RETRACTED: Menselijke vrijheid en het Christelijk geloof

Abstract

Human freedom and the Christian faith. In this article, it is examined whether there is room for human freedom in a Christian perspective. Augustine’s and Luther’s views are illuminating in order to clarify this matter. The way they deal with the idea of predestination is an important issue. According to Augustine, man is, to a certain degree, able to grasp the way in which God governs man; this idea is not present in Luther’s thoughts. Their notions of ‘freedom’ differ considerably as well; here, too, Augustine has more confidence in human reason than Luther does. However, it is difficult for both Luther and Augustine to defend a notion of human freedom and at the same time maintain God’s foreknowledge. Still, even irrespective of that, human freedom is something which cannot easily be demonstrated. For both Christians and non-believers, the issue of human freedom remains an unresolved problem. *This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Reason: ‘The article has been retracted to straighten the academic record. It has come to light that this article has significant overlap with an article that had already appeared in Informción Filosófica, Volume 1 (2004), num. 2, pp. 251–265, entitled ‘De onverenigbaarheid van menselijke vrijheid met het christelijk geloof’. Apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process’. The full-text of the original article (2004) is here: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/17816