## 1. Logical Consistency and Inductive Evidence



What is described above is the *problem of evil*. Because evil
poses the most difficult problems for traditional views of divine
providence, this discussion will be organized around the theme of
evil. In its classical formulation, the problem of evil is a problem
of logical consistency. The opponent of theism alleges that a triad of
properties traditionally held to belong to God's nature --
omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence -- are not jointly
consistent with the existence of evil in the world. An omniscient God,
we must assume, would have knowledge of the evil in the world. An
omnibenevolent God would desire to halt or prevent it, and an
omnipotent God should be able to do so. Yet evil is rife. It must be,
then, that God lacks at least one of the triad of attributes, and
perhaps all of them. Perhaps as creator he is somewhat in the dark as
to what evils may occur, and once they appear it is too late to
forestall them. On the other hand, it may be that evil is endemic
-- built into the structure of any world, so that even God is
powerless to prevent it. Or, maybe he just doesn't care, and has
long since turned his attention to projects more interesting than
nurturing our feeble destinies. Whatever the reason, the argument
runs, he is not the God of Abraham, of Jesus, and of Mohammed. Their
God simply would not permit wanton wrongdoing, nor would he allow the
suffering and duress under which all creation labors. So while the
presence of evil in the world does not serve to prove there is no God
at all, it does show there is no God of the kind adumbrated in
religious tradition.



The logical problem of evil may be countered with a logical rejoinder.
The fact is that the three perfections described above are not by
themselves sufficient to exclude the existence of evil in creation. To
get that result we have to add a crucial premise to the argument put
forth by opponents of theism: that there can be no justification for
evil, no good reason why a God with the attributes in question would
create a world that contained it. But why suppose this is so? Perhaps
there is some good or goods that are possible only in a world that
contains or at least permits evil, and without which creation would be
vastly inferior to what it is. If that were true, then an all-good and
all-loving God would not shrink from creating a world that contained
the evil necessary for that good or goods to be
 achieved.[1]
 So there is no final inconsistency here, and the theist may wish to
conclude on that basis that the problem of evil is resolved. But not
yet. For the opponent may concede that the presence of evil in the
world does not *entail* that there is no God of the kind
religious tradition postulates. Still, he may hold, it gives us good
inductive reason for thinking there is no such God. The pervasiveness
and profundity of the evil that occurs, the fact that it so often
falls upon the innocent and helpless, and the simple fact that we can
see no good coming from most of it are more than enough reason,
according to this argument, for any rational person to reject the God
of tradition. What good could possibly justify the Holocaust, or
wholesale destruction of civilian populations in war? Or, lest the
numbers submerge the agony, consider just a single case of innocent
suffering, posed by William Rowe: a fawn burned horribly in a forest
fire somewhere removed from any human awareness, doomed to days of
lingering suffering before inevitable death (1979, 337). We are unable
to discern any good coming from this single instance of evil, and the
same could doubtless be said for millions of others. What more reason
could a rational person demand for rejecting the God of our
fathers?



This so-called inductive or evidential argument from evil may be met
with a response similar to the one directed against the logical
argument, for the fact is that it too involves assumptions which, when
brought to light, seem questionable. It assumes that for each instance
of evil that occurs, we humans will be able to detect any good toward
which it might be directed, and that we will be able to tell whether
the good is achieved, whether it was worth the evil sustained in
reaching it, and whether it could better have been achieved without
the attendant evil. Again, however, why assume any of this is so? It
is not obvious, in the first place, that goods and evils are
commensurable in the way this argument seems to suppose--that is,
that we are able to grade goods and evils on a common scale, and then
measure the value of the good against the bad (Swinburne 1998, ch.
13). But even if we could do this, an all-powerful, all-knowing and
all-loving God could easily have aims exceeding any we have ever
imagined. How they are achieved at all, much less the role sin and
suffering may play in their achievement, could in principle escape us
utterly (Howard-Snyder 1996). If so, then we would still be in no
position to make the kinds of determinations about the role evil plays
in the world, and how dispensable it may be, that the evidential
argument presupposes. Still less should we expect to be able to make
such determinations in every case, which is what the argument demands.
As with the logical problem of evil, then, the theist may greet the
experiential problem with a stand-pat position. Neither argument goes
through unless we make assumptions we have no reason to make, and
which when brought to light seem positively implausible.



Still, evil is troubling, and anyone troubled by it is likely to be
left unsatisfied by the stand-pat response. For one thing, the
argument cuts both ways. If we are unable to discern God's
purposes then just as he may turn out to be a far better being than
our experience would indicate, so also he may turn out to be far
worse: a positively evil or incompetent God, undeserving even of
regard, let alone worship. Moreover, this response seems out of
keeping with the spirit of the Western religious tradition. That
tradition is at home with the concept of mystery: it speaks often of
aspects of God and his relationship to the world that outreach us, in
that our intellects are not finally able to grasp them. But seldom if
ever does the tradition treat mystery as totally impenetrable. Just
the opposite: the whole point of the theological enterprise is to
enable the believer to understand, however imperfectly, the nature of
God and the plan of salvation. It is hard to see how this aim can be
achieved if a phenomenon as central as evil must be held to escape all
comprehension, nor is there any special reason to expect such a thing.
Rather, it is in keeping with the hope of the believer that there
should be available some glimpse of the good accomplished through the
presence of sin and suffering in the world, even if in the actual
struggle with them one's best ally is faith. If this is correct,
then the theist should not limit his options to the negative. Beyond
pointing out the shortcomings of the opponent's arguments, he
can and should try to offer a positive *theodicy* -- that
is, an account of the role evil plays in the world, and a
justification for its presence. Such an effort is likely, of course,
to end up incomplete. In particular, the theist may be unable in many
cases to point to a good to which some evil that occurs is
indispensable. But he may want to be able to offer a general
justification for the presence of evil, and to describe some good or
goods which but for the occurrence of evil could not be achieved. The
question is whether he can do so without compromising divine
perfection.


## 2. The Free Will Defense



It may be possible to minimize God's involvement in the evil of
the universe. That is the aim of what is perhaps the most prominent
strategy employed in recent theodicy, which is based on the concept of
free will, and its importance in the plan of creation. The free will
defense begins by distinguishing two kinds of evil. *Moral
evil* is evil that occurs through rational action -- that is,
through wrongful exercises of will on the part of rational beings.
*Natural evil*, by contrast, is owing entirely to the operation
of natural causes. To see how this distinction works, we need to
realize that moral evil can itself be divided into several categories.
First come exercises of will that are sinful in themselves, and these
are of two kinds. They include wrongful acts of intention formation,
as when one maliciously decides to kill another, and the volitional
activity through which we execute wrong intentions -- e.g., the
effort of will aimed at carrying out the intention to murder. The
moral wrong of these exercises of will is *intrinsic* to them.
They are sinful in themselves, and would be so even if, through some
fortuitous circumstance, the attempt to kill went awry, and the
intended victim was not harmed at all. Suppose, however, that the
action succeeds, as it does in most instances of wrongful willing. If
so, further evil will occur -- in the present case, the death of
the victim. Now if the victim had died entirely as a result of natural
causes, his death would have counted as a natural evil. In this case,
however, it counts as a kind of moral evil, for while its occurrence
requires the cooperation of natural causes, those causes are set in
motion by the killer's volitional activity. Harm and suffering
that are caused by wrongful willing count as *extrinsic* moral
evil, in that they are caused by acts of will that are morally evil in
themselves, or intrinsically.



The significance and pervasiveness of extrinsic moral evil is easy to
underestimate, because a lot of the suffering and hardship that
belongs in this category tends to masquerade as merely part of the
human condition, and hence as natural evil. But it is not so. Many of
the hardships that befall humankind -- disease, ignorance,
poverty and the like -- owe their existence at least in part to
wrongful willing. The poverty of some is owing to the greed of others;
suffering and deprivation may occur because of institutionalized
racial and ethnic hatred, or because leaders use their positions to
advance their own power and prosperity at the expense of their
citizenry, or simply because the cost of defense against foreign
enemies brings economic hardship to a nation or some of its members.
In other cases the cause is sheer laziness, or the fact that time and
talent that might have been devoted to good are instead consumed by
selfish ends. Who can estimate how much of suffering and disease, of
poverty and ignorance, or of the threat posed by natural disasters
would by now have been conquered were not so much of our energy and
resources diverted either to the pursuit of wrongful goals, or to
guarding ourselves against those who do pursue them, and mending as
well as we can the harm they cause? If human wills were not so often
misdirected, human life would be transformed, and the struggles
against those evils that seem to us no one's fault much further
advanced. A great deal, then, of what we are likely to view as natural
evil actually falls under the heading of extrinsic moral evil.



That all of sin and so much of suffering counts as moral evil is
advantageous to free will theodicy, for according to the free will
defense moral evil is not to be blamed upon God. It is entirely our
fault -- that is, entirely the fault of rational beings who
employ their wills to pursue evil. This is because we have *free
will*, which is to be understood here in what is known as the
*libertarian* sense. We exercise libertarian freedom in forming
or executing an intention only if our deciding or willing is not the
product of deterministic causation -- that is, provided there is
no set of conditions independent of our exercise of will which,
together with scientific law, make it certain that we shall decide or
will as we do. Independent conditions -- our motives and beliefs,
for example -- may incline us toward one or another intention or
action. But they cannot guarantee it, because what we decide and what
we strive to achieve is finally up to us. Were it not so, we could not
be held accountable for our actions. We would be no more responsible
than someone who acted out of a psychological compulsion such as
kleptomania, or who was a victim of addiction, hypnosis or the
like.



