Nelson Pike on Thomas Aquinas and an Omnipotent Being’s Ability to do Evil

In his paper 'Omnipotence And God's Ability To Sin', Nelson Pike criticises Thomas Aquinas on his defence of how God’s impossibility to do evil can be reconciled with His omnipotence. Quoted below is Thomas' defence.

To sin is to fall short of a perfect action; hence to be able to sin is to be able to fall short in action, which is repugnant to omnipotence. Therefore, it is that God cannot sin, because of his omnipotence. Now, it is true that the philosopher says that God can deliberately do what is evil. But this must understood either on condition, the antecedent of which is impossible - as, for instance, if we were to say that God can do evil things if He will. For there is no reason why a conditional propositional should not be true, though both the antecedent and the consequent are impossible; as if one were to say: if a man is an ass, he has four feet. (ST 1.25.3)

As we can see, Thomas argues that we can make sense of how we can say that God is incapable of evil and yet omnipotent by claiming that if God were to will to do an evil action, He could do it, even if the antecedent and the consequent are both false. 

Pike has a problem with this. He attempts to show that Thomas’ defence is problematic by demonstrating through the use of similar statements that Thomas’ conditional statement is insufficient to defend God’s omnipotence and inability to do evil. Pike asks us to consider the following two statements:

(1) Jones has an ace in his hand if he wants to play it. 

and,

(2) Jones can wiggle his ear if he wants to.

Pike notes that while on the surface these statements seem like conditionals, they are in fact not, for the items mentioned in the if… clauses do not contain the item contained in the rest of the statements. If Jones has an ace in his hand, he has an ace in his hand whether or not he wants to play it. Similarly, Jones has the ability to wiggle his ear whether or not he wants to. The question of whether Jones wants to wiggle his ear does not determine whether or not he has the ability. So, the if clause here does not serve as a conditional on whether he has the ability or not; rather, it is there to indicate the indeterminacy of whether or not he will exercise this power. 

However, in such statements the relation between truth values of the antecedent and the consequent is such that if the antecedent is false, so is the consequent; so, if Jones does not have the ability to wiggle his ear, then he cannot wiggle his ear if he wants to. Pike maintains that Thomas’s ‘conditional’ statement is the same sort of statement as (1) and (2); this means that if the antecedent is false, so is the consequent, entailing that if it is false that ‘God can do evil things’ it is also false that ‘God can do evil things if He wants to’. Given Thomas does argue that God cannot do evil, he must maintain that He cannot do it even if He wants to. 

I think that Pike has made an error. Pike is quite right that in statements such as ‘Jones can wiggle his ear if he wants to’ and ‘Jones has an ace in his hand if he wants to play it’, the consequent is dependent upon the antecedent and does not determine it. But is this the same with the claim that God can do evil if He wants to? No. This is because in Thomas’ thought God’s ability to do evil is dependent upon whether he wills it; and this is clear from the preceding claim in Thomas’ quote that to sin is to fall short of a perfect action. This is why doing evil is a hinderance to omnipotence. 

Earlier in his paper, Pike dismisses the idea that to do evil is to fall short of a perfect action. Pike argues that we need to distinguish between one being morally weak and one being weak in power; he says that he sees no reason why a being who could bring about any consistent state of affairs could not be morally weak: to quote, ‘I see no conceptual difficulty in the idea of a diabolical omnipotent being. Creative-power and moral strength are readily discernible concepts’.

What Pike has failed to acknowledge is how Thomas’ statement here relates to his wider metaphysics and the other divine attributes. For Thomas held that we all aim for what is good and that we sin by failing to properly realise what is really good. Hence, the drug abuser thinks that stealing and taking drugs will be good for him even if he thinks that it is morally wrong; he deicides that it will be better to do morally wrong (he will usually justify his wrongdoing to himself) and get the drugs than not to steal the drugs. Yet, as we all know, taking drugs will not be good for the drug abuser. God, however, as an omnipotent being is also omniscient. God will therefore know the good to aim for. And, for Thomas as well as other classical theists, this can only be God Himself. God is His own end. And given that the ends and highest ideals of all created things exists in the mind of God, this will lead God to be making these things His ends too, in aiming for Himself. And this is why God is necessarily good, as demonstrated here.

