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Evil, Omniscience and Omnipotence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

R. W. K. Paterson
R. W. K. Paterson
Affiliation:
The University of Hull
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Extract

There are numerous ‘solutions’ to the problem of evil, from which theists can and do freely take their pick. It is fairly clear that any attempt at a solution must involve a scaling-down of one or more of the assertions out of whose initial conflict the problem arises – either by a downward revision of what we mean by omnipotence, or omniscience, or benevolence, or by minimizing the amount or condensing the varieties of evil actually to be found in the universe. And indeed, in one or more of these different ways, the charge of logical inconsistency can no doubt always be vouchsafed at least a formal answer. Unfortunately, the mere ironing-out of formal inconsistencies does not of itself go very far towards providing a solution to this central problem of theism which will be morally, religiously, and intellectually convincing and acceptable as well as logically impeccable. Everything depends on how the inconsistencies are ironed out. For every attempt at a solution of the problem of evil has to be made at a price, in keeping with the scale and type of conceptual or ethical readjustments which it requires of us. And if the solutions which are generally offered seldom seem to carry much conviction, this is because the price they require us to pay nearly always seems far too high. A ‘solution’ to the problem of evil that is to count as a genuine solution must not require us to make any conceptual or ethical readjustments which it would not on independent grounds be entirely reasonable to make. A ‘solution’ that was finally to count as the solution of the problem of evil would presumably need to be that particular one which required us to make only those conceptual and ethical readjustments which (of all the readjustments that were open to us) were on independent grounds the ones that it was the most reasonable to make. What follows is offered as a solution, in the above sense, of the problem of evil. However, I shall not here attempt to argue that it is the solution.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

page 3 note 1 When presenting this argument, theists often make the mistake of suggesting that the existence of free moral beings is a great good because it provides God with creatures to whom he may fittingly relate himself in a relationship of mutual love. Apart from other difficulties, this line of reasoning appears to make the existence of moral evil a means to God's own self-fulfilment, thus robbing the original argument of any value it might have as a genuinely moral justification of God's decision to allow moral evil to exist.

page 3 note 2 Theists seldom seem to recognize that arguments like these implicitly acknowledge God's indirect responsibility for the existence of moral evil. However, there is no reason why theists should not quite happily acknowledge this, since there is no incompatibility whatever between God's perfect goodness and his willingness to permit the existence of various evils, given that he has sufficiently good reasons – i.e. moral reasons – for permitting them. Of course the theist then has to try to show what these sufficient reasons might be.

page 5 note 1 This would still have been the case even if God had created free moral beings whose freewill he as it were put in abeyance only whenever they were about to think or do evil. It would be quite erroneous to imagine that such beings would be free on all occasions save when they were temporarily ‘puppetized’. It is a moral evil — in the sense that the world is rendered in some measure morally deficient — whenever anyone does the less good in preference to the better action, or the indifferent in preference to the positively good action, and so God would be obliged to ‘puppetize’ his creatures whenever the action they were about to do was anything other than the right action in the circumstances. Such beings would therefore never be allowed to make a free choice. They would in fact not be ‘free moral beings’ at all. (Moreover, if moral freedom is inseparable from the nature of consciousness itself, the only way in which God could ‘puppetize’ his creatures would be by rendering them unconscious, that is, by destroying them as minds or spirits.)

page 6 note 1 The proposition, ‘Judas will betray Christ’, is not equivalent to and does not entail the proposition, ‘Judas will necessarily betray Christ’. The truth of the former is not a sufficient condition of the truth of the latter when the truth of the former is known (e.g. by God), any more than when the truth of the former is not known by anyone. However, there is no space here to discuss all the alleged difficulties in the notion of God's foreknowledge of free acts; nor for my present purpose is it necessary, since my purpose here is simply to show that even if we accept both divine foreknowledge and human freedom we can still vindicate God's perfect goodness by identifying a sufficient reason for his allowing the existence of moral evils freely done and fully foreknown.

page 7 note 1 However, a Christian may claim to know as a revealed truth that the Virgin Mary is an example of a purely good human creature in the sense required. And a non-Christian theist might well hold this view of Jesus.

page 8 note 1 Clearly this rules out those forms of religious belief which assert even the logical possibility that some of God's creatures might be eternally damned.

page 9 note 1 Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Appendix.

page 10 note 1 I have not troubled to discuss the argument that the existence of an evildoer may be justified as a necessary means or occasion of good actions performed by other moral agents. This would not in my opinion furnish a genuinely moral reason for the existence of the evildoer, since a perfectly good creator would surely treat each of his creatures as being of intrinsic (if variable) worth and not just as a means to the betterment of others. Nor have I troubled to discuss the argument that God's original creative decision is taken with regard to an individual's ultimate progenitor (‘Adam’), leaving the future existence of that progenitor's descendants to the unfettered freewill of their eventual parents, but basing his original creative decision on his foreknowledge of the overall balance in favour of moral good which will prevail among the race as a whole. This, too, would involve treating some individuals (viz. the morally deficient) as mere means (in fact mere unavoidable appendages) to the existence of others; and it would also involve the dubious claim that a man's natural parents (not God) are the direct creators of his soul as well as his body.

page 11 note 1 No doubt there is some evidence to suggest that some ‘poltergeist’ mischief is due to spirit agency. But at most this would entitle us to ascribe no more than a tiny portion of minor natural evils to the influence of evil spirits. And in any case it would only be because nature already contained the materials for natural evil (brittle bones, burnable flesh, spillable blood, etc.) that it would in general be possible for physical evils to be produced by demonic agency. The question would therefore remain; why has God created bones that are brittle, flesh that burns, blood that is spillable, etc.?

page 12 note 1 There might, I suppose, be a mere overall balancing of the books, but this would be a culpably slipshod way for an omniscient and omnipotent creator to go about the business of distributing cosmic justice.

page 12 note 2 And the question would remain: why has God created a universe in which it is physically possible for creatures to inflict dreadful torments on their fellows?

page 18 note 1 I mean that God could not have created the kind of flesh which actually clothes our bones but made it unburnable by the fire we actually know. He might of course have clothed our bones in a quite different material (we can call it ‘flesh’ if we please) or perhaps created an altogether different mode of combustion (which we can call ‘fire’ if we please), but none of this affects my point, which is that the effect of actual fire on our actual flesh – and indeed also the putative effect of the other hypothetical ‘fire’ on the other hypothetical ‘flesh’ – is wholly determined by physical and chemical laws, and it is these laws which God cannot alter.

page 21 note 1 If need be he can create a succession of momentary pieces of blue litmus paper, to ‘prevent’ the acid from ever turning ‘it’ red.

page 21 note 2 However, it is reasonable to conjecture that for every miracle recognized as such there may be a thousand others the occurrence of which is never suspected (unsensational but unexplained recoveries from illness, avoidance of accidents, etc.).

page 22 note 1 This is not quite true. If souls were reincarnated here on earth, and if the creator foreknew that earthly life would steadily improve throughout an infinite future, the belief in divine goodness could on these premises be sustained without appeal to any other sphere of creaturely experience.