Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense

The head of a smiling, bespectacled, and bearded man in his seventies.
Alvin Plantinga in 2004

Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a logical argument developed by the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and published in its final version in his 1977 book God, Freedom, and Evil.[1] Plantinga's argument is a defense against the logical problem of evil as formulated by the philosopher J. L. Mackie beginning in 1955.[2][3] Mackie's formulation of the logical problem of evil argued that three attributes ascribed to God (omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence) are logically incompatible with the existence of evil.

  1. ^ Plantinga 1965; Plantinga 1977, ch. 4.
  2. ^ Plantinga, Alvin (6 December 2012). Tomberlin, H.; Tomberlin, James E.; van Inwagen, P. (eds.). Alvin Plantinga "Self Profile". Springer Netherlands. pp. 33, 38. ISBN 9789400952232.
  3. ^ "Evil and Omnipotence". Mind. 64 (210): 455–465.