Michael Preciado on Richard Muller’s Compatibilism
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.
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