Given the nature of libertarian freedom, then, our actions are up to
us, in that they are not brought about by independent events. And
because this is so, according to free will theodicy, moral evil is
entirely our fault. God is not to be blamed for it, because it owes
its existence to our wills, not to his (Plantinga 1974, 30). God is,
of course, responsible for the risk he takes in creating a world that
contains beings with free will. But proponents of the free will
defense can point to two reasons that could justify God in populating
the universe with such creatures. First, they are an enhancement to
creation. Creatures with free will are sources of spontaneity in the
world, able to choose for themselves the principles by which their
conduct will be guided. As such, they display the kind of liberty we
take God himself to have, and so are made in the image of their
creator (Swinburne 1998, 106). Second, God endows us with this power
because he desires creatures who will accept him freely, who will love
and obey him not because they are programmed to do so, but as a matter
of spontaneous choice. That we should come to love God in this way is
far more satisfactory than that we should be driven to accept him. As
in strictly human affairs, forced affection is a pale substitute for
love voluntarily bestowed. But, the argument goes, God cannot endow us
with free will without running the risk that some of us, at least,
will turn against him, and use our freedom to seek evil ends. True,
such ends are usually not achieved unless nature, which is God's
creation, cooperates. The bullet could not find its mark or the poison
be effective unless the relevant natural laws stayed in place. In
principle, then, God could allow us free choice and yet prevent any
choice that is evil from having its intended outcome. But freedom
would be a sham if an evil will could never have its way, and the
locus of sin lies not in the consequences of evil willing but in the
willing itself. Moreover, even though the harm we cause through our
actions requires God's cooperation, it too would not occur but
for our choosing and willing as we do. The price of freedom, then, is
moral evil. But moral evil is to be laid at our doorstep, not
God's, for it is we who choose it. God merely permits our
choices and makes them efficacious. In this he is justified, first
because of the good of there being free creatures in the universe, and
second because some, and perhaps many or even all, of these creatures
will come to enjoy God's eternal friendship, by choosing freely
to love and serve him.



The free will defense does not, in most formulations, attempt a
complete solution to the problem of evil. It deals only with moral
evil, and although we have seen that this category covers more than
might at first be supposed, it certainly does not appear that all of
the sorrows and failures of the world can be gathered under it. Even
if the free will defense succeeds then, there will remain a residuum
of natural evil to be addressed. It may, however, be questioned
whether the defense succeeds even in the limited project it
undertakes. One criticism of it raises a question about the relation
between creaturely freedom and God's activity as creator. J. L.
Mackie has argued that if God is truly all-powerful, he ought to have
been able to create creatures who possessed free will, but who never
did wrong (1955, 209). If that were possible, then we would have had a
universe free of moral evil, even though it contained creatures with
free will. Perhaps the sinful populace that presently inhabits the
world would have lost out on such a scenario: maybe God would have had
to create an entirely different crowd. Still, moral evil would have
been banished, and the condition of the world doubtless vastly
improved. But could God have exerted such control over creation?
Proponents of the free will defense have tended to think not. In order
for God to provide creatures with meaningful freedom, they argue, God
must relinquish control over how that freedom is exercised. Were it
not so, libertarian freedom would be destroyed: our decisions and
actions would not finally be up to us, but would instead be
manipulated by God (Plantinga 1974, 41-42; Flint 1998,
84-90). Even if they were exempt from natural causation, they
would still be determined by God's will, and so would be unfree.
Indeed, the argument runs, it would be logically impossible for God to
create creatures possessed of libertarian freedom, and at the same
time have the operations of their will fall under his creative
*fiat*. Now it is not usually considered a failure of
omnipotence for God to be unable to do what is logically impossible.
We need not, therefore, relinquish the claim that God is all-powerful.
Rather, the theist concludes, Mackie is simply mistaken in thinking
such a God could create free creatures with a guarantee that they
would never sin.



It should be pointed out that in giving this response, proponents of
the free will defense are making an important assumption about the
relationship between God's will as creator and ours as creatures
-- namely, that God's will operates in the same way natural
causes do. That is, his *fiat* as creator counts as an
independent condition or event, which causes the occurrence of what he
wills in just the way natural causes produce their effects. So if, as
creator, God wills that I decide to attend a concert this evening,
then my decision to do so is causally determined, just as it would be
had I been driven to it by an insatiable desire for Beethoven.
Otherwise, we would not have a violation of the criterion for
libertarian free will given earlier. Now we shall eventually see that
this model of the relation between God's will and the world is
at best unlikely, but let us suppose for now that the theist's
answer to Mackie's complaint stands. Is the free will defense
then successful? Again, it seems not, for the antitheist can still
raise two complaints, and these amount to two challenges that any
theory of providence which desires to avail itself of the free will
defense must overcome.



First, he may argue, even if the free will defense does not violate
God's omnipotence, it still violates his sovereignty. If God
were fully sovereign over the universe his rule would be complete. All
that occurs would be under his direct control, down to the smallest
detail. According to the free will defense, however, this is not so.
Rather, as we have just seen, proponents of this kind of theodicy
insist that some of what goes on in the world is not under God's
control, but under that of his creatures. To be sure, God need not
have created free beings, and when they engage in sinful willing he
can always thwart their ends by manipulating natural causes. But he
cannot stop them from sinning (or, for that matter, from willing
well), for both of these lie with the will itself. So in creating free
creatures God relinquishes part of his sovereignty over the universe
(Mackie 1955, 209-10; Flint 1998, 84-85). Furthermore,
unless God regularly interferes with his creatures achieving their own
objectives--that is, unless he deprives them of a meaningful and
efficacious freedom--his own objectives in creating the universe
are likely to be thwarted. However great a good it may be to have in
the universe creatures who exercise libertatian freedom, this would
seem a high and unseemly price for an otherwise sovereign God to pay
for their existence.



Second, the antitheist may argue, the free will defense violates
divine omniscience. For if I possess libertarian freedom, then whether
I decide to go to the concert tonight is neither under God's
direct control nor controlled by natural causes. And if that is the
case then God has no way of knowing what I will decide. Like anyone,
he can make a lucky guess: he may believe devoutly that I will decide
to attend the concert, and that may turn out to be correct. But lucky
guesses do not count as knowledge. Knowledge requires reasons, and God
can have no satisfactory reason for his belief, if by
"satisfactory" we understand what the infallible
omniscience usually attributed to him would require -- namely, a
reason that guarantees correctness. Rather, like any observer, God
must wait to learn what my decision will be in order to be sure of it.
But then throughout the time prior to my act, God is not omniscient.
There is a truth about the future that he does not know. Thus, the
antitheist may conclude, the free will defense is in fact a failure.
It exonerates God from direct responsibility for sin, but it does so
only by surrendering part of God's sovereignty, and by making
him fail, as creator, to be omniscient.


## 3. God's Knowledge of the Future and Open Theism



It is fair to say that philosophers responding to these difficulties
have been more concerned to preserve God's omniscience than his
sovereignty. Perhaps this is in part because philosophy is itself a
matter of pursuing knowledge, so that philosophers are led to value
omniscience more highly. Were we generals, say, or politicians, our
priorities might be quite the opposite. In any case, most discussions
of the seeming conflict between creaturely freedom and divine
perfection have concentrated on the task of reconciling as far as
possible the assertion that we have free will with the claim that God
is all-knowing. One especially important way of doing so is to hold
that God's position with respect to time is such that unlike us,
he does not have to wait for the future to unfold in order to know its
contents. Such was the view of Boethius, who held that God exists
entirely outside of time, in a kind of eternal present to which all
that occurs in time is equally accessible (*Consolation, Bk. V, pr.
6*). Thus, God is able in a single act of awareness to comprehend
all of history, the past and future as well as the present, just as
though they were now occurring. Many philosophers have followed
Boethius in this, holding that God is in no way a temporal being, but
is rather the creator of time, with complete and equal access to all
of its
 contents.[2]
 And it may well appear that on such a view God's omniscience is
restored, in that he has immediate cognitive access to everything that
will ever occur. Moreover, there is no conflict with libertarian
freedom, since on this account God's knowledge of our future
decisions and actions is not really *fore*knowledge. Rather,
the vantage point from which God knows our decisions and actions is
completely external to time. This makes all talk about
"when" God knows about our actions pointless. He simply
knows them, in a unified, timeless and unchanging act of comprehension
that comprises all that ever was or will be.



There are criticisms of the idea that God is timeless (Wolterstorff
1982). But even if the Boethian position is correct on this score, the
usefulness of this means of reconciling divine omniscience and human
freedom is highly questionable. The difficulty is that in order for
God to exercise full providence over the world, he needs to know
*as creator* how the decisions and actions of creatures with
libertarian freedom will go. It is hard to see how that is possible on
the Boethian view, for even if God is outside of time, his activity as
creator is still *ontologically prior* to the activities of
free creatures on this account, whereas his knowledge of those
activities is *posterior* to them. Thus, it seems impossible
that God's creative will could be guided by his knowledge of our
actions, even if, from his timeless perspective, such knowledge is
finally available to him. If this is correct, then even the Boethian
God runs an immense risk in creating the world. He can only hope that
we will use our freedom justly and wisely, perhaps making some
allowance for the possibility that we will not, but otherwise simply
trusting in the outcome. So although God's omniscience may be
restored by placing him outside of time, he is in no way empowered by
it. (Whether the Boethian God's simple foreknowledge grants any
providential advantage at all is a matter of dispute, but undeniably
the Boethian God must run significant risks in creating the world. For
an entry into the debate, see Hunt 2009, Hasker 2009, and Zimmerman
2012.)



It may be questioned, furthermore, whether this view of things really
is consistent with the claim that God is timeless. The Boethian
picture appears to call for a kind of transition, wherein God first
creates free creatures in ignorance of what their actions will be and
then learns about those actions by observation. But if that is so then
there appears to be change in God, in which case he would have to be a
temporal being after all. Now perhaps there is some way around this
problem: maybe as creator God somehow operates in isolation from
certain parts of his knowledge, while having access to all of it in
his role as knower -- and yet remains timeless in both
capacities. Still, it is not satisfying that God should be limited in
this way. His activity as creator ought to be completely unhampered.
Moreover, the bifurcation in God's thinking called for by this
adjustment only reinforces the difficulty of treating creaturely
decisions and actions as falling under divine providence. As creator,
on this account, God really does not know what kind of world he is
creating: how evil it will be, whence the evil will arise, and how to
anticipate it in detail in the plan of creation.



One may be tempted at this point simply to throw in the towel, to give
up the endeavor to reconcile libertarian freedom with divine
sovereignty and omniscience. If so, we may still insist on libertarian
freedom for creatures. But if we are convinced this is incompatible
with holding that God is omniscient, and that everything that takes
place in the created world falls under his complete governance, then
these claims will go by the board. On this type of theory, commonly
called the "Open" view or Open Theism, God is a temporal
being who, like us, must await the actions of free creatures in order
to know with certainty what they will be. And much that occurs, most
especially sinful decisions and willings, will not be of his choosing.
Not that he is completely in the dark: God can still have
probabilistic knowledge of how his creatures will act, and he can
contrive to place them in circumstances designed to elicit if possible
whatever behavior will achieve the most good. And of course he still
has the power to motivate and punish, so creatures may be guided
toward right paths. Accordingly, God is still able to exercise a sort
of general providence over the world, guiding it in the direction of
his objectives as creator, or at least something approximating them
(Rhoda 2010a). But his providence can never be, as is sometimes said,
"meticulous." Rather, on this scenario God's aims as
creator can only be achieved -- assuming they will be achieved at
all -- by taking risks. Inevitably, creaturely free will makes
for a setting of uncertainty, and only within that setting can God
attempt to bring creation to a happy outcome. Yet he proceeds, and his
doing so is a measure of his love for us.(See Hasker 1989 and Pinnock
et. al. 1994.)



