At once mysterious and compelling, the question of how human beings obtain salvation and whether they can lose it has preoccupied Christians of all traditions for centuries. While theologically conservative Christendom (made up of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism) shares significant common ground on most essential doctrinal issues, there is a spectrum of views on the freedom of the human will.…
How are we to think about our inability to control certain facts of our lives (e.g., our conception, time of birth, place of birth, family, and culture)? These “givens” in life powerfully remind us that we humans have genuine limitations and boundaries. Our lives are dependent upon many causal factors. Life itself is fragile, short, and there is a clear…
As human beings we like to think that we are masters of our own fate. We enjoy thinking that we are autonomous individuals whose personal decisions have made us who we are in life. Philosophers even talk about libertarian freewill—defined as the view that an individual who freely made a specific choice could have decided differently (in contrast to some…
Reflections 