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    God alone is able to move the creaturely will as agent wi... — Carmelics
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    God alone is able to move the creaturely will as agent without violence (i.e., consistently with its voluntary nature).

    Divine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If the will were moved by an external principle as agent, the movement would be violent.
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    • 2.God alone is the cause and sustainer of the will's being, and thus is able to move it from within rather than as an external principle.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.A cause that determines the outcome of a free choice with infallible efficacy renders that choice unfree, regardless of whether it operates 'from within'.
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    • 2.The distinction between internal and external causation does not preserve voluntariness if the agent could not have chosen otherwise given the divine motion.
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    • 3.Leibniz and libertarian incompatibilists hold that genuine freedom requires the ability to do otherwise, which omnipotent internal determination forecloses.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Molina argued that God's knowledge of free acts depends on counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, implying the will has a sovereignty over its acts that precedes divine motion.
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    • 2.If creaturely will possesses an irreducible self-determining power (as Scotus's formal distinction and Molina's middle knowledge suggest), then no external agent—even God operating internally—can be the sufficient moving cause of its free acts without usurping that sovereignty.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A cause that determines the outcome of a free choice with infallible efficacy re...God alone is the cause and sustainer of the will's being, and thus is able to mo...If creaturely will possesses an irreducible self-determining power (as Scotus's ...If the will were moved by an external principle as agent, the movement would be ...
    +3 moreShow less
    Leibniz and libertarian incompatibilists hold that genuine freedom requires the ...Molina argued that God's knowledge of free acts depends on counterfactuals of cr...The distinction between internal and external causation does not preserve volunt...

    Similar

    God alone is the cause and sustainer of the will's being, and thus is ...80%If the will were moved by an external principle as agent, the movement...76%God moves us in accordance with our voluntary nature.75%Definition (D3) does not unduly limit the power of an omnipotent agent...74%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, Ch. 88
    View source passageHide passage
    It may seem obvious that neither can survive: that once the operations of creaturely wills are subordinated to God’s will, libertarian freedom disappears, and with it any hope of absolving God of moral evil. But at least where freedom is concerned, traditional theology asserts the opposite. Augustine, for example, held that God moves our wills, working in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure, as scripture says (Phil. 2:13). Yet he insists that this does not diminish our freedom, for if it did we would not be told in the same passage to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (On...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises faithfully capture Aquinas's argument from the Summa Contra Gentiles as presented in the passage, and they logically support the conclusion: since external movement would be violent, and God uniquely can move the will from within (being its cause and sustainer), God alone can move it without violence.

    Confidence: Explicit argument from Aquinas as reported in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit