The problem of evil is one of the oldest and most adduced challenges to theism in philosophical literature and is expressed in many forms. In this essay, I will assess the compatibility of the two propositions: (i) God exists, and is omnipotent and wholly good, and (ii) Evil exists. The traditional atheistic argument runs that if God is omnipotent, he has the power to eradicate the evil in the world and, if he is wholly good, he would wish to do this. Since the presence of evil in the world is more certain than the existence of God, it would seem that the theistic hypothesis should be rejected if the above two propositions are incompatible. Alvin Plantinga, acknowledged as the leading theistic writer on this topic, has sought to demonstrate the consistency of these propositions and lay to rest what has become known as ‘the logical problem of evil.’
Plantinga seeks to reconcile propositions (i) and (ii) by formulating a third proposition which, when considered with (i), entails (ii). Plantinga’s third proposition is: Evil exists on account of the actions of free, rational creatures. Plantinga states that a world containing free creatures is more valuable than a world containing none. He continues, ‘the essential point of the Free Will Defence is that the creation of a world containing moral good is a co-operative venture; it requires the uncoerced concurrence of significantly free creatures.’ Thus, in having freedom in respect of their actions, human beings possess the opportunity to act in accordance with moral good or moral evil; moral evil results from the wrongful exercise of free will. For Plantinga, God could only have precluded the possibility of moral evil by removing man’s freedom of action and, thereby, man’s potential to do moral good.
Plantinga utilises ‘possible world’ semantics to attempt to demonstrate that it is possible that it is not within God’s power to create a world containing moral good but not moral evil since no moral good can exist without freedom. He takes two possible worlds, W and W*. In W, the actual world, Smedes, the director of a highways agency, gives Curley, the mayor of a town, a bribe of £35,000 to induce him to drop his opposition to the construction of a new motorway. Later, Smedes wonders whether, if he had offered Curley only £20,000, he would still have accepted the bribe. In the possible world, W*, Curley would have accepted, if offered, a bribe of £20,000. Thus, if W* were actual, Curley would accept £20,000. The question is, therefore, could God actualise W*? Given God’s omnipotence, we must accept that it is within God’s power to actualise W*. However, were God, in fact, to actualise W*, Curley would have no choice but to accept £20,000 and he would thus have been deprived of his freedom. Hence it is logically impossible that God can actualise W* and, at the same time, preserve the freedom of Curley in respect of either accepting or rejecting the bribe of £20,000. Plantinga argues that there are limits to what an omnipotent being can do, namely that he cannot do that which is logically impossible (most scholars, aside from Descartes, would accept this). For example, an omnipotent being cannot make himself exist and not exist at the same time. However, although the concept of omnipotence must be understood in this way, it does not negate anything essential to theism. For example, that God cannot cause something to be uncaused seems to be a logical impossibility and, therefore, accepting that God cannot perform such an action is not to call into question his omnipotence; ‘He cannot cause it to be the case that I freely refrain from action A; for if he does so, he causes it to be the case that I refrain from A, in which case I do not do so freely.’
However, Mackie argues that since an agent may freely choose the good on one occasion, it must be logically possible for him to choose the good on every occasion. So, why did an omnipotent God not create man in such a way that he would freely choose the good on every occasion? Since an omnipotent God has the power to create any possible world, the failure of God to choose this better possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good. In order to counter this objection, the Free Will Defence needs to prove that it is logically possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good but no moral evil.
Plantinga’s response is to introduce the notion of ‘transworld depravity’. He argues that it is logically possible that a free creature, if actualised, will choose wrong on at least one occasion. If so, it is possible that it is not within God’s power to actualise a world in which there is no moral evil. If, for example, Curley suffered from transworld depravity, it would not be possible for God to create a world, W*, in which Curley is significantly free and always does what is right. As Plantinga expresses it, the effect of transworld depravity is that ‘God could not have actualised any world W such that Curleyhood [his essence] contains the properties is significantly free in W and always does what is right in W.’ If every creaturely essence suffers from transworld depravity, God cannot actualise a world in which there is moral good but no moral evil. In the case of moral evil, then, assuming that free agency and transworld depravity are possible, Plantinga seems to have succeeded in showing that an omnipotent and wholly good God is not logically inconsistent with the existence of evil.
