Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T05:25:34.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Making a “Case for God” (a Causa Dei)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

John R. Schneider
Affiliation:
Calvin College, Michigan
Get access

Summary

This chapter is focused on which moral and epistemic conditions a God-justifying account of evil must meet in order to succeed. The author proposes that such accounts are likely to fail so long as they seek to show that in allowing evil, God has met the Necessity Condition. It requires that to be justified, the evil must be necessary in an absolute sense, i.e., unavoidable, even for God. The author proposes that theists should adopt Roderick Chisholm’s Defeat Condition, instead. It requires that the moral agent “defeat” any evil that s/he allows by integrating it into a valuable whole that both outweighs the evil and could not be as valuable as it is without the evil. In addition, he takes Chisholm’s suggestion that divine moral agency may be better pictured on an aesthetic analogy of God as Artist than on a narrowly ethical one. Further, he adopts Michael Murray’s proposal that a God-justifying account should be at least as plausible as not. In other words, it should be a “case for God” (or causa Dei), in Leibniz’s terms, rather than either a mere logical defense or fully blown theodicy.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×