The Problem of Evil and the Power of God

The Problem of Evil and the Power of God

Studies in Systematic Theology Series Editors

Stephen Bevans S.V.D., Catholic Theological Union, Chicago Miikka Ruokanen, University of Helsinki and Nanjing Union Theological Seminary Advisory Board

Wanda Deifelt, Luther College, Decorah, (IA) Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena (CA) Jesse Mugambi, University of Nairobi Rachel Zhu Xiaohong, Fudan University, Shanghai

VOLUME 8

The Problem of Evil and the Power of God By

Atle Ottesen Søvik

LEIDEN • BOSTON LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Søvik, Atle Ottesen. ╇ The problem of evil and the power of God / by Atle Ottesen Søvik. ╇╅ p. cm. -- (Studies in systematic theology, ISSN 1876-1518 ; v. 8) ╇ Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ╇ ISBN 978-90-04-20560-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Theodicy. 2. Swinburne, Richard. 3. Ward, Keith, 1938- 4. Griffin, David Ray, 1939- 5. Hygen, Johan Bernitz, 1911- I. Title. II. Series. ╇ BT160.S675 2011 ╇ 231’.8--dc22 2011012274

ISSN 1876-1518 ISBN 978 90 04 20560 4 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke€Brill€NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

Contents Acknowledgements����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓��������������ix ╇╛↜I.╇ Introduction����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������������������� 1 The Problem of Evil����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������� 1 Responses to the Problem of Evil not Discussed in this Book����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������������� 5 Material����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������������������������13 Method and Outline����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����16 Part One

Presentation of the Four Theodicies ╛╛╛II.╇ Richard Swinburne’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓�����������������������23 Greater Goods����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓��������������25 Necessary Evils����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������������27 Swinburne’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�31 III.╇ Keith Ward’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓34 Concept of God����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������35 Goals for Creation����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������38 Ward’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������39 â•›IV.╇ David R. Griffin’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓����������������������������47 Critique of Traditional Theism����������������������������������尓����������������������49 Introduction to Process Theism����������������������������������尓��������������������52 Griffin’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������57 ╇ V.╇ Johan B. Hygen’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓�����������������������������61 The Problem of Evil����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����61 The Concept of Almightiness����������������������������������尓������������������������66 Hygen’s Theodicy����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������69

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Criteria and Terminology ╇╛VI.╇ First Criterion: Coherence����������������������������������尓���������������������������81 Puntel on Coherence����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓81 Theory of Truth����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������85 Value Judgments����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������89 ╛╛↜VII.╇ Second Criterion: Authenticity����������������������������������尓�������������������95 Pannenberg on Systematic Theology����������������������������������尓���������98 The Philosophical idea of God����������������������������������尓������������������106 The Problem of Evil����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓108 VIII.╇ Terminology����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓������������112 ‘Evil’����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓��������������������������116 ‘The Problem of Evil’����������������������������������尓����������������������������������119 ‘God’ as Concept����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����121 God as a Perfectly Good Moral Actor in the World�����������������126 God as Personal����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������128 God as Immutable, Impassible, Timeless and Omniscient����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����������129 God as Trinitarian����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���134 God as Necessary����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����136 God as Infinite����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������146 God as Creator����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓��������150 God’s Power����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������������152 Part Three

Discussion of the Four Theodicies ╇╛╛IX.╇ Swinburne����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓����������������161 Some Evils do not lead to Greater Goods��������������������������������163 God Ought not to Use Evils as a Means����������������������������������尓���173 There are Better Ways to Reach God’s Goals�����������������������������176 Some Evils are not Outweighed����������������������������������尓����������������185 â•… X.╇ Ward����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�������������������������196 God Ought not to Allow Genuine Evils����������������������������������尓���197 Independence does not Require Suffering��������������������������������202



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Independence is not Worth the Suffering����������������������������������尓213 Less Independent Beings would be Better���������������������������������218 ╇╛XI.╇ Griffin����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������������������220 God’s Non-Coercion is Incoherent����������������������������������尓�����������221 God’s Non-Coercion is Inauthentic����������������������������������尓����������229 ╛╛╛XII.╇ Hygen����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������������������240 Hygen’s God is not Praiseworthy����������������������������������尓��������������241 Why does God only Perform Miracles Sometimes?����������������243 There are no Supernatural Evil Powers����������������������������������尓����245 God’s Fight is not Genuine����������������������������������尓������������������������247 XIII.╇ Conclusion����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓���������������252 Constructive Proposals����������������������������������尓������������������������������252 Final Conclusion����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����260 Bibliography����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������������������265 Index����������������������������������尓������������������������������������尓�����������������������������������269

Acknowledgements After working with this book for some years now, there are many people I would like to thank. The first to be mentioned is Professor JanOlav Henriksen, who supervised the dissertation I wrote about the problem of evil. I also received much valuable supervision from my colleague Professor Peder Gravem, and I am especially thankful to him when it comes to matters of method. I spent a semester at Luther Seminary in Minnesota in 2007. There I was happy that the Professors Paul Sponheim, Terence Fretheim and Alan Padgett took the time to read and comment on an earlier version of the book, and I enjoyed participating at their seminar on God, Evil and Suffering. At my own institution, there are also many people who deserve thanks. Thanks to all the colleagues who have given me feedback at various parts of the manuscript, thanks to the librarians for excellent help and service, thanks to the leadership of the institution for financial support, and thanks to everyone at MF who make it such a great place to work. Thanks to Brill and Maarten Frieswijk, for excellent service and cooperation, and to the anonymous reviewer, who gave much helpful advice. Thanks to my brother Olav and father Oddvar, who made many valuable comments to the draft version. And a very special thank to my dear mother, who died in the summer of 2009, but who with her joyful life in spite of her disease showed us all that she knew how to deal practically with the problem of evil. Finally, my thanks go to my wonderful and pregnant wife Elise and our fantastic son Kristian, who make it true that I love my life.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction the problem of evil Can one rationally believe that there exists a good and omnipotent God when there is so many and horrific evils in the world? In this book I argue that the answer is yes, and I do so by means of discussing four suggested solutions (also known as theodicies) to the problem. But first I shall draw a large picture of the problem field and various approaches to it, before I zoom in on a precise presentation of how the problem will be understood and discussed in this book.1 There is much pain and suffering in the world. Pain is a physical sensation which people and animals generally want to avoid, but there are exceptions. Sometimes someone wants to experience pain, or sees that it is necessary for a greater good. Suffering on the other hand involves a clearly negative evaluation of one’s own situation. Other situations not involving pain and suffering may also be considered as bad, in the sense that it was better if it had not happened. For example, some kinds of pollution or the destruction of something beautiful might not cause pain and suffering, but still be considered as bad. I shall use the terms ‘evil’ and ‘evils’ in a broad sense to cover all those states of affairs that are considered as bad. This is a broad spectre from horrendous evils to minor evils, but they have in common that they are seen as problems that people wish did not exist, and they may give raise to existential problems. Some evils may lead to greater goods in a way that makes people see in a larger perspective that it was good that they happened. In that case, something that was prima facie evil – something which seemed evil – was not genuinely evil. But there also seems to be a lot of evils which do not lead to any greater goods, so that 1 ╇ Readers who are not interested in this larger picture should proceed directly to the last three paragraphs of the next subchapter. Reader who want more details, arguments and references can consult Atle Ottesen Søvik, The Problem of Evil and the Power of God: On the Coherence and Authenticity of Some Christian Theodicies with Different Understandings of God’s Power (Oslo: MF Norwegian School of Theology/Unipub, 2009).

