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The Concept of Divine Goodness and the Problem of Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

G. Stanley kane
G. Stanley kane
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
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Extract

Traditional theism maintains the view that the world is created by a God who is at once omnipotent and perfectly good. One of the most persistent challenges to this view is that known as the problem of evil. The challenge consists in the allegation that the manifest imperfections of the world are incompatible with its having been created by a God who is both perfectly good and has the power to carry out his will. In the face of this challenge some theists have sought to defend theism by drawing a sharp distinction between human goodness and divine goodness and claiming that the goodness of God is different from human goodness not merely in degree but in kind, and that God's goodness cannot be understood by men. As a consequence of this, they contend, the created world can be judged to be imperfect only if it is measured against the inferior standards of human goodness, which because they are inferior are inappropriate for judging the works of the almighty and infinitely perfect God. The sharp distinction between God's goodness and man's thus allows the theist to maintain that God is perfectly good even while recognising that there is (according to human standards of goodness and evil) a great deal of evil in the world. Hence, if the distinction can be successfully defended, it provides a neat way of getting out of the problem of evil.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 49 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

Page 50 note 1 The unintelligibility thesis consists of the three following components: (I) the affirmation that God is good, (2) the claim that the proposition ‘God is good’ is unintelligible to ordinary human reason, or—to put the same point differently—the claim that God's goodness is ineffable, and (3) the denial that God's goodness differs only in degree from human goodness. Critics of theistic belief have sometimes used the second point as a basis for rejecting theism. Unintelligibility theorists, however, maintain that it is an integral part of correct theistic belief.

Page 50 note 2 The Limits of Religious Tought. London: John Murray, 1867, p. 145. Italics are Mansel's.Google Scholar

Page 50 note 3 Church Dogmatics (hereafter abbreviated as CD), Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1969, I, I, 449; II, I, P. 97.Google Scholar

Page 50 note 4 CD, II, 1, p. 189.

Page 51 note 1 CD, II, 1, p. 224. For a detailed statement of Barth's view that God's goodness and what God commands of men are wholly discontinuous with all rational human conceptions of the good, cf. CD, II, 2, pp. 509–24.

Page 51 note 2 CD, IV, 1, p. 497. Cf. CD, II,2, p. 619, where Barth asserts that a person who does not acknowledge God's command and live in obedience to it ‘is a murderer even if he does not harm a fly, an adulterer even if he never looks on a woman, a thief even if he never appropriates a straw that does not belong to him’.

Page 51 note 3 Mansel, , op. cit., p. 145.Google Scholar

Page 51 note 4 CD, II, 2, p. 522. Cf. Kaufman, Gordon, ‘Philosophy of Religion and Christian Theology’, Journal of Religion, XXXVII, 4 (October, 1957), pp. 238–9:Google Scholar ‘…no standards which we might wish to bring to measure it [God's revelation]—standards of what we take to be justice—would be properly applicable here…Rather, we have no right to assume that our standards of justice and universality are the appropriate ones by which to measure God. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because of their inadequacy and irrelevance, presumably, that revelation is necessary if it is necessary… we are in no position to judge it’.

Page 51 note 5 On all sin as being rooted in and a manifestation of pride, cf. CD, IV, I, pp. 413 ff; p. 450,. and p. 453.

Page 51 note 6 CD, II, 2, p. 645 f; cf. also p. 517 and p. 635.

Page 51 note 7 CD, II, 2 p.518; cf. CD, IV, 1, p.448 f.

Page 52 note 1 The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1952, pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

Page 52 note 2 ‘The Moral Argument Against Calvinism,’ contained in The Works of William E. Channing, D. D. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1877, p. 464.Google Scholar

Page 52 note 3 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, in Pike, Nelson (ed.), God and Evil. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice–Hall, 1964, p. 42.Google Scholar

Page 52 note 4 As Mill suggests; Ibid. p. 43.

Page 53 note 1 I am using the term ‘ordinary’ here, and wi11 do so throughout the paper, in a very broad sense to mean ‘apprehensible or knowable or functioning without the aid of any special divine grace or revelation’. I am thus not using it, as is often done, to contrast common knowledge, concepts, or uses, with special philosophical on, for as I am using the term the latter will be just as much a type of ordinary knowledge, etc., as the former.

Page 54 note 1 The term ‘apologist’ is often used to designate one who defends religious belief on the basis of natural reason or natural theology. Obviously, intelligibility theorists are not apologists in this sense. The term la being used in this paper to indicate anyone who defends theistic belief on whatever basis.

