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. 

The Owen Dilemma

Perhaps John Owen’s best known argument is his dilemma aimed as a rebuttal of unlimited atonement - the view that Christ died for everyone. Owen’s dilemma, which we will call ‘The Owen Dilemma’, is found in his ginormous work ‘The Death of Death’, in which he says, 

If Christ died in the stead of all men, and made satisfaction for their sins, then he did it for all their sins, or only for some of their sins. If for some only, who then can be saved? If for all, why then are all not saved? They say it is because of their unbelief; they will not believe, and therefore are not saved. That unbelief, is it a sin, or is it not? If it be not, how can it be a cause of damnation? If it be, Christ died for it, or he did not, If he did not, then he died not for all the sins of all men. If he did, why is this an obstacle to their salvation? (Death of Death, Bk III, ch 3)

Simply put, The Owen Dilemma goes as follows: If unlimited atonement is true, then either Christ paid for all the sins of those for whom He died, including the sin of unbelief; or Christ did not pay for all the sins for those for whom He died.

The force of Owen's challenge lays on apparent theological problems entailed by the horns of this dilemma. The first horn is said to be problematic because if Christ died for all sins, including the sin of unbelief, then the debt that is owed to God has been completely paid; God, therefore, cannot punish anyone for unpaid debt. The second horn is problematic because if Christ did not cover all sins by His death then man will still have unpaid debt towards God, which would result in no man being saved as no man can render what is due to God. 

The Owen Dilemma is seen as a trump card by Owenites (I am using this term to describe those who hold to all five points of TULIP) who wish to defend limited atonement. If you have ever argued with an Owenite over limited atonement, you would likely have encountered this dilemma from him. However, the dilemma assumes a number of philosophical presuppositions concerning the mechanics of The Atonement that render serious problems for the Owenite account. 

One presupposition is that Christ’s atonement was a payment of a literal debt, such that once paid God could not demand anymore payment or punish anyone for non-payment. But is this the best understanding of The Atonement? I think not. This position finds little support Biblically. When the Bible does speak of the Atonement in terms of debt, the subject is the writing off of debt and not the payment of it (See the parables of the two debtors and unforgiving servant). Moreover, such a view is open to a powerful philosophical objection, first forwarded by Fausto Sozzini (The 16th century founder of the Socinian movement). 

If Christ’s punishment was payment of a literal debt for those who will be saved, the need of repentance and faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins is made void. Christ would have fully paid the debt. God, therefore, would have no right to demand any more from His elect, including faith and repentance in Him. Indeed, if the Owenite system is correct every member of the elect would be born saved. To avoid this problem, the Owenite makes a distinction between the accomplishment of redemption and the application of redemption. The Owenite argues that the former is achieved by Christ without any reference to the actions of man but the latter is dependent upon man’s faith and repentance in Him. However, this distinction undermines the Owenite's thesis: separating the payment of the debt and the effect of this payment allows for the defender of unlimited atonement to provide an explanation as to why not everyone is saved, namely, because not everyone puts faith in Christ and thus reaps its benefits. 

Why, then, does the Owenite not accept unlimited atonement if he accepts this distinction? The reason is because of the other presuppositions held by the Owenite. 

The Owenite also argues that The Atonement can have no other purpose than the salvation of whom it was intended for. What is ironic about this Owenite presupposition is that it is commonly asserted but has virtually never been defended in any depth. This is likely due to the difficulty of defending such a presupposition. The reason why many Owenite forward this presupposition is because Scripture makes no mention of any other purpose besides the salvation of sinners. But this does not entail that there is no other purpose behind it. There are many things that Christians believe God does that we do not know the full purpose of — various cases of suffering, for instance. There are only a few places in the Bible where specific instances of suffering are said to have a purpose. However, it would be unwarranted to argue that suffering has no purposes besides those specific cases mentioned in the Bible. 

Our experience of nature also teaches us that many of God’s designs has multiple purposes. For instance, it would be wrong to state that the sun only has the purpose of providing light, for we know that it has the other purposes of producing heat, health by providing vitamin D, and securing the earth in its location within the universe. In times past these other purposes were unknown to mankind. Similarly, then, The Atonement may have other purposes that are not known to us. 

Having said all this, I do not think that the other purposes of The Atonement are completely unknown to us. Here are a few possible reasons for why God might have made The Atonement universal. The Bible teaches us that God is a God of love, this being a main premiss in John’s letters. I think it is more befitting and greater of a loving God that He provide provision for all rather than a select few. Universal atonement, therefore, is necessary if God is going to be maximally loving. A counterfactual argument can also be forwarded: it could be argued that the knowledge that Christ has died for all will lead more to place faith in Christ than if He only died for a select few. Universal atonement also frees God of any accusation of unfairness or lack of efficacy in His atonement. The reason The Atonement does not save all is not a failure on God’s part but only ever on man’s. Hence, as Luther so rightly said, no man can deceive himself and say, ‘The Lord died for Peter and Paul, but not for me’.

A third presupposition often held by the Owenites is that Christ took our sins upon Himself by taking them off us. The implication of this is that Christ could not have taken the sins of the whole world upon Himself, as then the world would be sinless (because all the sins were put on Christ) and thus all saved. This presupposition hardly needs much comment. It should be evident that this is not how our sin is imputed to Christ. We are not made sinless by having our sin taken off us but by identifying and becoming one with Christ. If the taking away of sin was sufficient to save us, then there would be no need for punishment. God would have only had to transfer our sin away from us onto someone or something else; and if this is the case, there seems to be little reason why God could not just have transferred the sin onto some animal. Moreover, if Christ bears our sin by taking it from us, it would imply that we become righteous by taking Christ’s righteousness from Him. But this is clearly absurd.

It should be clear that the presuppositions underlying The Owen Dilemma are to be rejected, and hence the Owen Dilemma itself. A better mechanic for understanding The Atonement that avoids the presuppositions of the Owenites, and the challenge of The Owen Dilemma against unlimited atonement will be offered in a later blog post.