Richard Muller is a brilliant historical theologian, although I’ve had cause to take issue with some of his claims about traditional Reformed views of human free will; specifically, that his remarks about ‘determinism’ and ‘compatibilism’ are based on idiosyncratic understandings of those terms, rather than the standard definitions in the contemporary philosophical literature on free will, all of which leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion. I learned recently (HT: Ron DiGiacomo) that my concerns are echoed, but developed in much more detail, in this 2024 article by Michael Preciado in the Journal of Reformed Theology.
From the article abstract:
The present essay addresses Richard Muller’s most recent comments regarding the Reformed Orthodox in comparison with contemporary compatibilism. Muller’s work is undeniably excellent. However, it suffers from a considerable weakness. That weakness is his lack of interaction with contemporary compatibilism. This causes him to misunderstand its nature and falsely claim that the Reformed Orthodox cannot be labeled as compatibilists. I argue that a more serious analysis of contemporary compatibilism shows that the Reformed Orthodox are correctly labeled as compatibilists. I do so by examining Muller’s main claims as to why the Reformed Orthodox were not compatibilists. In this examination, I argue that he has misunderstood the thesis of compatibilism and confused it with other metaphysical doctrines.
From the conclusion:
In my view, Muller’s project can be divided into two parts. The first part is his exegetical conclusions concerning the Reformed Orthodox. The second part is his philosophical interpretation of those exegetical conclusions. This essay has argued that he has failed in the second part of his project. Muller has claimed that standard usage of key terms such as ‘compatibilism’ and ‘determinism’ do not accurately describe the Reformed Orthodox. I have demonstrated that Muller’s usage of these terms is not standard. It also argued that there are widely used senses of these terms that do accurately describe the Reformed Orthodox. I think this means that the second part of Muller’s project needs to be abandoned.
The article is open-access (for now!) and I highly recommend it. In my humble estimation, it’s a slam-dunk.
Reading the article, I was surprised to learn that Muller thinks that ‘determinism’ means absolute necessity rather than hypothetical necessity. As Preciado shows, even libertarians like Robert Kane know that that’s not how you define ‘compatibilism’. Most compatibilists, traditional and contemporary, take pains to distinguish themselves from the likes of Spinoza. He’s an outlier; the vast bulk of compatibilists (like, 99.99999999%?) hold to hypothetical necessity, not absolute necessity.
What Preciado shows is that Muller starts with a strawman definition of ‘determinism’ that nobody but Spinoza accepts, and then pronounces (in light of this strawman) that Reformed Orthodoxy is neither determinist nor compatibilist. Not a hopeful strategy on Muller’s part.
I have one minor quibble with the article, which is the tendency of Preciado to repeatedly gloss ‘determinism’ as mere ‘hypothetical necessity’. This seems far too weak. It also has to be that the determining factors are ones we are *powerless to prevent* (perhaps due to their accidental necessity). After all, someone could deny accidental necessity of the ‘prior’ factors (maybe an Ockhamist who thinks God’s foreknowledge is a ‘soft fact’), but still insist on hypothetical necessity! That is, since God’s foreknowledge is such-and-such and is infallible, then it ‘necessarily follows’ that our future choices will occur exactly as represented in divine foreknowledge. But no Ockhamist will say he’s signing up to determinism.
It’s the difference between saying that determinism is “box (if p then q)” and saying it’s “box p; box (if p then q); :. box q”. The former is ‘hypothetical necessity,’ but doesn’t seem nearly strong enough (by itself) to count as determinism. Without ‘box p’ – that is, without the determining factors being out of our control – van Inwagen’s consequence argument couldn’t even get going. Which is probably why PvI stresses the determining factors not being ‘up to us’ in his statement of the argument. He wants to argue for the consequences of *determinism*, not of anything weaker than determinism. So you need both premises.
Still, this is just a blemish on very good article. There’s a complete lack of snarkiness, which is always good. Preciado’s translation of ‘divided’ and ‘composite’ senses into clear, accessible, modern senses is superb. The fourfold exposure of Muller’s definition of ‘compatibilism’ as a strawman is quite effective. There wasn’t a single argument in the entire article that didn’t ring true to me. (Makes sense; the legendary Taylor Cyr gave comments, so there’s not going to be any obvious red flags, I think…)
Preciado frames his argument peaceably at the end: Muller is great in his exegetical project vis-a-vis the Reformed, but his attempt to identify the *philosophical significance* of his exegetical project is a failure, and we should reject it. The idea is that Muller needs to stay in his historical theological lane (a lane he’s mastered very well), until he upgrades his philosophy driver’s license.
Good comments, Greg.
One minor quibble with your minor quibble: I’m not sure Preciado is wrong to gloss ‘determinism’ merely as ‘hypothetical necessity’. Consider, e.g., Kane’s definition of determinism, quoted at length here. He basically equates it with conditional (hypothetical) necessity. He doesn’t specify that the determining conditions must be beyond our control or such that we’re powerless to prevent them. Perhaps we should say that there are ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ definitions of determinism, with the latter being more specific about constraints on the determining conditions.
