My Dissertation Prospectus
Posted by faithinformed on April 23, 2008
This morning I had the pleasure to send off the final copy of my dissertation prospectus to my advisory committee. It took me much longer to write than I thought it would, but considering there were some major changes in the dissertation’s aim, that isn’t too unexpected.
For now, the title of dissertation is “A Rational Problem of Evil: The Coherence of Christian Doctrine and the Free Will Defense.” If you’d like to read a bit more about the project, I’ve posted a copy of the prospectus on the “Research” page of this blog.
peterkrey said
dear W. Paul Franks,
Just one wrong word, page 1, line 6: the “throngs” of suffering. Don’t you mean the “throes” of suffering?
I like the three Christian doctrines you are working with. they are very relevant.
I would have to study your dissertation proposal a whole lot more to follow and criticize your reasoning. In terms of the existential problem of evil, often the philosophical one allows for the questioning of God’s existence; but people going through the throes of suffering often have their faith become stronger, while of course others lose their faith. The glory of God is to change the evil that we do into good.
What do you make of Luther against Erasmus in their famous debate? I know this is not the tradition you are arguing out of. But Luther and Erasmus made a division of free will and relegated it to mean if we can choose our salvation or not. Luther argued that we have free will on a mundane basis, but not vis a vis God. Erasmus argued that we also had the free will to choose salvation.
On a horizontal level or in a very circumscribed sphere of competence, Luther thought we had free will. But on a vertical axis, before God we did not have it. Only God had such free will.
I realize this is all tangential to your piece on the free will defense. I get lost when 1 and 2 are referred to, 6 and 5, and I don’t go back and see exactly what arguments those numbers represent. If I get a chance, I’ll reread your proposal and try to follow those arguments and weigh and consider your broad and narrow arguments.
My dissertation was called The Sword of the Spirit, the Sword of Iron, and it had to do with Luther’s most often published pamphlets.
All the best on your dissertation. It seems like an exciting thrust into this age old controversy.
Sincerely,
peter krey
faithinformed said
Peter Krey,
Thank you for pointing that out, I’m a bit ashamed to not have caught it myself!
I think you make a good point about how many are drawn closer to God through their suffering. I think that is something to keep in mind when we talk about evil, but it is a little outside the parameters of my dissertation. I plan to make note of the difference in the first chapter.
I’m glad you mentioned Luther and Erasmus. A good friend gave me his copy of ‘The Bondage of the Will’ and I have a feeling it will be very helpful. I do not recall Luther’s thoughts on our having free will regarding “mundane” things, but find that a very interesting idea. Thank you for pointing that out.
I’m glad you took the time to read the prospectus, I posted it here but didn’t really expect anyone to read it! I think I’ll post chapter drafts as I finish them just in case there are others that can give feedback. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you stumble upon my site?
Cheers,
Paul
Tom Belt said
Paul, drop me an email. We gotta talk.
Tom Belt
tbelt@pactec.net
Francesco said
Test: does it work?
Italian Servant said
Critique to papier about PAP and SIN.
PAP: “A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. ”
The solution of the issue is, according to me, in John 15.22: the responsability is not linked to the action of “sinning” but to the sum of actions “sinning + without accepting Jesus”.
Romans 7:20: “20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is NO LONGER I WHO DO IT, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (with salvation)
1 John 3:9: “he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”
So, coming back to PAP, the man “could have done otherwise.”: just accepting Jesus.
The judgement and the salvation is a whole: you find a contraddiction because you made the paper without putting inside the scheme the cross.
In other words, without the cross, God was not in the right condition to make any judgement because PAP would have stop His judgement (and so, without the cross’ element, you are right).
Last remark: the judgement is made by an eternity’s point of view.
Italian Servant said
Paul
I read almost everything inside your dissertation and it seems to me that we agree about almost everything.
Just two questions:
1) does your dissertation start from the assumption that evil exist? where does it come this assumption? “in all things God works for the good of those who love him”.