Now, God could only fail to properly aim at Himself if He was either (1) not omniscient, and hence not omnipotent, or (2) not omnipotent and therefore lacked the power to do it. This is why Thomas says ‘Therefore, it is that God cannot sin, because of His omnipotence.’

Since it is God's will towards himself that prohibits Him from committing evil, it is true that ‘God can do evil things if He were to will it’. That is to say that God would have the power and ability to do it if He willed it - something that Pike actually attempts to defend later on, albeit differently to how we have done so here. But unlike humans who can err in what they think is good because of lack of omniscience, God cannot do this and therefore will only will what is good, although He would have the power to will otherwise were He to do so.

A Sketchy Essay on ‘Must an Anselmian Being be Necessarily Loving?

Traditionally, it was agreed that an Anselmian being must be necessarily omnipotent, omniscience, and omnibenevolent. However, in recent philosophy there have been challenges to this notion. Atheist Philosopher Stephen Law maintains that God could just as easily have been evil than good, and that all the traditional arguments for God’s existence prove can be parodied to prove just as much an evil god than a good God. But is this true? Could God really be evil rather than good? I think not. 

To show this to be the case we need to consider the following points.

First, what does it mean to be an Anselmian being? 

Second, what is the nature of good and evil?

Third, given our answer to the second question, in what sense can God be said to be good or evil?

I will address each of these in turn - albeit, briefly. 

1.

An Anselmian being is to be defined as the greatest possible being conceivable, or the most perfect being, or the greatest of all possible beings. Hence, in order to come to an adequate conception of an Anselmian being we to some extent need to know what properties contribute to the greatness of an entity that exhibits them. Our search for a conception of an Anselmian being will set us on an adventure of foraging for properties that appear to contribute to the greatness of the entity that exhibits them. This will involve picking out properties that are regarded as intrinsically good and postulating what these properties amount to, all the while making sure that no imperfections have crept into our conception. 

In the past, it has been held that any property exhibited by God is held to its maximum extent. Hence, if it is good to have property Y, then an Anselmian being has property Y to the greatest possible extent. Some have been unhappy with this formulation and have instead proposed what has been termed the combination formulation. On this understanding, what makes God maximally great is that He has the best combination of properties possible. But on such a view it may be the case that God has one property to a lesser extent than it could be. For example, it may be believed that instantiating property Y to its greatest possible extent means that one cannot instantiate property B. Yet having property Y to a great, but not its greatest extent, means that one can. A supporter of the combination formulation might therefore argue that is greater for God to instantiate a property Y to a great, but not is maximal extent, in order that He may also instantiate property B, this being greater than just instantiating property Y to its maximal extent. 

There are, however, three concerns with the combination formulation. First, on any combination formulation, the question is raised as to why God has these properties in the way that He does. Suppose that we deduce that the greatest combination is to have the properties X, Y, and Z at different respective values. But we would be justified in asking why God has these properties at these values instead of, let’s says, more of X at the sacrifice of Y. It is important to note that we are asking the question here in a De Re and not a De Dicto fashion. Of course, it is meaningless to ask why beings defined as instantiating properties X, Y, Z at particular levels instantiate those properties at those levels. This would be a De Dicto question. But it not meaningless to ask why a particular being has the properties he does at those particular levels. This is a De Re question. The supporter of the combination formulation has to either shrug his shoulders and say that he does not know or find some explanation prior to God to explain why God’s attributes are so arranged in this particular way - which questions God’s as ‘ipsum esse subsistens’.

This problem does not arise for the traditionalist - there is no limit on any of God’s properties that he has to explain. Rather, all that he has to contend for is that for any property that is intrinsically good to have, God has this property and He is the absolute standard for that property. 

This leads us to own second concern; namely, that there could be a being who exhibits a property that is intrinsically good to a greater extent than God. This not only has the troubling implication that there could be a being who is greater in a good making property than God, but also seriously poses a challenge to those who are in any way inclined towards some form of Platonism whereby God is the ultimate substantiation of any good making property, from which all other things derive from and which all things are compared against as a standard. If God is no longer the yardstick for an intrinsically good property, then God is no longer the one setting the standard. This is a serious weakness for the combination position. 

