Title

Suspending the debate about divine sovereignty and human freedom.

School/Department

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Date

9-2008

Abstract

The debate about divine sovereignty and human freedom is a series of competing attempts to reconcile two apparently conflicting components of Christian belief. Each of these attempts, or reconciliation projects, offers an account of how it can be true both that God is sovereign (omnipotent and omniscient) and that human beings have the sort of freedom necessary for moral responsibility. This debate continues despite longstanding objections to it. I maintain that these objections fail, but that there is another, and better, way to object to the debate. Rather than taking the line of the traditional objections by rejecting all future work on divine sovereignty and human freedom, I argue that we should suspend this debate until we solve the logically prior problem of determining what it is about human beings that justifies God in treating them as morally responsible agents.

Keywords

Free will and determinism; Theological anthropology--Biblical teaching

Publication Title

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

Volume

51

Issue

3

First Page

573

Last Page

590

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