But it can’t be glossed “*merely* as ‘hypothetical necessity,’” can it? As far as I’m seeing in the Kane definition you linked to, he doesn’t “basically equate it with conditional (hypothetical necessity)”. I mean, sure, he doesn’t use the phrases “beyond our control” or “powerless to prevent,” but he does repeatedly say things like this:
“decrees of fate”
“the foreordaining acts of God”
“antecedent causes”
Except on some implausible metaphysics, none of these are in our control. It seems pretty obvious to me that if the allegedly ‘determining’ factors *depend* on us, then they can’t *determine* us. Again, the Ockhamist example: God’s foreknowledge is a soft fact counterfactually dependent upon our actual choices. Hypothetical necessity is here (if God infallibly believes I’ll type this, then necessarily I’ll type this), but there’s no determinism.
A quicker example is: if I see you walking, then you’re walking. But that hypothetical necessity (if I see x to be the case, then necessarily x is the case) is *clearly* no species of determinism. It’s just me looking at you. :-)
I think the ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ qualifiers are misleading. My previous two examples of hypothetical necessity aren’t even ‘thin’ cases of determinism, are they?
Fair enough. But then why not think that the Reformed Orthodox had similar thoughts in mind when they distinguished ‘hypothetical necessity’ from ‘absolute necessity’? Preciado is basically just saying that what the RO called ‘hypothetical necessity’ with respect to human free choices (e.g., Turretin’s “hypothetical necessity of the decree”) is what contemporary philosophers would call ‘determinism’.
As I understand it, hypothetical necessity merely entails a sufficient condition for an outcome, but it doesn’t necessarily entail a *casual* relationship for the same. So, all determined relationships of antecedent to consequent are hypothetically necessary but not all hypothetical necessities are casually determined. (I probably side with Muller on Turretin. Dabney thought he was too soft of determinism too.)
James, I’ll paste in my reply below, since I refuse to allow this commenting system to render my prose as some Chinese writing in narrow, vertical strips. :-)
Greg,
I’ve thought for years, at high speed Muller crossed the double yellow line into the fast lane and didn’t even think to flip on his blinker. Sadly, there are many casualties in his rear view mirror, including the Davenant wreck.
Ron
As I understand it, one desideratum of the Preciado article is to situate the teachings of Reformed Orthodoxy within contemporary understandings of determinism (and compatibilism). He is arguing for conceptual identity (though not linguistic identity). And it seems to be an obvious feature of definitions of ‘determinism’ in modern free will debates that the determining factors are not ‘up to us,’ and are out of our control. van Inwagen’s consequence argument is specifically about the consequences of determinism, and it wouldn’t represent determinism accurately (or even have hope of being a valid argument), unless the box is before the p.
I *do* “think that (as you put it) the Reformed Orthodox had similar thoughts in mind when *they* distinguished ‘hypothetical necessity’ from ‘absolute necessity“! All I’m saying is that Preciado doesn’t make that clear when he is explaining their concept of determinism. As Preciado explains it, ‘determinism’ *just is* hypothetical necessity. But that’s just a component of determinism, and it leaves out something essential to the concept: the antecedence of the determining factors to the choices thus determined. It’s the difference between saying box (if p then q), and adding: box p. The latter is part of the Reformed and contemporary conception of determinism, and I felt that needed to be made clear.
Go back and read pp. 156-158 of the article.
“Contemporary philosophers use the word ‘determinism’ to mean conditional or hypothetical necessity” (156).
“Determinism is a form of conditional necessity” (156).
“determinism as conditional necessity” (156).
“‘determinism’ as hypothetical necessity” (156).
“determinism as hypothetical necessity” (157).
“determinism is understood as hypothetical necessity” (158).
“‘determinist,’ understood as hypothetical necessity” (158).
This presentation gives the impression, over and over and over again, that determinism is *just* hypothetical necessity. That is palpably false, and very misleading, since it would mean that Ockhamist accounts of foreknowledge, and my act of seeing you, are deterministic sequences. No one believes that. I get why he’s focusing on hypothetical necessity and talks almost exclusively about it: it is the most important point of contrast between Muller’s (dubious) concept of determinism as requiring absolute necessity, and the Reformed/contemporary concept of determinism as requiring hypothetical necessity. All I’m saying is that without the presentation of the determining factors as genuinely antecedent to the determined outcomes (so that the former in no way depends on the latter), the slogan “determinism as hypothetical necessity” is misleading. It’s a small point.
Perhaps I could make the point a different way. Preciado cites the Reformed as teaching “Those things are necessary that God has decreed or brought about by reason of the immutability of the divine decree” (Bucanus, 155); and that the hypothetical necessity is from “the decree of immutability” (Turretin, 157). These locutions are at least getting at the idea that the divine decree in theological determinism (analogous to past states of nature and the laws of nature in natural determinism) are above us and prior to us. Relative to what we can do, they are ‘immutable’ and so not subject to anything we can do to change them. That seems exactly right. That’s box p. But this factor is missing from *all* of Preciado’s glosses on the modern concept of ‘determinism’! I’m saying that gap needs to be filled. If you don’t add that, then determinism is Ockhamist is vision, which isn’t right.
I hate to focus on this too much. We’re squabbling over some 1% detail, when of course we have 99% in common about how great and useful this article is. My point is mainly a pedagogical one: while determinism involves hypothetical necessity rather than absolute necessity, it involves more than that, and I think that could have been stated more clearly.
I agree. It could have been stated more clearly.
I mean, ironically, “my act of seeing you” *is* determinist. It’s just that the determinism is going in the other direction, from you to me. :-)