Evil and suffering.

[Galaen]

Perhaps God did create evil to seperate us from Him and stop us being robots. Perhaps it is because He wants us to come to Him because we WANT to be with Him not just because He made us so.

[Lily]

The free will defence.


Both classic theodicies contain the argument that evil was a tragic consequence of human free will. More recently, this line of thought has been seperated and developed into theodicy in ti's own right, know as the " Free will defence ".

Basic argument.

The world is the logically necessary enviroment for human beings- the type of place that enables humans to be humans-for the world provides true freedom in the form of real choices which produce real goodness or real harm. Without such choices we would not be free and nor, therefore, should we be human.

Richard Swinburne has supported this defence and has helped to counter some of the criticisms that are often levelled against it. One such criticism asks why God needs to allow the scale of suffering witnessed in the holocaust, for example, Swinburne answered,,,

The less he allows men to bring about large sacle horrors, the less freedom and responsibility he gives them. We are asking that God should make a toy world, a world where things matter, but not that very much: where we can choose and our choices can make a small difference but the real choices remain God's. For he simply would not allow us the choice of doing real harm,,, he would be like and over-protective parent who will not let his child out of his sight for a moment.

In other words, a God who intervenes to prevent the large scale horrors would compromise the gift of freedom and remove human responsibility, thus preventing genuine human development.

Swinburne took the example of death, and argued that despite the suffering it causes, it is nevertheless essential to this free will defence. This is because death means that life and the chances that each life contains, are limited. This is essential because only in the limited lifespan can we have genuine responsibility for our actions.

A situation of temptation with infinate chances is no situation of temptation at all. If there is always another chance there is no risk. There would not be overriding reasons not to do a bad act, if you are always preserved from it's consequences. If you cannot damn yourself no matter how hard you go on trying, your salvation will be inevitable. A God who wishes that all men shall be saved is a being of dubious moral status.

In other words, if we were immortal there will always be another chance for us to make a amends. The world therefore needs to contain natural laws that can cause death, however painful this may be. The free will defence therfore renders death explainable.

Critique of the free will defence.

The free will defence adds to the work of Augustine and Irenaeus, giving further explanation as to why some evil and suffering may be necessary. However, it attracts some of the criticisms that we have already considered, especially the concern that Divine love cannot be expressed through such suffering.

It also does not explain "why" some people chose to turn away from God. This in turn, prompts the interesting question as to whether God could have created a race of genuinely free beings who, nevertheless, would never have infact chosen to commit evil. While the majority of philosophers have argued that this guarantee could never be made with genuine free beings, J.L Mackie, provides a challenge.

If there is no logical impossibility in a mans freely choosing the good on one, or even several occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right. Clearly his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good. J.L Mackie, " Evil and omnipotence ". April 1955

If this challenge holds true, it entails the death of not only the free will defence but also the theoicies of Augustine and Irenaeus. For Mackie is effectively arguing that God's gift of freewill is in no way an excuse for the existence of evil. God should simply have made free beings who would infact never chosen to sin.

John Hick argued that while humans might have appeared to be choosing freely and doing good on all occasions, in relation to God, they would not be free, because God would never have made them in such a way that he knew they would never choose evil. For if God knows in advance what his creation will do in any case, does this not suggest he has preordained evil ? And yet, if he had no idea what they would do, does this not suggest that evil took God rather by suprise, thus questioning his omnipotence ?

Tomorrow, process theodicy which rests upon the assertion that God is not omnipotent.