Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology - Analytic ...

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Paul L. Manata © 2011
moment of choice. So how could the controller “predict” ahead of time what was
going to happen? This is referred to as the Kane-­‐Widerker objection or
Indeterminist Worlds objection. There have been many philosophical responses
to this, but one theological counter is that it looks like this objection assumes
Open Theism, for if God were the controller he would know what the person will
do if he allows it, and Christians might think that too high a price to pay to avoid
Frankfurt’s counters.
6.4 The arbitrariness objection
Determinists might wonder why a libertarian free person goes one way rather
than another. Why does Bob choose Jesus while Fred doesn’t? It can’t be that
one is smarter or more moral than the other, for that would lead to boasting and
remove grace from salvation. Salvation is now for the smart and upright. So what
explains it? The response from libertarians is that Bob chose for reasons. This
doesn’t quite get at things though. For on libertarianism, while reasons may
incline, they do not do so deterministically or decisively. On libertarianism, given
identical pasts, a person may choose differently. This means, given identical
desires, character, and reasons up to the moment of choice, the person can
choose differently. This seems radical. If the exact same past, desires, character,
reasons, etc., always issued in identical futures, then it looks like we have a case
of determinism on our hands. So what “tips the balance?” Libertarians typically
have said this is mysterious. This shouldn’t be considered a knockdown argument
against libertarianism, for there is definitely mystery in the Reformed system too.
6.5 The luck objection
A nastier version of the above argument rears its head in what is sometimes
referred to as the luck objection. This argument has spawned quite a lot of
literature, and I can hardly do it justice here. Again, since libertarianism is the