Such a position may appeal to philosophers who find the God of perfect
being theology too remote and mysterious to equate with the God of
scripture. But this viewpoint faces serious problems. Some are
relatively specific. For example, it is hard to see how, if even God
does not know what they will be, the actions of free creatures could
be the subject of prophecy. Yet they often are, in scripture (Flint
1998, 100-02). Also, there will no doubt be many cases where
multiple free actions impinge on some outcome God desires. When that
is so, the probabilities of those actions need to be multiplied to
determine God's assurance of the outcome, which as a result
could be minuscule (Flint 1998, 104). But the biggest difficulty is
that this view places God's fate as creator almost completely in
the hands of his creatures. No matter how concerned and loving he may
be, or how powerfully he attempts to win us over, we are on this view
out of God's control. There is always the chance, therefore,
that his plans as creator will be utterly dashed, that his overtures
to us will be rejected -- even to the point, one supposes, of our
all being lost -- that we will use our freedom and advancing
knowledge to wreak ever greater horror, and that creation will turn
out to be a disaster. Willingness to take chances may be laudable in
some cases, but surely this level of risk is irresponsible. Moreover,
it is completely out of keeping with both scripture and tradition,
both of which portray God as above the fray of the world, unperturbed
by its mishaps, and governing its course with complete power and
assurance. On the Open view, divine governance is a hit or miss
affair, in which we can only wait to see whether a somewhat poorly
informed God will manage to bootstrap his way to his objectives.
Surely, opponents argue, this gives away too much of the traditional
notion of providence.



One tactic for preserving omniscience even while accepting the basic
open theist view just described is to hold that God cannot be faulted
for not knowing in advance how we will exercise our freedom, since
until we do there is simply nothing to know. According to views of
this kind, not all propositions about the future have a truth value.
Some do, of course: it is a necessary truth that 2 + 2 = 4, and this
proposition has as much bearing on the future as it does on the
present and past. Similarly, a proposition concerning the future may
have a truth value when its truth is causally determined. Consider,
for example, the proposition that the sun will rise tomorrow. Most
likely, it is true. True or false, however, this proposition's
truth value is fixed by causes already in place, causes that determine
either that the sun will rise tomorrow or that it will not. But now
consider the claim that I will decide an hour from now to attend a
concert this evening. If I have free will, there are no conditions
presently in place that determine whether I will so decide. This being
the case, according to the present view, the proposition that I will
decide in an hour to attend the concert is neither true nor false. It
has no truth value at all, nor does any other proposition that
describes a future free decision or action. But then, the argument
runs, it is not a mark against his omniscience that in creating us,
God does not know how we will exercise our freedom. It is logically
impossible to know of a proposition that it is true or that it is
false if it is neither. And inability to know what logically cannot be
known does not harm God's omniscience, any more than inability
to do what logically cannot be done harms his omnipotence (Swinburne
1993, 180-81). A distinct but related view is that all future
contingents are in fact false, because there is nothing in the future
to make them true, and so the fact that God does not know ahead of
time which of them becomes true is not an epistemic failure on his
part (see Todd 2016).



If correct, this view would indeed reconcile divine omniscience and
creaturely freedom, leaving only the problem of sovereignty to be
addressed. But there are telling arguments against it. Propositions
that venture to predict future free decisions and actions do appear to
have truth values, and some of them appear to be true. One indication
of this is that we believe and disbelieve such propositions, and what
is it to believe a proposition but to believe it is true, or to
disbelieve it but to believe it is false? Nor does it seem possible to
worm our way out of this. Let *p* be the proposition that I
will decide to attend a concert this evening. It might be protested
that for someone to believe I will so decide is only to believe
*p* will *become* true at the appointed time --
i.e., at the time of my decision. But that does not solve the problem,
for to believe this is simply to believe another future-tensed
proposition -- namely, "*p* will become true"
-- which is just as dependent on my decision for its truth as is
*p*. Similarly, it will not do to claim that to believe
*p* is not to believe it is true but only that it is likely or
probable. For to hold these beliefs is just to hold, respectively,
that it is likely that *p* is true, or probable that it is
true. In short, there seems no avoiding the fact that to believe
*p* is to be committed to its truth, pure and simple. Moreover,
anyone thus committed would, if I later decide to attend the concert,
be justified in saying they had been right about what I would decide,
that their earlier belief had been correct. And again, what is it for
a belief to be right or correct except for it to be true? (For a
related argument, see Pruss 2010, to which Rhoda 2010b replies.)



In any case, the concern remains that open theism leaves the
traditional strong view of divine providence in tatters in favor of a
risk-taking God. A better solution would be preferable, if one can be
had.


## 4. Middle Knowledge



A possible way to reconcile libertarian views of freedom with a strong
view of divine providence was posed by the sixteenth-century Spanish
Jesuit, Luis de Molina
 (1588).[3]
 According to Molina, God is able to know *as creator* how any
exercise of creaturely freedom will go. That is, God knows, for any
creature he might create, how that creature will behave in whatever
circumstances he might be placed. God is able to know this, moreover,
even though the creatures in question will, if created, enjoy
libertarian freedom. This kind of knowledge, which Molina called
*middle
 knowledge*,[4]
 is comprised in what we may call *subjunctives of freedom*.
Consider, for example, the situation in which I will find myself later
today, when I deliberate about whether to attend the concert tonight.
It is possible to formulate two subjunctive conditional propositions
about that situation. The first states that if ever I were placed in
the circumstances (call them *C*) that will then obtain, I
would decide (freely) to attend the concert; the second states that in
those circumstances, I would not so decide. Let these be symbolized as
*C* > *p* and
*C* > *~p*, respectively. Both
*C* > *p* and
*C* > *~p* count as subjunctives of
freedom, and since we are imagining that I will be placed in
*C* later today, it is plausible to think that one or the other
of them is true. Let us suppose it is
*C* > *p*. According to defenders of middle
knowledge, God knows prior to any creative act on his part that
*C* > *p* is true; hence he knows this
prior to my existence, and prior to any act of mine. We need not take
the "prior" here as temporal, if we hold that God exists
outside of time. The idea, rather, is that the truth of
*C* > *p* is logically or ontologically
prior to any creative decision on God's part, and to any doing
of mine, in that its truth is fixed independently of these matters.
Further, God is able to *know* that
*C* > *p* is true independently of any
decision of his, and without appealing to any actual decision on my
part as evidence. Finally, God is armed with true subjunctives of
freedom for every other set of circumstances in which I might ever
have been placed, and the same for every other free individual he has
the option of creating, whether he actually chooses to create the
creature or not. In effect, then, middle knowledge gives God advance
notice of every free decision or action that would ever occur, on the
part of any creature he might create (Flint 1998, 37-41).



Assuming it is a legitimate notion, middle knowledge does much to
restore God's providence in creating free creatures. Once armed
with information about how such a creature would decide and act in the
various circumstances in which he might be placed, God has the option
of not creating the creature, or of creating him in whatever
circumstances are called for by the subjunctives of freedom God wishes
to be realized in the actual world. Now of course the circumstances in
which one creature is placed may depend in part on how others choose
to exercise their freedom. But the willings of those others can in
turn be providentially arranged, since they too fall under middle
knowledge. In principle, then, nothing need occur in the actual world
that does not have God's prior recognition and consent, at
least. There may, of course, be much that does not go as God would
prefer. It is important to realize that middle knowledge does not
restore complete sovereignty to God. If
*C* > *p* is true, then there is no way for
God to create me in circumstances *C* and have me do anything
but decide to go to the concert. The best he can do is alter my
circumstances to fit some true subjunctive of freedom that has another
outcome. And the same goes for the subjunctives of freedom that hold
of all other creatures God might create. This means there is quite a
range of worlds which, though logically possible, are not
*feasible* for God, in that they are beyond his reach as
creator (Flint 1998, 71). From God's point of view, free
creatures will behave as they will behave, and that is that. Still,
God can know in advance of creation what worlds are feasible, and can
plan accordingly, which is a vast improvement over the Boethian view.
The position as regards omniscience is also improved. There is still a
kind of transition called for -- this time commencing from a
point at which God merely contemplates the possibilities of how things
*might* go with creation, to a point at which, having decided
what creatures and circumstances will in fact populate the world, he
knows how things *will* go. Again, however, it might be
possible to work out a way in which the transition can be understood
non-temporally. And the Molinist position offers a further advantage
over that of Boethius, in that now God's knowledge about how
exercises of creaturely freedom will actually go will be guaranteed
simply by his decision as to what creatures and circumstances he will
create, rather than awaiting the actual decisions and actions of free
beings. This diminishes God's passivity; it enables him to know
*as creator* how the history of creation will
 unfold.[5]



But *is* middle knowledge a legitimate notion? Many have
thought not. One serious objection against it is that there does not
appear to be any way God could come by such knowledge. Knowledge, as
we have seen, is not merely a matter of conceiving a proposition and
correctly believing it to be true. It requires *justification*:
one must have good reasons for believing. But what justification could
God have for believing the propositions that are supposed to
constitute middle knowledge? The truth of subjunctives of freedom
cannot be discerned a priori, for they are contingent. It is not a
necessary truth that if placed in circumstances *C*, I will
decide to attend the concert tonight. Nor can we allow that God might
learn the truth of *C* > *p* from my actual
behavior -- that is, by observing that I actually do, in
circumstances *C*, decide to attend the concert. For God could
not make observations like this without also finding out what creative
decisions he is actually going to make, which would destroy the whole
purpose of middle knowledge. Instead of being guided in his creative
choices by knowing what decisions creatures would make *if*
they were created, God would be presented from the beginning with a
*fait accompli* -- with the reality that he was
*going* to create certain creatures, and they were going to
behave in certain ways. For God's options as creator to remain
truly open, middle knowledge must have some other justification.
Furthermore, it seems clear that observation of the actual behavior of
creatures could not possibly inform God of the truth of those
subjunctives of freedom that delineate the behavior of creatures he
will *not* choose to create, for in their case there is no
pertinent reality to consult. Yet Molinism wishes to allow for the
possibility of such creatures. It is apparent, then, that neither
conceptual resources nor resources founded in the concrete world will
enable God to know in advance of his decisions as creator which
counterfactuals of freedom are true. If there is a third resource, no
one has said what it is. Thus, while God may firmly believe certain
subjunctives of freedom, there appears to be no justification
available to him that would allow such beliefs to constitute middle
 knowledge.[6]



