A few years ago I ran across a statement by Jean-Paul Sartre which seemed to imply that if there is a God, then there can be no human freedom. That thesis struck me as questionable, but at the time I did not pause to examine it. More recently I ran across a similar, more explicit statement by Kurt Baier, and I decided the time to pause had come. My knee-jerk response to Baier – and I confess it was probably nothing (...) more – was, ‘Why can't there be human freedom if there is a God? Indeed, can there be human freedom if there isn't a God ?’ The second of these questions has proved to be the more provocative to me, for the more I have thought about it, the more it has seemed to me that it is the atheist and not the theist who should be on the defensive about libertarianism, i.e. the position that human beings do act, that human actions are not determined, that we are the sole cause of our actions, and that all things remaining the same, we could have done otherwise. Indeed, the more I thought about that question – Can there be human freedom if there is no God? – the more convinced I became that the atheist has no good reason for believing in libertarianism. Note: I am not saying that atheism is logically incompatible with libertarianism. Perhaps it is, but if it is, that is not yet obvious to me. Rather, I am saying that an atheist who believes in libertarianism must believe in it on the basis of faith and must hold this faith in opposition to the only type of evidence that is available to him. Hence, by denying the existence of God, Baier and Sartre do not make room for human freedom; they make belief in human freedom irrational. By contrast, I shall argue, the theist does have a good reason for believing that humans are free. Let's take separate looks at Baier and Sartre; then I shall summarize the substance of my position. (shrink)

While reflecting one day on the enormous difficulties that men have in knowing that there is a God, a completely unexpected and unfamiliar question drifted into my purview – perhaps as a kind of ultimate expression of my philosophical frustration. ‘Indeed’, the question asked, ‘can even God know that he is God?’ At first I thought this query merely amusing. ‘Wouldn't it be funny if God cannot know that he is God! But of course he can.’ So my mind wandered (...) on to other things. The question did not leave me alone, though. It insisted that I take it seriously, and the more I did, the more legitimate, complex, and significant it came to seem - and still does. (shrink)

Richard Creel shares a practical gem of wisdom he discovered in the work of Hegel.

It has been about fifty years since the topic of divine impassibility was the subject of book-length philosophical treatments in English. In recent years process and analytic philosophers have returned this issue to the forefront of professional attention. Divine Impassibility traces the issue of classical sources, relates the positions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books, and surveys the writings of contemporary British analytic philosophers such as Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and H. P. Owen, American analytic (...) philosophers such as Norman Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump, Nelson Pike, Robert Adams, and Bruce Reichenbach, and process philosophers such as Charles Hartshorne and Lewis Ford. The author shows that clear, adequate analysis of the issue must distinguish four respects in which God might be passible or impassible: nature, will, knowledge, and feeling. He shows also how decisions on this topic bear on numerous others in philosophical theology such as creation, eternality, evil, and human freedom. His creative proposals on these and other topics attempt to go beyond the difficulties of both classical and process conceptions of God. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Immutability Impassibility Toward a Unified Position Works cited.

In a 1987 paper Thomas Morris introduced the phrase ‘perfect being theology’ and argued that in our efforts to construct an adequate theistic conception of God the most fruitful procedure will be for us to engage in reflection and dialogue about what a maximally perfect being would be like . To some of us that approach seems so obvious as to be without a significant alternative, but there are other approaches that have been followed – such as working up a (...) conception of God solely from the statements in a purported repository of divine revelation, such as the Bible . Another approach has been to study a wide range of religious scriptures to see what common conception of the divine can be found in them or most plausibly constructed from them. Those approaches, Morris said, have left us with something unsatisfactorily incomplete, static, and perhaps self-contradictory. Morris argued, a la St. Anselm and René Descartes, that the notion of a maximally perfect being is the north star that has been at the heart of the theistic traditions of the world, and it is that notion that we must explore and elaborate in order that we might construct an adequate conception of God. I agree. (shrink)

Sorne people use “faith” to refer to an action, some to a passion, and sorne to a composite of the two. “Faith” is also sometimes used interchangeably with “belief.” This paper is an effort to identify and overcorne some of the problems caused by these facts. I pursue this end by distinguishing several meanings of “belief,” and by distinguishing actional faith, passional faith, and faithfulness from one another. I argue that much can be gained by restricting the meaning of “faith” (...) to the concept of a non-evidential doxastic passion that can be caused by any number of things, including God, if God exists. (shrink)

Sorne people use “faith” to refer to an action, some to a passion, and sorne to a composite of the two. “Faith” is also sometimes used interchangeably with “belief.” This paper is an effort to identify and overcorne some of the problems caused by these facts. I pursue this end by distinguishing several meanings of “belief,” and by distinguishing actional faith, passional faith, and faithfulness from one another. I argue that much can be gained by restricting the meaning of “faith” (...) to the concept of a non-evidential doxastic passion that can be caused by any number of things, including God, if God exists. (shrink)

_Thinking Philosophically_ begins by helping the reader acquire a lively sense of what philosophy is, how it began, why it persists, and how it is related to other fields of study, especially science.

