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Depravity, Divine Responsibility and Moral Evil: A Critique of a New Free Will Defence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

A. M. Weisberger
A. M. Weisberger
Affiliation:
Philosophy and Religion, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida 32211
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Extract

One of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of religion is the existence of moral evil in light of an omnipotent and wholly good deity. A popular mode of diffusing the argument from evil lies in the appeal to free will. Traditionally it is argued that there is a strong connection, even a necessary one, between the ability to exercise free will and the occurrence of wrong-doing. Transworld depravity, as characterized by Alvin Plantinga, is a concept which has gone far to explain this relationship. Essentially, the notion of transworld depravity involves the claim that in any world where a person is significantly free that person would, on some occasion, act morally wrongly, or as Plantinga phrases it: ‘If S' were actual, P would go wrong with respect to A’ (where S' is a possible world, P is a person and A is an action). Not only, Plantinga claims, is it possible that there are persons who suffer from transworld depravity, but ‘it is possible that everybody suffers from it’. If transworld depravity obtains, Plantinga notes, God ‘might have been able to create worlds in which moral evil is very considerably outweighed by moral good; but it was not within His power to create worlds containing moral good but no moral evil – and this despite the fact that He is omnipotent’. On this view, God could not instantiate perfect-person essences who would not ever sin. Although Plantinga argues that these instantiated beings are significantly free in that they could have done otherwise (i.e. not sinned), it does seem that his claim about transworld depravity amounts to a claim about transworld depravity amounts to a claim about the existence of a necessary connection obtaining between freedom and evil. For even though it makes sense to claim that an individual may have unactualized dispositions, to claim that everyone, past, present and future, has unactualized dispositions seems to be a significantly different claim. It is therefore difficult to see how this latter claim differs in substance from the claim of a necessary connection obtaining between the capacity for free will and the commission of evil acts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 375 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Plantinga, Alvin, God, Freedom and Evil (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1974), p. 48.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 53. Though Plantinga says this, he goes on to argue in the following chapters that this is the best possible world, i.e. that God could not have created a world with as much moral good and less moral evil or less natural evil than this one. God, then, could not, according to Plantinga's final analysis, have actualized a world ‘containing a better balance of broadly moral good and evil’ (p. 59).

3 Dore, Clement, Moral Scepticism (N.Y.: St Martin's Press, 1991), p. 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ibid. p. 58.

5 Ibid. p. 58.

6 Ibid. p. 59.

7 Ibid. p. 59.

8 In addition, it should be noted, that since the definition of O-occasions stipulates the lack of God's intervention, the alternative of God intervening on O-occasions is not viable.

9 Ibid. p. 59.

10 Ibid. p. 60.

11 Ibid. p. 62.

12 Ibid. p. 62.

13 Ibid. p. 62.

14 It may be objected that there are such things as unactualized dispositions such that if Jones had been going to harm Smith, contrary to fact, then a third party, Brown, would have prevented Jones from acting. This amounts to the same thing as saying that Brown has the capacity for behaving in such a manner and seems a perfectly acceptable way of speaking. But it is not at all clear that vis-à-vis God, unactualized dispositions are relevant. Many theists assume that God does not have the capacity for evil or a ‘capacity’ for anything which God does not already possess a disposition towards. And this implies that God is imperfect since it is normally assumed that God is wholly actualized. Hence, unactualized dispositions in relation to God are problematic, unless one accepts a process-like concept in which God is in a state of becoming.

15 The example can be found in Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Cohn, Steven M. in Classics of Western Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977), pp. 505–6.Google Scholar

16 Frankfurt, Harry G., ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’, in Moral Responsibility (ed. John, Martin Fischer) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 143–52.Google Scholar

17 Dore, op. cit. p. 64.

18 Ibid. p. 65.

19 Ibid. p. 65.

20 Ibid. pp. 65–6.

21 It seems that Dore is shifting the burden of proof by requiring the atheist to argue against the possibility of God (argument O). This argument does not seem relevant to the present discussion.

22 Dore, op. cit. p. 67.

23 Ibid. pp. 67–8.

24 One approach, which will not be dealt with here, involves the issue of God's foreknowledge (or lack thereof). For if it can be shown that God has no foreknowledge of heinous deeds then there is no corresponding obligation to prevent evil.