Note that the above objection is not based on the claim some have
made, that subjunctives of freedom lack truth values, or that their
truth is not properly grounded (R.M. Adams 1977; Hasker 1989). That
may indeed be a problem for some subjunctives of freedom, but it is
not a problem for *C* > *p*. On the usual
understanding, a subjunctive of freedom counts as true provided that,
among worlds in which its antecedent is satisfied, there is at least
one in which the consequent is satisfied as well, and which is more
similar to our world than any in which the consequent is not
satisfied. Now no world can be as similar to the actual world as that
world is to itself, and we are assuming that *C* and *p*
are true in the actual world. Accordingly,
*C* > *p* must be true as well. The only
way to avoid this outcome is to deny that propositions like *p*
-- that is, propositions which describe future free decisions in
the actual world -- have truth values, and we have already seen
that this will not do. So *C* > *p* is
perfectly well grounded. The problem is only that it is not grounded
in the way it needs to be to serve as middle knowledge. It is not
grounded *independently* of God's or my free decisions.
In light of this, we can only conclude that the Molinist effort to
reconcile creaturely freedom with God's omniscience and
sovereignty as creator fails. We have yet to see how God can know as
creator what decisions and actions his creatures will engage in, while
at the same time upholding the idea that those decisions and actions
are manifestations of libertarian freedom.



The objections to Molinism presented in the last two paragraphs are
typical of most objections to Molinism in that they focus on the key
idea of the subjunctive of freedom, also often called a counterfactual
of creaturely freedom (CCF). Ken Perszyk, in his survey of the debate
over Molinism, divides those objections up into three categories: (1)
arguments that there can be no true CCFs, or at least not enough true
CCFs for Molinist purposes, (2) arguments that there cannot be true
CCFs prior to God's creative decisions, and (3) the argument
that we have seen already, that God cannot know CCFs prior to his
creative decisions. See Perszyk 2013 for a more thorough discussion of
the varieties of such arguments.


## 5. An Epistemic Alternative



It is commonly supposed that Molinism represents the only middle
ground between, on the one hand, a risk-taking God of the sort
envisioned by both open theism and simple foreknowledge views (like
the Boethian view described above) according to which whatever
foreknowledge God does have is not of much (or any) providential use,
and, on the other hand, full-blown theological determinism. It has
been suggested recently (in Kvanvig 2011, chapter 8), however, that
there may be space for views other than Molinism in the area between
those two extremes. Molinist "middle knowledge" is
knowledge of subjunctive conditionals ("were Jeff to be put in
circumstances C, he would do X"), which God then employs to
guide his decisions as to what circumstances to actualize. But there
are a number of other sorts of conditionals that might be of use to
God in his decision-making. One is a particular type of indicative
conditional, an epistemic conditional: "if Booth didn't
kill Lincoln, someone else did." This is a different sort of
conditional than the subjunctive, for it is true while the
corresponding subjunctive ("if Booth hadn't killed
Lincoln, someone else would have") is false. An epistemic
conditional is true when knowing the antecedent puts one in a position
to know the consequent, such that one's belief in the consequent
(on the basis of the antecedent) will count as knowledge so long as
the consequent is true and the evidence is undefeated (by contrary
evidence one has or by external pieces of information that result in a
Gettier situation).



If Molinist subjunctive conditionals are replaced by these epistemic
conditionals, a different, "epistemic" theory of creation
and providence may be generated. God reasons suppositionally: suppose
I do X, what am I in a position to know would result? He uses his
knowledge of the epistemic conditionals to infer what he can, and then
supposes further actions on his part, inferring further information.
Importantly, some of these conditionals will describe human free
decisions, for even on libertarian views of the will it is still
possible sometimes to know what someone will freely do on the basis of
other information about them. Sometimes God will come to a point where
he cannot infer anything further because there just isn't enough
information, but sometimes he will be able to generate a complete
history of the world in this manner, a complete plan or story of the
world. Such complete plans or stories are the possible worlds that he
will be able to ensure actually come about (by actualizing all the
states of affairs he had supposed throughout the reasoning process);
they are the feasible worlds on this account of providence. So, like
Molinism, there are possible worlds that God cannot bring about, but
(also like Molinism) he has quite a bit more control over the ones he
can bring about than is allowed by open theism. The limitations on God
are subtly different on this view than on Molinism. On Molinism the
limitations are the simple facts about what free beings would do in
any given situation, while on the epistemic account the limitations
are the availability of evidence with respect to what free beings will
do in any given situation.



Perhaps the greatest strength of the epistemic account is that it may
avoid the central problem of Molinism: the question of how the
conditionals in question can be grounded, and grounded in such a way
that God can know them independently of his decision to create. If
epistemic principles are necessary truths, then God can know a host of
epistemic conditionals simply on the basis of his knowledge of
necessary truths. One problem with the epistemic account is simply the
question of whether there really are sufficient true epistemic
conditionals for God to come to know enough about what free beings
will do with their freedom to generate a whole history of the world.
Perhaps the profoundest problem for this view, however, is the
question of the infallibility of divine foreknowledge. It is a key
feature of the view that the reasoning from antecedent to consequent
licensed by the epistemic conditionals is the sort involved in
ordinary judgments of knowledge, and so is defeasible (subject to
overturning by further information) and fallible. But surely
God's knowledge cannot be defeasible and fallible.
Kvanvig's solution to this problem is to argue that once the
divine course of suppositional reasoning reaches completion and
describes a full possible world, it transforms from fallible and
defeasible to infallible and indefeasible precisely because of its
completeness; there are no further pieces of information that God
could learn which would undermine the reasoning (an internal defeater)
or put God into a Gettier situation (an external defeater). But it is
hard to intuitively reconcile Kvanvig's solution here with the
reality that all of this reasoning is merely suppositional and each
step on its own is fallible; couldn't it turn out to be mistaken
at some point once the suppositions are made reality and the divine
fallible reasoning collides with what actually happens? (See Kvanvig
2011 and Hasker 2016 for discussion of these objections.)


## 6. The Traditional Solution



If the views considered thus far all fail, theists have no choice but
to place the decisions and willings of rational creatures under
God's creative authority. Only by so doing is it possible to
restore to him complete control over the course of events in the
world, and only in this way can he know *as creator* what world
he is creating, and so be omniscient. If all of our decisions and
actions occur by God's creative decree, then all possible worlds
are made feasible for him. He can create as he wishes, with full
assurance as to the outcome. And he can know how things will go, in
particular how we will decide and act, simply by knowing his own
intentions as to what our decisions and actions will be. Clearly,
there are respects in which this approach is to be preferred. From the
perspective of piety, the versions of the free will defense we have
seen so far are all troublesome: they seem to place our concern for
ourselves above our regard for God, by maximizing our options at the
expense of his. One can readily anticipate the response that if
complete sovereignty for God and libertarian freedom for his creatures
cannot both be had, then the devout (not to say Godfearing)
philosopher would be well served to endorse the former, that anything
less is not just out of keeping with the mainstream of theological
tradition, but actually borders on blasphemy. Yet we have seen that
free creatures are of greater value than the unfree, if only because
their greater likeness to God makes them a desirable enhancement to
creation. The question, then, is whether placing our decisions and
actions under God's creative *fiat* leaves in place
anything of creaturely freedom, or of the free will defense.



It may seem obvious that neither can survive: that once the operations
of creaturely wills are subordinated to God's will, libertarian
freedom disappears, and with it any hope of absolving God of moral
evil. But at least where freedom is concerned, traditional theology
asserts the opposite. Augustine, for example, held that God moves our
wills, working in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure, as
scripture says (Phil. 2:13). Yet he insists that this does not
diminish our freedom, for if it did we would not be told in the same
passage to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (*On Grace
and Free Will*, 750). Similarly, Thomas Aquinas maintains that all
of our doings, even those in which we sin, are on a par with the rest
of creation in having God as their first cause. Only the defect of
those actions which is their sinfulness derives from us. Sin, he says,
is like limping, in which the defective motion arises from the
crookedness of the limb, rather than the power of locomotion that
impels it (*Summa Theologica* I-II, Q. 79, Art 2). Like
Augustine, moreover, Aquinas sees no conflict between God's
activity as creator and ours as free creatures. On the contrary: he
holds that God's activity as first cause is actually the cause
of our freedom, since he moves us in accordance with our voluntary
nature (*Summa Theologica* I-II, Q. 18, Art 1, *ad* 3).
What to make of these suggestions is, however, less than clear. In
Augustine's case it may be argued that his later writings
abandon any earlier flirtation with libertarian ideas, so that the
notion of freedom endorsed in the passage referrred to above is in
fact a version of what today is known as compatibilism (Baker 2003).
With Aquinas, however, the situation is less clear (Stump 2003, ch.
9). Much turns on how it might be possible for God to move us in a way
that is truly consistent with our voluntary nature, where
"voluntary is taken to signify libertarian freedom". And
it has to be said that Aquinas offers little by way of explanation.
There is, however, an interesting suggestion in the *Summa Contra
Gentiles*, where Thomas maintains that if the will were moved by
an external principle as agent, the movement would be violent, and
then proceeds to the conclusion that God *alone* is able to
move the creaturely will as agent without violence, since he alone is
the cause and sustainer of its being, and thus is able to move it from
within (Book III, Ch. 88).