John Dewey once said of philosophical problems that they are quite different from old soldiers. Not only do they never die, but they do not even fade away. Something similar might be said about the unfavourable Divine attributes of the 1950s and 60s, timelessness or eternity, necessary existence, foreknowledge of creaturely free choices, and immutability. All have contemporary defenders. Even the puzzling, traditional tenet that God is metaphysically simple now has formidable apologists. Perhaps the least popular of the traditional theistic (...) canon, the most likely to fade away, is the tenet that God is impassible. The recent appearance of Richard Creel's Divine Impassibility has shown that even this least popular of attributes can be powerfully articulated and defended. Roughly, the impassibility thesis is the claim that God does not undergo sensory experience including suffering and pain, nor is God subject to corruption, substantial essential change or to external agency. Creel's defence of Divine impassibilism is certainly the most balanced and sophisticated in the current literature. Any argument for passibilism must take Creel's work seriously. I intend to do just that in the course of defending the thesis that the God of Christian theism is passible in an important respect. There are substantive moral and religious reasons to believe God suffers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GOD, EMOTION, AND CORPOREALITY: A THOMIST PERSPECTIVE 1 MARCEL SAROT University of Utrecht Utrecht, The Netherlands I. Introduction WHEN WE TAKE" impassibility" to mean" immutbility with regard to one's feelings or the quality of ne's inner life," 2 the number of adherents to the doctrine of divine impassibility has continuously decreased during the present century. Slowly but surely the concept of an immutable and impassible God has given way (...) to the concept of a sensitive, emotional, passionate God. Before the Second World War this tendency was restricted to British theology,3 but since then it has spread to the rest of Europe, notably to France and Ger1 A first draft of this paper was presented at a meeting of the Aquinas Research Group of the Catholic Theological University of Utrecht (The Netherlands ) in May, 1990. I would like to thank the other participants for their useful comments. The paper also profited from the valuable comments of Prof. Dr. Vincent Brummer and Dr. Christoph Schwi:ibel. The writing of this paper forms part of a research project on divine passibility, supported by the Dutch Research Foundation for Theology and Religious Studies (STEGON), and funded by the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Research (NWO). 2 I have argued for this definition in my article " Patripassianism, Theopaschitism and the Suffering of God: Some Historical and Systematic Considerations," Religious Studies 26 (1990) : 363-375. a See A. van Egmond, De Lijdende God in de Britse Theologie van de Negentiende Eeuw: De Bijdrage van Newman, Maurice, McLeod Campbell en Gore aan de Christelijke Theopaschitische Traditie (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1986); J. Kenneth Mozley, The Impassibility of God: A Survey of Christian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), pp. 127-166; Doctrine in the Church of England: The Report of the Commission o·n Christian Doctrine Appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1922 (London: SPCK, 1938), pp. 55-56. 61 62 MARCEL SAROT many, to the United States and to Asia.4 By now most of the theologians who explicitly state their views on divine impassibility hold that this doctrine is to a greater or lesser degree false, and Ronald Goetz rightly asserts "that the rejection of the ancient doctrine of divine impassibility has become a theological commonplace." 5 Nevertheless the debate on this issue is not yet closed. Recently Richard Creel published a thorough study in defense of divine impassibility,6 which, I expect, will prove quite influential. Other theologians who defend the doctrine can be cited as well.7 To a large extent, the arguments which these theologians put forward in favor of divine impassibility are taken from the classic Christian theological texts. Among these, the writings of Aquinas are not the least important and no one will be surprised to hear that he is frequently cited in this connection. However, what has surprised me in my study of the debate on the issue of divine impassibility is that one of the most important arguments Aquinas 4 On passibilist tendencies in modern theology, see Richard Bauckham, " ' Only the Suffering God Can Help ' : Divine Passibility in Modern Theology," Themelios 9 (1984) : 6-12; Warren McWilliams, The Passio1i of God: Divine Swffering in Contemporary Protestant Theology (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985); Van Egmond, De Lijdende God, pp. 28-31, and "Theopaschitische Tendenzen in de Na-Oorlogse Protestantse Theologie," Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 79 (1979): 161-177; Marcel Sarot, "De Passibilitas Dei in de Hedendaagse Westerse Theologie: Een Literatuuroverzicht," Kerk en Theologie 40-3 (1989) : 196-206. 5 Ronald Goetz, "The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy," The Christian Century 103 (1986): 385. Also see the literature cited in the preceding note. 6 Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 7 See, for instance, Brian Davies, Thinking about God (London: Chapman, 1985), pp. 155-158; William J. Hill, "Does Divine Love Entail Suffering in God?," in: B. L. Clarke & E. T. Long, eds., God and Temporality (New York: Paragon House, 1984), pp. 55-71 ; id., " The Doctrine of God after Vatican II," The Thomist 51 (1987); pp. 412-414; Herbert McCabe, "The Involvement of God," New Blackfriars 66 (1985) : 464-476, reprinted in Herbert McCabe... (shrink)

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues (...) for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person.Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others. (shrink)

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues (...) for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others. (shrink)

Richard Pettigrew offers an extended investigation into a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern our credences. The main principles that he justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian epistemology, though many other related principles are discussed along the way. Pettigrew looks to decision theory in order to ground his argument. He treats an agent's credences as if they were a choice she makes between different options, gives an account of the purely epistemic utility enjoyed by different (...) sets of credences, and then appeals to the principles of decision theory to show that, when epistemic utility is measured in this way, the credences that violate the principles listed above are ruled out as irrational. The account of epistemic utility set out here is the veritist's: the sole fundamental source of epistemic utility for credences is their accuracy. Thus, Pettigrew conducts an investigation in the version of epistemic utility theory known as accuracy-first epistemology. (shrink)