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they are considered – also in a larger perspective – as being genuinely evil, meaning that it would have been better if they had not happened. If these bad states are partly caused by immoral human actions, I shall refer to them as ‘moral evils’, and if they are not, I shall refer to them as ‘natural evils’. There are evils that are difficult to place in either category, but it is still a useful distinction. Evils in various forms give raise to existential questions. ‘Existential questions’ I define as practical questions related to how a person shall live her life, and how she can have a good life, for example: How can I come to terms with evils in my life, what gives meaning to my life, what gives hope, what gives comfort, and so on. How to best answer such questions depend partly on the individual in concern. On the other hand there are ‘theoretical questions’, by which I mean general questions of what is true and false, independent of the individual who asks. But some theoretical questions are sometimes called existential, because of their close link to the aforementioned existential questions. Examples would be: What is evil? Where does evil come from? Why do some (good) people suffer, but other (bad) people not? Is there an end to suffering? Is there a (good) life after death? Does God or gods exist? Can God or gods (miraculously) prevent suffering, and if so; why not more often, or why does it happen so arbitrarily? Does petitionary prayer help? Why does God seem hidden instead of making his existence obvious to us? These questions are theoretical questions in the sense that they are general and have answers that are true or false – unless the question presupposes false premises. But these questions are also existentially important for most people, since what you believe to be the right answer to these theoretical questions will influence what you answer to the existential questions about what gives hope, meaning, comfort, and a good life. For example, if you think there is no God and no life after death, you will most likely not feel comfort by or hope that you will reunite with someone you have lost. All the problems of evil mentioned so far can be referred to as ‘the problem of evil’ in daily speech. They constitute a cluster, for many of them are closely connected to each other, so that answering one of them will have consequences for how you answer the other questions. If the problem of evil in a wide sense is to be solved, it must be solved by answering or rejecting all the different problems of evil. Some will reject some of the problems as false problems, for example if they



introduction

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do not believe that God exists. The problem of evil is a complex of problems, where different people acknowledge different problems with different strength depending on their existential interests and what else they believe to be true. The theoretical questions of evil also raise other practical problems, related to the existential questions already mentioned. Psychologists, sociologists and philosophers can be interested in how to understand evil and why people do evil towards each other, and why they do so much and horrible evils towards each others. This is knowledge that politicians, peace workers and others are interested in, in order to fight evil. There are also other practical questions of how to best comfort those who suffer or how best to fight various evils. All of these questions can be referred to as ‘the problem of evil’, but the questions I started with are those most commonly referred to as the problem of evil, and the ones that are the focus of this book. Most religions and ideologies offer answers to all these questions, both the existential and the theoretical questions. Depending on what else is held to be true in the ideology or religion, the answers will be different, since adherents try to make the cognitive content of their religion or ideology more or less coherent. It is common for religions and ideologies also to offer a positive solution to existential problems, claiming that there is meaning in the world and reasons for hope that evil can be overcome. Peter Berger is famous for his claim that religions try to make order out of chaos.2 This stands in contrast to other ontologies like naturalism or nihilism claiming that there is no great Meaning of Life or that there is very little reason to hope that there is life after death or that one day everything will be good. Religions give different answers to the problems of evil. Depending on what else is believed to be true, religious people understand the problems differently and offer different answers. It has been suggested that religious responses to the problem of evil can be divided in three main answers: either a karma-solution where all evils are to be explained as deserved consequences of misdeed in earlier lives; or a dualistic solution where all evils are to be understood as the result of one or more evil forces acting against one or more good forces/God; or a

╇ Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1969). 2

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monotheistic solution where free will if often offered as an explanation of at least moral evils.3 But it is extremely difficult to give a brief, general and correct overview of how people belonging to the different religions understand and try to solve the problem(s) of evil. The reason is that there are so many different opinions within one religion among its various traditions and individual thinkers, and even the main solutions come in many versions. In fact you will find many similar solutions in the main religions. Some may refer to karma as the explanation of concrete evils, but if they believe that there is one good and omnipotent God who created the karma system, then the problem of why God created a world where all these evils are possible becomes very similar to a monotheistic version of that problem.4 But the believer in karma may also understand God not as the omnipotent creator of the karma system, but rather think that this system is a basic part of being which God did not create.5 One may find a theodicy in Christian process theology which is similar in principle, namely that God is not omnipotent in the sense that God can do everything, and evils must be understood as part of a system God did not create out of nothing. David Griffin, whose theodicy will be discussed in this book, offers such a solution. People focussing on what in essence are dualistic solutions, or focussing on free will can also be found in the major religions. In this book you will find Swinburne and Ward focussing on free will, while Hygen’s theodicy is dualistic. It is very difficult to say something general about how religions relate to the problem of evil, because it is so complex. As shown above, many of the same approaches can be found in the different religions. I think it is less interesting to identify an essence of the different religions, than to highlight the specific propositions6 individuals hold true and which questions they struggle to answer, regardless of their 3 ╇ Classically argued by Max Weber, in Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen Konfuzianismus und Taoismus: Schriften 1915–1920, eds. Petra Kolonko and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, 1989, 95. Weber describes the monotheistic solution as predestination, but since his days free will has become the most common monotheistic solution. 4 ╇ Examples of Western-like formulations in Eastern holy texts are given by Bimal Matilal, in Andrew Eshleman, Readings in Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West (Malden, MA: Blackwell 2008), 274. 5 ╇ As argued for example by the Indian philosopher Shankara. See Shankara, reprinted in ibid., 296. 6 ╇ By ‘proposition’ I mean that which a sentence expresses about the world. A more precise account is given in chapter six.



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religion. Even though the specific theodicies I discuss in this book are Christian, they have solutions that in principle could be interesting for people adhering to very different religions. What I shall do in the following is this: I start with the large map introduced so far of many problems and many solutions. Then I zoom in and comment very briefly on theories I leave out and why. This will have to be superficial, but it gives the reader an impression of where in the larger discourse the discussion in this book is located and why. I shall start by commenting upon atheism, then the other religions than Christianity, then some who reject that one should try to solve the problem of evil, and then finally some influential Christian theodicies. When this is done, I am ready to present the problem and the theodicies that will be discussed in this book, and how they will be discussed. responses to the problem of evil not discussed in this book There are numerous responses to the problem of evil which there is no space to discuss in this book. But a reader may be interested in where the content of this book is located in the larger discussion, and why it is located where it is. I do not have space to justify why I have left out everything which is left out, but I indicate briefly why I have left it out, and refer to other books where longer discussions can be found. I have selected four quite similar theories, and the basic justification of my approach is that this strict selection allows for a thorough and precise debate which gives a well-argued solution in the end to the problem of evil as it is defined later in this chapter. An atheist will reject many of the problems of evil that has to do with God or gods. I do not discuss any atheistic theories in this book, since I believe that the arguments for the existence of God make it more likely that God exists than that no God exists. The discussion of God’s existence is a huge discussion, but I recommend the authorships of Richard Swinburne, Keith Ward, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and L.B. Puntel for a well-argued defence of the coherence of belief in God.7 All religions face a great common challenge, namely to argue that it is more likely that the content of their religion is mainly true rather than that it is mainly false and merely has been invented by humans. 7

╇ See the literature list for concrete titles.

