Table Of ContentLove, Freedom, and Evil
Does Authentic Love Require Free Will?
CURRENTS OF ENCOUNTER
STUDIES ON THE CONTACT BETWEEN
CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS,
BELIEFS, AND CULTURES
VOL. 41
GENERAL EDITORS
Hans De Wit
Jerald D. Gort
Henry Jansen
Lourens Minnema
W.L. Van Der Merwe
Hendrik M. Vroom
Anton Wessels
ADVISORY BOARD
Leonard Fernando (Delhi)
James Haire (Canberra)
James W. Heisig (Nagoya)
Mechteld M. Jansen (Amsterdam)
Kang Phee Seng (Hong Kong)
Oddbjørn Leirvik (Oslo)
Francis Anekwe Oborji (Rome)
Jayakiran Sebastian (Philadelphia, PA)
Nelly Van Doorn-Harder (Valparaiso)
Ulrich Winkler (Salzburg)
Love, Freedom, and Evil
Does Authentic Love Require Free Will?
Thaddeus J. Williams
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011
Cover Art: Paul Gauguin, “Where Do We Come From? Who Are
We? Where Are We Going?” (1897), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Cover design: Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3359-7
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0058-5
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011
Printed in the Netherlands
Table of Contents
1. EVIL AND THE AUTONOMOUS HEART
Rethinking Free Will as a Condition of Authentic Love
1.1 THE RELATIONAL FREE WILL DEFENSE.........................................3
1.1.1 The Problems of Evil...........................................................3
1.1.2 Three Criteria of Theodicy.................................................8
1.1.3 The Intransitivity Dimension..........................................11
1.1.4 The Anthropological Dimension....................................16
1.1.5 The Relational Dimension...............................................18
An Overview................................................................................23
1.2 THE AXIOM OF LIBERTARIAN LOVE.............................................25
1.2.1 Three Necessities...............................................................25
1.2.2 Three Freedoms.................................................................29
1.2.3 Necessity of the Heart......................................................32
1.2.4 Teleology and Transcendence........................................36
1.2.5 Boyd’s Chip, Hanegraaff’s Cathy, Brümmer’s Doll...37
1.3 TRUE LOVE: Is Freedom from the Heart Indubitable or
Dubious?................................................................................................43
1.3.1 The Non-Indifference Condition of True Love...........43
1.3.2 Leibniz’s Indifferent Queen............................................44
1.3.3 Edwards on Indifference and Love...............................47
1.3.4 Wiggins and Hasker on Contrastive Explanations....51
1.3.5 Contrastive Explanations and Love in Le Chambon.54
Summary and Conclusions.......................................................57
2. FREEDOM AND THE ENSLAVED HEART
Depth Capacity and the Case for Libertarian Free Will
2.1 THE MORAL IMPERATIVE ARGUMENT: Does "Ought" Imply
"Can"?.....................................................................................................61
2.1.1 Depth Capacity..................................................................61
2.1.2 The Pelagian-Erasmian-Kantian-Finneyan Dictum...63
2.1.3 Johannine Perspectives on “Can”..................................67
2.1.4 Two Erasmian Strategies..................................................71
2.1.5 Anthropological Optimism.............................................77
2.2 THE GRIEVOUS RESISTANCE ARGUMENT: Does Divine Grief
Imply Human Autonomy?................................................................83
2.2.1 Resistance and Autonomy...............................................83
2.2.2 A Divine Tension...............................................................85
2.2.3 An Exegesis of Acts 4:28...................................................89
2.2.4 Gregory Boyd on a Predetermined Crucifixion..........93
2.2.5 Solidarity and Stability in Suffering..............................98
2.3 THE RELATIONAL VISION ARGUMENT: Can One Guarantee
Another's Love?.................................................................................103
2.3.1 Relationship Implies Resistibility................................103
2.3.2 Love Relationships and Creaturely Finitude.............105
2.3.3 Absolute and Creature-Relative Impossibilities.......107
2.3.4 I. Howard Marshall on Predetermination..................109
2.3.5 Impossibility and the Synoptic View of Faith...........112
Summary and Conclusions.....................................................115
