ABSTRACT
While War eld was attempting to de ne the term predestination , I take the above passage to offer a good characterization of theological determinism —the view, in brief, that God determines every event that occurs in the history of creation. There have been many expressions of this basic conviction in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology, and various arguments offered in support of it, from biblical texts that suggest it (cf. Feinberg 2001: 679-82) to considerations of divine perfection that imply it (Helm 1993: 44-54). Some theists even accept determinism rst on empirical or philosophical grounds, and then go on to reason that if all events are determined, they must ultimately be so by the Creator of all (cf. McCann 2005: 145). This article will focus, not on reasons for accepting theological determinism, but on how those who do accept this view have conceived of the nature and extent of human freedom. As we will see, much turns on how theological determinists spell out (or do not spell out) what it means for God to determine events, as well as what other metaphysical assumptions they make about the compatibility of such determinism and free will. Below, I will discuss four possible (though perhaps not collectively exhaustive) positions that theological determinists have held on the issue of human freedom. The rst are ‘standard’ compatibilists about determinism and human freedom; the second think that human freedom is incompatible with natural determinism, but compatible with theological determinism; and the third are ‘standard’ incompatibilists about determinism and
human freedom, and so conclude that we are not free. The second group may be subdivided further, into those who take theological determinism to be causal , though different from natural determinism in some respect, and those who think that the way the Creator determines events has nothing in common with the way created causes do, so that causal language cannot be used unequivocally of God and creation. This latter group takes theological determinism to be compatible with a libertarian account of human freedom.