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Are there really any reincarnation of humans and a law of karma deciding how good people are and determining their following lives accordingly – or is it not more likely that this is just made up by humans? Did God or gods really reveal themselves to those central religious persons who claimed (or about whom it is claimed) that they spoke on behalf of God – or is it not more likely that it was just made up? Are there really any evil forces responsible for diseases, natural disasters – or are not the scientific explanations more plausible? And so on. Naturalism, understood roughly as the belief that the world of space-time is all there is, presents itself as a very challenging alternative to religious ontologies. Naturalism is able to explain very much in a coherent manner, receiving new verifications from natural science all the time. There is more to read about religions and science than anyone can cover. Based on what I have read it is my opinion that religious world views in general make a poor case compared to naturalism when it comes to offering a plausible ontology. But I do think that there are versions of Christianity which can stand up to the challenge. I will present quite much of such a version in this book, but again I must refer to the authorships of Richard Swinburne, Keith Ward, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and L.B. Puntel for a thorough version. Since it is the only plausible religious alternative to naturalism I know of (which may of course be due to my own ignorance), Christianity is the only religion I consider in this book. But I believe that the conclusions I draw are interesting for people belonging to different religions, and could well become part of the reasoning on the problem of evil in other religions too. Within Christian theology, it is common to believe that God exists, and that he8 is perfectly good and omnipotent. I shall return to the question of how to define God’s goodness and power, but as long as God’s goodness is taken to imply that he both wants to and has the power to prevent more evils in this world, it is a problem to understand why God does not do so. Some understand God as being itself or ground of being, but God may nevertheless be understood as personal, omnipotent and good so that the problem remains the same. If God is understood as being itself or ground of being, but not personal, good and omnipotent, then the problem of evil dissolves, but so does any reason for religious attitudes towards this God, or hope for a good

8 ╇ For stylistic reasons and in lack of a gender-neutral personal pronoun I use ‘he’ since I believe that God is personal, but I do not mean that God has gender.



introduction

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afterlife.9 Such a God would be little different from a unifying force of physics, so that one could question the use of term ‘God’ at all. Various arguments can be given that the ground of being should be understood as personal,10 and I will not discuss the idea of an impersonal God in this book. As shown above, there are many different theoretical questions connected to evil. The following formulation is common in literature on the problem of evil in a Christian context: There seems to be a contradiction between on the one hand believing that there is a good and omnipotent God and on the other hand that evils exist. When I read thorough attempts to solve this problem they include answers to most of the other theoretical problems of evil as well. In this book I focus on this theoretical problem, which means that I will not answer existential problems connected to how people should live their lives. How people should live their lives is very different from person to person, but the theoretical problem I have just mentioned is either consistent or not, and a problem that many people experience as a problem. This means that I also leave out more practical theodicies, which focus on what God has done to fight evil.11 I have nothing against theories about what God has done to fight evil as such, but they do little to answer the theoretical problems which are the focus of this book. I find that a crucial theoretical problem is why God in the first place would create a world where suffering is possible, and the mentioned practical theodicies have no answer to this. Many philosophers and theologians have tried to solve the theoretical problem, but there are also some who believe that there is a God who is good and omnipotent, but they reject attempts to give a theoretical solution to the problem. The reason can either be that it is impossible because of the character of religious language, or that it is immoral to try to solve it, and I shall now briefly reject these two critiques.

╇ 9 ╇ As argued in Michael Tooley, ‘The Problem of Evil’, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010), section 1.1. 10 ╇ See for example Lorenz B. Puntel, Sein und Gott: Ein systematischer Ansatz in Auseinandersetzung mit M. Heidegger, E. Levinas und J.-L. Marion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), chapter 3.5 and 3.6 or William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 152–153. 11 ╇ Kenneth Surin argues against what he calls theoretical theodicies in favour of what he calls theodicies with a practical emphasis, as offered by for example Dorothee Sölle and Jürgen Moltmann (Kenneth Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)).

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chapter one

Concerning religious language, some argue that such language does not have truth value since God is outside our normal experience, and presumably greater than what language or mind can fathom. Mysticism and negative theology would be examples of this view, whereas some philosophers and theologians argue against the truth value of religious language based on a general critique of the idea of universal truth.12 I agree that religious language has many functions, some of which do not have truth value. But I do think that it is possible for theological language about God to refer to reality and have truth value (which can be tested on its coherence). In chapters six and seven I spend some time showing how Puntel and Pannenberg defend the truth value and testability of theological language, so I will not present it here, but rather refer the reader to those chapters. Concerning the moral critique, some argue that theodicies are immoral because they have bad consequences. Some even claim that all theodicies are immoral for this reason, for example Kenneth Surin, Terrence Tilley, or Sarah Pinnock.13 I will just comment briefly on such moral critique of theodicies in the following, but a longer discussion can be found elsewhere.14 I will give two counterarguments to such a kind of moral critique. First of all, it is often question-begging.15 The theodicies are supposed to be wrong, and the consequences of communicating something wrong are then considered to be bad. But in such a case the theodicy should not be dismissed because of its consequences; rather, its claims should be discussed and rejected by arguments. If the theodicy is considered by the critics to be true and it has bad consequences, then those should be criticized who use true ideas to do something immoral. And if the theodicy is considered by the critics not to be true, then its content should be criticized. But a theory

12 ╇ See for example D.Z. Phillips, inspired by the late Wittgenstein, in D.Z. Phillips, Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970), chapter five. 13 ╇ Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil, 146–149; Terrence W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991), 219; and Sarah K. Pinnock, Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), 135–138. 14 ╇ See Atle Søvik, ‘Why almost all moral critique of theodicies is misplaced’, Religious Studies 44, no.4 (2008); Robert Simpson, ‘Some moral critique of theodicy is misplaced, but not all’, Religious Studies 45, no. 3 (2009); and Atle O. Søvik, ‘More on moral critique of theodicies: Reply to Robert Simpson’, Religious Studies (forthcoming). 15 ╇ To beg the question is to presuppose (parts of) the conclusion you are arguing in favour of without being or making aware of it.



introduction

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should not be rejected only because of its consequences, unless the consequences show that the theory is wrong. The second problem is that even if a theodicy is inappropriate to communicate in some situations, it does not mean that it is inappropriate to communicate in all situations. Kenneth Surin and Sarah Pinnock argue that there are situations where communicating a theodicy has bad consequences, and they claim that for that reason it is always wrong to communicate it.16 Much moral critique of theodicies portrays different situations where sufferers are silenced, pacified, inflicted with extra suffering and so on.17 From these examples the theodicy is morally dismissed. But sometimes a theoretical theodicy is helpful, wanted, and needed, and it may have the good consequences of bringing comfort and hope. It is a matter of practical wisdom to find out when a theodicy is appropriate to communicate or not. This means that even if there are some situations where a theodicy should not be communicated, that does not make it immoral in general. It is a difference between searching for truth and communicating truth. Searching for truth is not morally wrong, although communicating a true proposition may be wrong in some situations, but not in others. Searching for the truth about God is what many theoretical questions of theodicy are about. This means that a general dismissal of searching for theodicies at all – such as suggested by Tilley18 – cannot be substantiated. Searching the truth about God is not immoral. Skeptical theists argue that the problem of evil is not a good argument against belief in God’s existence since we cannot know whether evils are genuinely evil or not. The argument is that we humans are not in a position to know whether or not God has good reasons for letting evil occur, since God is so much greater than we can understand.19 Richard Swinburne argues against such a position by defending a 16 ╇ Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil, 146–149; and Pinnock, Beyond Theodicy, 135–138. This view is shared also by Michael Scott, ‘The Morality of Theodicies’, Religious Studies 32, no. 1 (1996): 4. 17 ╇ For example Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy, part II; or John Swinton, Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 17–28. 18 ╇ Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy, 219. 19 ╇ See for example the articles by Alston, Wykstra and Howard-Snyder in Daniel Howard-Snyder, The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996) or the article by Bergmann and Howard-Snyder in Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 13–25.

