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The Problem of Evil and Modern Philosophy — II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Brian Davies O P
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Is God morally good? Is he morally bad? Confronted by the reality of evil his defenders have sometimes said that he is morally good, or, at least, that there is insufficient proof of his moral badness. Why? Because, so they say, the following argument is acceptable:

  1. 1 In creating, God brings about or allows various evils.

  2. 2 These evils are justified since they go along with some good or goods which depend on them in some way.

  3. 3 Evil can therefore be seen as part of God’s justified plan in creating or allowing for certain goods.

But does it make sense to say either that God is morally good or that he is not? This is the question I raised at the end of my previous article on God and Evil.

Many people would find it odd, or even offensive, They would say that since God is good, he is bound by moral requirements in the way that human beings are, that the goodness of God is moral goodness, where that is understood in the same way as it is when ascribed to men and women. Richard Swinburne is a good representative of this view. God, he says, is perfectly good. What does this mean? It means, says Swinburne, that God knows which actions are morally good and which actions are morally bad, and that God always does actions which are morally good and never does actions which are morally bad. According to Swinburne, ‘God’s perfect goodness follows deductively from his omniscience and his perfect freedom’. Since God is omniscient he will ‘know the truth value of all moral judgments whether or not they are true or false’. Since he is perfectly free he ‘will always do any action which he recognizes to be over all better to do than not to do, and so one which he judges to be morally obligatory’.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 64 , Issue 751 , January 1983 , pp. 18 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 ‘The Problem of Evil and Modern Philosophy –’, New Blackfriars, December 1982.

2 Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God (Oxford, 1979), p 97Google Scholar.

3 Swinburne, op. cit., p 98.

4 Swinburne, op. cit., p 101.

5 Swinburne, op. cit., pp 98 ff.

6 Hick, John, God and the Universe of Faiths (Glasgow, 1977), p 69Google Scholar. Hick's way of talking about God and evil has been criticized along lines not wholly dissimilar to those adopted by me by D. Z. Phillips in Brown, Stuart C. (ed.), Reason and Religion (Ithaca and London, 1977)Google Scholar. Hick's most recent statement of his views on God and evil is to be found in Davis, Stephen T. (ed.), Encountering Evil (Edinburgh, 1981)Google Scholar.

7 ‘God: I – Creation’, New Blackfriars, October, 1980.

8 Cf. God and the Soul (London, 1969), p 105Google Scholar. Cf. Providence and Evil (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar, Chapter 4. The reference is to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X, 8, 1978b, 16.Google Scholar

9 Colledge, Edmund and McGinn, Bernard (Trans. & Intro.), Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defence (New York, Ramsey, Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar.

10 Peter Geach, Providence and Evil, pp 80 f.

11 ‘God: III – Evil’, New Blackfriars, January, 1981.

12 Summa Theologiae, Ia, 45, 5.

13 The doctrine can be found in Summa Theologiae, Ia, 3. It is usefully expounded and discussed by Peter Geach in Three Philosophers (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar and by Burrell, David B. in Aquinas, God and Action (London and Henley, 1979)Google Scholar.

14 Summa Theologiae, Ia, 6, 1.