Journal Article Critique 2 The Doctrine of Sin Turabian format

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY

Journal Article Critque 1

Ciocchi, David M. “Suspending the Debate about Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom.” Journal of Evangelical Theological Society; Lynchburg (September 2008): 573-590.

Submitted to Professor Dr. Robert Wetmore

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of

THEO-525-B07 LUO

Systematic Theology 1

by

Avery Clementin

September 9 , 2018

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

A. purpose statement.

B. the brief overview of the paper's contents.

II. A brief Summary

A. thesis of the article.

B. the overall content of the article.

III. Critical Interaction

IV. Conclusion

Introduction

The article's purpose according to the author concerns divine sovereignty and human freedom (DSF). The author suggests suspension of the debate to the time when human beings can bring solutions on issues pertaining attempts to make the justification on how God treats them as responsible beings in terms of moral. The articles further outline divine sovereignty and free will debate objects including varying objections. He then summarizes each debate section by giving his opinion which he perceives as truth in regards to each listed view.

Brief Summary

The author illustrates divine sovereignty and human freedom debate as a way of attempting to bring together Christian belief conflicting components. The debate split to how freedom can be realized by human beings for moral responsibility and on the other hand ensuring God is sovereign. The author discusses what human beings are about that will ensure there justification and treatment as responsible morally by God hence getting human freedom. Various views like compatibility view, authors view, libertarian view, and agnostic autonomism are presented in the entire debate.

The views of the author in the entire article are that the debate should not be focused on free will and divine sovereignty but rather concentrates on what human beings is about that makes God see them as morally responsible in any case. Various issues are at high risk such that human beings who make choice of their freedom are supposed to be morally responsible while at the same time human beings should know that freedom is God-given as sovereign. Freedom is present because of the sovereignty of God. The two are interdependent and not independent because human freedom cannot exist without God permission through His sovereignty which is divine.

Critical Interaction

The author uses the various approach in the debate which includes libertarianism, autonomism, and compatibility view. The author illustrates augments from each view. The author's goal in the article is to illustrate the reason why the discussion concerning free will and divine sovereignty should come to an end.

The article's thesis seems to be spirituality and logic based. The clear argument for the thesis is provided by the author including scriptural and logical examples. The article's weakness is that the author fails to address the debate well but rather poses a different whole question. The strength is that the author provides support for his view and either side of the discussion.

Conclusion

The author presented various important point in the entire debate concerning free will and divine sovereignty. He scrutinizes various points including providing his own view throughout the article. One disadvantage of the article is that the author should have identified other issue rather than focusing on what human beings are about that makes God see them as morally responsible. The article, therefore, is two-fold. The author presented freedom and divine sovereignty information and thereafter included the third aspect in support of the reason for whole debate suspension. The questions pertaining to the article is what information would have been provided by the author in support of the stopping the entire debate. The other question is where the article would have been taken to. The article provides teachings that human beings possess freedom of will due to the fact that the sovereignty of God is divine.

Bibliography

Ciocchi, David M. 2008. Suspending the debate about divine sovereignty and human freedom. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 51 (3): 573.