10

chapter one

Principle of Credulity, which says that we should believe that things are as they appear, unless we have good reasons not to. The fact that God presumably is much greater than what we can understand does not count as a good reason for not believing that there are genuine evils when it appears that there are. For if God is beyond our understanding, we may as well be in error concerning everything else we say about God – maybe what appears to be good is really evil, for example.20 Of course we may be in error about everything. But we need the Principle of Credulity as a starting point. Otherwise anyone can make any claim on behalf of a god, said to be greater than we can understand, and then reject all critique by saying that we are not in a position to know whether the claim nevertheless is true because the mentioned god is so great. Likewise, naturalists may reject all arguments in favour of God’s existence by saying that we are not in a position to whether or not science will give a better explanation in the future. All of this may be true, but we have no reason to believe one more than the other. So if we are to decide among theories which of them is best argued, the Principle of Credulity should be maintained. Even those theists who find skeptical theism to provide a good rebuttal of the problem of evil, should be interested in a finding a coherent theodicy. For even if the theist can use the skeptical argument to argue that the theist may be wrong in claiming that there is no coherent theodicy, it is far better for the theist if she can show the atheist a coherent theodicy.21 Since I claim to provide a coherent theodicy in this book, I believe that it should be interesting also for skeptical theists even if I will not discuss skeptical theism anymore in this book. The area I have now zoomed down to is the area of Christian theodicies, where a large part of the theodicy discourse has been situated. Here I have selected famous theodicists like Richard Swinburne and David Griffin, but also scholars less known for their theodicies, like Keith Ward and Johan Hygen. But there are some other famous theodicies of this sort that which I have left out, and why is that? Two typical examples would be Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen. I have left them out for these reasons: The first is that they offer defences, while ╇ For this and other arguments against skeptical theism, see Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 20–29. 21 ╇ As argued by Michael Murray, in Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 35. 20



introduction

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I am interested in theodicies. These terms are defined in different ways, but Plantinga is sufficed with his defence being merely possible, he does not require it to be plausible.22 Peter Van Inwagen has a bit stronger requirement for his defence, saying it should be ‘true for all anyone knows’.23 But showing that belief in God is possible does not counter the critique that belief in God is implausible. My interest in this book is in theories one can argue as plausible by showing a comparatively high level of coherence. The coherence of a theodicy does depend on how it fits into a larger theory, and so people may disagree on how coherent a theodicy is because they evaluate it in light of different larger theories. But the coherence of the theodicy also depends on its relation to all other sorts of facts, so one can consider the coherence of theodicies both on their own and in light of their larger theoretical framework. When I say that a theodicy is plausible I mean that it must be a coherent part of a larger theoretical framework that can well be argued to be at least as coherent as the best alternative theories. This is a reason for me to spend some time on the larger frameworks of the theodicies in this book, although for reasons of space, focus must be mainly on the theodicies on their own and not the larger framework. The goal is nevertheless a theodicy which is as coherent as possible. In Plantinga’s classical text on the problem of evil he suggests that all natural evils could be understood as caused by Satan.24 I find that very implausible, and argue against such a view in chapter twelve. Van Inwagen suggests that at one specific point in evolution God made primates into humans by miraculously giving them language, abstract thought, disinterested love and free will. These humans had paranormal abilities which made them invulnerable to any harm, and they did not die either. But then they used their free will to sin, and God took their paranormal abilities away. Van Inwagen does not say that this story is true, but that it is true for all anyone knows, and that there is no reason to believe that the story is false.25 I think it is very unlikely that this theory is true, because there is no evidence for it, and because there 22 ╇ Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977). When I use the term ‘plausible’ I mean ‘likely to be true because apparently more coherent than alternative understandings’. 23 ╇ Peter Van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7. 24 ╇ Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 58–59. 25 ╇ Van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil, 85–87.

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are many reasons to believe that the human mind has evolved gradually.26 Plantinga and Van Inwagen’s defences are left out both since I find them implausible and since they do not fit as well into the methodological set up as the others do. After all these limitations, what it left is the understanding of the problem and the theodicies that I will actually discuss in this book. From now on the problem of evil is defined in the following way: If God is perfectly good, it seems to follow that he would prevent genuine evils. If God is omnipotent, or at least immensely powerful, it seems to follow that he could prevent genuine evils. But since genuine evils seem to exist, this seems to contradict either 1) that God exists, or 2) that he is perfectly good, or 3) that he is immensely powerful. For if he both exists and is perfectly good and immensely powerful, then it is difficult to understand why there is so much genuine evil in this world. The theoretical task of understanding these propositions coherently is here called ‘the problem of evil’ and defined as ‘the apparent inconsistency between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil’.27 There are many attempts to understand how these elements can be united. Different thinkers try either to redefine some of the terms, or think of arguments as to why the different elements after all fit together. Such an attempt is often called a theodicy. In the following I will understand ‘theodicy’ as ‘an attempt to understand the apparent inconsistency between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil in as coherent a way as possible’. Given these definitions, I define the goal of a theodicy modestly, so that a ‘successful theodicy’ or a ‘solution to the problem of evil’ would be ‘a demonstration that evil does not make belief in God contradictory’. The more coherent a solution is, the better it will be. But also this theoretical problem covers many different problems and aspects. There is the logical problem of whether propositions about God and evil are inconsistent, there are evidential problems of whether God’s existence is plausible in the face of the amount of evil, the Â�duration

26 ╇ See for example how Peter Carruthers understands the human mind and how its modules have evolved gradually (Peter Carruthers, The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)â•›). 27 ╇ I here use the terms ‘powerful’ instead of ‘omnipotent’ and ‘evil’ instead of ‘genuine evil’ in order to include all the four theodicies of this book, since not all of them will agree that God is omnipotent or that there is genuine evil.



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of evil, the distribution of evils, the type of evil, or specific evils,28 and there are many specific questions such as: Where did evil come from? Why does God allow it to exist? Why is there so much evil? Why does God not prevent evil? Why does God not prevent more evil? Why does God prevent evil arbitrarily? Why is God hidden? Why does God not answer more prayers and perform more miracles? Why does God seem to answer prayers and perform miracles arbitrarily? And so on. The problem has already been defined and I will not narrow it down further, since the different theodicies I discuss also define it this widely. Even if the way that the problem has been defined covers many more precise problems, the theodicies discuss most of these problems in order to show that they are coherent theodicies. The more precise problems are so closely connected that one can hardly answer one of them satisfyingly without discussing the others. But focus will be on trying to make a theodicy as coherent as possible given the fact that there is so much evil, and by ‘much evil’ I include both the duration and distribution, the horror and the amount of evil. Still, this problem is far too big for a book to handle, and so further limitations are necessary. The goal of this book is to find the best Christian theodicy, which means the Christian theodicy that in the most coherent way makes the case that belief in God is not contradictory, but rather coherent. What this sentence means more precisely is spelled out in great detail in chapters six and seven, where I define terms like ‘best Christian’ and ‘most coherent’. I can only promise to give a well-argued conclusion to which if the four theodicies is the best, and not which theodicy is the best of all that exist. But of course I have selected among the best I know. Material To work with the problem that now has been defined, I have chosen four theodicies – by Richard Swinburne, Keith Ward, David R. Griffin and Johan B. Hygen. They all think similarly about theological language, theological method, and God – but they have four different

28 ╇ For the distinction between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil, see Howard-Snyder, The Evidential Argument from Evil, xii–xix. The distinction between different problems of evils based on different kinds of evils, I have from Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 11, 31.

14

chapter one

opinions on God’s power. There is a major divide between them concerning whether God is the source of everything there is (creator ex nihilo) or not (creator out of chaos). On opposite sides of this divide we find Richard Swinburne and David Griffin, who both have written extensively on the problem of evil. In addition there are two other persons who are quite similar to these two, who have not written so much about theodicy, but who make very interesting adjustments compared with Swinburne and Griffin, namely Keith Ward and Johan B. Hygen. Many aspects of their theodicies will not be discussed as thoroughly as Swinburne and Griffin because that would involve much unnecessary repetition; rather, their differences in relation to Swinburne and Griffin will be focussed upon. All four believe that God’s power is limited by logic and moral, which means that God cannot actualize a state of affairs the description of which is logically contradictory; nor can he act immorally. Except for these limitations (if logical limitations should be called limitations at all), Richard Swinburne argues that there are no limitations on God’s power. Ward and Griffin argue that God is also limited by how God’s nature necessarily is, and they understand this limitation differently. As mentioned, Ward and Griffin also disagree on how to understand God’s creation, since only Ward of the two believes in creation out of nothing. Hygen argues that God is limited by something external, namely evil powers not created by God. These are four different understandings of God’s power, and it is these different understandings of God’s power that is the focus of the discussion in this book. Richard Swinburne represents what is often referred to as a ‘greatergood-theodicy’.29 He argues that God has allowed evil to occur in order to reach greater goods. Swinburne mentions several greater goods, such as love, compassion, loyalty, development of human character etc, and they all depend on humans having free will. Keith Ward says of his own theodicy that it is a variety of the ‘free-will defence’, but with greater emphasis on the necessities inherent in God’s nature.30 For Ward, it was good that God chose to create our unique world with its unique goods, which would otherwise not exist, even though there

29 ╇ The classification is taken from Charles Taliaferro, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 305. 30 ╇ Keith Ward, Divine Action: Examining God’s Role in an Open and Emergent Universe, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2007), 67. Even if Ward calls it a ‘defence’, I show in chapter eight that he presents a theodicy in my definition of the term.



