Argument
Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense
Overview
Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a logical argument developed by the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and published in its final version in his 1977 book God, Freedom, and Evil. Plantinga's argument is a defense against the logical problem of evil as formulated by the philosopher J. L. Mackie beginning in 1955. Mackie's formulation of the logical problem of evil argued that three attributes ascribed to God (omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence) are logically incompatible with the existence of evil.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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230. M. Bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have just read, and draws from them false conclusions. It is not true that God loves his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led by necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures. For if that were so, he would acquire his glory always and everywhere. The decree to create is free: God is prompted to all good; the good, and even…
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
States what Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is; the author is tied to Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense in the knowledge graph.
The former cogitates its object either by means of pure transcendental conceptions, as an ens originarium, realissimum, ens entium, and is termed transcendental theology; or, by means of a conception derived from the nature of our own mind, as a supreme intelligence, and must then be entitled natural theology. The person who believes in a transcendental theology alone, is termed a deist; he who acknowledges the…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is.
Is it that the glorified souls, the saints, are equal to God, being predestined to good, and deprived of what is called _free will_, which, according to Saint Augustine, is only the possibility of evil when the divine grace does not incline man towards the good?[642]
Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, The golden verses of Pythagoras
States what Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is.
Philosophers who discussed Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense
Related ideas
- Graham Oppy
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Antony Flew
- Analytic philosophy
- David Ray Griffin
- Augustine of Hippo
- Robert Merrihew Adams
- Best of all possible worlds
- Omnipotence
- Omniscience
- Luis de Molina
- Prima facie
- Satan
- Christian theology
- Problem of evil
- Theodicy
- Theism
- Incompatibilism
- William Alston
- Modal logic
- Omnibenevolence
- Free will
- Counterfactual conditional
- God
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.
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