The Devil's Own Luck: Lucifer, Luck, and Moral Responsibility

(Hardback)

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Contemporary philosophy is interested in questions of luck and moral responsibility. Christian theology is largely unconcerned with luck because of its understanding of the creatureliness of the will. This understanding is rooted in story of the primal sin the narrative about how the first good creature chose wrongly. When considered philosophically, this story produces a problem for describing how a good creature can sin in ideal circumstances. The tradition has appealed to a voluntarist account of the devil's sin as a satisfying response to this problem. But some have worried that this kind of free choice succumbs to a responsibility denying kind of luck. This volume describes how this underlying story undermines worries about luck for Christian moral reasoning by reflecting on how any luck the devil has is his own.

Author Bio

John R. Gilhooly is associate professor of philosophy and theology and Director of the Honors Program at Cedarville University in Cedarville, OH.