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also has to be quite a lot of suffering in our world. David R. Griffin represents what is often referred to as a ‘process theodicy’.31 He claims that God did not create evil, and is incapable of removing all evil at an instant. This theodicy is founded on the concept of God and the metaphysics of process philosophy, particularly as developed by A.N. Whitehead. Johan B. Hygen’s theodicy has been called a ‘fightingpower-theodicy’.32 Hygen claims that God is not omnipotent in the sense of being able to make anything happen. Rather, God is fighting against evil. Why have these four been chosen? There are several reasons for this choice. An important reason is that by discussing these four in the way that I do, I end up with a well-argued answer to the problem of evil. Another reason is that Swinburne is a main figure among those who write theodicies, whereas Griffin represents a main alternative with many adherents in the US. Ward and Hygen in turn provide interesting adjustments of these two. In the theodicy discourse, Ward is rarely quoted, while Hygen is practically unknown. I hope the discussion will show that these scholars have insights that deserve more attention in the debate. More importantly, by bringing Ward and Hygen in discussion with Swinburne and Griffin, important unsolved problems will surface to which I will offer some new arguments and suggestions in chapter thirteen. By bringing these four theodicies together in the order and the framework I have chosen, I will be able to point out not only which theodicy is best, but also important problems that remain to be solved also in the best theodicies. And for these problems I will suggest my own answers, which have been prepared through the discussion. This will be my contribution to the discussion, that I suggest how to solve remaining unsolved problems, so that I can present a coherent theodicy in the end. I do not present my own contributions and conclusion already in this introduction chapter, since it is very difficult to understand the relevance of these contributions before the discussion is made. But it is my hope that the fruitfulness of the discussion and my contributions will convince the reader that my choice of material was good. 31 ╇ The term comes from the title of Griffin’s own book from 1976: David Ray Griffin, God, Power and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976). 32 ╇ The term is my translation of the Norwegian ‘kjempende-allmakt-teodicé’ from Tore Wigen, Religionsfilosofi: En bok om tro og fornuft og livets mening (Oslo: Luther, 1993), 238.

16

chapter one method and outline

There are considerable methodological challenges in discussing and evaluating four different theodicies. To be able to systematically consider the theodicies, I will proceed in the following way: First there will be a presentation of the theodicies in part one. This is done as immanently as possible, which means that they are given a presentation on their own terms, with their own terminology, and with a main focus on how the authors themselves present their solutions to the problem of evil. I start this way in order to let the voice of the authors themselves be heard – to the extent that that is possible. This entails that I do not comment or problematize the theodicies in the first presentation. It is common in books like this to raise questions along the way to accumulate questions for further discussion, and to indicate for the reader what is to come. This is partially done here, since I include in my presentations how the scholars criticize other theodicies. These critiques then return in the discussion in part three. But I do not spend too much time on indicating coming critique, because I need to clarify the positions in part two, before precise criticism can be made. So in part one, I mainly present the theodicies on their own terms. Of course such a presentation will still be coloured by the one who presents it, since a selection of material and the summary will always have a particular perspective. For example, in my presentations I want to present the focus that the authors themselves have, but in addition to this I focus on aspects that I know will be relevant for the discussion in part three. I have tried to lie close to the texts of the four scholars, to read as sympathetically as I can because my goal is to find the best answer to the problem, and by help of the references the presentation can be double-checked by any reader. A presentation or an analysis should always include a self-critical element, to convince the reader that the presentation or analysis is good. This self-critique is less important here since my aim is to present the theodicies as coherent and as authentically Christian as possible, but this does not exempt me from the need for self-critique. To strengthen the self-critical aspect of the presentation, I mainly use two strategies: Firstly, if I find text parts that seem to contradict each other, I discuss them in order to find out which gives the best presentation of the theodicy. Secondly, if I find presentations of the same point that I am presenting written by other readers of the same theodicy and these differ from my presentations, I will compare my presentation



introduction

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with these and discuss why I believe my interpretation to be the best. These two strategies function as an argument in favour of my presentation being fair, and demonstrate that several interpretations have been considered, without me forcing an interpretation on the material.€Nevertheless, such presentations can never be neutral, but that is exactly why self-criticism is important. After the presentation of the four theodicies in part one, part two presents criteria for evaluation including a theoretical framework for the discussion, and then the precise terminology which will be used in the discussion. This part is for readers who are especially interested in working with the question of theodicy, and at times it is quite abstract and detailed. Readers who are just interested in the discussion and conclusion can very well skip part two and proceed directly from the presentations in part one to the discussions in part three. One does not need to read part two for the discussion to make sense, and if questions about terminology should arise, the reader may confer the relevant subchapter in chapter eight. I present part two briefly now, so those who just want the short version of this book should proceed directly to chapter two now. Chapters six and seven present criteria for the discussion. Criteria clarify what is meant when I say that a particular theodicy is better than another. There are many possible criteria, but my interest in this book is Christian theodicies and the question of how likely it is that they are true. I have therefore chosen coherence as a criterion of truth, and authenticity as a criterion of whether a theodicy is Christian. This does not mean that I think that a final verdict can be made on the question of their truth, but truth is the motive I have for using coherence as a criterion. Arguments in favour of choosing these criteria instead of others can be found in chapters six and seven. There the content of the criteria will be spelled out in great detail, but briefly put the contents are the following: First of all I consider the coherence in the four theodicies. ‘Coherence’ is here defined as a concept with three main aspects; consistency, cohesiveness, and comprehensiveness. My understanding of the concept is based on the work of the German philosopher Lorenz B. Puntel, which will be further presented in chapter six. ‘Consistency’ means that that the propositions in the theory cannot logically exclude each other. ‘Cohesiveness’ means that the propositions must be connected or tied together – the more and tighter, the better. ‘Comprehensiveness’ refers to the scope of relevant propositions that are integrated, and the more,

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the better. Since there are degrees of cohesiveness and comprehensiveness, a theory can be more or less coherent. The use of this criterion is mainly to point out inconsistency within the chosen theodicies, although other aspects are sometimes relevant. The content of this criterion will be spelled out to a much greater detail in chapter six. Secondly, I consider the authenticity of the four theodicies. By ‘authenticity’ I mean the question of whether or not the theodicies may reasonably be characterized as Christian. On the one hand, I need to clarify what I mean by Christian theodicies, but on the other hand, whether or not a theory is authentically Christian is too big a question to determine in any well-argued manner within the frames of this book. The criterion is therefore more carefully formulated, and states that a theory, in order to be seriously considered as a candidate of authentic Christianity, has to argue that it is an understanding of Christian belief which makes it more coherent to believe that God is revealed through Christ than alternative understandings of this (purported) revelation. This criterion will be based on the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg, and its content is presented in much greater detail in chapter seven. These two criteria are closely connected. The criterion of coherence is based on the work of L.B. Puntel, and is concerned with coherence among data.33 Authenticity is a material criterion, based on the work of Pannenberg, which specifies certain data as relevant or not in the theodicy. But this criterion is also based on the criterion of coherence, since Pannenberg uses Puntel and his understanding of coherence to spell out the criterion of authenticity. There is therefore a close internal connection between the two criteria which unifies the methodological approach in this book. In addition to using material from Puntel and Pannenberg as criteria in this book, I also present more of their work as a theoretical framework for the whole discussion. Puntel’s philosophy gives a detailed ontology and theory of truth that I present in chapter six. In chapter seven I further present how Pannenberg’s understanding of how to do ╇ ‘Data’ is here understood in the wide sense that Puntel defines them, that is as truth candidates. See Lorenz B. Puntel, Struktur und Sein: Ein Theorierahmen für systematische Philosophie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 32, ET 24–25. For readers who do not speak German I will provide references also to the English translation of Puntel’s book since I use him so much. I indicate this with the abbreviation ‘ET’, which in footnotes referring to Puntel’s Struktur und Sein refers to the translation by Lorenz B. Puntel and Alan White, Structure and Being : A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic Philosophy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). 33



