Re: Van Til+Plantinga=?

["seriousactualist" <seriousactualist@yahoo.com>]

Thanks for your reply, James. So you are the unattributed second-hand 
source here. ;-)

You wrote:

[...]
> 4. Plantinga's FWD may not presuppose the *actuality* of libertarian
> freedom, but it surely presupposes its *possibility* (in the broad,
> logical sense).  

Indeed.

> However, even that is at odds with the Reformed tradition.  If God
> is sovereign in the sense that Calvinists have invariably affirmed,
> and essentially so, then libertarian freedom is not exemplified in
>*any* possible world -- in which case: RIP, FWD.

It is unclear to me that:

o there is any such thing as *the* Reformed tradition;
o this Reformed tradition is (or various relevant Reformed traditions
are) sufficiently modally sophisticated to support your judgement
(where I'm *not* here taking the countenance of possible worlds
<shudder> as modally sophisticated); or
o it's just obvious that it follows from salient reformed creedal
statements -- e.g., WCF X.1ff and the second paragraph of the 1903
Declatory Statement on chapter III -- that human persons are at best
free in the compatibilist (or other non-libertarian) sense

Further, if (as it seems to me) being an agent cause of E entails
being libertarian free with respect to E, and if, as you say, the
Reformed tradition insists that being libertarian free is not possibly
exemplified (in Plantinga's broadly logical sense), then the Reformed
tradition is committed to the impossibility (in that same broadly
logical sense) of agent causation. But then God is not an agent cause,
which seems offhand (again, to me) to ill comport with the message, if
not the very words, of Scripture.

> 5. To insist that the FWD is consistent with no one being *actually*
> libertarian free, while strictly correct, only serves to blunt the
> apologetic relevance of the argument.  [...]

That depends on what the apologetic problem is, doesn't it? The FWD is
a defense against the logical (deductive) problem of evil. If the
apologetic context is otherwise, all bets are off. 

-- pm


---