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Plantinga on free will and evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Nelson Pike
Nelson Pike
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Irvine
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Extract

Some philosophers have argued that a world created by an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good being would not contain evil. Since the world contains evil in fact, it follows (so it is claimed) that the world was not created by an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good being. One of the replies frequently given to this argument is that the world contains evil only because it is populated with free creatures (men and devils) who perform morally wrong action. This is the centre of the so-called ‘Free Will Theodicy’ - a favourite not only of technical theologians such as Thomas Aquinas but of practising believers of the least sophisticated sort. On this view, evil results from the illicit exercise of created free will. The fault thus lies with his creatures and not with the omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good creator.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 449 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

page 449 note 1 Mind, LXIV (1955Google Scholar). The thesis of interest is developed in the second section under the title ‘Fallacious Solution’, subsec. 4.

page 449 note 2 This paper was first published as part of the collection Philosophy in America, ed. Black, Max (Cornell University Press, 1965Google Scholar). It was later printed as chapter 6 of Plantinga's book God and Other Minds (Cornell University Press, 1967Google Scholar).

page 450 note 1 ‘Which Worlds Could God Have Created?’, journal of Philosophy, LXX (1973Google Scholar); chapter 9 of The Nature of Necessity (Oxford University Press, 1974Google Scholar); and God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A (Harper and Row, Torchbook Series, 1974).Google Scholar

page 450 note 2 American Philosophical Quarterly, XIV(1977).Google Scholar

page 451 note 1 Cf., for example, God, Freedom and Evil, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

page 451 note 2 So far as I know, that it is logically impossible for God to make someone freely do something is a point first made by Graves, A. A. in an early response to Mace's paper entitled ‘On Evil and Omnipotence’, Mind, LXV (1956), 260.Google Scholar

page 452 note 1 The material in this paragraph is a summary of the argument given by Plantinga in sec. A, subsec. 6 of God, Freedom and Evil.

page 452 note 2 The thesis of this paragraph is developed by Plantinga in God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 4.

page 452 note 3 Cf. God, Freedom and Evil, pp. 48–9.Google Scholar

page 453 note 1 What follows in the next two paragraphs is a synopsis of the material presented in God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 7. See also The Nature of Necessity, pp. 188 ff.Google Scholar

page 453 note 2 Cf. ‘What Worlds Could God Have Created?’, p. 551.Google Scholar

page 454 note 1 What follows here is a summary of the argument given by Plantinga in God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 8. See also sec. A, subsec. 3.

page 455 note 1 See God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 4.

page 455 note 2 Cf. God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 4, 9 and especially 10. This thesis was also part of the argument in ‘The Free Will Defense’. See God and Other Minds, p. 132.Google Scholar

page 456 note 1 The idea that on Plantinga's view (as developed in ‘The Free Will Defense’) God depends on luck to deliver a favourable balance of right action over wrong action is suggested by Peter Windt in ‘Plantinga's Unfortunate God’, Philosophical Studies, XXIV (1973).Google Scholar

page 456 note 2 See The Nature of Necessity, ch. 9, sec. 5. See also ‘What Worlds Could God Have Created?’, Pp. 544–9.Google Scholar

page 457 note 1 Op. cit. p. 109Google Scholar, first column.

page 457 note 2 Note that, for Plantinga, this is only a possibility. God might discover that there is no possible world of this description that he could actualize.

page 458 note 1 I refer here to the concept of the possible person that figured importantly in the argument of ‘The Free Will Defense’. Cf. God and Other Minds, pp. 141 ff.Google Scholar

page 461 note 1 See, for example, Saw's, Ruth LydiaLeibniz (Penguin Books, 1954), p. 92.Google Scholar

page 462 note 1 In his discussion of what he calls ‘world indexed properties’ (cf., e.g., God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 7) Plantinga makes clear that it would be part of Curley Smith's essence that in W, he chooses Z-D when free in Edam at Z. Of course, this is not surprising. We have stipulated that W stands for a world in which Curley Smith chooses Z-D when free in Edam at Z. Because of this stipulation, ‘X is Curley Smith’ entails ‘In W, X chooses Z-C when free in Edam at Z’. This is just another way of saying that ‘X is Curley Smith’ entails ‘In a world containing Curley Smith choosing Z-C when free in Edam at Z, X chooses Z-Cwhen free in Edam at Z’. I mention this in order to forestall a possible source of confusion. The present claim is that Curley Smith's essence does not include ‘If free in Edam at Zwould choose Z-C’. This is true even if it does include ‘In W, chooses Z-C when free in Edam at Z’.

page 464 note 1 In this paragraph the term ‘possible’ in such sentences as ‘it is (is not) possible that Curley Smith has transworld depravity’ occurs in its epistemic sense. Read ‘it is possible that X’ as ‘for all we know to the contrary, X’. This is so in Plantinga's discussion as well when he is talking about the possibility that some actual person has transworld depravity, e.g. God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 6, p. 48Google Scholar. Though this is confusing, it does not damage the argument. It is the possibility of transworld depravity with respect to creaturely essences that constitutes the mainstay of the argument. In the latter context, ‘possible’ is used in its logical rather than in its epistemic sense.

page 467 note 1 Op. cit. sec. I.Google Scholar

page 467 note 2 That there are no such properties is the principal thesis of sec. II.

page 468 note 1 Adams' thesis is really more general than this. Using the imagery of the Edam story, Adams denies the existence of full path runners, i.e. mouse-sets which are such that their instantiations would (as opposed to would probably) choose any one of the four paths in an Edam-variation.

page 468 note 2 Adams draws this conclusion on page 117.

page 469 note 1 See, for example, God, Freedom and Evil, pp. 44, 47 and 49.Google Scholar

page 470 note 1 See God and Other Minds, p. 132.Google Scholar

page 471 note 1 This idea is at least suggested by Plantinga in ‘The Free Will Defense’. Here, after pointing out that in order to create creatures capable of moral good God must create free creatures and thus creatures capable of moral evil, Plantinga says:‘… but (God) cannot create the possibility of moral evil and at the same time prohibit its actuality’ ( God and Other Minds, p. 132Google Scholar). Obviously the ‘cannot’ in this statement does not express logical impossibility. I can make sense of it only if it is taken as upressing the idea of practical consistency, i.e. only if ‘X cannot do A and at the same time do B’ means‘It would be irrational or (in some practical way) inconsistent for X to do A and then to do B’.

page 472 note 1 The following two passages are taken from The Basic Writings of St. Augustine, vol. I, ed. Oats, W. T. (Random House, 1948Google Scholar) which in turn were taken from A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Schaff, P..Google Scholar

page 473 note 1 Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. I, ch. 17, sec. 11 and ch. 18, sec. 3.

page 473 note 2 Sec. II of my ‘Hume on Evil’, Philosophical Review, LXXII (1963Google Scholar). See also Roderick Chisholm's splendid development of the same idea in ‘The Defeat of Good and Evil’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (1968–1969), pp. 21–38.Google Scholar

page 473 note 3 Cf. God, Freedom and Evil, sec. A, subsec. 3, p. 27.Google Scholar