Free Will and God's Universal Causality

Free Will and Gods Universal Causality is a significant and novel contribution to the philosophical and theological literature on divine providence, in particular the interaction between human and divine agency. The book is clearly written, exceptionally argued, and truly innovative in many ways. * Southeastern Theological Review * Unique, bold, and genuinely innovative. * Thomas P. Flint, Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, USA * This book makes the best case I have seen for a roughly Thomistic approach to reconciling divine universal causality with libertarian freedom. It is a significant contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion. * Katherin Rogers, Professor of Philosophy, University of Delaware, USA * This is a careful, well-argued book. In addition to making a powerful case that a creaturely action can be caused by God and still free in the libertarian sense, it sheds new light on a host of debates concerning divine and human agency (including Gods role in sin, the free will defense, and the nature of providence, grace, and predestination). Highly recommended. * Jeffrey E. Brower, Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University, USA *

W. Matthews Grant is Professor of Philosophy at University of St Thomas (MN), USA.

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 1.1. Divine Universal Causality (DUC) and Creaturely Action 1.2. Libertarian Freedom and the Apparent Conflict with DUC 1.3. Dual Sources: A Neo-scholastic Approach to Resolving the Conflict 2. God: Universal Cause and Cause of Human Actions 2.1. Scripture 2.2. Perfect Being Theology: An Anselmian Approach 2.3. Cosmological Arguments from Contingency 2.4. Conservation and Concurrence: A Suarezian Argument 2.5. A Thomistic Argument from Participation 3. Divine Universal Causality and the Threat of Occasionalism 3.1. Does DUC render creaturely causes otiose? 3.2. God and Creaturely Causes: The Claims of Non-Occasionalist DUC 3.3. Non-Occasionalist DUC: The Metaphysical Objection 3.4. Non-Occasionalist DUC: The Epistemic Objection 3.5. Can agent-causal acts be caused by God? 4. Free Creatures of the Universal Cause 4.1. The Intrinsic/Extrinsic Distinction 4.2. Why DUC may appear to preclude libertarian freedom 4.3. The Extrinsic Model of Divine Agency 4.4. DUC without Determinism 4.5. Ability to do otherwise 4.6. Ultimate Responsibility 4.7. Dual Sources 5. The Extrinsic Model Defended 5.1. The Extrinsic Model, Intrinsic Models, and Scholastic Theology 5.2. From DUC to the Extrinsic Model 5.3. But is the Extrinsic Model also ruled out by DUC? 5.4. Does the Extrinsic Model render Divine Causality Unintelligible? 6. Does God Cause Sin? 6.1. DUC, Moral Evil, and the Privation Solution 6.2. Moral Evil and Privation 6.3. Objections to the Privation Account of Moral Evil 6.4. Does God cause the badness in sinful acts simply by causing the acts? 6.5. How the badness in sinful acts is caused by the sinner alone 7. The Problem of Moral Evil 7.1. The Failure o