[lit-ideas] Re: The Problem of Evil
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 17:36:43 -0800
Robert,
Moving into Protestant theology, what you have described in your note below
equates to hyper-Calvinism; which in ascribing utter sovereignty to God also
involves utter determinism in all things. Calvin himself never argued for
that determinism, but the only way to reconcile his view of God's
sovereignty with Man's free will is to assume an antinomy. To reconcile all
the things Calvin said on these matters, an antinomy is required.
Jacob Arminius after Calvin's death denied the antinomy and insisted that
God gave man utter free will. He didn't precisely deny God's sovereignty
but argued that God sovereignly gave man free will. Thus man can of his own
free will choose to love God. Evil is necessary for man to have this free
will.
Those who are not Arminians but not hyper-Calvinists deny that man's free
will is absolute. God is sovereign even over man and can and does choose
along the lines of what you have described below, but nevertheless
(according to this scenario) man's free will is not infringed. Man freely
chooses what God wishes him to choose, "for it is God who works in you to
will and to choose according to his good purpose."
The Arminians and Calvinists differed on the nature of man. Calvinists
believed man's fall was absolute; thus, he doesn't have enough sense of the
Good to choose God unless God enables him to do so. Arminius denied that
man's fall was absolute. Man retains a sense of the Good that is sufficient
to enable him to choose it.
I wasn't aware that Leibniz took a deterministic view equivalent to
hyper-Calvinism, but very few people hold such a view today. Many more fall
into the two categories I've described above giving man Free Will with God
enforcing or not enforcing the will assumed to be free. We choose God with
a Free Will that is absolutely free to choose him or not - or we choose God
with a Free will that seems absolutely free to choose him or not. In either
case, evil is required.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 4:45 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Problem of Evil
Lawrence writes:
> We can assume (as Leibniz does in his /Theodicy,/ if memory serves me)
> that God has chosen to create humans that will love him of their own
> free will. In order for humans to be able to make that choice, they
> must be able to choose evil. If there is no evil there can be no such
> choice.
This is easy for Leibniz to say, harder for him to reconcile with the
rest of his philosophy. In choosing Lawrence, God chose not just any
Lawrence, but that very Lawrence who now lives in San Jacinto, has two
Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Ginger and Sage, etc., etc. In choosing this
Lawrence, God chose from (according to Leibniz) an infinite number of
possible Lawrences, and the one he chose was the one compatible with the
most other existent things compatible with the most possible good of the
whole.
So, in choosing Lawrence, God knew (having before him the complete
individual concept of Lawrence) that Lawrence would join the Marines,
live in San Jacinto, and all the rest. If God knew that, it's hard to
see how Lawrence could have done otherwise. THIS Lawrence could not have
decided not to join the Marines, no matter how much he (now) believes he
has free will. For, had he not joined the Marines, and so on, he would
not be the Lawrence God chose to actualize. (It's hard to phrase the
counterfactual here.)
It gets worse. God is constrained by his own will to actualize the most
possible existent things consistent with the good of them all as
coexistents. So, one might think of God as an ideally competent chess
player, who, as his competence reaches the ideal, can only make the best
possible moves. There are no such chess players in the real world, but
one can imagine such a 'chess player' embodied in a computer program
which can never have HAL-like episodes of rebellion.
All of these criticisms were made at the time Leibniz wrote (most
forcibly by Arnauld), and it's by no means clear he answered them.
There's an interesting appendix-cum-summary of the Theodicy at
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/leib.htm
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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