes hard to see how anyone could be in a position to know that a choice had been made or an action performed.

(c) The possession of libertarian free will by created beings seems to be incompatible with the essential theistic doctrine that all created beings are always utterly dependent on God as their sustaining cause.

5. Therefore the free will defence fails.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 477 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 477 note 1 Flew, Anthony, ‘Compatibilism, Free Will and God’, Philosophy 48, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 477 note 2 I take it that the term is now sufficiently current not to need explanation. Flew's target in his paper is the version given by Plantinga, Alvin in God and Other Minds, Cornell University Press, 1967.Google Scholar

page 479 note 1 Cf. Lucas, J. R., The Freedom of the Will (Oxford University Press, 1970), especially chs. 3 and 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 480 note 1 Lucas, , op. cit. p. 12.Google Scholar

page 480 note 2 Cf. my ‘Epistemological Scepticism Again’, Philosophical Forum, 111, 3 (Fall 1971).Google Scholar

page 482 note 1 Cf. the Note at the end of this paper.

page 482 note 2 Contra Gentiles iii, chapter 162.

page 482 note 3 E.g. Contra Gentiles iii, chapters 73, 148, 159.

page 482 note 4 Lucas, J. R., ‘Pelagius and St. Augustine’, The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. xxii, 2 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar