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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 6/20/2005 5:22 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Here is a better question to ask,
If free will always means being able to choose between objects of differing moral value (Good or evil) then what are the respective moral values of God's options to choose to create or to choose not to create? Is one of those choices good and the other evil?
Acolyte
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 6/20/2005 10:25 PM (GMT -6) | | TGB
I am not sure your answer maps my question. Perhaps I can bring it out more clearly.
Does libertarian freedom imply the ability to do evil?
Is it possible for there to be an agent such that necessarily the agent always and only does that which is good with respect to choices that have moral value and still retains libertarian freedom? | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 6/21/2005 10:40 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi Acolyte-
I'll try to track down Farrell's book when I get settled into Minneapolis. I understand there are some good libraries in town, so I should be able to borrow it and scan (is that legal?) the entire thing if it's as good as you say.
Acolyte: Does libertarian freedom imply the ability to do evil?
Tom: Again, my answer would be, "In some circumstances, yes. On others, no." Let me try to unpack this a bit.
For finite creatures whose moral disposition is contingent (because it has to be acquired responsibly by the finite agents themselves) and not necessary, I think libertarian free will implies the ability to do evil. That is, LFW is necessary for such beings if they are to be the ones determining the sort of persons they become (good or evil, loving or selfish, etc.). It's the development of moral character by beings whose character has to be responsibly acquired which itself requires libertarian freedom.
But this would seem to presuppose that one's character can be sufficiently formed. So I think also that libertarian free will is finite. By that I mean it's expendable. We "spend it" or "use it up" over time as we exercise it. A lifetime of spending one's libertarian free will has the effect of solidifying a person's disposition in the chosen direction (toward realizing loving ends or toward realizing selfish ends). As Augustine (I think it was) said, our choices determine our habits, our habits determine our characters, and our characters in turn determine our choices. So I think libertarian free will eventually gives way to compatibilistic free will with respect to good and evil.
So I'd say there is no such agent such that necessarily the agent always and only does what is good with respect to choices that have moral value and still retains libertarian freedom with respect to THOSE choices. But there may be libertarian options open in non-moral occasions, or in occasions where there are equally good options to choose from. A person who libertarianly chooses good over time and increasingly becomes solidified in good may ultimately choose their way into only compatibilistically loving ways of behaving (presumably in heaven). Such a person would not be libertarianly free to choose evil. But they may be free in the libertarian sense when considering options that are only good (shall I wash my neighbor's feet or wash their car? Only the assumption that "equally good and loving options" is an incoherent notion would lead one to think we can't be libertarianly free in SOME sense in heaven). The latter choices are "moral" even though they are compatibilistic (necessarily good) because the compatibilism was libertarianly determined for the agent herself over time, not unconditionally decreed for her by some other agent (say, God).
Personally, I want to affirm with traditional Christianity God's free choice to create, that is, God's libertarian choice to create. I think this is necessary if we're to argue that Creation is logically contingent. Otherwise, if God's choice to create follows necessarily from his existence and character (which are presumably logically necessary), then you've got Creation following necessarliy from what is logically necessary, in which case I don't see how one argues the logically contingent nature of Creation. Clear as mud? Thoughts? Tom Post Edited (TGB) : 6/21/2005 10:55:14 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 6/21/2005 11:13 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 6/21/2005 11:45 AM (GMT -6) | | As to the Farrell book, scanning may not be legal but the book probably isn’t going to come back into print and there is just no other way to acquire a copy for yourself. Have fun wrestling with the ethical dilemma. And oh, it is all good-check out the table of contents on amazon.
If moral dispositions are acquired responsibly I don’t see why they cannot be lost responsibly as well. If we are responsible for the wills and characters that we have how exactly does this imply that we could ever cut off the possibility of losing those moral dispositions? If on the other hand they cannot be lost and this is acceptable, then why would we need to be responsible in the first place? It seems as if our responsibility is cut off just at the place where we cease to be able to freely change our characters.
Moreover, I am not clear on why one would think that we would need to be responsible for it. Take three possible worlds.
World A. We have LFW, we acquire moral dispositions, but it is always open to us to change them, and some agents have misused their freedom and hence evil is present.
World B. We begin with LFW, we acquire moral dispositions, but it ceases to be open to us to change them, and some agents have misused their freedom and hence evil is present.
World C. We have compatibilist freedom, some form of determinism is true, we acquire moral dispositions but it is never open to us to change them, and there is no evil.
Now, Persons in world A seem to be responsible all the way through. Persons in world B are uncontroversially responsible part of the way through, but seem to lose responsibility when they lose the ability to change their moral dispositions because they cease to be free with respect to them. It becomes difficult to see why world B is better than world C since on world C there is no evil and no possibility of evil. Does evil make world B so much better? I don’t think so. Advocates of world B already admit that compatibilist freedom at the end is acceptable, so why isn’t it acceptable at the beginning? That is to say, if it is acceptable to extinguish LFW and responsibility at the end, why is it not also acceptable to do so at the beginning? We cease to be sources of our moral character and hence cease to be morally responsible when it is no longer “up to us” what kind of moral character we are going to have, right? The gist is this, does the Good require the possibility evil in order to be Good? When such agents cease to be the source of their moral character it seems that they become inactive and static and this is a result of a lack of LFW. Putting inevitability at the end seems just as problematic as putting it at the beginning. The Calvinist, Thomist, Scotist, Arminian, Molinist, and OV here seem to converge on saying that compatibilist freedom is acceptable.
As to Augustine, I think you might be thinking of Hume or Edwards. Augustine says no such thing as far as I know, Calvinist protestations aside. But here is something else to think about. Don’t your intuitions tell you that if freedom is such a good that there should be more of it and not less of it in the eschaton? Are sinful people really more “free” than the saints? That seems backwards doesn’t it?
As to an agent that necessarily the agent always and only does what is good with respect to choice that have moral choices and still has libertarian freedom, wouldn’t Christ be the cardinal example of such an agent? Christ does after all have two wills and presumably both of these operate with LFW.
Why think that becoming fixed or solidified in the Good rules out libertarian freedom? It seems to me that being fixed in the Good would be problematic if we took the Good to be simple. If the end is simple, then alternative possibilities seem morally removed unless one wishes to keep open the possibility of perpetual falls. Furthermore, why would heavenly freedom be compatibilistic simply because all of the options (assuming there is a plurality of goods to choose from) are good? LFW seems to me to only require a plurality of options-it remains silent on the question of their moral worth, doesn’t it?
I too share the motive to preserve God’s freedom to create or refrain from doing so. But notice that the original problem keeps popping up here. Does God’s goodness necessarily diffuse itself? Is Christ human will free from divine determination? Can the blessed will otherwise? For example, when Christ says in John 6:38 that he didn’t come to do his own will, does this mean that there are three wills in the Trinity or that the human and the divine in Christ are opposed to each other? Likewise, when Christ says in the passion, “not my will” does this mean that Christ is willing contrary to God initially and then later conforms or does it mean that the divine will determines the human will in Christ? If that is the case, then it seems legitimate for God to do so for every human being and predestinarianism is off and running. (predestinarianism of varying stripes then seems to be primarily a christological problem, in which case the categories of Christology-person/nature might provide a clue to solving some of these difficulties.)
On a biblical note, any hints on where the Bible teaches that God was free in choosing between creating or not?
Thoughts? | | Back to Top | | |
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Acolyte
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 42
| Posted 6/21/2005 12:38 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom,
Yes I have seen that site before. After skimming your conversation let me make a few observations.
First I think that your instincts are right but I don't think you have gotten to the fundamental problems yet. I agree I think Calvinists are forced to pantheism of sorts. I don't think that this is a problem just for Calvinists though. Pantheism has multiple forms. The trick is to recognize the patterns in which the same problem replays.
Second, problems with atemporality glossed as the Boethian view of simultaneity motivate moving "downward" into temporality to try and solve the problems and yet seem to generate other problems by doing so. The problem is that the entire spectrum of views is entirely neo-platonic. A quasi or temporal deity is no less neo-platonic than one who exists at a single moment. The solution is not go to down into temporality but to transcend simultaneity.
Third, from the hard nosed Scotist and Calvinist to the Process and Open View, they are all shades of Neo-Platonic Origenism. Diminishing the being of agents so that they are mere unexpemplified essences in possible worlds makes then no less eternal or necessary and no less indebted to neo-platonism. You still have a type of necessary world on Calvinism or Process, the only difference seems to be the degree of being such objects have. As divine ideas or such things they are not contingent. None of these views can secure the contingency of creation, one way or the other. But it is not possible on the latin model to put these things external to and dependent on the divine essence since God is nothing else than his essence without falling into the disease of "platonism." That is, God ad intra and God ad extra really just end up being judgments by us and not a difference in God.
Fourth, historically the problem is that all of the people of the discussion (here on the Net and in the professional literature) are working with the latin theological tradition and simply assume that that tradition has been "dominant" in Christianity. They read everyone else through the lens of Augustine's Origenism. They speak of the "traditional christian view" which is code for "the latin theological tradition." This is highly parochial, especially considering the fact that prior to Augustine, all of the western theologians were morons or quacks. The subtle and well thought out stuff wasn't done by the scholastics, because they didn't yet exist, but rather by the Easterners. The Carolingians couldn't even read Greek or not much for example. All of these same problems are at play in the Arian, Apollinarian, Eutychian, Nestorian and Monothelite debates. The clues are in the condemnation of Origenism in the 6th-7th century. The theological model that arises there is non-Augustinian which is why you don't have perpetual debates about grace, free will, providence, etc. How curious.
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