Is God Greater if He is Only Contingently Good?

Avak A. Howsepian, in his paper 'Is God Necessarily Good?', argues that it is greater for God to be contingently good than necessarily good. The reason given for this by Howsepian is that a contingently good being is able to do more good acts than a necessarily good being. To demonstrate this, Howsepian defines two ways that one can do a good action: first, one can do a good action by directly performing that action, and second, one can do a good action by choosing to refrain from doing evil. So, to give the example provided by Howsepian, Fiske may do a good action by choosing to feed the hungry but may also do a good act by choosing to refrain from gluttony. Howbeit, Howsepian argues that we can only refrain from doing a good action if there is a possibility to do otherwise and we know that there is a possibility to do otherwise: I cannot intend to square a circle because I know that a square circle is impossible. A necessarily good being, therefore, cannot intend to refrain from evil because he would know that it is impossible for him; whereas a being who is only contingently good can, having the ability to be able to directly do a good action and do the good act of refraining from an evil. Howsepian says that the latter is clearly not as great as the former. Hence, God, should be conceived as a contingently good being rather than a necessary good being.

Howsepian’s analysis is faulty. Here is why. First, Howsepian’s argument is first predicated upon the idea that what makes God good is His possibility of doing good actions. But how does this make one any more good than a being who has not got the possibility of doing these good actions? For instance, it is possible that I be as good as the Apostle Paul, or John Wesley, or some other great saint. But this does not make me as good as them: the mere possibility of being as good as these saints does not entail that I am as good as them. Similarly, for a being to have the possibility to do more good actions than x does not show Him to be any more good than x. What it does show is that the being has the ability to do more things and is thus more omnipotent. We have already dealt with whether God’s goodness threatens his omnipotence here. 

Howsepian concedes this point and reformulates his argument. Howsepian writes: 

Of course, one could ask, why might one think that an appeal to a proper subset of possible good action types could be helpful in adjudicating the question of whether or not a necessarily omnipotent, necessarily omniscient, and contingently good being is more benevolent than a necessarily omniscient, and necessarily good being? The answer to this question can be most readily appreciated by further considering the truth of the following proposition: If G* is wholly good and G* can refrain from evil actions, then G* will refrain from evil actions.

We are now entering dangerous waters. We are no longer saying that God is good because He has the possibility to do good actions but because He does good actions. But this would make God’s goodness dependent upon creation (perish the thought!) as God can do more good actions in a universe where He chooses to create than in a universe where He does not choose to create. But it seems evident that a God who needs to depend upon His creation in order to be good is not maximally great. Howsepian has evidently made an error in his reasoning somewhere along the way.

Part of the problem is that Howsepian seems to think that God is to be called good in exactly the same way that we are to be called good. But this obviously cannot be the case. We are subject to moral commands and duties that we have to obey, and we call people good when they choose to follow these commands and duties. But on traditional theism, God is not under any moral commands or duties; for it is God who issues the commands and duties of morality, and it would be absurd to say that God commands Himself. If God is going to be called good in an identical manner to us, then the commands and duties of morality must come from something external to God, which He then becomes subject to. But not only does this sacrifice God on the altar of the Euthyphro Dilemma, it also seriously weakens the aseity of God. Whatever reason, then, we have for calling God good, it is not because He follows the commands and duties of morality. And it is here where Howsepian first errs. (I will address in a later blog post by what we mean when we call God good.)

But let us grant Howsepian his definition of what it means for God to be good. Because even if we do this, it is by no means clear that refraining from an action is a morally good action. It is true that we attach a certain praiseworthiness to when we refrain from an evil action; however, we only intend not do an evil act when weakness is involved: the drug abuser intends not to do the evil action of taking drugs because he is tempted towards that evil. I do not intend to refrain from drug taking. The thought does not cross my mind. I aim to live a healthy life, etc. and it follows from this that I do not take drugs. But for Howsepian this is not enough to count as actively refraining in a way that is praiseworthy. Howsepian argues that if I am absorbed in a game of chess, I might not be doing evil but I am not refraining from it. I need to be actively refraining for it to count. But this entails the absurd conclusion that the drug abuser who needs to be constantly refraining from taking drugs is more good than myself who does not need to refrain from drug taking, because I am not a drug abuser. Where Howsepian has gone wrong is that he has equivocated the praise that we give for achievement with moral praise. The reason we praise the drug abuser who has resisted the temptation to take drugs is because it was a difficult thing for him to do and not because he is to be morally praiseworthy. We can therefore deny that resisting evil is a morally praiseworthy act. 

Howsepain has thus not demonstrated that it is better for God to be contingently good than necessarily good.

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.

Denying The Second Premiss of The Moral Argument Does Not Save You From Theism: The Moral Argument And Idealism

I wonder if the following argument could be used to counteract atheistic rejections of the second premiss of The Moral Argument.

