This article argues that recent results of the cognitive sciences could make significant contributions to theological debates about free will, but they have been largely ignored by contemporary systematic and philosophical theologians. Recent work in cognitive psychology and moral psychology has to do with our intuitive and automatic patterns of reasoning in the domains of freedom and responsibility. This research will be relevant for many theological domains and has the potential to raise new issues and problems. The essay examines three such domains. First, the debate between intellectualist and voluntarist accounts of the will have been central in theology. Recent findings suggest that intellectualist accounts of the will have more intuitions on their side than has been previously assumed. Second, theologians have debated whether belief in free will is central for moral and political life. This question was pertinent during the Reformation when many of the reformers either rejected free will or presented truncated accounts of it. Recent results from moral psychology suggest that belief in free will has significant pro‐social and altruistic effects. Finally, the possible compatibility of divine determinism and free will is crucial for theological debates about sin, grace and God’s providence. Recent psychological results point in the direction of affirming that while most humans have strong intuitions about the incompatibility of free will and divine determinism, these might be based on a false inference. Finally, some new counterintuitive challenges about the manipulativeness of God are raised against the divine determinist position.

中文翻译：

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认知科学如何促进关于自由意志的神学辩论

本文认为，认知科学的最新成果可以为有关自由意志的神学辩论做出重要贡献，但当代系统的和哲学的神学家大都忽略了它们。认知心理学和道德心理学的最新工作与我们在自由和责任领域的直觉和自动推理模式有关。这项研究将与许多神学领域相关，并有可能提出新的问题。本文研究了三个这样的领域。首先，知识分子和志愿主义者之间关于遗嘱的争论一直是神学的中心。最近的发现表明，知识分子对遗嘱的支持比以前想象的要多。第二，神学家们争论着，信仰自由意志是否对道德和政治生活至关重要。这个问题与宗教改革时期有关，当时许多改革者拒绝了自由意志，或者提出了被遗弃的描述。道德心理学的最新结果表明，对自由意志的信仰具有显着的亲社会和利他效应。最后，神的决定论和自由意志的可能相容性对于关于罪恶，恩典和神的旨意的神学辩论至关重要。最近的心理学结果指向肯定的方向，即尽管大多数人对自由意志和神圣决定论的不相容性有很强的直觉，但这可能是基于错误的推论。最后，针对神的操纵性提出了一些新的违反直觉的挑战，违背了神的决定论立场。