Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology - Analytic ...

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Paul L. Manata © 2011
compatibilists say is needed for moral responsibility? They claim that the morally
responsible individual would have to be responsive to different reasons (reasons
responsiveness) if she or he were to have them. The turning of the car could not
be done out of compulsion, something done regardless of reasons to the
contrary. On top of this, they argue that the reasoning mechanism must be the
person’s ‘own,’ and that he or she would ‘take responsibility’ or ‘ownership’ of
their actions, especially when they have been informed of the determinism
involved.
Again, this was an extremely abbreviated overview of semi-­‐compatibilism, and it
was a little longer than the section on classical compatibilism due to the “set up”
time, but I hope it gives a general feel for what is involved in this move. No
doubt, many questions and criticisms can be (and have been!) raised against this
view, but my purpose was not to address all of the issues surrounding these
views, much less give any knockdown argument for them, but simply to report
two popular models of compatibilism that can roam comfortably within our
perimeter fence. If these models don’t suit the reader’s appetite you are free (!)
to come up with your own—or latch on to one of the many other models out
there—as long as you stay within the fence.
5. Libertarian accounts of freedom and moral responsibility
5.1 Libertarian free will: the basics
By far, the most popular view of free will in Christianity, at least in modern times,
is libertarian freedom. Libertarians claim that if we are morally responsible for
our actions, then we have to be libertarian free, since moral responsibility
requires certain things be true about us that could only be true if we were
libertarian free. Christian libertarians also say that the picture the Bible gives