Usually, the moral argument is formulated as follows:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

2. Objective moral values do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

Premiss 2 relies heavily upon intuition. We all have a strong sense that some things are just wrong: it is wrong to abuse children; it is wrong to enslave other people, and so on. Nevertheless, there are some who bite the bullet and reject that objective moral values exist, holding that we cannot trust our intuition. 

But, if we cannot trust our intuition in regards to moral values, why should we trust our moral intuition regarding other things we normally intuitively believe? Would it not be more coherent to say that we cannot intuitively believe anything, rather than be selective about it? And if this is so, we cannot intuitively believe that there is an external world behind our own sense-data. Intuition tells us there is, but all we have acquaintance with is the ideas represented to us. 

However, this would lead us to accept idealism. And as demonstrated by Berkley, ideas are passive and can thus exercise no casual power; thus, on an idealist model, in order to explain change, one needs to adopt occasionalism, whereby God is a primary cause of all change (there being no secondary causes). 

Since this requires God, denying intuitionism in order to reject the second premiss of The Moral Argument cannot save one from theism. 

An Analysis of Causation

The ancients understood causation in terms of causal powers. The reason for this is because of how they understood change. Change for the ancients was just the reduction of potency into act - see analysis on act and potency here. Hence, the change of water from cold to hot is the potentiality of hotness in the cold water to become actual (and the actuality of the coldness in the water to become potential). But what brings about this actuality had to be something external to the thing undergoing change, otherwise there would be no explanation as to why the thing has not already undergone the change in question; however, the ancients clearly understood that not any old thing could bring about a change in something: ice can bring about change in water in a way that smoke cannot; a magnet can bring about change in metal in a way that it cannot with wood, &c. There are limits to the effects that efficient causes can produce. The ancients understood these limits by referring to the causal powers that efficient causes have. So ice cools water because it has the power to cool objects it touches. Smoke does not cool water because it does not have this power to cool. 

Now, this understanding of causation has been mocked as trivial and vacuous. French playwright Molière says that to say ‘opium causes sleep because it has the power to cause sleep’ is to say a mere tautology, and hence explains nothing. But as pointed out by Ed Feser, this is not a tautology: a tautology would be to say that ‘opium causes sleep because it causes sleep’ rather than ‘opium causes sleep because it has the power to cause sleep’. To say that opium has the power to cause sleep is to say that falling to sleep after taking opium is not some mere accidental feature of taking opium, but belongs to the nature of opium itself. The fact that this is not a tautology is evidenced by the fact that critics of causal powers don’t say to this statement, ‘yes, we know, and this is too trivial to be worth mentioning.’ Rather, they say that ‘No, Opium does not have the power to cause sleep as things do not have causal powers.’

It would also be wrong to imagine the idea of causal powers as going against what science tells us. So, in the case of opium, the idea of powers does not contradict the chemist who tells us that opium causes sleep because it is composed of a such and such chemical compound that reacts with the body when digested. As noted by Anthony Kenny, we need to distinguish the possessor of power, the power itself, the vehicle of power, and the actual exercise of power. In the case of opium, it is the specific chemical properties that are the vehicle by which its casual power is exercised; other substances will have other vehicles by which their powers are exercised. The difference, thus, between the chemist and the metaphysician is that the former is concerned with vehicles while the latter is concerned with powers. 

David Hume questioned this way of analysing of causality. In his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume writes that the ‘constant conjunction of two objects’ in our experience is what leads us to regard these two objects as casually related, but that objectively ‘all events seem entirely loose and separate’ rather than being necessarily connected. In principle, any effect or none might follow from any cause. The efficacy we think we perceive in things is really just a projection of our expectations onto the world. So, a cause is analysed by Hume as follows: ‘We may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second.’ (Section VIII). What Hume is espousing here is a regularity theory of causation. Regularity theories of causation argue that causation can be captured entirely in terms of the regular correlation that exists between two events - say, A, and B. No reference is required to explain the relationship between A and its effect B, such as the power A has over B. The relation between them are loose and separate. 

However, there are several objections that face regularity theories. First, regularity theories have difficulty in accounting for the asymmetry between causes and effects. A regular correlation between A and B does not entail that A is the cause of B rather than B the cause of A. Adding a condition that a cause must precede its effect B will not help since, as proved by Kant, causes can be simultaneous with their effects, such as a ball on a cushion making an indent. A second problem is that there are cases of regularity that are not cases of causation. This is illustrated by the following example adapted from Ed Feser. Suppose that I drop a cube of sugar into my tea; this is followed by a splashing sound, and then ripples, which move a floating tea leaf to the side of the cup. Events like the moving of the tea leaf are regularly preceded by events such as ripples and the splashing sound. So, on the regularity analysis, the splashing sound and the ripples are equal candidates for being the cause of the leaf’s motion. But, of course, it is only the ripples, and not the sound, that is the cause. A third difficulty can be seen if we add the example of someone else trying, before the splash is made by the first cube, to add a second cube of sugar to my tea but say it is caught before it can make contact (I have already put enough in my tea). The regularity theory would seem to entail that the dropping of the second cube of sugar is the cause of the splash in the tea. But, of course, it is only the dropping of the first cube of sugar. 