3. LOVE AND THE REFORMED HEART:
The Scope of Divine Action in Human Love
3.1 FIVE MODELS OF DIVINE ACTION IN HUMAN LOVE...............119
3.1.1 God and the Heart...........................................................119
3.1.2 Pelagius and Cassian on Divine Action......................120
3.1.3 Arminius and Augustine on Divine Action..............123
3.1.4 Divine Action in No Man’s Land.................................127
3.1.5 Observations on the Theological Landscape.............129
3.2 HEART REFORMATION AND THE BIBLE......................................131
3.2.1 An Ancient Hebrew Tension........................................131
3.2.2 Divine Giving and Human Coming............................138
3.2.3 Divine Unifying and Human Loving..........................144
3.2.4 Divine Raising and Human Remaining......................149
3.2.5 The Tension Beyond John..............................................152
3.3 THE PROBLEMS OF EVIL REVISITED............................................159
3.3.1 The Divine Contributor Objection...............................160
3.3.2 The Sparsity Objection...................................................165
3.3.3 Prayers for Love Actualization.....................................169
3.3.4 Equiprobability, Probabilistic, and Hybrid Models.173
3.3.5 Free Will and Concrete Evil..........................................179
Summary and Conclusions.....................................................181
EPILOGUE
What a Difference One Word Makes............................................183
BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................................187
INDEX....................................................................................................199
Acknowledgements
In the words of Albert Schweitzer,
Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course.
Everything originates in a will for the good, which is
directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or
action for the expression of gratitude.
In that spirit, I would like to express gratitude to the many who
directed “a will for the good” at me, making this work possible.
Dr. Hendrik Vroom of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam
supervised this work from a sketchy blueprint to the final
product with patience, support, and insight. His constant
encouragement to “go deeper,” while recognizing that we
always perceive “through a mirror dimly,” was immensely
helpful. This encouragement not only helped to move this text
beyond much of the superficiality and hubris of early drafts,
but also helped to move me beyond much of the superficiality
and hubris in my own life and theology.
I would also like to thank:
Dr. Bram van de Beek, for his enthusiastic support of this
work, his valuable critiques, and his willingness to take on a
“co-debater” of far lesser knowledge.
Taylor Landry, for his diligence, editorial insight, and
generous time investment without which this would be an
entirely different (and almost entirely unreadable) book.
Joseph Mellema, Esq., for his willingness to “be in” the
arguments and his editorial assistance that fundamentally
altered the DNA of this work.
Aron Mckay, not only for his editorial input, but also for
his conversations thirteen years ago (along with Jason Pfeiffer)
that sowed the seeds of doubt about free will that have
blossomed into this book.
Dr. J.P. Moreland, for modeling clear thinking as my
mentor at Talbot School of Theology, and for many patient
dialogues about free will that powerfully shaped my thinking
on the topic.
Milan Yerkovich, for his mentorship that helped to bridge
the divide between my head and heart as I developed the
“relational theology” of this work.
Henry Jansen, for his keen attention to detail and vast
editorial expertise.
Zonneweelde, for their generous support that helped to
make this publication a reality.
I am also indebted to my parents, Russell and Judy
Williams, Dr. Jon Marshall, Dr. Michael Horton, Dr. James
White, Sean Maroney, Fox Clark, Israel Gomez, John Reed,
Henk Reitsema, Bobbie Clement, UNITE, and my dear students
at Saddleback College and the Good Life Academy.
Lastly, I thank my beautiful wife, Jocelyn, and daughters,
Gracelyn and Holland, who have taught me more about
authentic love than all of the profound theological volumes
combined. To my wife and daughters, I most affectionately
dedicate this work.
Thaddeus Williams
Mission Viejo, CA
April 2011
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EVIL AND THE AUTONOMOUS HEART
Rethinking Free Will as a Condition of Authentic Love