With regard to natural (as distinct from moral) evils, Plantinga argues that since it is not logically impossible for non-human spirits to be behind the occurrence of natural disasters, such evils do not represent a challenge to the consistency of the original propositions nor to the coherence of a belief in theism. For Plantinga, natural evils are closely related to moral evils in so far as they are due to the activities of free creatures; indeed, he considers them both to be cases of ‘broadly moral evil’. He concludes that the problem of evil does not disconfirm theism provided that it is possible that there is no possible world which God could have created which contains a better balance of good and evil. Since this account is not itself logically inconsistent, it appears that we are forced to accept that, regardless of the plausibility of Plantinga’s argument, it demonstrates, at a purely logical level, the possibility of reconciliation between propositions (i) and (ii) above, and thus discredits the claim of inconsistency levelled at them.
Despite any intuitive feeling that there is an inconsistency between propositions (i) and (ii), any incompatibility is ultimately determined by the principles that we regard as implicit in the propositions. Mackie refers to these principles as ‘additional premises’ or ‘quasi-logical rules’ and his listing of them may be paraphrased thus: good and evil are diametrically opposed, good will always seek to eliminate evil, and an omnipotent being can do anything. The most controversial of these is the assertion that good will always seek to eliminate evil, for if this is invariably true then a good omnipotent being cannot co-exist with evil. However, its truth is questionable. Christians regard Jesus as God-incarnate, omnipotent and good, yet he did not eliminate evil. Holland
Plantinga’s defence rests entirely upon a strict definition of human freedom. If his Free Will Defence is to work, then ‘for any time t* prior to t it must be possible both that J perform act a at t and that J refrain from a at t. That is, at no time prior to t can the state of the world entail either that J perform a at t or that J refrain from performing a at t.’ In other words, Plantinga’s argument depends upon determinism being false. To have free will in the strictly libertarian sense is to act intentionally in such a way that is not caused by some process of natural causation or an external cause. This is by no means intuitively the case. The actions men take are determined largely by their genes and by their character. Character is moulded by experience and environment. Therefore, the external environment may influence one’s behaviour and actions. For example, traumatic stress may affect a person’s emotional state and lead to irrational actions. Thus a strictly libertarian view of action seems invalid. Mackie argues that to claim that a free action is one that is not influenced in any way by the state of the agent prior to the action is to adopt an absurd variety of libertarianism which implies that the actions of a person are not determined by the sort of person they are but, rather, that free choices just happen and are not made – in the traditional understanding of the word – by the unique person in whom they occur. However, the crux of the Free Will Defence is that free choices are inherently valuable; so much so, in fact, that the existence of great evils as a result of this freedom is tolerated. If Mackie’s argument is true, are we overvaluing freedom? John Hick has argued that human nature is inherently flawed and that the purpose of life is for soul-making. On this analysis, it seems that since God himself has determined our character as humans, in some sense he bears ultimate responsibility for the evil in the world. This is a concept not entertained by Plantinga.
Plantinga’s interpretation of God’s creation, which accepts God’s access to ‘middle knowledge’, rests on the possibility that God actualised a state of affairs which is as good as it can be, given that humans exist and have free will. If this is indeed the case, it appears strange that the Biblical record shows God acting in history to correct the error of human ways in, for example, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the Flood. Given the attributes of God, it is to be taken that he cannot err or regret his actions, yet he still needed to intervene in human affairs. Of course, Plantinga’s reply would be that God foresaw the need to intervene. But, nonetheless, given Plantinga’s account of creation, it seems strange that God did not choose to actualise a world in which at least some of these interventions would be unnecessary.
