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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Arminian determinism


Joel Green is in the top-tier of Arminian NT scholars. Ironically, there's a sense in which Green is even more deterministic than Calvinists. As a physicalist, he espouses physical determinism (at least above the subatomic level). He believes our choices are reducible to brain states. What we take to be our conscious choices are usually the effect of subconscious brain states, over which we have no control. By contrast, Calvinism is committed to divine determinism, but not to physical determinism, and most Calvinists are substance dualists. 
(1) I am a Methodist, but regard my tradition's view of freedom as overdrawn. I make this claim based on both biblical and neuroscientific (and neuro-philosophical) considerations.  
(2) I am not a determinist. However, I am convinced by the neuroscientific evidence that most of what we do as humans we do at a pre-conscious level (and thus at a level that does not rise to the level of the exercise of free will). I regard the biblical evidence as congruent with this understanding, and the material I discussed in Body, Soul, and Human Life suggests why this is so. 
http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=203

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