The third problem is that the following three are all possible conclusions that can be drawn from the combination position. (1) It could be the case that there is a single possible peak of goodness that can only be exhibited by instantiating certain properties - again, let us say X, Y, and Z. (2) Alternatively, it could also be said that a multiplicity of good beings is possible - different combinations leading to an equal amount of goodness. (3) It might also be postulated that we cannot accurately measure goodness and there are possibly many multiple incommensurably beings. Both (2) and (3) again pose a challenge to God’s self-subsistence and idea that He is the sole and lone source of all goodness. Yet, there seems to be no strong reason to prefer (1) over (2) or (3). This problem, of course, cannot occur on the traditionalist model as there can only be one being who exhibits all intrinsically good properties to their maximum extent. 

For these three reasons the traditional Anselmian formulation is to be preferred. We now turn to our enquiry into the nature of good and evil. 

2.

It would be beyond this short essay to lay out every possible formulation of good and evil that there has been in philosophy. I will therefore a defend a formulation that has been popular in classical theism of the likes of Augustine and Aquinas - the idea that evil is a privation of something good. While this position, though classical held, has seen less popular support by certain modern philosophers today, there are good reasons to hold to this position. 

First, it accords well with how we naturally view good and evil. We say that something is evil or defective when it does not accord to how that thing is meant to be according to its nature. Thus, we say that a dog with three legs is experiencing evil in so far as he is not living up to what it is to be a dog - a four legged canine. Equally, a man born with a tail is considered to be a defective man in so much as he is not living up to what a man ought to be - a tailless homo-sapien. But the same is not true for a dog, for a dog without a tail is defective. Thus, in defining particular accounts of evil, we start with definition of what the thing experiencing evil should be and look for some defect against that definition that hinders it from achieving it. 

The same is said concerning moral duty. In a paper co-authored by Steuart Goetz and Bill Anglin (1982, IJfPoR), there are a few reasons suggested for how a moral evil can be a privation. One could side with Aquinas and say that moral sin is when the will is not subordinated to God. Sin is the abandoning of a higher good for a lower one, thus putting things out of order. Hence, moral evil is a privation of proper order. Alternatively, one could argue that moral evil is where there is some privation in terms of duty, such as the duty to respect and preserve life. Murder is a nonfulfillment of a duty to preserve life etc…

Second, the privation view of evil avoids the worrying conclusion that God is responsible for creating evil. The theist, especially the Christian theist, maintains that God is the creator of all things. He also wants to hold that God is not the creator of evil. The idea that evil is not a privation poses a problem to this, as this means that evil is something, and if this something is created, then God must be the creator of it. 

Third, related to the point above, the privation position on evil accords well with other metaphysical positions held by classical theists. Again, if one wishes to hold to any form of Platonism, then a non-privation view on evil poses a problem. For if God is the standard for all things, and evil exists, then God must be the standard for evil. But since there clearly exists good things, God must be the standard for goodness too. But this adds dualism into the nature of God and cannot be. Thus, the only alternative would be to hold to, as Augustine feared, Manichaean dualism.

Given these three reasons, the privation view of evil is not at all unconvincing. Indeed, it has supporters today and should not be dismissed out of hand as some whacky long gone theory of Aristotle. I will give a fuller and better defence of the privation account in a later blog post.

3.

With these positions established, in what sense can we say that God must necessarily be good? Since the privation view of evil argues that what is good is being - these two things being convertible, it can be argued that God is good because he is pure being and contains within Himself the ends of all things. However, this is not fully what we are looking for. We are still left with the question of why God must necessarily be loving. 

One might attempt to argue with Aquinas and say that God is loving by choosing to create and give being to creatures and things, as this is to give the creatures a good. So, to quote Aquinas:

God loves all existing things. For everything that exists is, as such, good, because the very existing of each thing is a certain good, as are each of its perfections. Now… God’s will is the cause of all things and… everything therefore has to be willed by God in so far as it has reality or any goodness at at all. So, God wills some good to every existing thing. Since loving is the same as willing something good, God clearly loves everything. (ST, 1.20.2)

Aquinas clarifies that:

Yet he does not love the things as we do. For since our will is not the cause of things being good, but responds to that goodness as to its objective, our love in willing good for something is not the cause of that goodness. Instead, its goodness (real of imagined) evokes the love by which we will for the thing both that it retains the goodness it has and that it gains goodness which it lacks, and we act so as to bring this about. But God’s love pours out and creates the goodness of things. (ST, 1.20.2)

While this shows that a God who has created is loving, we are still left with the question of what if God never created at all. Would God still have been loving then? And does not this run the risk of making God’s love dependent upon him creating creatures? The usual response to this is that one is not saying that God is loving because he creates but that His creation shows that he is loving. This is then furthered by an appeal to the metaphysical idea that effects look like their causes. And since the creation is good, God himself - the cause of creation - is good. While I think that these appeals have their merits, and will be be examined more in further blog posts, neither of these are the argument that I wish to pursue here. For there is perhaps one argument that given what we have said provides convincing reason for why we ought to consider God to be necessarily loving. 

