Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: free will

  • Responding to the Argument for the Possibility of Foreknowledge from Transcendence (By Brian Knapp, Founder/Contributor Emeritus)

    If God foreknows person P will make choice C at time T, then it is not possible for this choice to not be made. After all, if P does not choose C at T, then God’s foreknowledge was incorrect, in which case God actually did not foreknow this choice would occur at all as truth is a necessary component of foreknowledge. Stated differently, if it is not true that P chooses C at T, then God could not have foreknown that they would. So, when we say that God foreknows that P will choose C at T, there is no …

  • What Happened to Paul Manata? and "Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology: A Contemporary Introduction"

    Paul Manata has been silent for nearly a month. Where did he go? Well, now we know. He has been writing a lengthy paper called, “Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology: A Contemporary Introduction.” Find out more about it and get a copy here.…

  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black V

    These posts contain lengthy quotations from Defense of the Faith, by Cornelius Van Til – this post will deal with pages 319-323. In the previous post, Van Til dealt with the unbeliever’s state before God, his self-deception, suppression of the truth, and the proper apologetic methodology to use with the unbeliever. Beginning here, he begins to answer the charge that a covenantal apologetic is “circular reasoning”, or has no “point of contact” with the unbeliever.

    The one main question to which we are addressing ourselves in this series of articles is whether Christians holding to the Reformed Faith should

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  • Are choices arbitrary?

    Those who wish to defend libertarian free will over against a position like Calvinism often attempt to do so upon the basis of a strictly philosophical rather than exegetical basis. It is often asserted that determinism of any kind (which for the sake of argument includes Calvinism) precludes free will such that if we possess free will then indeterminism must be the case. Since there is libertarian free will indeterminism is true (and Calvinism is false).

    Note that the inconsistency between libertarian free will and determinism is assumed. The assumption may be granted as definitional. Note also that libertarian free …

  • An Internal Critique of Physicalism: Freedom and Responsibility

    Peter Smith and O.R. Jones begin their discussion of causality and freedom by restating three points to provide a context for their discussion.

                First, it is a deeply entrenched presumption of science that all physical changes      are to be explained entirely in terms of physical causes… (252)

     

                Second, we humans belong to the physical world, at least in the sense that there     is no more to our make-up than ordinary organic stuff… (252)

               

                Third, we have claimed it as a virtue of our broadly functionalist account of the     mind that it allows us to speak of mental states while still

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