Leigh Vicens

Augustana University
  •  28
    Christianity and the Problem of Free Will
    Cambridge University Press. 2023.
    Central to the teachings of Christianity is a puzzle: on the one hand, sin seems something that humans do not do freely and so cannot be not responsible for, since it is unavoidable; on the other hand, sin seems something that we must be responsible for and so do freely, since we are enjoined to repent of it, and since it makes us liable to divine condemnation and forgiveness. After laying out the puzzle in more depth, this Element considers three possible responses—libertarian, soft determinist…Read more
  •  250
    Election and Human Agency
    with Taylor Cyr
    In Edwin Chr van Driel (ed.), T&T Clark Handbook on Election, . pp. 536-558. forthcoming.
    In Section 1, we begin by asking what, exactly, it might mean for God to “elect” people and how this relates to their agency and freedom. After getting clearer on what God is supposed to elect people to or for, we argue against the view that a person’s will is not involved in the process by which God elects her, which we identify in part as the person’s coming to have faith. But, in Section 2, we consider several reasons for thinking that a person’s free will is not involved in her coming to hav…Read more
  •  8
    For all the Blessings of this Life
    Journal of Analytic Theology 10 54-64. 2022.
    I argue, first, against the idea that Christian thanksgiving is about counting one’s blessings, or finding something specific in every circumstance which is intended by God for one’s own good. For we cannot know how God specifically intended to benefit us in most circumstances, and such knowledge is required for blessings-counting; and the New Testament models a different kind of thanksgiving which makes more sense in light of Christian theology. I also argue against the conception of Christian …Read more
  •  33
    Free Will Skeptics Can Have Their Basic Desert and Eat It Too
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 1-12. 2022.
    In this essay, I argue that if we assume with free will skeptics that people lack moral responsibility, or at least a central form of it, we may still maintain that people are ‘basically’ deserving of certain treatment in response to their behavior. I characterize basic-desert justifications for treatment negatively, as justifications that do not depend on consequentialist, contractualist, or relational considerations. Appealing to attributionist accounts of responsibility as well as the symboli…Read more
  •  43
    Theological Determinism: New Perspectives (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    This volume unites established authors and rising young voices in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to offer the single most wide-ranging examination of theological determinism-in terms of both authors represented and issues investigated-published to date. Fifteen contributors present discussions about theological determinism, the view that God determines everything that occurs in the world. Some authors provide arguments in favor of this position, while others provide considerat…Read more
  •  15
    Providence and Evil in Farrer’s Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited
    In Richard Harries, Stephen Platten & Rowan Williams (eds.), Austin Farrer for Today, . pp. 70-83. 2020.
  •  46
    Agent Causation
    In Joseph Keim Campbell (ed.), A Companion to Free Will. forthcoming.
  •  258
    Review of: Peter Furlong, The Challenges of Divine Determinism: A Philosophical Analysis (review)
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (4): 234-239. 2020.
  •  51
    God and Human Freedom
    Cambridge University Press. 2019.
    This Element considers the relationship between the traditional view of God as all-powerful, all-knowing and wholly good on the one hand, and the idea of human free will on the other. It focuses on the potential threats to human free will arising from two divine attributes: God's exhaustive foreknowledge and God's providential control of creation.
  •  70
    Agentive Phenomenology and Moral Responsibility Agnosticism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 35 (1): 181-190. 2019.
    Most incompatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility require, for a person to count as morally responsible for an action, that specific events leading up to the action be undetermined. One might think, then, that incompatibilists should remain agnostic about whether anyone is ever free or morally responsible, since whether there are such undetermined events would seem to be an empirical question unsettled by scientific research. Yet, a number of incompatibilists have suggested tha…Read more
  •  64
    Sin and Implicit Bias
    Journal of Analytic Theology 6 100-111. 2018.