2) isn’t an issue with the meaning and usage of the word “evil”? For Augustine from Ippona, evil was just a lack of good… but it had no ontological meaning.
In biblical thought, it seems to me that only a “relative” evil exists: for example, starting from Romans 9:22,23 it seems that what is evil for the sinners, is a “good” remark for the saints.
And, in other parts of the Bible, what is evil now, will be “good” from an heaven point of view…
what do you think about this?
please, answer on my mail address because I’m not sure I’ll remember to check on this blog/ web-site.
Bye,
IS
faithinformed said
Francesco, I’m not sure what you were testing, but something worked!
Italian Servant,
I’m appreciate your thoughts on the prospectus and on the PAP-OS article. Concerning the existence of evil, even if we say it has no ontological status (i.e. it is just privation of good), there seem to still be agents (you, me, at least a few people at AGTT) that are the cause of that privation. For example, if I kill you, we may call your death a privation of the good your life brought. But, I am the one that brought about that privation. So, in my view, we would have the same problem as before. If God is all good and all powerful, why does he allow the privation of good. Make sense?
(Sorry for not emailing you about this, but I don’t have the address.)
Francesco said
Thanks for your kind answer.
My answer is that you already decided (arbitrary) that death is an evil. Why? I could suppose that in the universe there is no evil, even if our perception is different (thinking to Hiroshima).
On the other hand, giving a weight to the perception of evil, I should input into the philosophical discussion the “direction” of the evil (I recall again Romans 9:22,23): this could change completly the meaning of a lot of your sentences in the paper.
However, even if I make these remarks, I agree with the general tone of the paper. I’m still a little reluctant about the approach to the PAP.
May you write to francescolorenzocataldo@gmail.com for an important thing (very fast)? thanks,
IS
IS said
If you go into “Why do christians believe in Hell”, you could find in my first two comments some reasons why I support a concept of “relative” evil.
IS said
I refer to the post in AGthinktank “Why do christians believe in Hell”,
peterkrey said
dear Paul,
I’m sorry that I just discovered your response to my response of about two months ago.
I have a peterkrey.wordpress.com website and I think I found you through looking at a series of tags and one tag put me into your dissertation proposal, but I’m not sure.
I taught Phil of Religion at Diablo Valley College for several semesters and I have always struggled with Luther’s Bondage of the will and his nuanced position that on the horizontal level, “coram hominibus” there is freedom of the will, while on the vertical level, “coram deo” there is none. God alone has freedom of the will there, we have none. In the debate with Erasmus, he carefully defines the parameters of their debate to concern the freedom of the will for salvation.
Luther has a few paragraphs that are very interesting in his commentary on Psalm 117. It can be found in Philip and my book on Luther’s Spirituality. I think I have copied the relevant paragraphs into my website, because I taught a class in Christ Lutheran Church on our book. I call it the diabolical dialectic and I think it helps to understand the autonomy and heteronomy of ethical responsibility. I believe both God and the devil are still autonomous to persons or societies, they are within, but could also be within a collectivity, as social forces. But the insight that this daibolical dialectic gave me is that idols are distortions of the one true God and every distortion is really a false ultimate and a false ultimate turns out to be a devil mistaken for God causing God to be mistaken for the devil.
So the “devil made me do it” does not relieve a person of responsibility, because a person has responsibility for following a false ultimate as well as stepping out of the social forces unleashed by a false ultimate and both of these rescues also depend upon God’s grace, which does not dissolve human responsibility. Luther would say God elected and predestined those who are thus saved, but would not agree with double predestination, that God also elected those who would be damned.
From your rational approach, you may have to take up philosophical arguments more that these pieces of reasoning that get their start from theological insights, i.e., revelation.
When I was just now hunting for a comment made on my website, I found your response. I’ll check out your website when I next get a chance.
lovejoypeace,
peter krey