There are two things that may be said in favor of this suggestion here
(see also McCann 1995 and 2005, Shanley 1998, and Grant 2010 and
2017). The first concerns libertarian free agency itself, which is
often portrayed as a power by which we cause, or confer existence
upon, our own actions. Such a view would not accord with
Aquinas's claim that only God can move the creaturely will in
this way, and in fact it is hard to see how this portrayal of agency
can be right. If I confer existence on my decision to attend the
concert tonight, I must do so either through some act separate from
the decision, or as an aspect of the decision itself. If it is through
a separate act, the problem of freedom simply shifts its location. We
have to be convinced that this act in turn receives its existence from
me, and we appear headed for a vicious regress. But neither does it
seem possible for me to confer existence on my act of deciding as an
aspect of the act itself. For prior to the act's appearance
there is nothing to do the conferring, and once it appears, the
conferral is no longer needed. So whatever agency and voluntariness
consist in, it does not appear to be an ability to confer existence on
our own actions. That is important, because it means that unless we
can find a way to ground libertarian freedom in the creative activity
of God, the decisions and actions in which it is manifested are likely
to have no cause, no accounting *whatever* -- a situation
few philosophers are likely to find satisfying, and which hardly puts
me in control of my act of
 deciding.[7]



A second important consideration has to do with the relationship
between God's creative will and the things he creates. We are
prone to think of this as an event-causal relation, in which God
issues a kind of command, and the command in turn produces the
mandated effect. Applied to our example, this would mean that God
creatively wills that I decide to attend the concert, and his willing
then causes me to decide. And of course this sounds exactly like what
Aquinas describes as the violent operation of an external principle.
On this scenario my deciding is passive, and hence involuntary,
because God's creative *fiat* is an event independent of
my decision, which by acting upon me robs me of my autonomy. I am
reduced to a puppet manipulated by God, rather than a free agent.
Clearly, however, this scenario does not reflect the way Aquinas
thinks creation works, and on that score there is reason to think
Aquinas is right. For consider again the causal relation alleged to
obtain between God's willing and mine. Whatever we take this to
consist in, it must exist contingently, for causal connections are not
necessary beings. But then this supposed causal connection must also
be created by God, and if that occurs through another process of
command and causation, we would be facing another regress. The only
way out is to hold that God *directly creates* the causal nexus
-- which is to say that in its creation, the nexus itself, not
some command, is the *first* manifestation of God's
creative activity. But if God's creative will can be directly
efficacious in this task, then it can also be so in his creation of us
and our actions. There is, then, no need for a nexus to explain the
efficacy of God's creative will, nor is there any causal
distance whatever between God and either us or our behavior. Rather,
we and all that we do have our being *in* God, and the first
manifestation of his creative activity regarding our decisions and
actions is nothing short of the acts themselves. This is why it may be
misleading to call this traditional view by its common name,
"theological determinism," because the sort of
determination involved in God's providential ordering of
creation is very different than ordinary causal determination within
the created order.



A useful analogy that may be drawn here is to the relationship between
the author of a story, and the characters within it. The author does
not enter into the story herself, nor does she act *upon* the
characters in such a way as to force them to do the things they do.
Rather, she creates them *in* their doings, so that they are
able to behave freely in the world of the novel. On the traditional
account, God's relation to his creatures is similar. As creator,
he is the "first cause" of us and of our actions, but his
causality works in such a way that we are not acted *upon*, and
so are able to exercise our wills freely in deciding and acting. If
this is correct, then as Aquinas at least seems to suggest,
God's creative activity does not violate libertarian freedom,
for it does not count as an independent determining condition of
creaturely decision and action. On the contrary: assuming God's
own will is free, there is no event in heaven or earth that is
independent of my deciding to attend the concert tonight, and which
causes my decision. God's creative activity does not act upon me
or render me passive in any way, for it consists solely in God's
freely giving himself over to being the *ground of being* for
me and all that I do. Accordingly, I can still display libertarian
freedom. My decision is a spontaneous display of creaturely agency,
free in the libertarian sense because it does not occur through event
causality, and because in it I am fully and intentionally committed
both to deciding and to deciding exactly as I do. There are no further
legitimate requirements for libertarian freedom. There is, of course,
something that cannot happen on this view: it is not possible for
God's activity as creator to be devoted to my deciding to attend
the concert, and yet that I should forebear to decide at all, or
decide to do something else. But that is not because if I were to try
it, I would find myself in a losing battle with God's
efficacious will. It is because there is no manifestation of that will
regarding my decision short of the decision itself. The impossibility
that God's will as creator and mine as creature should diverge
suggests trouble because we can view what goes on either from
God's perspective or from mine. That suggests two events, and a
potential conflict between them. Properly interpreted, however, the
traditional view appears to call for only one event, and as far as
*it* is concerned, all the impossibility comes to is that I
cannot at once both make a decision and not make it. To be incapable
of the logically impossible is not a failure of freedom, libertarian
or otherwise.



So far it has been argued that theological determinism, by virtue of
the nature of the determination involved (which may yield the result
that it is even misleading to describe it as determination at all),
may well be compatible with a basically libertarian view of free will.
An alternative for proponents of theological determinism is to accept
a classically compatibilist view of free will, according to which
freedom is compatible even with determination by causal factors within
the created order, so long as those causal factors are of the right
sort. The most famous proponent of such a view is Jonathan Edwards,
and such views are common in the contemporary free will literature.
This discussion will proceed by focusing on the libertarian view of
the will, but many of the same approaches can be taken by the
compatibilist as well.


## 7. Authorship of Sin



The traditional view is enigmatic, and a lot more would need to be
said to make it convincing. But if an account along these lines can be
made to work, creaturely freedom is indeed reconcilable with divine
sovereignty and omniscience. Our destinies are entirely subordinate to
God's creative will; he exercises full control in all that we
do, notwithstanding the fact that our deeds are fully voluntary, and
we have every reason to expect that all that takes place in the world
will reflect the providence of a perfectly loving father. As for
omniscience, here too there is no difficulty. God knows about our
decisions and actions simply by knowing his own intentions, for he
wills that they occur. Nor is his will exercised from the fastidious
distance preferred by Molinists, in which God creates us knowing what
we will do, but has no hand in our actually doing it. Rather, God is
as much the cause of our sinful actions as of our virtuous ones, or of
any other event.



Yet, Augustine and Aquinas would both insist, he remains perfectly
good and absolutely holy, a being deserving of our complete reverence
and absolute devotion. How might such a thing be possible? Does not
the traditional view entail that God is the author of sin in some
objectionable way? This objection must be carefully distinguished from
the ordinary axiological problem of evil: the question of whether God
has sufficiently good reason to allow the evil and suffering which
exist. The author of sin objection says that the traditional view
involves God too intimately in evil even if he has sufficiently good
reason for allowing it.



Part of the answer lies in the fact that even if my act of deciding to
go to the concert tonight has its existence grounded in God's
creatively willing that I so decide, it is still *I* who act,
still I who decide. God's willing that I decide as I do does not
make my decision God's. Indeed, if it did, if my decision were
predicated of God rather than me, his will would fail to achieve its
object. But it is not possible for God's will to be frustrated,
as long as what he wills is consistent. So regardless of what we may
think of the traditional view's contention that divine
sovereignty and creaturely freedom are fully compatible, that view
does not take the operations of our will, or the actions founded upon
them, away from us. They remain our own. Consequently, any sin they
involve remains ours also. Thus, if I decide sinfully to go to the
concert tonight -- if, say, I am neglecting duties I know should
take priority -- the sin is mine, not God's. If he is to be
faulted, it must be for some other reason. It should be noted,
moreover, that God's position in this respect is not much
different from what it is on the Molinist account. True, that view
takes certain things out of God's hands. Whether I would decide
to go to the concert in the circumstances in which I will find myself
tonight is not, according to Molinism, up to God. But it is up to him
whether I shall be created in those circumstances, and indeed whether
I shall exist at all. On both views, God knowingly and willingly
creates a world in which rational creatures sin. The difference is
that on the traditional view God does have complete control: he can
create any possible world, and he is as much involved as creator in
those acts in which we sin as he is in any others.



This is not a complete answer to the author of sin charge, simply
because the author of sin objection is not one objection at all but a
family of objections. It has as many different versions as there are
objectionable relations to sin that the traditional view might be
thought to entail God bears. It might be argued that the traditional
view entails that God is the cause of sin, or that God intends sin, or
that God desires that sin occur, or that God loses his moral standing to blame sinners for their sins, or that God fails to love the damned.
Each of these charges must be treated individually (for a variety of
responses, see the collected essays in Alexander and Johnson 2016; see also Todd 2018 for a discussion of God's moral standing to blame sinners).
Here it may suffice to point out that with respect to each individual
charge it is not obvious both that theological determinism entails
that God bears the property and that God's bearing the property
would be incompatible with divine perfection. For instance, as the
above author-storyteller model makes clear, theological determinism
does not entail that God causes evil in the same way that created
agents cause evil, and if the traditional privation theory of evil is
true, then theological determinism does not entail that God causes
evil at all (for more discussion of this appeal to the privation theory of evil, see White 2016, Furlong 2019, chapter 4, and Grant 2019, chapter 6). Nor it is clear that, on the correct view of creation,
theological determinism entails that God intends any evil at all;
perhaps God selects the possible world he wishes to create all at
once, so to speak, intending only the good aspects of creation and
merely foreseeing (as an unintended side effect) all the evil that is
caught up with it (White 2016). God may even love the damned and
decide to decree their damnation, if there is a sufficiently great
good that cannot be brought about without it; a general may,
consistent with perfect love, order his son (a captain in his army,
whom he loves) to a certain death in defense of a city in order to
prevent the greater tragedy of the city's sacking (Johnson
2016). The question is whether there is such a great good; and this is
the ordinary, axiological problem of evil.


## 8. Moral Evil and Defeasibility



If the author of sin objection does not succeed in defeating the
traditional view, then what is left is the question of whether God has
sufficiently good reason for decreeing the evil that exists. The
standard free will defense, which works only by diminishing
God's authority and circumscribing his providence, is not
available to the theological determinist. Can the theist's
response to the argument from evil survive the loss of the standard
free will defense?



