It’s somewhat true of Judaism: the duty to obey god presumes the ability to disobey, without which there’s no meaningful sense in which a duty can exist. In oth

It’s somewhat true of Judaism: the duty to obey god presumes the ability to disobey, without which there’s no meaningful sense in which a duty can exist. In other words: duties cannot be involuntary, and so the mitzvah requires free will. However, as you’ve noted: this wasn’t integrated into all (or even most) Christian doctrines, and so the author’s Judeo-Christian-style argument doesn’t really hold water. It reads closer to paleoconservative rhetoric around fundamental unity between the two (with the implication that Islam is somehow fundamentally different).