There is a second definition of causation that Hume offers. Well, Hume did see this as a further explanation of the first, but it is really a second definition. According to this second definition, we can say that an object caused another object ‘if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.’ Here Hume is developing a counterfactual definition of causation. We can formalise it as follows. To say A caused B means that the following is fulfilled:

1) If A had not occurred, B would not have occurred.

2) If A had occurred, B would have occurred.

3) A and B both occurred.

This is a better analysis of causation as B depends counterfactually on A in a way that A does not depend on B; hence, a solution to the asymmetry problem. Neither does the account seem to be threatened by examples involving the sugar cube: the leaf would not have moved had the ripples by the sugar cube not been made, through it would have still moved had the splashing sound somehow been prevented. The counterfactual account therefore captures the fact that it was the ripples and not the sound that moved the leaf. It also captures the fact that it was the first cube of sugar and not the second that moved it. 

Nevertheless, this account of causality is still Humean in that it views causes and their effects as loose and separate, in that they have no intrinsic or necessary connection to one another. The causes under this view cannot be said to have an active tendency to bring about their effects. This leads to problems, which have been well noted; particularly influential has been C.B Martin’s ‘electro-fink’ example. Consider a live wire, which if touched by a conductor, will cause electricity to flow into it. If the counterfactual analysis is correct, anything we might want to say about the causal relation in question here would be captured in a conditional such as the following:

c) If the live wire is touched by a conductor, then the electrical current flows form the wire to the conductor. 

But now imagine that we connect to this wire an electro-fink, which is a device that renders a live wire dead when touched by a conductor and dead wire live when touched by a conductor. The conditional above will now no longer be true. If a live wire is touched while the electro-fink is attached, current will not flow to the conductor, because it will be prevented from doing so by the electro-fink; hence the conditional fails to give the necessary conditions for the wire’s being live, since a wire could be live even when it is not true that it will transmit current to a conductor. And when the wire is dead, current will still flow from it to the conductor, because it will be made live by the electro-fink; hence the conditional fails to give sufficient reasons for the wire being live, since a wire could be dead and yet still transmit current to a conductor. The proper way to characterise the wire, in Martin’s view, is to say that it has power when live which is hindered by the electro-fink, and lacks power when dead but is given power by the electro-fink when touched. 

Additionally, the counterfactual analysis has trouble in adequately accounting for masks and antidotes. So, in the tale of King Midas, King Midas had the power to nourish himself, but this power was masked by his power to turn everything he touched into gold. And we can imagine a case where someone takes a poison that has the power to kill that person, but the poison is hindered by an antidote that changes the immune system of the person so that he can resist the poison. 

One could try and reformulate the counterfactual definition as follows. A causes B if:

1*) If A had not occurred, B would not have occurred.

2*) If A had occurred and C did not occur, B would have occurred.

3*) A and B both occurred and C did not occur.

The trouble with this new definition is that we can easily think up examples where A and C both occur and yet B does occur. For instance, someone takes poison and is given an antidote to stop the effects of the poison but is then given another poison to counteract the antidote to allow for the original poison to take effect. And similar revisions and counter-examples can kept being made on the counterfactual definition. It seems, then, that talk of powers is a much better way of analysing causation. 

Indeed, talk of powers fits well with how we describe events involving change. To again appeal to Feser, let us consider a case of a boat being pulled at an angle by two horses, one each side of the canal. The combined pulling of these horses causes the boat to head northwards up the canal. What we see here is a combination of powers at work. The power exercised by horse A and the power exercised by horse B leads to the boat moving down the canal, but these powers would result in the boat moving in a different direction when exercised in a different context. Moreover, we would not describe what is going on here as a set of loose and separate events but just one event that is the exercise of multiple powers; an effect can be the result of a polygeny of powers.    

The talk of powers, therefore, seems to be a good way to analyse causation. The very nature of these powers and how they relate to philosophy of science will be discussed in a later blog post. 

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. 

Richard Swinburne is Right About The Problem of Evil

Throughout the history of belief in God, both believers and non-believers alike have questioned how a loving God could ever allow suffering. In the Biblical book of Job, we find Job wrestling with God in face of the suffering that he faces at the hand of Satan. On the more philosophical side of things, we find Epicurus asking, ‘Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?’ Many since Epicurus have asked the same question, and as a result have concluded that God cannot exist given the evil in the world.  