Page 55 note 1 CD, II, I, pp. 188–9.Google Scholar Cf. Brunner, E., God and Man. London: SCM Press, 1936, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

Page 55 note 2 CD, II, 2, pp. 631–6Google Scholar; Brunner, , God and Man, pp. 76–84.Google Scholar

Page 56 note 1 This is essentially the view which Mansel propounds; Ibid., lectures I-IV.

Page 57 note 1 This example is one that is suggested by Mill, , op. cit., p. 42.Google Scholar

Page 58 note 1 Carnell, Edward John, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Co., 1956, P. 303.Google Scholar

Page 58 note 2 Ibid.

Page 58 note 3 ‘Responsibility’ has several distinguishable senses. When it is used to indicate that which one is morally duty–bound to do, it is roughly equivalent to ‘obligation’. This is the sense in which the word is being used in the discussion in this paper.

Page 59 note 1 CD, II, 2, pp. 642–53Google Scholar, especially these statements on pp. 642–3: ‘The idea of responsibility, rightly understood, is known only to Christian ethics…This alone knows of man's confrontation by One to whom he must give an answer, because He is the One who confronts him in sovereign transcendence and lays upon him an ineluctable obligation… Without a knowledge of the transcendent divine decision … or an awareness of the Law which God has eternally established…we can think and speak of responsibility only in a diluted form which does not do justice to the real significance of the term and which may eventually deny and dissolve it.’

Page 59 note 2 The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, pp. 184–5: ‘Our conception of justice (as a duty) implies the norm of equal treatment… But God is not under any obligation to deal with us as equals… As equals, we owe equal treatment to others. But God owes His creatures nothing… As Creator He is absolute Lord, who is not bound to give any account of Himself to His Creation. He owes no one anything. at He gives He gives in complete freedom. He is not tied to our standards of justice.’

Page 61 note 1 Martin, C. B. has an interesting argument on the kind of view that Brunner holds. ‘This whole argument seems to rest upon the principle that those to whom we are indebted have special rights over us. But whether we agree with it or not, this surely is a moral principle. Therefore, there is at least one moral principle not dependent for its validity on the divine will’. Religious Belief. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959, p. 31.Google Scholar

Page 63 note 1 Brunner, , op. cit., pp. 182–5.Google Scholar

Page 63 note 2 Ockham's position is expounded by Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy. Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1959, Volume III, pp. 103–10.Google Scholar

Page 64 note 1 Ockham's view is that, on the supposition that God has chosen a particular set of standards, he remains faithful to them and they remain stable.

Page 64 note 1 Cf. Brunner, , op. cit., p. 185:Google Scholar ‘[God] proves His justice in the constancy with which He provides validity and effectiveness to His Law which He has given to us.’

Page 65 note 1 Two classical exponents of the view that God is necessarily good are Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. For the former's view, cf. Cur Deus Homo?, II, x; Proslogion, VII; and for the latter's view, cf. Summa Theologise, I, a. 3, q. 25, ad. 2. Neither Anselm nor Thomas held to the unintelligibility thesis or the impropriety thesis as we have understood them.

Page 66 note 1 Since ‘P';s bringing about S is good’ does not entail ‘Bringing about S is good’, or ‘S is good’, and since ‘P' doing A is good’ does not entail ‘A is good’, more than just these premises are needed to ground the inference. Premises having to do with the omniscience and omnipotence of God are needed, but we need not concern ourselves with them here, since nothing directly relevant to our discussion turns on them.

Page 68 note 1 Carnell, , op. cit., p. 312.Google Scholar

Page 68 note 2 Ibid.op. cit., p. 312.

Page 68 note 3 Calvin, , Institutes of the Christian Religion (Beveridge translation). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Co., 1957, III, 23, 2.Google Scholar

Page 69 note 1 Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, paragraph 2. In Leibniz, , Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology (Montgomery translation). LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1957.Google Scholar

Page 69 note 2 Leibniz, , Theodicy (Huggard translation; edited with an introduction by Farrer, Austin). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1951, paragraph 176.Google Scholar

Page 70 note 1 Cornell, , op. cit., p. 309.Google Scholar

Page 70 note 2 Euthyphro, 9–10. In The Dialogues of Plato (Jowett translation). New York: Random House, 1937, Vol. I, p. 391.Google Scholar