Dan Chapa

Recently Wes (aka Remonstrant) asked me whether I thought Compatiblism was compatible with Arminianism. I responded here: http://danchapa.blogspot.com/2007/10/is-compatibalism-mutually-exclusive.html#links arguing that compatiblism was incompatible with Arminian Soteriology and here: http://danchapa.blogspot.com/2007/10/compatiblistic-agent.html arguing that compatiblism could not use agent causation to explain responsibility. Wes offer this counter: “The usual notions, that in compatibilism, God is ultimately accountable for the acts and thoughts of His creatures, and God’s universal offer of salvation is not sincere, are not completely right. At least as it seems to me, especially when I could advance the claim that before the creation of His creatures, the usually omniscient God was somehow (How? Maybe God withheld His knowledge, or He factored certain contingencies in, or we can simply say He had created us free [in a compatibilist sense]) ignorant of the future choices of...

Yes, they are mutually exclusive. Both can't be true at the same time. Compatiblism is the idea that determinism is compatible with human freedom. Determinism is the idea that everything that happens had a preceding cause such that it necessarily happens and the opposite cannot happen. Freedom (as compatiblists explain it) is freedom from compulsion. IE no one is forcing you to do something you don't want to do. You are able to act according to your strongest desire. However you are unable to act contrary to your strongest desire. And that desire comes from our nature and our nature comes in part from God's creating us the way He did and in part from God putting us in the circumstances He does, and in no part from us as an indeterministic cause of our actions. Arminianism is both a philosophical and a soterialogical system. As a philosophical system, it embraces libertarian free will and denies determinism outright. This can be seen clearly from the writings of it...

Recently, a poster named Remonstrant shared a few sites arguing for compatiblistic determinism and asked me whether I thought compatiblism was mutually exclusive with Arminianism. I would like to address this in two parts. First, I wanted to provide some comments on the article then answer the question of how the view squares with Arminianism. This article by Ned Markosian was the longest and most in depth: http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/nmarkos/Papers/Comtac.pdf In it Ned advocates for a view in which Agent Causation and Compatible Determinism co-exist. Ned argues that 1) Compatible Determinism is the best way of explaining Agent Causation, as it resolves various issues with indeterministic Agent Causation and 2) Agent Causation (even if Compatiblistic) is sufficient to explain moral responsibility. My take… Ned proposes various definitions of Agent Causation, all of which fail in one aspect or another. But Ned’s point is that agent causation is compatible with compatible determinism. ...