Editorial: Freedom Conference Special Edition

Abstract

Many thanks to the editors of PJTR for the opportunity to guest edit this issue of the journal on behalf of New Zealand Christians in Science. Thanks especially to Christa McKirland who supported and participated in the NZCIS Freedom Conference at Maclaurin Chapel in February 2022. There we had two days of interesting offerings from multi-disciplinary perspectives on the issue of freedom, widely defined in theology, philosophy and the sciences. This issue of PJTR features four of those papers. They all cover new ground, not being simply re-hashings of old arguments around free will or otherwise. I would highly recommend each of them, with their different styles and modes of argument. Three are from New Zealand based scholars and the fourth is by a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrew’s, Drew Everhart, who nevertheless raises the important issue of corporate responsibility, something we should understand particularly well in New Zealand where Treaty considerations are routinely incorporated into public discourse. Yael Cameron’s paper is on the Southern Ocean and the freedom of the animal in relationship to God, another concern very relevant to our South Sea location in the world. Christa McKirland interacts with the sciences of psychology, parsing the paradoxes of autonomy and relatedness relative to other persons and to God. And John Owens takes seriously the difference that agency makes in the overall problem of freedom.