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systematic theology fits very well into the theoretical framework of Puntel. I then present Pannenberg’s thoughts on the problem of evil, and how there is a suitable room within his systematic theology for a discussion of the four selected theodicies. There are some great advantages to presenting this wider framework for the discussion. The content of the theodicies becomes clearer against such a background, and so does the relation between them. When the discussion in part three is finished, I return in the final chapter to the question of how my conclusion fits into the framework of Pannenberg and Puntel. While the discussion and conclusion shows the coherence of the theodicy with regard to the most central elements of a theodicy, this wider framing also lets the reader see the coherence between the theodicy I conclude with and a much wider theological framework. This functions as support for the conclusion since it is shown how well it coheres with a wider coherent framework. More importantly, my plan with this strategy is to end up with a conclusion which is not only a theodicy but also a greater theological framework within which the theodicy fits. After the presentation of criteria and the frameworks of Puntel and Pannenberg, I use chapter eight to clarify the terminology for the discussion. I also show how the four theodicies fit into the greater theoretical framework I have presented. In this chapter I present first briefly how the scholars think about coherence, authenticity, ethical language, theological language, and ontology. Then I consider terminology connected to the problem of evil, and the attributes of God, which also serves to relate them to each other in the greater framework. This clarifies where they are similar and where they are different, and makes a more precise and systematic comparison possible. An important part of this work is that I develop a common terminology which is precise enough to include all the theodicies, and which clarifies more precisely what they mean with their terms. The common terminology developed in this chapter is the one that will be used in the discussion. This may seem very laborious, but it is necessary for clarity, since the scholars use many of the same words with quite different meaning. The discussion of terminology leads to distinctions that are very important in the discussion. After this, all is set for the discussion of the theodicies in part three. Since there is not room to discuss all aspects of the theodicies, I have chosen the central claims in each theodicy and focussed on counterarguments against these. My job in this discussion is to evaluate both the coherence in the theodicies and also how well they score on the

20

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criterion of authenticity. In chapter thirteen I conclude, first by making some suggestions as to how the theodicies can become even more coherent. I make some constructive suggestions in part three as well, but my most important constructive contributions will be made in chapter thirteen. There I end with concluding on what the best theodicy is within the limits of this book and how it can be improved further. My answer to the question of best solution is of course just claimed to be valid within the frame of the investigated theodicies.

Part One

Presentation of the Four Theodicies

CHAPTER TWO

Richard Swinburne’s Theodicy Richard Swinburne was Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford. He is a famous philosopher of religion, author of acknowledged books such as The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and several others.€Swinburne has written extensive material on theodicy. Recent texts include The Existence of God (2nd ed) (2004), Providence and the Problem of Evil (1998), and Is There a God? (1996). Swinburne argues that every evil in this world is allowed by God because it serves a greater good. His book Providence and the Problem of Evil is an attempt to show that this is a justified belief. It consists of four main parts. First there is an introduction where the problem and central terms are defined. Swinburne then presents the good goals of creation that God wants to achieve. Part three is supposed to deal with all types of evil, and to show that all evils are means to a greater good. Part four consists of some necessary additions to complete the theory. The following presentation of Swinburne’s theodicy is based on this book and structured around the same four parts, beginning now with his introduction.1 Swinburne claims that God has to allow all actual evils to occur in order to achieve good goals. The purpose of his book is to justify this view. Swinburne does so in detail, by showing for each type of evil that it serves a greater good. Before he starts, Swinburne defines important terms and concepts used later on in his book. God is defined as ‘a being who is essentially eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, creator and sustainer of the Universe, and perfectly good’.2 An important concept within this definition is the concept of omnipotence. Swinburne understands an omnipotent being as ‘one who can do anything logically possible, anything, that is, the description of which does not involve a

1 ╇ The rest of this subchapter is based on Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 3–45. 2 ╇Ibid., 3.

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contradiction’.3 This means that God, according to Swinburne, has no constraints other than the constraints of logic. Since God is also said to be perfectly good, it becomes difficult to understand why there is any evil. Swinburne prefers to use ‘bad state of affairs’ instead of the term ‘evil’. He uses the term ‘evil’ only to distinguish between ‘moral evil’ and ‘natural evil’. Moral evils are those evils deliberately caused by humans, while natural evils are evils not deliberately caused by humans. A ‘bad state of affairs’ is thoroughly defined, but basically understood so that ‘it would be bad for an agent who could prevent them to allow them to occur’.4 This would seem to mean that the existence of just one morally bad state would lead to the conclusion that there is no God, since an omnipotent and perfectly good God would prevent the occurrence of all morally bad states. Swinburne does not accept this version of the problem of evil. He claims that the exception of this argument is that God as a perfectly good and omnipotent being will not prevent a bad state E from occurring if a)╇ God has the right to allow E to occur. b)╇Allowing E (or a state as bad or worse) to occur is the only morally permissible way in which God can bring about a logically necessary condition of a good G. c)╇ God does everything else logically possible to bring about G. d)╇ The expected value of allowing E, given (c), is positive.5

Put in simpler words, ‘a perfectly good being will never allow any morally bad state to occur if he can prevent it – except for the sake of a greater good’.6 According to Swinburne, the crucial question in the problem of evil is whether or not there is a bad state of affairs that fulfils these four demands. If there is a state of affairs that does not fulfil all these four criteria, then God should have prevented it, and so its occurrence suggests that there is no God. Swinburne however intends to show that all types of bad states fulfil these four demands; that is, all bad states occur for the sake of a greater good. Presenting a greater good that justifies the allowing of one type of bad state is what Swinburne calls constructing a ‘theodicy’ for that bad state. That theodicy does not claim to be God’s actual reason (the actual ╇Ibid. ╇Ibid., 4. 5 ╇Ibid., 14. 6 ╇Ibid., 13. 3 4



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greater good of God’s choice) for allowing that bad state to occur, but only to be a possible reason (a greater good that God may have chosen in this instance, which would justify him in allowing the bad state to occur). This means that Swinburne does not argue that his theodicy is true in detail – that on every occasion Swinburne knows God’s actual reason for allowing some evil to occur. But he does argue that his theodicy is true in general – that each evil is allowed for the sake of a greater good.7 This means that he does make a stronger claim than that the theodicy must only be possibly true, it must also be probably true. To give a theodicy for all types of bad states is to construct a ‘total theodicy’, according to Swinburne. For every bad state there must be shown one or several greater goods that are justifiable reasons for God to allow that bad state to occur. Swinburne argues that most Christians need to construct a total theodicy, because without it, evil counts against the existence of God.8 To those who may have moral hesitations regarding his theodicy, he assures that he respects them deeply, but he pleads them to contemplate on God’s love and the gifts God will give for unending time. He suggests ‘that long reflection on this will make it less and less obvious that some significant suffering for the very short period of an earthly life is ruled out’.9 A little later in the book he is more direct against those who claim that for moral reasons no theodicy should be given. If they accept the existence of evil, and believe in God without further explanation, they are insensitive to how bad that evil really is. Summing up so far; Swinburne attempts to show that all types of bad states serve a greater good, and this is the aim for the rest of his book. First he presents what the relevant goods are, and then he argues for each type of bad state how it serves a greater good. Greater goods Swinburne focuses on the goods of beauty, thought, feeling, action, and€ worship. These are defined and explained as good, and constantly€referred to in his discussion of evils later. A short overview of Swinburne’s argument will be given here, and then the different goods

7 ╇Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 238; and Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 15–17. 8 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, x, 15. 9 ╇Ibid., xiii.

