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Once More on the Free Will Defence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Axel D. Steuer
Axel D. Steuer
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Religion, Haverford College
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Extract

In responding to the problem that evil poses for belief in the existence of an omnipotent and all good deity, a number of Christian philosophers have followed Augustine in making the free will defence (FWD) the foundation of their theodicies. The FWD seems to be well suited for the important role it has played in Christian religious thought. Not only does it admit the reality of evil in God's world, but it also proposes to free God from moral responsibility for at least a considerable portion of that evil. A few philosophers, e.g. Terence Penelhum, have even argued that ‘… the Christian theist is committed to some form or other of the free will defence …’ because of the Christian understanding of the nature of God and man. Whether or not this is true, the argument that it was not possible for God to create free human beings without permitting some degree of evil in his world (the FWD) has been sufficiently influential that those sceptics who have intended to show that the reality of evil makes theism an intellectually indefensible position have usually felt compelled to treat it. For similar reasons, a number of theistic philosophers have felt obligated to defend the FWD against such sceptical attacks.

Type
Section on ‘The Free Will Defence’
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 301 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 301 note 1 According to Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will (Book Three, Chapter XVII), ‘… the will is the radical cause of all evil’. For a recent discussion of the Augustinian tradition in theodicy see Hick's, JohnEvil and the God of Love (New York, Harper & Row, 1966).Google Scholar

page 301 note 2 I borrow this shorthand way of writing the words, ‘Free Will Defence’, from an essay by Davis, Stephen T., entitled, ‘A Defence of the Free Will Defence’, which appears in vol. 8 of Religious Studies (December, 1972), pp. 335–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 301 note 3 Religion and Rationality (New York, Random House, Inc., 1971), p. 251.Google Scholar

page 301 note 4 ‘Evil and Omnipotence’, in God and Evil, ed. Pike, Nelson (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964).Google Scholar

page 301 note 5 ‘Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew, A. and MacIntyre, A. (London, SCM Press Ltd., 1955).Google Scholar

page 302 note 1 Ninian Smart, Alvin Plantinga, Terence Penelhum and W. D. Hudson are among the well-known philosophers who have addressed this particular Mackiean objection to the FWD.

page 302 note 2 ‘The Free Will Defence’, in God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1967).Google Scholar See also Dore's, Clement ‘Plantinga on the Free Will Defence’ in Review of Metaphysics, XXIV (June, 1971).Google Scholar

page 302 note 3 ‘A Defence of the Free Will Defence’, in Religious Studies, vol. 8 (December, 1972).Google Scholar

page 303 note 1 What I call two ways of interpreting Mackie's claim, Plantinga describes as two possible versions (the original and the revised) of Mackie's objection to the FWD. Plantinga makes a further distinction between two ways of interpreting the key proposition of Mackie's original objection, i.e. the proposition, ‘God creates free men such that they always freely do what is right’. I do not now want to discuss this additional distinction which Plantinga makes. Rather, I want to focus on the essential difference between what Plantinga calls the two versions of Mackie's objection to the FWD and I call two interpretations of Mackie's claim that the free creatures of an all good, omniscient and omnipotent God would always freely choose to do the good. How one interprets Mackie's claim depends on whether one reads him as saying that God's free creatures should be so constructed that they always choose to do the good or whether one reads him as saying that God should only create those free creatures who he knows will always choose to do the good if they are created. For Plantinga's discussion of Mackie's objection(s) to the FWD see pp. 135–49 of God and Other Minds, op. cit.

page 303 note 2 The topic of Book Three, Chapter Five, of Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will is whether ‘God is to be praised, not blamed, even for his creation of beings who are able to sin and subject to unhappiness’.

page 303 note 3 Charles Hartshorne is perhaps the best-known of the contemporary philosophers who have argued for this position. Most recently, Terence Penelhum has called for a restriction or redefinition of God's omniscience. See his chapter on freedom and omniscience in Religion and Rationality, op. cit., pp. 293–301.

page 303 note 4 This I take to be the heart of Plantinga's response (in God and Other Minds) to the revised version of Mackie's objection to the FWD. Again, the reader is advised to look at Dore's comments on Plantinga's argument. See the article referred to in footnote 2, p. 302.

page 304 note 1 I base my preference for this interpretation of Mackie's claim on his later essay, ‘Theism and Utopia’, which appeared in the journal, Philosophy, in 1962. In that brief essay, written in response to Ninian Smart's criticism of the earlier ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ article, Mackie tries to clarify what he means by the notion of ‘… God's making men such that they always freely choose the good’ (p. 157).

page 304 note 2 See footnotes 2 (p. 301) and 3 (p. 302) for the appropriate reference.

page 304 note 3 Davis, , op. cit., p. 335.Google Scholar

page 304 note 4 ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ in Pike, op. cit., pp. 56–7.

page 305 note 1 For Mackie, , see ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ in Pike, op. cit., p. 56, and for Davis see op. cit., p. 336.Google Scholar

page 305 note 2 ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ in Pike, op. cit., p. 56.

page 305 note 3 Ibid.

page 306 note 1 ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ in Pike, p. 57

page 306 note 2 Plantinga discusses Mackie's Paradox of Omnipotence in a chapter entitled ‘Verificationism and Other Atheologia’ in God and Other Minds, op. cit.

page 306 note 3 ‘Mr. Keene on Omnipotence’, in Mind, LXX (1961), pp. 249–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 306 note 4 ‘Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence’, in Philosophical Review, LXXII (1963), pp. 221–3.Google Scholar

page 307 note 1 Mackie, , ‘Omnipotence’, in Sophia, vol. I, No. 2 (1962).Google Scholar Reference found in Ahern's, M. B.The Problem of Evil (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 20.Google Scholar

page 308 note 1 On p. 59, Mackie argues that there are two orders or kinds of omnipotence and that ‘… we cannot consistently ascribe to any continuing being omnipotence in an inclusive sense’.

page 308 note 2 In the article mentioned in footnote 1, p. 307, Mackie seems to agree with Mayo's resolution of the Paradox of Omnipotence.

page 308 note 3 One of the central themes of Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will is that while both of these traditional claims are true, nonetheless God remains free of any moral blame.

page 309 note 1 See p. 58 of ‘Evil and Omnipotence’ in Pike, op. cit.

page 309 note 2 Among the better known philosophers, e.g., both Hegel and Hartshorne appear to argue that the acts of will of his creatures are somehow integral to God's being.

page 310 note 1 See p. 57 of ‘Evil and Omnipotence‘ in Pike, op. cit.