Many assume that the best, and perhaps only, way to address the so-called Problem of Evil is to claim that God does not do evil, but that God merely allows evil. This assumption depends on two claims: the doing-allowing distinction exists and the doing-allowing distinction is morally significant. In this paper I try to undermine both of these claims. Against I argue that some of the most influential analyses of the doing-allowing distinction face grave difficulties and that these difficulties are (...) only exacerbated when applied to God. Against I argue that broadly Kantian considerations give a better explanation of the moral differences in paradigm cases than the doing-allowing distinction and, when applied to God, effectively dissolve the moral significance of the doing-allowing distinction. The upshot of this is that those who claim God does evil are no worse off than those who claim God allows evil regarding the PoE. (shrink)

Theological determinism is, at first glance, difficult to square with the typical Christian commitment to the appropriateness of divine blame. How, we may wonder, can it be appropriate for God to blame someone for something that was determined to occur by God in the first place? In this paper, I try to clarify this challenge to Christian theological determinism, arguing that its most cogent version includes specific commitments about what is involved when God blames wrongdoers. I then argue that these (...) commitments are not essential to divine blame, and that there are plausible alternative accounts of such blame that would not court similar challenges. I end with a case for the intelligibility of divine blame within theological determinism, in light of its possible similarity in relevant respects to certain instances of intelligible human blame. (shrink)

Commentators have long been fascinated by the problem of freedom in Leibniz's system. Many of the recent studies begin with Leibniz's views on modality, truth, and so-called superessentialism, and then investigate whether these doctrines are compatible with freedom and contingency. There is, however, another dimension to Leibniz's thinking about freedom that has been largely overlooked in the recent literature. ;Leibniz inherited a medieval debate about God's foreknowledge of and providence over human free actions, and unlike the other great philosophers of (...) the early modern period, set out to solve it. This means the problem of human freedom for Leibniz was nested in the larger problem of God's creation, preservation, and governance of the entire created order. ;In this dissertation I set out the late medieval debate and Leibniz's adjudication of it. I argue that Leibniz offers a strong notion of providence that is a via media between the two competing paradigms of the late seventeenth century, Molinism and Banezianism. In light of these theological commitments, I offer a new assessment of Leibniz's views of divine and human freedom. (shrink)