Journal of Reformed Theology

Michael Preciado on Richard Muller’s Compatibilism

/ Philosophy, Theology / 10 Comments

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.

Some Challenges for Libertarian Calvinism

/ Philosophy, Theology

Since we’re talking Calvinism and compatibilism, let me mention that Paul Manata and I just had an article on those issues published in the Journal of Reformed Theology: “Determined to Come Most Freely: Some Challenges for Libertarian Calvinism” (details here).

Here’s the abstract:

It is commonly held that Calvinism is committed to theological determinism, and therefore also to compatibilism insofar as Calvinism affirms human freedom and moral responsibility. Recent scholarship has challenged this view, opening up space for a form of Calvinism that allows for libertarian free will. In this article we critically assess two versions of ‘libertarian Calvinism’ recently proposed by Oliver Crisp. We contend that Calvinism (defined along the confessional lines adopted by Crisp) is implicitly committed to theological determinism, and even if it were not so committed, it would still rule out libertarian free will on other grounds.

Libertarian Calvinism (LC) is an attempt to reconcile a Calvinistic (monergistic) view of salvation with a libertarian (incompatibilist) view of human freedom. We summarize and compare two versions of LC proposed (although not personally endorsed) by Oliver Crisp. Following Crisp’s lead, we take the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) as representative of historic confessional Calvinism. We develop three objections that apply to both versions of LC:

  1. WCF’s statements about God’s attributes and God’s eternal decree imply theological determinism and thus rule out libertarian free will (since libertarianism, on standard definitions, entails that determinism is false).
  2. Libertarianism is motivated by the ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ (OIC) principle, but WCF implicitly rejects OIC, thus undercutting a major motivation for libertarianism (and thus for LC).
  3. WCF 10.1 straightforwardly affirms compatibilism by asserting that God determines that the elect freely come to Christ. Since libertarianism entails that compatibilism is false, LC is internally inconsistent.

We conclude the paper with a brief assessment of the prospects for libertarian Calvinism more generally.