Plantinga’s defence has been criticised for being too minimalistic. His arguments may suffice to show that God is blameless for evil, yet it seems that there should be more to the supposed moral perfection of God than simply leading a blameless existence. Plantinga’s concept of God seems deistic and detached, rather unlike the God of traditional theism. With no theological expectations, the problem of evil is reduced to a mere logical debate. This minimalist approach portrays not the God of classical theism but merely a cosmic actualiser whose characteristics are not necessarily worthy of worship. Central to Plantinga’s argument is the assertion that God is unable to exercise his power to prevent evil once he has actualised a world with free creatures. Plantinga’s position also rests on the possibility that evil actions are balanced or somehow outweighed by good actions. If this position is accepted, it surely seems similarly possible that the evil pursued by free creatures will not be balanced or somehow outweighed by the good. It follows, therefore, that it must be possible for humans to use their freedom in such ways as to ultimately frustrate God’s design for his creation. This notion appears awkward in relation to the classical formulation of God and his omnipotence. The claim that evil actions are outweighed by good actions is bold, and a full discussion of this is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that it is not intuitively true; as the dictum of Schopenhauer articulates, ‘A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.’
However, Plantinga is merely providing a defence and not putting forward a theodicy. Thus the job of the Free Will Defence is to defend against a charge of inconsistency and not to justify evil or provide an account of the role of evil in the divine order. For Plantinga’s position to hold, he need not show that his assumptions are true, or even probably true; he need only show them to be possibly true. Although I have attempted to mention some criticisms of Plantinga’s ideas, one can imagine his retort to be that his defence relies not on truths but on possibilities. Furthermore, it has to be accepted that his propositions are without logical inconsistency and, as such, have to be recognised as possible. Thus, despite the theological inadequacies of Plantinga’s arguments, it seems that, on a purely logical basis, he has protected the simultaneous belief in God and the acknowledgement of the existence of evil from a charge of inconsistency. Stendhal’s pithy comment that “God’s only excuse is that He does not exist’ seems less forceful given the possible justification advanced in the Free Will Defence. Yet this is not the end of the problem. It merely serves to define the lines of battle for the philosophical debate on the evidential problem of evil in order to find a more theologically complete answer to this thorny problem.
The problem of evil is one of the oldest and most adduced challenges to theism in philosophical literature and is expressed in many forms. In this essay, I will assess the compatibility of the two propositions: (i) God exists, and is omnipotent and wholly good, and (ii) Evil exists. The traditional atheistic argument runs that if God is omnipotent, he has the power to eradicate the evil in the world and, if he is wholly good, he would wish to do this. Since the presence of evil in the world is more certain than the existence of God, it would seem that the theistic hypothesis should be rejected if the above two propositions are incompatible. Alvin Plantinga, acknowledged as the leading theistic writer on this topic, has sought to demonstrate the consistency of these propositions and lay to rest what has become known as ‘the logical problem of evil.’
Plantinga seeks to reconcile propositions (i) and (ii) by formulating a third proposition which, when considered with (i), entails (ii). Plantinga’s third proposition is: Evil exists on account of the actions of free, rational creatures. Plantinga states that a world containing free creatures is more valuable than a world containing none. He continues, ‘the essential point of the Free Will Defence is that the creation of a world containing moral good is a co-operative venture; it requires the uncoerced concurrence of significantly free creatures.’ Thus, in having freedom in respect of their actions, human beings possess the opportunity to act in accordance with moral good or moral evil; moral evil results from the wrongful exercise of free will. For Plantinga, God could only have precluded the possibility of moral evil by removing man’s freedom of action and, thereby, man’s potential to do moral good.