This argument will begin by considering reasons for why God chooses to create. Now, there are some who say that it is wrong to speak of God acting for reasons. The justification for this line of thought is that we only have reasons when we want or desire something. Reasons lie in needs: we have a reason to brush our teeth because we want and need to keep them clean; we have a reason to leave the lecture early because we want to catch a train, and so on. God, however, does not have any wants or needs; He is fully satisfied within Himself. I will leave aside whether God has reasons for acting or not as an open question, although I am not entirely convinced about the relation made between reasons, wants and needs. Nevertheless, this problem might be avoided by distinguishing between reasons to act and reasons for acting. To give a quick example: to fulfil my desire to help others might be a reason to give to charity. But the reason for acting this way is because I am a loving person. 

With this in mind, we can begin to ask what reason God had for creating the world. Now, it might be said that what lead God to create the world was His love for His creatures; however, this would be wrong headed for the simple reason that it would put the creature before God. God cannot love that which is yet to exist, nor can it be that God creates to fulfil His need for love, or because he desired union with creatures, or wished to multiply the amount of good that existed in the world already. Neither of these options are tenable. For God desires and needs nothing and contains all the fullness of goodness within Himself. God’s creation does not multiply goodness. 

What, then, could explain God’s reason for creating the world? What has traditionally been concluded is that the reason for God creating is His love for Himself. God is His own end in His act of creating. This position is desirable for the following. First, it means that God is not moved to act on any reason but His own self. Second, if any end is worth aiming for a fully self-sufficient being, it is God’s own self and sufficient nature. Should God desire anything, then it is only worthy for Him to desire Himself. Third, we must imagine that whatever is valuable is what God aims for, and yet only God Himself is ultimately valuable. 

But why should God loving himself lead to the creation the universe? Well, as we saw previously, if we are to accept a privation position on evil, then there is an essence or nature of a thing that defines what it is to be that thing - an ideal or standard to which that thing aims for if you like. Now, since we cannot say that this exists within the objects upon earth - as temporal things are fleeting and temporally, we would have to put these within the mind of God Himself, as ideas that pre-existed the objects that they represent. Thus, in loving himself, God loves these ideas of His; and this somehow causes these ideas to be diffused in the act of creation. We might draw an analogy between how the sun, by shinning, illuminates all things. Similarly, pure love, through the act of loving, brings into ‘light’ the ideas that it focuses upon. 

Much of the plausibility of this theory comes from the fact that it is the best way to account for how an all sufficient, maximally great being could have a reason to create. For when engaging in perfect being theology, we should incline towards views of God and His nature that appear to maximise His greatness, unless compellingly contradicted by reason or Scripture. To give an example, if we consider it greater that a being have knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, we should be inclined to believe that God has this knowledge, unless this knowledge is shown to be impossible. 

So, if love for oneself is necessary for the creation of the world, then one has to be loving in order that He may create. This makes love - at least self-love - an intrinsically good property for God to have. But as we have already stated, any property that is intrinsically good is held by God to the greatest possible degree; God, therefore, has the property of love to the greatest possible degree and is necessarily omnibenevolent 

Such a parallel can not be maintained with an evil god; since what could draw the evil god to create? For it could not be evil god’s hatred for himself that causes him to create, for such a being would certainly not be great; nor, as we have seen, could it be creatures themselves for such creatures are yet to exist; neither could it be to fulfil evil god’s desire for hatred, as a maximally great being has no desires that need fulfilling. It seems, then, that the inability to draw such a parallel renders the coherency of an evil god as improbable.  

4.

To conclude, we have seen that if the privation position of evil and traditional Anselmianism is defended, then only a loving God is compatible with a fully self-sufficient being who has the ability to create the universe.