Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

The Freedom Of God, Scout Powell

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

This paper addresses the exceedingly complex nature of God's freedom through the defense of Friedrich Lohmann’s article, “God’s Freedom: Free to be Bound.” The role of God’s creation in his own freedom is explored as well as the idea of omnipotence, negative freedom, positive freedom, and gracious autonomy. This paper affirms the idea that God is simultaneously free and bound to his own creation; God’s own self-restriction leads to his eternal glory. God’s freedom to be bound is seen both in the Old Testament Scriptures as well as the New Testament. For example, God permanently tied himself to the world …

Moral Responsibility, Justice, And Freedom, Jonathan Smith

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Freedom, and in particular, the freedom of human beings, is a hot topic within the field of metaphysics. In this paper, instead of arguing for the truth of a particular position on freedom, I explore whether a particular position, compatibilism, might be consistent with the existence of moral responsibility and retributive justice. To alleviate ambiguity, I construct a model by which the four primary positions on freedom might be clearly understood. I then distinguish between what I call ‘common-sense’ views of moral responsibility, and ‘complex’ views of moral responsibility. I select a particular complex view, which I term the ‘virtue’ …

Can God Know What Time It Is? A Working Paper, Caleb Brown

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Many thinkers hold the following five propositions are inconsistent:

1. The dynamic theory of time (McTaggart’s “A-theory”) is correct
2. God is atemporal
3. God knows tensed facts
4. Free human actions are possible
5. God interacts responsively with humans

This working paper uses the discussion in Four Views: God and Time as a starting-point and moves towards explaining how these propositions are consistent.

Al-Ghazali On Causation, Omnipotence, And Human Freedom, Christopher P. Garber

Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion

In his work entitled "On Power," famous Muslim philosopher al-Ghazali lays out his particular brand of occasionalism. Al-Ghazali views god as the ultimate cause for everything that is logically possible, including the acts of man. In this paper, al-Ghazali's occasionalism is fully fleshed out to reveal what appear to be his true views on both God and man's power (or lack thereof) and the implications of such views.