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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The logical consequences of divine sovereignty for human freedom have been disputed for so long that one might doubt whether anything new remains to be said on the matter. Recent debate on the related topic of ‘Brain and Will’ has however brought up a logical point which would seem to apply equally in the theological context and which throws fresh doubt on the coherence of the traditional antithesis between predestination and human freedom. My object in this paper is to outline the argument and bring home some of its implications.
page 13 note 2 On this see the following writings by MacKay, D. M.:
‘Brain and Will’, The Listener, 9th and 16th May 1957; also (revised) in Body & Mind (ed. Vesey, G. N. A.), 392–402, (Allen and Unwin, 1964)Google Scholar; Part I in A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, revised edition (ed. Edwards, and Pap, ), 38–42 (The Free Press, New York, 1965).Google Scholar
‘On the Logical Indeterminacy of a Free Choice’, Mind, lxix, 31–40, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Freewill and Causal Prediction’, in Cross-Cultural Understanding: Epistemology in Anthropology (ed. Northrop, F. S. C. and Livingston, Helen) (Harper and Row, 1964), 162–79.Google Scholar
‘Information and Prediction in Human Sciences’, in Information and Prediction in Science (ed. Dockx, S. and Bernays, P.) (Symp. of Int. Acad. for Phil. of Science, 1962), Academic Press, New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Freedom of Action in a Mechanistic Universe (Cambridge University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
page 13 note 3 Dorothy, Sayers: The Mind of the Maker, Methuen, 1941.Google Scholar
page 16 note 1 e.g. in Col. 1.16–17, Heb. 1.3.
page 22 note 1 MacKay, D. M., op. cit.; Popper, K. R.: ‘Indeterminism in Classical and Quantum Physics’, Brit. J. Phil. Sci. i, 117–33 and 173–95, 1950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 23 note 1 A further distinction is of course necessary in biblical theology between God-manifest-in-time in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. My intention is not—Heaven forbid!—to present a theory of the nature of God, but only to point out that the need to recognise more than one ‘person’ in the Godhead is logically implicit in the notion of God as a Creator who interacts with His creation.