In the face of this challenge from evil, theists have had to come up with explanations for why a loving God might allow the evil that He does. There have been various different explanations offered. We will briefly lay out some of them here. 

Free Will Defence - God has endowed mankind with free will - the choice to choose between good and evil. The result of this is that some will choose evil over good, and, therefore, harm others. Evil is thus a cost of free will. The good of the gift of free will outweighs the evil caused by it 

Soul Making - Evil allows us to develop our character. Many report to become stronger, better people in face of suffering and struggle. While on the other hand many would say that those who are spoilt all too often have bad characters. God, therefore, allows suffering in order not to spoil us and to develop our character.

Hiddenness - God wished for us to freely choose to follow and worship Him, and not choose to follow and worship Him out of fear or coercion. But if God was plainly evident to us, no one would choose not to follow Him or choose not to do any evil. After all, who runs a red light when a policeman is in the car behind them? God, therefore, makes himself hidden to give us a real free choice. But in order to do this, God must add some doubt to his existence and therefore allows evil. 

Afterlife - God will recompense those who have done good in this life with an eternal afterlife of bliss. Thus, any evil suffered in this life will be more than compensated in the next. 

Howbeit, most are convinced that while these arguments may raise the probability for why God may allow suffering, they do not provide a full defence to the problem of evil. Theists, therefore, have often deployed a sceptical theist response. The sceptical theist response says that we are not in a good epistemic situation to make the probabilistic judgment that a good God would allow for the kind evil that he does. As finite beings, we are limited in knowledge and reasoning capacity. God, however, is infinite. His knowledge and power is far greater than ours; He can see all of history before him and providently guides it by his will; therefore, what may seem pointless on our limited framework may not be pointless in the grand-scheme of God’s wider framework. The seemingly pointless death of a couple’s child could be the cause of a chain of events that leads to some greater good that would not have come about had the child not died. The child’s death, therefore, is not ultimately pointless and God, who saw what the death would lead to, is not failing on his omnibenevolence for permitting it. 

The sceptical theist card is popular amongst theists. Nevertheless, there is a problem with it - namely, that it appears to make God into an impersonal being who treats His creatures as a means to an end towards some greater good. But this is contrary to the God of Christian theism who cares individually for each of His creatures. Is there a way to salvage the sceptical theist response? I think there is. 

In the debate, God - For and Against - C4 - 1993, Richard Swinburne says the following: 

Could we talk about Auschwitz?… God wants the best for us. He wants us to be heroes. He is not interested in us having little tingles of pleasure every now and again. He wants us to be worthy people; be great people. And we can only be great people if there are great choices for us. Auschwitz gave us great choices. It is not something I wish to see repeated, but one can be grateful for what was shown that occasion. And finally, there is this great good for the victims, that perhaps even they did not always appreciate; that they were of use. One of the terrible things that can happen to a man in our world is to not be of use - not to be any use at all to anybody. One thing the victims of Auschwitz were is of use because it was their suffering which provided the opportunity for the German guards, who were also human beings who also had tremendous choices, to make the choice. And we can be grateful for that too. 

‘May you rot in hell’ was Peter Atkins’ response to this quote during the debate. Many too, myself included, at first sight find this quote repulsive. Nevertheless, upon further reflection I have come to conclude that Swinburne must be right. Whatever reason God has for allowing suffering must be of some good to the person whom undergoes the suffering if it is going to be consistent with God’s omnibenevolent nature. God does not use people as a means to an end. 

Swinburne is correct that pleasure is not the only good that exists. To have meaning - that is to live a meaningful life - is also of great importance. One way that one can be meaningful is to be used by God for some purpose of His. Such meaning could have eternal significance and therefore be eternally meaningful. Consider (for example) a couple who lose their infant child to a seemingly pointless disease. The couple, understandably, are deeply upset and grieved; nevertheless, through their suffering they contemplate the higher things in life and decide to place faith in God, understanding Him to be the only being who can make sense of their suffering. The couple go on to be great missionaries and end up doing a great deal of good, through their Gospel preaching and acts of charity. Now, this good that came from the death of this infant and the suffering of the couple gives the infant and the couple meaning. Many may fill the afterlife who are thankful for the suffering of infant and couple as it lead to their own salvation. And to be meaningful in this way is a good both to the couple and the infant. God, therefore, in using the death of the infant to promote greater good, cannot be accused of using the infant or the couple as means to an end, with no good coming from the suffering for their own sakes. 

Thus, we see that Swinburne’s solution, rather than making God repulsive, vindicates Him. So, while I am not the biggest fan of the good professor, in this case I am inclined to say that he is right.