Evil, Free Will Defenses, And Aquinas

• Author / Creator

  Stacey, Marc

• The main purpose of this thesis is to reconcile a free-will defense with Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics. The Free-Will Defense is an attempt at answering the logical problem of evil, which states that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically incompatible. However, the Free-Will Defense presumes many concepts about causation, freedom of the will, and the nature of God which Aquinas would not accept. Hence, the question arises as to whether a free-will defense is something Aquinas can even offer as a solution to the problem of evil. In this thesis, I argue that a free-will defense is compatible with Aquinas’ metaphysical framework and that the apparent inconsistencies between the two are only superficial. As such, I provide a revised free-will defense that is consistent with Aquinas’ framework that I call the Thomistic Free-Choice Defense.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Philosophy
  • Aquinas
  • Evil

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-1jg5-eh88

• License

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