Another free will defense may yet be available (McCann 2005). (For
other attempts to modify a variety of free will defenses so as to make
them compatible with theological determinism, see Byerly 2017
and Almeida 2017.) It must be remembered that even though the actions
of free creatures do not escape providence, such creatures are still
an enhancement to creation, in that their nature reflects more closely
what we suppose to be God's own nature. As such, free creatures
are more suited to the kind of fellowship with God that believers
understand to be their ultimate destiny. It may be, however, that the
achievement of that destiny inevitably involves sin. In part, this is
because to have free will is to have a nature that is incomplete, in
the sense that what we are never fully determines what we shall do.
Rather, we have to complete our own nature, by establishing an
identity for ourselves -- that is, by adopting the patterns of
behavior and long term objectives that define our lives. And it may be
that in so doing we inevitably find ourselves in rebellion against
God, simply because as free beings we are apt to assume we can
establish our destiny in a way that escapes providence -- that
is, entirely by our own choice -- and so make that enterprise
instead of obedience to God our first priority. Second, it has to be
remembered that true friendship is always voluntary. If God only
*exacts* devotion from us, we are reduced to being his
subjects. To be friends with him requires a meaningful and responsible
decision on our part to accept the offer of friendship he presents to
us. But a responsible choice in God's favor requires that we
understand the alternative -- which is to be at enmity with him.
And there is good reason to think such an understanding requires that
we sin. Guilt, remorse, a sense of defilement, and the hopeless
desolation of being cut off from God cannot be understood in the
abstract, because if they are only understood abstractly they are not
*ours*. Only through experience can we understand what it means
to be in rebellion against God, and we gain that experience by
sinning. By turning away from God we realize what it means to be
alone, and we learn that however successful they may be, our own
projects cannot satisfy us. Only then are we in a position to choose
responsibly to accept God's offer of fellowship. Finally, we
must remember the simple fact that if we are to experience a
transition that ends in our being united to God, that transition can
only begin from a place where we are separated from him. It is
plausible to think, however, that there is no morally neutral ground
here: that unless we are within the circle of God's love, we
must be outside it, and that once we choose voluntarily to stand
alone, we are already in an attitude of hostility toward God. In
short, if we are to come to God as voluntary agents, it may well be
that we can only approach him from a position of sinfulness.



If this is correct, there is a great good that God, as a loving
creator, is able blamelessly to will for us, but which in its exercise
inevitably leads *us* into blameworthiness. That good is our
autonomy -- the thing that makes us most like God, and is the
sole means by which we are able to reach friendship with him, but
which can be responsibly exercised to enter that friendship only if
first employed in a conceit of rebellion, wherein we learn our
limitations, and come to appreciate the emptiness of a life based on
subjective independence. Only thus are we able to reach a position of
moral autonomy from which an authentic choice to enter into fellowship
with God is possible. Thus, freedom is indeed crucial to moral evil:
the implications of libertarian agency are such that its purpose in
God's plan could not be achieved without the occurrence of sin.
Unlike the standard free will defense, however, this approach does not
endanger God's sovereignty or omniscience. As creator, he is
fully involved in those acts in which we sin, for they can occur only
through his will. But he incurs no blame for them, for they are our
acts, not his, and although they place us in rebellion against him,
they do not put God in rebellion against himself. Indeed, no
individual can be in rebellion against his own will. So if the essence
of sin is rebellion against the will of God, then even though God is
the first cause of those acts in which we sin, it is not possible that
he himself sin in their occurrence. It is worth noting, too, that the
present view makes it possible to explain what, on the standard free
will defense, can only be a mystery -- namely, that although all
of us possess libertarian freedom, and so have the option of serving
God, still *all* humans sin. The reason for this is not that
God suffers a terrible run of bad luck in a grand lottery of his own
institution. Rather, it is because only by passing through sin that
the saved are able to achieve their destiny. By creating us in our
sinfulness, God assures that each individual will develop an authentic
moral identity, and, if the theistic tradition concerning divine
justice is correct, prepares each for the eternal recompense
appropriate to his character.



An objection may be raised at this point. It is not a part of our
religious tradition that all are saved. St. Paul, for example, seems
clearly to have believed that some, the elect, are destined from the
beginning for salvation, and others not
(*Rom.* 9:10-24), and the same appears true of Jesus
himself (*Matt.* 26:24, *Luke* 10:20). And it is part of
standard theology that, after death, the saved are joined to God in
the beatific vision, a state of eternal and indescribable joy. The
lost fare far worse. They are condemned to the bitter and devastating
frustration of permanent separation from their creator, and on many
accounts to a lot of other miseries as well. Now on the present view,
God is as much involved in the rebellion of the reprobate as in the
conversion of the saved. And one may well wonder what could justify
this. Why should a loving God create creatures destined for
damnation?



Many have found the idea that some creatures are destined for final
reprobation troubling, if not downright incompatible with divine
omnibenevolence (M.M. Adams 1993). One option here is to reject the
concept of reprobation, opting instead for one or another form of
*universalism* -- the view that in the end all are saved,
or at least that salvation is never completely foreclosed to anyone.
Perhaps in the end the will of those who would reject God is simply
overwhelmed, so that they have no choice but to accept him.
Alternatively, it may be that those who would reject God's
friendship are never able to do so with finality, so that the
opportunity for salvation is always available to them even if they
never opt for it. But universalist views face the twin challenges of
apparent unorthodoxy and of seeming to trivialize earthly moral
existence, which most religions treat as of paramount importance. 



For those who find universalism unacceptable the problem is to find
adequate justification for the idea that some may be irretrievably
lost. Here it should be pointed out that whatever the sufferings of
the lost may be, theologians have always agreed that the greatest evil
they sustain is final and irremediable separation from God. Nothing
could be worse than to be cut off from the love and friendship of a
father whose power extends to every detail of the universe, and who
invites us to a share in his very life. But if this is the greatest
evil of damnation, then no one who ends that way is treated unfairly,
for this separation is precisely what one chooses by insisting on a
life of rebellion rather than seeking reconciliation with God. Indeed,
having once created beings destined to be lost, it is hard to see how
a loving God could do anything but honor their choice in the matter
(Kvanvig 1993, ch. 4). What is troubling, rather, is that he should
create such beings at all, much less will their performance of the
very actions through which they reject him. It may be argued, however,
that even here God's love is at work. He cannot, of course,
directly intend the rebellion of sinners, nor the destruction of the
finally unrepentant. But the lost are full participants in securing
their tragic destiny; and while a life ruined by final rebellion is
morally indefensible, it is still morally meaningful. Through their
actions, the lost carve out for themselves a character which, though
not upright, represents a real option for a free creature. Thus, the
argument runs, to the extent that moral autonomy is a good it can be
willed for a creature by God even when it takes this form.
Furthermore, it is claimed, it is a mistake to think that God is not
lovingly involved in the lives of the reprobate, or that he would have
been more loving had he not created them. On the contrary: what is
meaningless is to suppose that God would have shown greater love
toward the lost by omitting them from creation. What is not there
cannot be loved. Equally, it is meaningless to think the lost would be
better off had they not
 existed.[8]
 What does not exist is neither well nor poorly off, nor anywhere in
between; and it is as good for the reprobate to have life, the
opportunity for salvation, and an autonomous choice as to whether to
accept it, as it is for the saved. What is not good for them is the
use they make of the opportunity, in choosing to be without God. But
that is fully their decision, and its consequences are fully
earned.



If the sort of view outlined above is correct, there is ample reason
for God to create a universe in which there is moral evil, for only
through the presence of moral evil is it possible for creatures like
us to develop a legitimate moral identity, and make an informed and
responsible choice to accept or reject God's offer of friendship
with us. It is important to see that on such a view, moral evil is not
treated as a causal means to the good of our having friendship with
God. If that were so, opponents could justly object that God could
simply have created us in such friendship from the start, and the
defense would fail. Rather, the good on which this kind of theodicy is
based is a free and informed choice that can only be made from a
position of sinfulness. Rather than constituting a causal
*means* to our establishing our own stance toward God, sin is
an indispensable *part* of the process -- something
without which a legitimate choice for or against God's
friendship is not just causally but conceptually impossible. But that
is not all. In the case of those who choose in God's favor, at
least, moral evil is *defeated* in that it is bound up in a
total state of affairs that counts as a far greater good, in which the
evil is addressed and overcome. The very autonomy that the sinner once
insisted upon is surrendered to God, thus becoming the foundation for
a new understanding and a richer relationship, in which one is able to
act as an informed and wholehearted participant in the divine
enterprise of working good. Sin does not function as a causal means in
this process, nor is it simply overbalanced by some other good with
which it coexists. It encountered and overcome, through the
providential operation of God, as manifested in creaturely
freedom.



The idea that evil is defeasible was developed first by Roderick
Chisholm (1968). It is an especially useful notion for theodicy, in
that when evil is defeated, the usual objections to the presence of
evil in the plan of providence are turned aside. If evil were only a
means to good, and were simply outweighed by the goods to which it
leads, antitheists could legitimately object that God could have
created a better world simply by omitting the evil and creating those
goods outright, or obtaining them through means that were not evil. By
contrast, when evil is defeated it is caught up in a larger state of
affairs that constitutes a far greater good, but not by containing
components that might have occurred independent of the evil in
question, and simply outweigh it. Rather, the evil is addressed within
the larger state of affairs in such a way that it becomes integral to
the good through which it is defeated. The defeat of evil is,
moreover, an especially impressive sort of good. That Beethoven should
have overcome the natural evil of his deafness to write the music he
did, for example, strikes us as an amazing good -- one far
greater than what would have been accomplished had Beethoven written
the same music (assuming that to have been possible) with good
hearing. Similarly, that moral evil is overcome through the process by
which sinners are brought into a right relationship with God may be
considered a far greater good than would have been accomplished had he
made us a community of spiritual lotus eaters, whose relationship to
him, if any, was founded on no meaningful decision, but simply upon
our never having had the experience that would make anything else
possible. Indeed, given the moral vacuity of such an existence, it is
not obvious that such creatures would even be fit for divine
friendship, much less able to make the decision through which that
relationship is brought to pass.



But of course the same does not occur in the case of any who might be
lost. Their rebellion is permanent, and is not overcome through any
action of theirs. The antitheist may wish to argue that in this case
it is evil that triumphs over good. The character of the lost is
permanently corrupted: any virtue that was theirs is turned to
wrongdoing, and any hope that they might even achieve peace with God,
much less be of useful service to him, comes to nothing. Thus, it
might be claimed, the very existence of the reprobate stands as a
gratuitous and unanswered defilement of creation, in which evil is
victorious. Can the theist point to anything that might reverse this
verdict? One possibility is that God himself could take action
specifically aimed at defeating all moral evil. This, of course is the
defining theme of Christian soteriology. In that tradition, all sin is
defeated through the paramount manifestation of God's love for
the world, the redemptive suffering of Christ, which could not have
occurred unless there were sin, and which makes possible God's
offer of salvation to humankind. Not all sinners may accept the offer,
but God is reconciled to all, in the sense that the substitutionary
atonement of Christ covers all wrongfulness. For the Christian
believer this is a *sine qua non*: nothing but the sacrifice of
a being who participates fully in the divine nature is sufficient to
satisfy fully the demand of divine justice, and unless that demand is
satisfied friendship between God and humankind is impossible. Thus the
redemptive suffering of Christ is for Christians the ultimate act of
mercy and compassion on God's part toward all sinners, and the
ultimate defeat of moral evil (see Plantinga 2004).