Plantinga utilises ‘possible world’ semantics to attempt to demonstrate that it is possible that it is not within God’s power to create a world containing moral good but not moral evil since no moral good can exist without freedom. He takes two possible worlds, W and W*. In W, the actual world, Smedes, the director of a highways agency, gives Curley, the mayor of a town, a bribe of £35,000 to induce him to drop his opposition to the construction of a new motorway. Later, Smedes wonders whether, if he had offered Curley only £20,000, he would still have accepted the bribe. In the possible world, W*, Curley would have accepted, if offered, a bribe of £20,000. Thus, if W* were actual, Curley would accept £20,000. The question is, therefore, could God actualise W*? Given God’s omnipotence, we must accept that it is within God’s power to actualise W*. However, were God, in fact, to actualise W*, Curley would have no choice but to accept £20,000 and he would thus have been deprived of his freedom. Hence it is logically impossible that God can actualise W* and, at the same time, preserve the freedom of Curley in respect of either accepting or rejecting the bribe of £20,000. Plantinga argues that there are limits to what an omnipotent being can do, namely that he cannot do that which is logically impossible (most scholars, aside from Descartes, would accept this). For example, an omnipotent being cannot make himself exist and not exist at the same time. However, although the concept of omnipotence must be understood in this way, it does not negate anything essential to theism. For example, that God cannot cause something to be uncaused seems to be a logical impossibility and, therefore, accepting that God cannot perform such an action is not to call into question his omnipotence; ‘He cannot cause it to be the case that I freely refrain from action A; for if he does so, he causes it to be the case that I refrain from A, in which case I do not do so freely.’
However, Mackie argues that since an agent may freely choose the good on one occasion, it must be logically possible for him to choose the good on every occasion. So, why did an omnipotent God not create man in such a way that he would freely choose the good on every occasion? Since an omnipotent God has the power to create any possible world, the failure of God to choose this better possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good. In order to counter this objection, the Free Will Defence needs to prove that it is logically possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good but no moral evil.
Plantinga’s response is to introduce the notion of ‘transworld depravity’. He argues that it is logically possible that a free creature, if actualised, will choose wrong on at least one occasion. If so, it is possible that it is not within God’s power to actualise a world in which there is no moral evil. If, for example, Curley suffered from transworld depravity, it would not be possible for God to create a world, W*, in which Curley is significantly free and always does what is right. As Plantinga expresses it, the effect of transworld depravity is that ‘God could not have actualised any world W such that Curleyhood [his essence] contains the properties is significantly free in W and always does what is right in W.’ If every creaturely essence suffers from transworld depravity, God cannot actualise a world in which there is moral good but no moral evil. In the case of moral evil, then, assuming that free agency and transworld depravity are possible, Plantinga seems to have succeeded in showing that an omnipotent and wholly good God is not logically inconsistent with the existence of evil.
With regard to natural (as distinct from moral) evils, Plantinga argues that since it is not logically impossible for non-human spirits to be behind the occurrence of natural disasters, such evils do not represent a challenge to the consistency of the original propositions nor to the coherence of a belief in theism. For Plantinga, natural evils are closely related to moral evils in so far as they are due to the activities of free creatures; indeed, he considers them both to be cases of ‘broadly moral evil’. He concludes that the problem of evil does not disconfirm theism provided that it is possible that there is no possible world which God could have created which contains a better balance of good and evil. Since this account is not itself logically inconsistent, it appears that we are forced to accept that, regardless of the plausibility of Plantinga’s argument, it demonstrates, at a purely logical level, the possibility of reconciliation between propositions (i) and (ii) above, and thus discredits the claim of inconsistency levelled at them.
Despite any intuitive feeling that there is an inconsistency between propositions (i) and (ii), any incompatibility is ultimately determined by the principles that we regard as implicit in the propositions. Mackie refers to these principles as ‘additional premises’ or ‘quasi-logical rules’ and his listing of them may be paraphrased thus: good and evil are diametrically opposed, good will always seek to eliminate evil, and an omnipotent being can do anything. The most controversial of these is the assertion that good will always seek to eliminate evil, for if this is invariably true then a good omnipotent being cannot co-exist with evil. However, its truth is questionable. Christians regard Jesus as God-incarnate, omnipotent and good, yet he did not eliminate evil.
