Trinity Term 2024
All members of the university and their guests are welcome.
Loving God and Free Will Professor Timothy O'Connor Indiana University Bloomington Abstract:
For human beings, freedom of the will is a power that is necessarily bounded and of variable magnitude along many dimensions. These variable ‘freedom factors’ include one’s awareness of relevant alternatives and the environmental and psychological influences on one’s deliberation. But our most important choices and actions are directed at long-term goals, and there is intra- and inter-personal variance in the ability to persist in a pattern of life-shaping choices, too. Here, variable personal qualities such as resolve, attention, and self-mastery come into play. I will propose that a person’s love of God is another variable diachronic freedom factor. I will then explore the complex ways that it interacts with other factors, enhancing but also in some ways diminishing the scope of our freedom. When 8:30 to 10 pm (Refreshments from 8:15pm) Tuesday 7 May Week 3 Where Large Senior Common Room Oriel College, Oxford |
God's Aseity Professor Brian Leftow Rutgers University Abstract:
The claim that God exists a se is basic to classical theism. Anselm argues it in the third chapter he ever wrote about God, and builds his doctrine of God on its consequences; Aquinas' Fourth Way incarnates Anselm's argument and conclusion, and inferences from aseity pepper both of Aquinas' Summae. Aseity is typically seen as the main root of the classical theist doctrine of divine simplicity. Yet while divine simplicity has had much attention in the last forty years, divine aseity is little discussed; there are just two papers about it in recent literature. I offer some suggestions about how to understand aseity. Taken literally, the claim that God exists a se asserts that He exists "from Himself." That sounds like a claim that His existence is in some way self-caused or self-explained, and inability to make sense of that drives most to read "a se" merely as "not from another." I think there may be more to aseity than just this. I explore some sensible ways God could exist "from Himself," which are not just matters of not being from another. When 8:30 to 10 pm (Refreshments from 8:15pm) Tuesday 14 May Week 4 Where Large Senior Common Room Oriel College, Oxford |