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The Christian Theodicist's Appeal to Love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Daniel  and
Frances Howard-Snyder
Daniel
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, West lafayette, Indiana 7907
Frances Howard-Snyder
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington 98119
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Abstract

Many Christian theodicists believe that God's creating us with the capacity to love Him and each other justifies, in large part, God's permitting evil. For example, after reminding us that, according to Christian doctrine, the supreme good for human beings is to enter into a reciprocal love relationship with God, Vincent Brümmer recently wrote:

In creating human persons in order to love them, God necessarily assumes vulnerability in relation to them. In fact, in this relation, he becomes even more vulnerable than we do, since he cannot count on the steadfastness of our love the way we can count on his steadfastness… If God did not grant us the ability to sin and cause affliction to him and to one another, we would not have the kind of free and autonomous existence necessary to enter into a relation of love with God and with one another… Far from contradicting the value which the free will defence places upon the freedom and responsibility of human persons, the idea of a loving God necessarily entails it. In this way we can see that the free will defence is based on the love of God rather than on the supposed intrinsic value of human freedom and responsibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 185 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 ‘Moral Sensitivity and the Free Will’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, XXIX (1987), 86–100,Google Scholar especially pp. 96ff.

2 ‘The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy’, Philosophical Topics (Fall 1988), p. 163Google Scholar. Van Inwagen and Brummer are not alone among recent Christian theodicists in drawing our attention to this connection between love and morally significant freedom. Richard Swinburne cites Brummer approvingly in ‘The Free Will Defence’, Archivio di Filosofia, LVI (1988), 585–96,Google Scholar especially pp. 592–3. See also Anglin's, W. S. recent Free Will and the Christian Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Van Inwagen, P. ‘And yet they are not three gods but one god’, in Morris, T. V. (ed.), Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), p. 141Google Scholar.

4 See his Counterfactuals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973)Google Scholar.

5 Ruth 1:16–17 reads: ‘And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried’. The Anglican Wedding Vow reads: ‘I M. take thee N. to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.’

6 Compatibilists and incompatibilists can agree on this point.

7 ‘On the Divine Nature and the Nature of Divine Freedom’, Faith and Philosophy (January 1988), pp. 1–24Google Scholar.

8 Talbott, pp. 9–10.

9 We have gleaned this reply from van Inwagen, ‘Theodicy’, p. 163.

10 We are grateful to our friends John O'Leary-Hawthorne and Peter van Inwagen for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.