    This paper argues that implicit bias is a form of sin, characterized most fundamentally as an orientation that we may not have direct access to or control over, but that can lead us to act in violation of God’s command. After noting similarities between certain strategies proposed by experimental psychologists for overcoming implicit biases and certain disciplines developed by Christians on the path to sanctification, I suggest some ways in which the Church might offer its resources to a society…Read more
  •  24
  •  66
    Is it possible for God both to create a deterministic world and to act specially, to realize his particular purposes within it? And if there can be such 'particular providence' or 'special divine action' (SDA) in a deterministic world, what form can it take? In this article I consider these questions, exploring a number of different models of SDA and discussing their consistency with the proposition that the world is deterministic; I also consider how the various consequences of each model accor…Read more
  •  25
    Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, by Derk Pereboom (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 32 (2): 230-235. 2015.
  •  83
    In his book Personal Agency, E. J. Lowe has argued that a dualist theory of mental causation is consistent with “a fairly strong principle of physical causal closure” and, moreover, that it “has the potential to strengthen our causal explanations of certain physical events.” If Lowe’s reasoning were sound, it would undermine the most common arguments for reductive physicalism or epiphenomenalism of the mental. For it would show not only that a dualist theory of mental causation is consistent wit…Read more
  •  127
    Theological Determinism
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014.
    Theological Determinism Theological determinism is the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world. While there is much debate about which prominent historical figures were theological determinists, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Gottfried Leibniz all seemed to espouse the view at least at certain points in their … Continue reading Theological Determinism →.
  •  129
    Objective Probabilities of Free Choice
    Res Philosophica 93 (1): 125-135. 2016.
    Many proponents of libertarian freedom assume that the free choices we might make have particular objective probabilities of occurring. In this paper, I examine two common motivations for positing such probabilities: first, to account for the phenomenal character of decision-making, in which our reasons seem to have particular strengths to incline us to act, and second, to naturalize the role of reasons in influencing our decisions, such that they have a place in the causal order as we know it. …Read more
  •  55
    Self-Forming Acts and Conflicts of Intention
    Southwest Philosophy Review 31 (1): 93-100. 2015.
    In this paper I examine Robert Kane’s account of a self-forming action (SFA), in which an agent makes dual efforts of will to form two incompatible intentions. In addition to the frequently raised objection to this account, that such dual efforts would be irrational, I discuss a further conceptual problem, that it does not make sense to speak of efforts to form particular intentions. I then propose an alternative model of an SFA, in which an agent deliberates and selects between two possible but…Read more
  •  63
    Closing the Door on Limited-Risk Open Theism
    Faith and Philosophy 31 (4): 475-485. 2014.
    This paper argues against a version of open theism defended by Gregory Boyd, which we call “limited risk,” according to which God could guarantee at creation at least the fulfillment of His most central purpose for the world: that of having a “people for himself.” We show that such a view depends on the assumption that free human decisions can be “statistically determined” within certain percentage ranges, and that this assumption is inconsistent with open theists’ commitment to a libertarian co…Read more
  •  50
    On the natural law defense and the disvalue of ubiquitous miracles
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 80 (1): 33-42. 2016.
    In this paper I explore Peter van Inwagen’s conception of miracles and the implications of this conception for the viability of his version of the natural law defense. I argue that given his account of miraculous divine action and its parallel to free human action, it is implausible to think that God did not prevent natural evil in our world for the reasons van Inwagen proposes. I conclude by suggesting that on the grounds he provides for “epistemic humility” about modal claims and value judgmen…Read more
  •  165
    Divine determinism, human freedom, and the consequence argument
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71 (2): 145-155. 2012.
    In this paper I consider the view, held by some Thomistic thinkers, that divine determinism is compatible with human freedom, even though natural determinism is not. After examining the purported differences between divine and natural determinism, I discuss the Consequence Argument, which has been put forward to establish the incompatibility of natural determinism and human freedom. The Consequence Argument, I note, hinges on the premise that an action ultimately determined by factors outside of…Read more