This kind of answer is, however, confined to a particular religious
tradition. Is a more general solution possible? There are at least two
lines of response the theist can take up at this point. First, he can
argue that the moral evil wrought by unrepentant sinners is defeated
through divine justice. Evildoers who refuse reconciliation with God
receive a recompense addressed precisely to their offense: a permanent
state of separation from the God they reject. The destruction this
entails befits their situation, but it is also a destruction the
wrongdoer chooses, and his choice is honored by God in the outcome.
Thus, religious apologists argue, the fate of the reprobate is a
manifestation not only of God's love for them, but also of his
justice. Without sin, it is held, much of God's goodness could
be displayed in the world, but his justice could not. Not that God
does not forgive the unrepentant; he does, but his forgiveness is
rejected, and that is what seals the sinner's fate. So while the
sinfulness of the unrepentant is not overcome through their accepting
salvation, it is defeated through God's justice in honoring
their rebellion. This display of God's character is what some
have identified as "glory," and so this is a version of
the divine glory defense (see Johnson 2016; for another version of the
divine glory defense, see Green 2016 and Hart 2016.) Secondly, there
is the fact that the sinner's deeds are visited upon others in
the world, who must cope not only with the suffering and hardship that
results, but also with the very fact of sin: with knowing they have
been denied the dignity appropriate to rational beings, and instead
made the object of malice. Here too, the theist might argue, it is
possible for sin to be defeated, by being pointed out and corrected,
and above all by being forgiven. In admonishing and forgiving those
who sin toward us, we ally ourselves with God in the struggle against
moral evil, by refusing to lapse into vengefulness and self-pity, and
instead focusing ourselves, and if possible the sinner as well, on the
higher things of God. This also is a good to which sin is integral,
rather than constituting a mere causal means, and which makes the
world far better than it would be if sin never occurred.


## 9. Suffering



The position outlined above depends heavily on the idea that in the
plan of providence moral evil is defeated, rather than simply being
outweighed by some good to which it is a means. The evil of sinful
willing is overcome when autonomy that is wrongfully exercised is
surrendered to God in repentance and conversion, or when the sinner is
left to the just deserts of willing to be separated from God. It may
fairly be argued, however, that the defeat here pertains primarily to
intrinsic moral evil -- that is, to sinful willing itself --
rather than to the harm caused by it. Both conversion and reprobation
may refute the sinful will, but they do not seem to alleviate or
otherwise overcome the suffering caused by it. The idea of forgiveness
may address the latter to some extent, but it is not entirely clear
how. And even so, it may be claimed, much suffering is not, or at
least not obviously, the result of wrongdoing. The pains and anxieties
of daily living would doubtless be lessened if wrongful willing did
not occur, but there would still be danger and disease, accidents,
natural disasters, occasional deprivation, the sufferings of old age,
and eventual death. Theodicy has to deal with these evils too, and as
in the case of sin, it will not do to claim simply that they lead to
some greater good that outweighs them. For as in the case of sin, the
antitheist could then argue that God could as easily have created the
world so that the resultant good would be achieved by means that did
not involve suffering, or would simply appear without any means at
all. How, then, might the theist respond here? Can the concept of
defeasibility be developed so as to cover suffering as well as
sin?



One indication that it can is the disdain we would have for a world in
which there were no suffering or hardship to be faced, but instead
only endless gratification. As usually formulated, the argument from
evil is based on what appears to be a false presumption. It imagines
that the ideal world for a loving and compassionate God to create must
be what John Hick describes as a hedonistic paradise: a place devoted
to human enjoyment, in which comfort and convenience are maximized,
and pain and deprivation have little or no place (1966, 292-93).
If not banished completely, they must be held to the minimum necessary
to guarantee to God's creatures the most pleasant existence
possible. Now obviously, that is not the sort of world we have. The
amount of suffering is immense -- far more, certainly, than it
would be if God's aim were to maximize worldly joy. But the
appropriate conclusion, the theist may argue, is not that the universe
is not the creation of a provident God. For consider how we react to
people whose lives have little to distinguish them except that they
appear -- perhaps deceptively -- to be filled with
enjoyment. There is a tendency, when we suffer one or another of
life's ills, to envy such people: to wish our own existence
could be as theirs seems to be, rather than the painful drudgery of
the moment. But the truth is that we seldom admire those who appear to
have a life of ease, nor are we likely to consider that kind of life
very well spent. What we admire are lives of courage and sacrifice:
persons who overcome hardship, deprivation, or weakness to achieve
some notable success; who stand, perhaps not even successfully,
against some great evil; or who relinquish their own happiness to
alleviate the suffering of others. How would such lives be possible if
natural evil did not exist? (For a related view, see Swinburne
1978.)



Still less would we respect an entire world devoted to nothing but
enjoyment. Imagine a society in which everyone has an electrode
implanted in their brain, which, when a current is passed through it,
causes intense euphoria, unmatched by any other pleasure. One simply
needs to be attached to a power source, and the simple push of a
button yields ecstasy. And that is all anyone cares about.
Agriculture, commerce, government, and social institutions are
organized toward but one goal: to maximize the time each person can
spend plugged in, lost in self-stimulation. Individual lives are
conducted with the same aim. Work is still necessary, but it is held
to a minimum, and contact with fellow human beings has no purpose
other than to keep things running smoothly, so that the pleasure of
all can be maximized. Now if the antitheist ideal of creation were
correct, this type of society ought to represent a high order of human
existence -- better by far than the world in which we presently
find ourselves. In fact, however, it is beneath contempt, a level of
existence so low as to be barely human. The enterprises we value most
would shrivel to near nothingness in such a world: there would be no
art or culture, no important public works, little technology and
science -- above all, no real human fellowship, no caring, no
sacrifice (Hick 1966, 359-61). Perversely enough, in fact, all
we have to add to a world like this is war, and we get a situation not
at all unlike Hobbes's state of nature, the very antithesis of
anything we could value. Clearly, says the theist, we wish more for
ourselves than this. A life without challenge is a life without
interest.



If theism is correct on these matters, then a God interested in
creating the best of worlds cannot have as his top priority the
maximization of creaturely pleasure. Rather, a significant part of the
enterprise of creation itself ought to be the confrontation and defeat
of evil -- an accomplishment far greater than merely guaranteeing
the unperturbed pleasure of all. And if human beings are created in
God's image, and called to friendship with him, it is to be
expected that they will have an important share in this enterprise.
The central role in every human life of the struggle against evil
bears this out. The battle is fought within each of us: the foremost
challenge we face is that posed by our own sinfulness, which is
overcome when we acknowledge that control of our destiny lies finally
with God, and give up our false claim to ourselves. But for believers
that is by no means the end of the matter. In the wake of repentance
there should occur a gradual transformation of the individual, in
which the damage wrought by sin is repaired, and the character traits
appropriate for friendship with God are nourished. Remorse, anger and
bitterness have to be replaced by gratitude, peace and hope; attitudes
of failure must be supplanted by a sense of worth; rationalization has
to give way to self-understanding. Above all, the believer has to
develop such virtues as humility, patience, courage, and concern for
others -- to give up selfishness in favor of charity. Hick calls
this process "soul-making" (1966, 289-97) In it, the
individual is transformed into a being suited for full friendship with
God, because through the achievement of virtue he is made over into
God's likeness. And much of the process takes place through our
learning to deal with natural evil, with pain, sorrow and deprivation,
in ourselves and others. By having to cope with our own suffering, we
develop peace, humility, perseverance, and trust in God. We also learn
sympathy for others who suffer, and by working to improve their lot we
establish mercy and justice, in ourselves and in society. Indeed, much
of human fellowship and solidarity is founded upon the support and
comfort we lend to each other in times of need, and in the common
enterprises by which we seek to secure ourselves and one another
against the depredations of natural evil.



According to soul-making theodicy, then, by undergoing the soul-making
process we develop the traits required for true friendship with God,
in the only way that is suitable for humans. Some might object that
God could have created virtuous people without their having to go
through the troubles that afflict our present existence, that
dispositions to good behavior need not be established through
suffering (Mackie 1955, 205-06). Theists can respond, though,
that this objection fails to grasp the nature of soul-making. Human
virtues are not mere behavioral dispositions, of the kind found in the
inanimate world. There are, no doubt, natural dispositions of
patience, courage, kindness and the like -- behavioral
propensities we are born with, and that vary in strength from one
individual to another. But these are not what we have in mind when we
speak of moral virtue in the proper sense. True virtue has to be
tested and refined. Someone with the virtue of patience must have
tasted affliction and disappointment, and seen things through; the
courageous person has to have endured danger and risk; the
compassionate must have struggled with temptation, sorrow and
hardship. The point of such experiences is not merely to strengthen
our tendency to act rightly. Virtue is much more than an abiding
behavioral propensity. It is a matter of practical wisdom. It requires
that we know trial and suffering, and human weakness in the face of
them, in the only way they truly can be known: through experience.
Suffering, like sin, cannot be understood in the abstract. Only first
hand awareness of the world's pain enables us to comprehend
fully the options for good and ill in the situations we face, to judge
correctly what action is called for, and to perform it with an
attitude of humble submission to God, and loving concern for others.
In short, true virtue requires knowledge of good and evil -- not
just as they are manifested in our own struggle with sin, but as they
are played out in the travail of the whole world. As we gain this
knowledge, we become more suited for God's friendship; indeed,
the process of gaining it is the beginning of the friendship. For to
address virtuously the hardships of life is not only to improve
ourselves; it is to take up the role God has planned for us in the
crucial creative enterprise of overcoming natural evil.



Soul-making, according to its defenders, is not possible except
through the experience of suffering. Because this is so, and because a
world in which humans are brought to spiritual maturity through this
process is incomparably better than a hedonistic paradise, there is
every reason to expect that a perfectly good and loving God would
create a world in which there is suffering. Still, the opponent may
object that this answer is at best incomplete. For, he will argue, not
all of the suffering of the world enters into soul-making. Consider
again the case that was mentioned earlier, of the fawn caught in a
forest fire. By and large, the sufferings of lower animals pass
without even being remarked by rational beings, and seem to serve no
purpose whatever. Even among humans, intense suffering is often
followed simply by death, and contributes to no apparent moral
development. Or, it may simply be that a person dies suddenly. What
end of soul-making does that serve? And in any case, the complaint
continues, surely the sheer *amount* of natural evil that
exists in the world is incommensurate with the purposes described. In
much of human pain and hardship we see little or nothing of the
heroic, but only misery. Virtue is a fine thing, but could not God
have contrived to purchase it less expensively?



