6.5 The Free Will Theodicy
The best known theodicy of all is the free will theodicy. The basic thrust of this explanation is that a world in which humans have free choice is better than a world in which they do not. But if people have free choice to do good or evil, then some will make bad choices and evil will result.
Gottfried Leibniz (1600's) thought that this set up was the best possible one. He did not think that God could have created anything but the best of all possible worlds, and this world is it. his suggestion that this is the best of all possible worlds did not mean that every event in this world was the best thing that could happen, only that the way the world is set up is the best possible way.
This argument certainly appeals to the democratic sensibilities of the West. Would we rather marry someone who freely has chosen to love us or someone who was forced to obey us? Would we rather a robot love us because it was programmed to do so or would we like to have someone choose us among other possibilities. Because a world of choice seems better to most of us than a world of force, the free will explanation for evil tends to make sense to us.
The one who is usually credited for this argument is Augustine (400's), although Augustine's version of it was a little different than what we have said. For Augustine, it was Adam who had the free choice. However, because he chose to disobey, the entire world became "fallen." While Adam was free to choose, we are not free today.
The strength of Augustine's understanding of the Fall is that it explained both the existence of moral and natural evil. On the one hand, the choices of Satan and Adam were free will choices. God did not make them sin, but gave them the freedom to sin if they chose. In that sense, God is not directly responsible for the origins of evil. Satan and Adam are.
Yet because of Adam's sin, all humans are now born totally depraved. They are not able to do good in their own power. At the same time, because of their inherent evil, they do things that do not deserve God's favor. God is thus under no obligation to do good to anyone, and anyone God does "save" is an act of mercy and love.
At the same time, the natural world "fell" at the same time with Adam. There were no earthquakes, tornados, or paper cuts in the Garden of Eden. These are also a by-product of Adam's free choice. Augustine thus explained the origins of natural evil by way of Adam's moral evil.
Later thinkers like John Calvin (1500's) and John Wesley (1700's) built on Augustine's system in more than one way. Calvin passed on Augustine's thought largely as it was--God in His mercy chooses to save some. He does not choose those who are damned directly, because they were already condemned by their own actions. <1> But in his love, God chooses to save some.
By contrast, thinkers like Jacobus Arminius (1600's) and John Wesley did not believe Calvin's picture of God matched with His character as portrayed in the Bible. A God who arbitrarily chooses some can hardly be said to love the world (John 3:16) or to want all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). So Arminius and Wesley suggested that God's grace gives everyone a chance to be saved, even though they are still unable to save themselves. We will talk more about these thinkers in chapter 10.
We should mention that the systems of Augustine, Calvin, Arminius, and Wesley are all thoroughly ensconched in the Western Christian tradition, particularly with their common understandings of total depravity, an idea that originated with Augustine in the West. Christians before Augustine, as well as the Eastern Christian tradition, did not absolutize human fallenness to quite the same degree. In this respect, it is perhaps closer to Paul in the New Testament, who thought of human sinfulness in terms of our enslavement to powers rather than some evil nature within us. <2> At the same time, Paul taught that God's Holy Spirit could free us from these powers.
We might synthesize these thinkers into a free will theodicy that looks something like the following. God created a universe in which it was better to be able to choose the good freely rather than be forced to choose the good. Unfortunately, Satan and Adam made the wrong free will choice. As a result, the world was corrupted both naturally and spiritually. The default state of humanity and the world is enslavement to sin.
Yet because God loves the whole world, He graciously is willing to empower all to choose the good. One day God will restore the creation to its pre-fallen state of complete human freedom. But in the meantime, the gracious empowerment of God's Holy Spirit makes possible the same free choice humanity had before the Fall.
Certainly we should not think that the free will theodicy answers all our questions about evil. Why, for example, has God waited so long to reset the creation to its pre-fallen state? It cannot be so that He can save more, for time only adds individuals--both to be saved and to be damned. From a traditional perspective, time does not save appreciably more of those already here than it adds in new ones who are damned. In other words, unless we adjust traditional perspectives on these things, time only adds to the overall percentage of the condemned.
An even more significant question is why God in fact set the world up this way in the first case and whether He had to do so. Is Leibniz really correct to think that this is the best possible way to set up the universe? Could not an all powerful God have created a world where it was better for us to be robots than to have free will? This question gets us into issues of God's nature that will have to wait a later chapter.
<1> Of course some of Calvin's followers became double predestinarians who believe that God chooses both those to be saved and to be damned. We also mentioned earlier in the chapter some who believe God predestined both Satan and Adam to sin as well.
<2> Some translations render the Greek word flesh as sinful nature (e.g., the New International Version), but this is more a reflection of Western theology than of Paul's own thinking.
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I think it is useful here to consider what is meant by "best" and God's relationship to it. By "best" are we meaning what God DEEMS as "best" or what metaphysically IS "best?" With both sides we get into the question of how God relates to both, but as you say towards the end you will get to that at another time. With the first train we run into the problem of considering whether or not good and evil are merely voluntary in relationship to God; i.e. that God just chooses what "the good" is through divine command. In considering the latter point, "goodness" as a metaphysical category gets us into the issue of whether or not it is a logical possibility that the metaphysical category of perfection is even possible. In order there to be a best possible world, it must be the case that every state of affairs that encompasses the possible world must be a maximal state of affairs, but is that really possible? To use Alvin Plantinga's example of "a most perfect island," if the island obtains the various states of affairs of "having a large supply of hammocks and dancing hula girls," it seems problematic to say that there is a fixed, maximal state of affairs, due to the fact that one could always conceive of an island that had one more hammock or dancing hula girl. In the relationship with evil, if it is indeed necessary to have a degree of evil within the world in order to have the "best" possible world, why does that category necessitate a particular "degree" of evil in the world? It would seem that getting stung by one bee would be better than getting stung by two or three, so why does the world display such a strong degree of evil if it is the best possible one?
Leibniz's answer: because if any less or more states of affairs obtained in the actual world, it would entail a logical contradiction somewhere in the propositional content of that world as a possible world. In other words, the propositional states of affairs found within the world are of the form that allows the actual world to be a logically valid world. Since self-contradictions are always false, God cannot create a world that has logical contradictions; there are no round squares, married bachelors and 2+2 does not equal 5.Leibniz is both a genius and is frustrating all at the same time here, because he is relying on logical inference to answer for the evidential circumstances that this is not the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz is frustrating because by leaving the issue in the logical problem it cannot be really "proven" whether this actually is the best of all possible worlds, because that would be bringing the evidential categories where they do not belong.
It seems here that this is where the discussion of God's nature is so important, because if we are willing to throw our lot in with Leibniz we invariably need to make certain metaphysical commitments about God that very well could be problematic for Christian faith, especially in the matter of how "goodness and perfection" relate to Him. If appealing to Leibniz creates metaphysical inconsistencies that we are uncomfortable with, then that very well could be a good indication that Leibniz shouldn't be our defense.
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