Alston on Plantinga and soft theological determinism

Abstract

In this paper I shall challenge a thesis advanced by William P. Alston in a splendid paper published in 1985 entitled "Divine Foreknowledge and Alternative Conceptions of Human Freedom".1 The thesis in question concerns the argument given by Alvin Plantinga in God, Freedom and Evil for the claim that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. It consists of the claim that Plantinga's argument is best understood as relying (implicitly) on the conditional conception of power (ability, freedom) employed by such figures in the history of ethics as Hume and Schlick. Interestingly, this same thesis is defended by William Hasker in "Foreknowledge and Freedom" an article published at about the same time as Alston's.2 Here, after a lengthy analysis of Plantinga's early as well as his more recent writings on the foreknowledge problem, Hasker concludes that in these sources Plantinga's is what William James once called a "soft determinist". He is, let us say, a soft theological determinist. I should add that although I shall reject this soft deterministic interpretation of Plantinga's reasoning in God, Freedom and Evil, Alston's analysis of Plantinga's text seems to me to be the most penetrating of the many that have been offered in the recent literature on the foreknowledge problem. My own discussion will contain both procedural and substantive elements germinated from Alston's reflections. It will also include critical comments relating to two other (in my mind) less insightful attempts to gain closure on Plantinga's illusive, though obviously provocative compatibilist argument. I'll begin by establishing the context in which Alston's reasoning is framed.