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Theodicy and Blissful Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Lawrence Moonan
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A blunt commentator on the things around us can argue that by failing to choose the ‘obviously better’ possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right, God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good ‘. An underlying argument runs:

1 (1) If God does not choose the obviously better possibility of making beings who would accept freely and always go right,

God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good. (Assumption.)

2 (2) God does not choose the obviously better possibility...

(Assumption.)

1,2 (3) God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good.

(1,2 modus ponens.)

This, the Underlying Argument, is weaker than the Blunt Commentator’s original one. If it fails, the original one cannot succeed, but if it goes through, the original one does not necessarily go through. I number the main steps, chiefly to keep track of the assumptions.

In Part I, I argue that the Underlying Argument fails to prove the conclusion that God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good; and that it fails, from ignoring a view exploiting the notion of blissful freedom: a theologians’ notion, but one already appealed to by at least one philosopher strongly sympathetic to the Blunt Commentator’s argument. In Part II, I draw attention to an ambiguity in ‘always go right’, with a view to pursuing, in Part III, consequences of a further ambiguity to be seen in ‘God cannot be both omnipotent and good’, demanding attention to two diverse forms of theism. One of these— ‘existence-theism’—is invulnerable to a Blunt Commentator’s argument, but can exploit some of the Underlying Argument’s steps to support a Blunt Commentator’s conclusion in the sense needed to impugn the other form, ‘character-theism’.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 80 , Issue 945 , November 1999 , pp. 502 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Some of the sharpest critics of theodicy favour a Blunt Commentator's argument. One is found expressly in Mackie, J. L., ‘Evil and omnipotence’, Mind 64 (1955) 200–12,209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Flew, A., ‘Divine omnipotence and human freedom’, in Flew, A. & Maclntyre, A., New Essays in Philosophical Theology, London [1955], xii + 274pp., 144–69, 155Google Scholar.

3 Hume did not care for this other way, though in Pt 9 he treats it on a couple of pages (215–16 of the 1976 Price edn). When his character Demea puts it forward, it is in a manner of expression already biased towards character‐theist concerns. Yet when Cleanthes argues against it, his argument is not allowed to rest on a contentiously empiricist premiss only. Demea argues for the existence of a being ‘who cannot be suppos'd not to exist without an express Contradiction’ (p.215). Cleanthes replies that the Words., necessary Existence have no Meaning; or, which is the same thing, none that is consistent' (p. 216). The words italicized (by Hume) indeed have no meaning within the Way of Ideas. But ‘none that is consistent’ permits the objection raised by Cleanthes to be shared by at least some who might not have wished to accept his then fashionable empiricist criterion for meaning.

4 In Infinite God: The central issue addressed by existence‐theism, forthcoming, I spend some chapters (of philosophy of language and metaphysics, chiefly) to explain how precisely it is that the existence‐theist's core contentions need not be incoherent, and and are at least possible to be said with truth. More briefly I expound the ways in which ‘God is both omnipotent and good’ might likewise be said with truth by an existence‐theist. For examples of medieval Schoolmen's use of similar modes of analysis, for attributions to divine power in particular, see L. Moonan, Divine Power: The medieval Power Distinction up to its adoption by Albert, Bonaventure and Aquinas, Oxford 1994, xi + 396pp., passim. In our day treatments of divine goodness, and how the obvious evils around us can or cannot be accommodated, within an existence‐theist perspective, are not in evidence. Even a philosopher who opens a chapter on divine goodness with a crisp and essentially clear outline of such a treatment almost immediately leaves it aside, saying: ‘. I shall not consider this position in any detail. Instead, I shall concentrate on the issues surrounding the claim that God is morally good.’śve, so far as any prominence goes, the issue of whether such a claim even can be made without absurdity, where God is supposed not to be in any way finite. See G. J. Hughes, The Nature of God, London 1995, p.152.

5 A consistent existence‐theist can certainly seek to argue that what we call goodness in creatures (or, what can be seen to be ultimately ordered so as not to be capable of becoming (again) disordered) is in addition morally admirable; just as he might argue that there is a lot of it, or that even parts of it are big. But just as he cannot use ‘is such that there is a lot of it’ or ‘is in parts big’ in an analysis that could permit theologians to use “The divine nature is in parts big' or ‘. is such that there is a lot of it’, he likewise cannot use” This ordered entity is morally admirable (or, is morally deplorable)', or ‘This whole order of things is morally admirable (or, is morally deplorable)’ as a premiss within a putatively explanatory theology, or to justify ‘God is morally admirable (or, is morally deplorable)’. See ST 1/6/3 ad 3; Id. 21q. 1. l.fi;Verqu2,3adlb The point here has nothing especially to do with either theology or morals. It is that some predicates (say, ‘is descriptively good’, ‘is wise’) express integral “forms” which are not inherendy limited to instantiation in a restricted range of kinds of thing, and can thus be used to provide “scientifically” usable analyses of ‘God is good’, ‘God is wise’ where ‘God’ is being taken to refer to the simply existent, if there is one. Other predicates express integral “forms” instantiable only in limited things, or limited ranges of things: and cannot be used to provide the theologian with analyses of the kind he needs. As to the distinction between ‘good’ as used in a narrowly moral sense, as against the sense needed for the descriptive goodness of something's fitness for a purpose, or of some technical performance, that is not at all arcane. A widely sold seaside postcard used to show a young lady emerging from the bushes, cheeks flushed, hair slightly out of place. With analytical precision she says to the young man with her: ‘Mummy told me I was to be good. Was I?’.