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will be presented further when they become relevant in my discussion of his theodicy.10 Concerning beauty, Swinburne understands beauty as a quality of things in themselves. God has created beautiful things, and it is good in itself that concrete things exist. Our universe dances, according to Swinburne. Concerning thought, Swinburne focuses on beliefs. Beliefs are ideas about how the world is, about what is true and what is false. True beliefs are good in themselves, and instrumentally good. Learning is also good, but believing something that is wrong is not good. Concerning feeling, Swinburne distinguishes between desires and emotions. Desires are involuntary (in the sense of ‘not chosen’) inclinations for doing something or for something to happen. It is good when they are satisfied, unless they are bad desires. It is also good to know that they are being or have been satisfied. That we desire is good in itself, for it is better to want something than nothing. An emotion is a combination of desire and belief. The emotion of anger, for example, is a combination of something you believe to be true and some desire you have as a result of that belief. Many of the emotions are good, while bad emotions are evils that need a theodicy. Concerning action, Swinburne understands action as including causing – intentional and spontaneously. Causing something good is good, while causing something bad is bad. It is good that humans can cause things, because then they contribute. When causing, it is better to be able to choose between good and bad than only among goods. Free will is good, and it is better to be able to influence the world much rather than little. This gives us responsibility, which is also a good thing. We want our children to be responsible. It is good that we can learn; it is good that we can change; and it is good that we are responsible for ourselves and for others. In this context, Swinburne also mentions forgiveness, gratitude, and respect as goods. Being in use is very good, even if you die being in use, because it is good for others. And then there are some goods that only exist if God exists, namely worship and eternal life. This list of goods is the one that Swinburne uses in the next€part of his book, as greater goods that justify the different types of bad states.

╇ This subchapter is based on ibid., 49–122.

10



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Necessary evils According to Swinburne, there is a web of reasons why God might allow different bad states.11 Still, Swinburne makes some major divisions for clarity. He divides the bad states into moral and natural evils, and then he adds some evils that are only evil if God exists (sin, afterlife punishment, and agnosticism). When it comes to moral and natural evil, he divides each of these subjects in two. The fact of moral evil is basically explained as necessary for the greater good of free will. The range of moral evil is mainly explained by reference to the greater good of responsibility. Natural evil is basically explained both by the good responses it makes possible, and by the possibility of learning from it. Swinburne also adds an explanation for the evils of sin and agnosticism, which are evil only if God exists. These five points will now be presented in further detail in the same order as just presented. Crucial for understanding the fact of moral evil is human free will. Swinburne believes in a libertarian free will, by which he means that humans have the power of choosing whether or not to bring about effects without being subject to causes which determine how they exercise that power. Among the effects humans can choose to bring about are happiness or suffering for other people. These choices make a difference in the world. Human actions are not predetermined, and for this reason Swinburne also calls it efficacious free will. He considers free will in this libertarian sense (that is; not compatible with determinism) to be what most ancient theologians meant by ‘free will’, and mentions all theologians in the first four centuries, all subsequent Eastern Orthodox theologians, and most Western Catholic theologians after Duns Scotus, as examples of theologians who believed in a libertarian free will. Free will is claimed to be good, but as Swinburne defines it, the possibility to choose between good and evil is required. Swinburne recognizes that our choices could be limited, and still free. He calls the type of free will we have ‘very serious free will’, and holds that this kind of free will is better than a limited one. Alvin Plantinga is famous for his€ writings on free will in relation to the problem of evil. But unlike€Plantinga, Swinburne holds that God does not know the future. 11

╇ This subchapter is based on ibid., 125–219.

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With reference to Nelson Pike, he claims that we cannot be genuinely free if God knows the future. In order to use free will successfully as an argument in theodicy it is therefore important that God does not know the future. For this reason Swinburne criticises Plantinga on this point. Plantinga argues that foreknowledge of the future belongs to the concept of God as omniscient; Swinburne disagrees, since knowing the future of free human beings would be a logical impossibility. Claiming that God knows the future, Plantinga has made it unnecessarily complicated for himself, according to Swinburne. For the free will to be seriously free, humans must have good and bad desires. So temptations and bad desires are necessary for the free will to be seriously free, according to Swinburne. He concludes that the possibility of doing moral evil is a necessary means to give humans the greater good of very serious free will. And with this possibility of doing moral evil, a lot of actual moral evil follows. Of course one might object to this, for example by suggesting better ways God could have arranged it. Swinburne answers some of these objections when he focuses on the range of moral evil and the development of responsibility. Why could not God have made us free, and then stopped us every time we wanted to do something wrong? Could not all bad choices be prevented, so they had no effect? Swinburne refutes this by introducing The Principle of Honesty, which he claims is a moral truth. The principle implies that God must be honest, and so could not create a world where its inhabitants are systematically deceived. If we had thought that we had a serious choice, but did not, we would have been deceived, and God cannot deceive us. What about the human ignorance that leads to so many bad choices€– could not God have informed us more? According to Swinburne, we must be ignorant in the beginning in order to have a serious choice of acquiring knowledge, which is a good and important choice. But what about our ability to turn totally corrupt – what is the good in this possibility? According to Swinburne, this is a necessary alternative possibility in order to also have the possibility to develop a stable and good€ character. God has made us free to develop a stable and good character – which is a good thing – but with this freedom, the freedom to develop an evil character necessarily follows. But is it not bad that our choices can have tremendously bad consequences for others than ourselves? Swinburne argues that responsibility for others is a great good, which necessarily involves the possibility of causing other people great harm. When some are born poor, we can help them. Since it is



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possible to die, we have the great responsibility of keeping each other alive. Swinburne even claims that the Holocaust made possible a lot of help to Jews and others, a lot of heroic acts, and a great deal of learning which hopefully will prevent it from happening again. Concerning ignorance, Swinburne comments that while it is good that ignorance gives us possibilities of learning and teaching, it is bad when we are hurt because of ignorance. To improve the situation God has given us incentive and deterrent desires, which means that we want food, sex and sleep, and we experience pain when we are in danger. But why do we also experience pain when there is no way to escape the danger? Would it not have been better if only those able to escape could feel pain? Swinburne’s answer to this is that if it were so, and it was known to be so (which it should be because of The Principle of Honesty), then people would not bother to help each other. To sum up Swinburne’s answer so far, serious free will and great responsibility are goods which necessitate a great amount of moral evil. But what about natural evils? The existence of natural evil is normally considered a greater problem theoretically than the existence of moral evil, because one no longer can use the argument of free will. Swinburne’s view is that all pain makes many good responses possible. In addition to showing responsibility, Swinburne mentions compassion, endurance, and sympathy. And again many objections can be raised. Even if pain makes different goods possible, would not a total absence of pain be better? Swinburne holds that a world with some pain and some compassion is at least as good as a world with no pain and no compassion. Would it then be good if God were to multiply the amount of pain immensely, in order to multiply the amount of possible compassion? Swinburne rejects this suggestion as ‘obviously crazy’12, but without further argument at that point. Later, however, he says that by increasing the amount of evil, at one point evil will outweigh good, and for that reason it should not be increased indefinitely.13 Could not the goods made possible by pain also be possible in response to lack of good, rather than presence of evil? Swinburne answers that if so, lack of good would be evil, and in addition pain gives more compassion than does lack of good. But would not apparent suffering be enough to create compassion and sympathy? Swinburne

12 13

╇Ibid., 161. ╇Ibid., 243.