Plantinga’s defence rests entirely upon a strict definition of human freedom. If his Free Will Defence is to work, then ‘for any time t* prior to t it must be possible both that J perform act a at t and that J refrain from a at t. That is, at no time prior to t can the state of the world entail either that J perform a at t or that J refrain from performing a at t.’ In other words, Plantinga’s argument depends upon determinism being false. To have free will in the strictly libertarian sense is to act intentionally in such a way that is not caused by some process of natural causation or an external cause. This is by no means intuitively the case. The actions men take are determined largely by their genes and by their character. Character is moulded by experience and environment. Therefore, the external environment may influence one’s behaviour and actions. For example, traumatic stress may affect a person’s emotional state and lead to irrational actions. Thus a strictly libertarian view of action seems invalid. Mackie argues that to claim that a free action is one that is not influenced in any way by the state of the agent prior to the action is to adopt an absurd variety of libertarianism which implies that the actions of a person are not determined by the sort of person they are but, rather, that free choices just happen and are not made – in the traditional understanding of the word – by the unique person in whom they occur. However, the crux of the Free Will Defence is that free choices are inherently valuable; so much so, in fact, that the existence of great evils as a result of this freedom is tolerated. If Mackie’s argument is true, are we overvaluing freedom? John Hick has argued that human nature is inherently flawed and that the purpose of life is for soul-making. On this analysis, it seems that since God himself has determined our character as humans, in some sense he bears ultimate responsibility for the evil in the world. This is a concept not entertained by Plantinga.
Plantinga’s interpretation of God’s creation, which accepts God’s access to ‘middle knowledge’, rests on the possibility that God actualised a state of affairs which is as good as it can be, given that humans exist and have free will. If this is indeed the case, it appears strange that the Biblical record shows God acting in history to correct the error of human ways in, for example, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the Flood. Given the attributes of God, it is to be taken that he cannot err or regret his actions, yet he still needed to intervene in human affairs. Of course, Plantinga’s reply would be that God foresaw the need to intervene. But, nonetheless, given Plantinga’s account of creation, it seems strange that God did not choose to actualise a world in which at least some of these interventions would be unnecessary.
Plantinga’s defence has been criticised for being too minimalistic. His arguments may suffice to show that God is blameless for evil, yet it seems that there should be more to the supposed moral perfection of God than simply leading a blameless existence. Plantinga’s concept of God seems deistic and detached, rather unlike the God of traditional theism. With no theological expectations, the problem of evil is reduced to a mere logical debate. This minimalist approach portrays not the God of classical theism but merely a cosmic actualiser whose characteristics are not necessarily worthy of worship. Central to Plantinga’s argument is the assertion that God is unable to exercise his power to prevent evil once he has actualised a world with free creatures. Plantinga’s position also rests on the possibility that evil actions are balanced or somehow outweighed by good actions. If this position is accepted, it surely seems similarly possible that the evil pursued by free creatures will not be balanced or somehow outweighed by the good. It follows, therefore, that it must be possible for humans to use their freedom in such ways as to ultimately frustrate God’s design for his creation. This notion appears awkward in relation to the classical formulation of God and his omnipotence. The claim that evil actions are outweighed by good actions is bold, and a full discussion of this is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that it is not intuitively true; as the dictum of Schopenhauer articulates, ‘A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.’
However, Plantinga is merely providing a defence and not putting forward a theodicy. Thus the job of the Free Will Defence is to defend against a charge of inconsistency and not to justify evil or provide an account of the role of evil in the divine order. For Plantinga’s position to hold, he need not show that his assumptions are true, or even probably true; he need only show them to be possibly true. Although I have attempted to mention some criticisms of Plantinga’s ideas, one can imagine his retort to be that his defence relies not on truths but on possibilities. Furthermore, it has to be accepted that his propositions are without logical inconsistency and, as such, have to be recognised as possible. Thus, despite the theological inadequacies of Plantinga’s arguments, it seems that, on a purely logical basis, he has protected the simultaneous belief in God and the acknowledgement of the existence of evil from a charge of inconsistency. Stendhal’s pithy comment that “God’s only excuse is that He does not exist’ seems less forceful given the possible justification advanced in the Free Will Defence. Yet this is not the end of the problem. It merely serves to define the lines of battle for the philosophical debate on the evidential problem of evil in order to find a more theologically complete answer to this thorny problem.
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