It is difficult for the theist to give a fully satisfying answer at
this point. Perhaps the best strategy is to invoke again the concept
of defeasibility. For a theodicy that emphasizes that notion,
God's full purpose in creating a world that includes pain and
affliction includes more than the spiritual maturation of his
creatures. Indeed, that effect is only concomitant to the objective
that is first and foremost: that evil be defeated. We should expect,
therefore, that evil will be found in the world to such a degree and
in such variety as best to serve this overarching purpose. If anything
less were so -- if God, as creator, should shrink from some evil
as too diabolical to be overcome, or too bitter to be endured --
he would already have fled the field, and the battle would be lost
before it had begun. But as to the actual degree and diversity of evil
necessary for its defeat, that is very difficult for humans to judge.
Our perspective on creation is vastly incomplete, and in any case we
have no reason to expect to be privy to God's purposes regarding
each detail of creation -- especially, as we are about to see,
when it comes to suffering. Still, some helpful points are available
to the theist.



First, as regards the claim that there is too much evil, or that much
of it serves no purpose, it is not obvious that each instance of
suffering must be defeated separately from all others, or in the
experience of the individual who endures
 it.[9]
 The death of another can be as much a reminder to me of my finitude
as my own impending death, sudden or lingering. The sufferings of
others -- even of lower animals -- can be effective in
arousing me to works of mercy and charity. Indeed, while particular
acts of compassion must perforce be directed toward this or that
specific instance of suffering, the attitude of compassion is not. Its
object is *all* suffering, even suffering of which none but the
sufferer will ever be specifically aware; and compassion can be
awakened and reinforced by the very realization that much suffering
goes unnoticed and unrequited. The same goes for other virtues. We may
be prompted to greater efforts to secure justice in the world
precisely because we know that much injustice is never redressed; we
may seek to accomplish some difficult goal for which others suffered
without success, and in whose memory we want to see it attained. One
of the benefits of evil that seems unrequited, then, is that it
elicits greater effort to deal with those ills we can address, and
greater urgency to assist the forgotten. In this sense, at least,
there is no such thing as suffering that serves no purpose.



A second important point concerns the *way* in which suffering
is defeated in the process of soul-making. It is not simply that it is
caught up in a larger process that is very good. That would be
compatible with suffering merely being outweighed in the larger
process, or with it serving only as a causal means to the achievement
of virtue -- neither of which is enough to secure its defeat.
Rather, suffering is addressed in the process of soul-making and, as
it were, refuted. To see how this occurs, we need to understand the
nature of suffering. It is rarely a matter of sheer physical pain, and
even when it is, we are often quite prepared to bear it. A distance
runner might endure a lot of pain, or a student considerable hardship,
in pursuit of their goals. Yet both might maintain an optimistic
spirit, and even deny they were really suffering. True suffering
occurs when reason is left groping, and hope is called into question.
We suffer when pain seems too great to bear and to serve no
commensurate end: when the loss of a loved one leaves us dazed, empty
and alone; when hateful assaults leave us feeling wounded and
violated; when we are distressed by disease, or the ravages of old
age. Experiences like these tend to crowd all else out of our
consciousness. They make us feel dismayed, vulnerable and incomplete;
they make our projects appear trivial, our ambitions unreachable.
Above all, the experience undermines our confidence in the essential
goodness of the world, and our hope that all will be well. Indeed,
what suffering does is to raise for each of us, in a way mere argument
cannot, the problem of evil -- and with it the inevitable
temptation to sullenness, self-pity, and enmity toward whatever God
there may be. But when we face the problem, and work through
suffering, it is defeated. The defeat can manifest itself in many
ways. Almost always, our capacity to endure future hardships, and to
comfort others in theirs, is increased. We may come to see more
accurately our place in the universe, to deepen our devotion to God,
to resolve to assist in attacking the sources of suffering, in human
wrongdoing as well as the vagaries of nature. In all of this, the
theist may argue, natural evil is defeated: the very experience that
threatens to overwhelm confidence in the good becomes the
indispensable foundation for attitudes of character that serve to
diminish its effects and aim at wiping it out. Above all, however,
suffering is defeated in the simple fact that it is borne with good
grace -- that we refuse to submit to the temptation to descend
into repining and bitterness, and resolve instead to continue in hope.
Much of the heroism of those who suffer lies simply in this: that they
strive to go on -- something even a fawn can do.



The problem of suffering is not just an intellectual challenge, but a
moral one as well. Evil calls for a certain reaction on our part, a
reaction of striving, and it is defeated when that reaction occurs. It
made be protested that this reaction is available only to believers,
and hence that this approach to the problem of evil begs the question.
That is not true. The theist is not required to produce a theodicy
that will work even if there is no God, only one that will work if
there is. And in any case, there seems to be no reason to think
nonbelievers are precluded from participating in the defeat of evil.
They can and do gain from suffering much as believers do -- even
to the point of reacting to it with hope in the final goodness of
things, and with reverence for any source this goodness may have,
whatever its nature. It does have to be admitted, of course, that
particular instances of pain and misery do not always meet with a
positive response in the sufferer. There may not be sufficient time,
and when there is the individual may lack the intelligence or
understanding to react in ways we would recognize. Where we do
understand the reaction, there may be a mix between good and bad
manifestations of character. And of course there are cases where
natural evil is borne with anything but good will -- with furious
anger, or morose despair. Faced with this reality, the theist can only
point out what was mentioned above, that the evils which befall some
can and do work to encourage virtue in others, and this can occur by
negative example also. If this seems insufficient, the theist can
argue that in a world where each an every instance of evil was
thoroughly and obviously defeated -- so that a perfectly
satisfying response to opponents of theism would always be available
-- an important dimension of evil would be missing. It is
essential to the challenge of evil that it frequently appears
gratuitous, that there seems to be too much of it, that as far as we
can see, it often goes
 unaddressed.[10]
 Anything less could not bring out the best in us. And then we would
be far less suited to God's friendship, and this world would be
far less than is needed for it to be a creation worthy of God: the
best of all possible worlds.


## 10. Mystery



The last few sections outlined a variety of approaches to theodicy
which are compatible with theological determinism; they represent
attempts to explain why God might allow evil which do not rely on the
traditional free will defense. Equally prominent in the
tradition's treatment of evil, however, is the theme of mystery:
an unwillingness to identify with any surety why God would allow evil.
That theme is prominent in scriptural treatments of evil, such as
those found in Job and Ecclesiastes. Perhaps the most plausible way to
interpret the tradition's emphasis on mystery is as a
combination of what philosophers now call skeptical theism and the
Moore Switch.



Skeptical theism
 notes that the basis of the argument from evil is often, perhaps
always, an inference from what is not seen, a "noseeum"
inference: "I don't see a reason God could have for
allowing evil, so there isn't one." Sometimes inferences
of that sort are good ones, as when I infer that there are no
elephants in the classroom on the basis of the fact that I don't
see any. But often inferences of that sort are fallacious, as when I
infer that there are no germs in the room on the basis of the fact
that I don't see any. The difference seems to be, roughly
speaking, that I would expect to see any elephants if there were any,
but I wouldn't expect to see the germs. Which are God's
reasons most like, the elephants or the germs? Arguably, given the
epistemic distance between God and man, his reasons would be more like
the germs, and so the fact that we can't identify a reason for
God to allow evil doesn't justify the inference that there is no
such reason. Such, in outline, is the basic idea behind skeptical
theism. (See Dougherty and McBrayer 2014 for debate over the
view.)



The Moore Switch (Rowe 1979) is a related but different move. If one
can know that God exists, and perhaps that Christianity or some other
religion is true, on the basis of other evidence, and that evidence is
sufficiently great so as to overwhelm the evidence against the
existence of God provided by the existence of evil, then the problem
of evil might become simply a puzzle to solve instead of a decisive
reason against belief in God, even without a full explanation for
evil. Particularly, if there exists a sort of direct perception of God
or God's works or properties of created things that directly
imply the existence of God, then the evidence provided by such direct
perception could overwhelm the evidence for the premises of an
argument from evil against theism. The movement of Reformed
epistemology has claimed to identify such direct perceptions or
something analogous to such direct perceptions, and as such
constitutes a distinct response to the problem of evil that still
amounts to a kind of appeal to, or justification of, mystery with
respect to God's reasons for allowing evil (See Alston 1991 and
Plantinga 2000).


## 11.Conclusion



The hallmark of the traditional free will defense is its
fastidiousness: it seeks to distance God from as much evil as
possible, so that his goodness will not be tainted by it. The God of
the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions is not so fastidious. He is
active in all our deeds, turning our hearts where he wills
(*Prov*. 21:1), and working in us to will and to do as he
pleases. Part of his purpose in this, the tradition holds, is that we
be creatures with the moral authenticity that can only come with free
will. The inevitable accompaniment, however, is that we sin. God does
not will this for its own sake, but if God's providence is
complete he does will for us the independence that amounts to our
rebellion, for it is indispensable to his purpose. The question the
tradition faces is whether God's providence can be complete
here, whether he can have full sovereignty if we are truly free. The
second focus of concern is the fact of suffering, which also falls
under God's will. According to theodicies that emphasize
soul-making and defeasibility, this is not because God is malevolent,
but so that we can share with him the knowledge that evil is
creation's enemy, and partake in the glory of its defeat. The
scriptural God evinces no fear that he will be tainted by any of this,
nor does he distance himself from evil in any way. On the contrary:
even after Adam's sin God remains fully engaged with humankind,
sparing no effort to secure our rescue, and treating our suffering
with healing concern and compassion. In the Christian tradition, he is
even willing to send his son to bear our sorrows with us, and to be
sacrificed so that we may again find acceptance with God in
repentance. The fallenness of creation is not, then, an object of
heavenly disdain, and for defenders of divine providence it is not
cause for philosophical disappointment. Rather, they hold, the task of
overcoming evil is central to the creative enterprise. We sin and
suffer because God is out to defeat sin and suffering, and to see that
all who are ordained to share in the victory do so. The theist is
forced to admit, however, that we do not always understand in detail
how this occurs, and some sort of appeal to mystery may in fact be
necessary. In that respect, at least, any theodicy has to be
incomplete.