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rejects this by using The Principle of Honesty; God can not deceive us systematically. But would not moral evil be enough to create compassion, sympathy, and responsibility – do we need natural evil as well? Swinburne answers that the removal of natural evil would rob us from a lot of opportunities to be good. But what about animals – is there any good in their pain? Swinburne assumes that animals as well can learn, and they can learn from the pain of other animals. Animal pain also gives other animals a chance to be heroic, show sympathy and patience€– all of which are goods. In addition humans can also learn, show compassion, and be heroic when facing animal pain. So far Swinburne has argued that natural evils and the pain they lead to are necessary means for good responses, such as responsibility, compassion, sympathy, endurance, heroism, and helping. But Swinburne justifies the existence of natural evil with an additional reason, namely knowledge. Prior to his book on theodicy, he had written that natural evils are necessary means to knowledge about the effects of our actions. This was then heavily criticized by David O’Connor, Eleonore Stump, and others. In light of the critique, Swinburne changed his position to claiming that natural evils are necessary means for ‘very well justified knowledge’ about the effects of our actions.14 Swinburne then mentions some different ways of achieving this knowledge, which would include less pain. But he rejects each alternative by arguing that knowledge by experience (which includes the experience of pain), is the best justified knowledge. And achieving this knowledge – the learning process – is also a great good, according to Swinburne. Swinburne even treats a special possibility, namely that God himself told us in each situation what the effects of our actions were. But then we would feel God’s eye€ on us continuously, which would reduce our freedom of choice. He€lets this argument of learning also apply to animals and their pain by arguing that they can learn inductively by observing the pain of other animals. Swinburne’s conclusion on knowledge is that God, by the means of natural evils, gives us very well justified beliefs about the effects of our actions. This is necessary for our very serious free will to function properly.

14 ╇Ibid., 176–178, including n.171. In 2004, Swinburne has changed his mind again concerning this argument (see Swinburne, The Existence of God, 245–257). But this change does not alter the presentation of the argument as given here, and will not be discussed in part three, so I leave it out here.



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In the end of his discussion of evils, Swinburne deals with states that are bad only if God exists: sin, afterlife punishment, and agnosticism. He wants to show that these bad states make even better states possible. Swinburne understands sin as hurting God. Humans can choose whether to love God or hurt God. To love God is a great good, but it€ necessarily requires the possibility of hurting God instead. Sin is€thereby a necessary possibility if humans are to have serious free will in their choice of loving God. The threat of punishment is a deterrent to sin. Some may develop their own character in such a bad way as to wish for eternal loss of God. But Swinburne’s understanding of salvation and damnation is that God will not give eternal pain to anyone who does not wish it. Agnosticism, which is a result of people not bothering to consider whether there is a God or not, is bad. But some may be honest agnostics because they find it too hard to believe in God, for example because of the problem of evil. Swinburne has an answer to why God does not make himself more known. If we were sure of God’s existence, it would reduce our free will, because we would not feel so free to do evil. This is because we then would know that God existed and watched us. God could have given us more knowledge about himself, and stronger desires to do bad things, in order for the will to be free. But instead he reduced our knowledge about himself, which makes it easier for us to be naturally good. Swinburne adds some thoughts on human death and on the incarnation and atonement. He mentions the following advantages of human death: that we have responsibility for life; that we have the possibility of sacrificing ourselves; that what we do matters more; that people who are older than us die, so we become the most respected and wise; and that no one can torture us for ever. When it comes to the incarnation and atonement, these are specifically Christian doctrines, which if true, reduce evil and create good. The compassion that God shows in the incarnation when he takes part in human suffering is also good. When weighing good against evil in the world, these specific Christian doctrines add to the positive side. Swinburne’s theodicy So far, Swinburne has argued that God may have good reasons for allowing evil to occur. However, to complete the theodicy he argues that two further points must be defended; namely a) that God has the

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right to allow evil to occur, and b) that the amount of good outweighs the amount of evil.15 Concerning God’s right to allow evil to occur, Swinburne wishes to avoid the negative connotations that are connected to the word ‘right’. The word may suggest a person insisting on his or her right, without caring about others. Swinburne underlines that God has a right to do something if and only if he does no wrong to anyone else by doing it. To talk of ‘God’s rights’ may seem strange, but Swinburne thinks that there are some moral truths that are necessarily true, independent of whether or not God exists. Within such an understanding it makes sense to speak about what is morally right also for God. Analogously to parents, Swinburne continues, God has rights visà-vis his children. These rights are limited, but still Swinburne argues that parents (or carers) have the right to inflict some suffering on their children (or dependants) if it leads to a greater good. When it comes to God’s rights, Swinburne distinguishes between the period before and after human beings are created. Before human beings are created, God must create a good life for the humans (not the best life, for that is impossible since it can always be better); he must make sure there is not too much suffering (and this is why God created death); and to a certain extent he is allowed to use humans as means to a goal, if it is balanced. ‘Balanced’ here means that bad states are compensated by good states so that good outweighs evil, which means that the whole is considered good when seen together. After human beings are created, God has given us more independence and the gift of free choice. When it comes to good and evil, these are unevenly distributed, but Swinburne claims that God in this respect would “only be ‘unfair’ if the bad states were too bad or not ultimately compensated”.16 With the arguments just mentioned Swinburne claims that God has the right to do what he does. But the presupposition for this is that the total amount of good outweighs the total amount of evil. Swinburne considers the weighing of good against bad to be the crux of the problem of evil. He says that his opponents usually are happy to grant him€that some goods necessitate evil. But the big problem is when it comes to the scale of evil. The amount of evil is the problem, not the existence of evil. Swinburne must therefore argue that the amount of

15 ╇ This subchapter is based on Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 223–251. 16 ╇Ibid., 236.



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good outweighs the amount of bad, and he claims this must be the case in the life of each individual. To show this, he presents different thought experiments. The first is that if you had a machine that could make you unconscious every time you were bored or in trouble, very few would use this machine. This shows that life itself is meaningful, not just the good parts of it. Swinburne’s second argument is that very few people commit suicide, although they have painful lives. This must mean that most people consider the good to outweigh the bad. The next thought experiment is to ask oneself; if you could live for only a few minutes, and could choose between a heroin trip or to give birth to a child, which would you choose? Swinburne suggests that you should choose the child birth, and the experiment is supposed to show that it is greater to be in use, than to sense pleasure. Another experiment is to choose between this world and a world with only ten percent of the suffering we have today, but where also our choices only mattered ten percent of what they do today. Swinburne suggests that we should choose our world. This does not mean that Swinburne argues that the more evil, the better. The reason he does not is that at one point evil will outweigh good. But he claims that his thought experiments show that in the world we have today, good outweighs bad. Towards the end of his book, Swinburne mentions some verses from the Bible which state that suffering is good, for example Acts 5:41 and Col 1:24. But this suffering will not last for ever. There is a heaven where all suffering will be compensated. But Swinburne also maintains that it is good for some to be able to choose not to enjoy this heaven. After this, Swinburne concludes by claiming to have dealt with all types of evil, and shown for each type a reason why God might permit it. He ended with arguing that God has the right to do this, and that in the end good outweighs bad for all individuals. By doing this, he claims to have shown that there is no inconsistency in claiming that God is perfectly good and omnipotent although evil exists, for every evil is a means that the good and omnipotent God uses to reach greater goods.

CHAPTER THREE

Keith Ward’s Theodicy Keith Ward retired as Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford in 2004. He was the Gresham Professor of Divinity at Gresham College in London from 2004 to 2008, but is now retired. He is an acknowledged philosopher of religion, author of acclaimed books like Divine Action (1990/2007); God, Chance and Necessity (1996); God: A Guide for the Perplexed (2002), and several others. Ward has not written any books where the problem of evil is the only focus, but many of his books have one or more chapters about theodicy. Relevant books in this regard are Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (1982); God, Chance and Necessity (1996); Religion and Creation (1996); God, Faith and the New Millennium (1998); and Pascal’s Fire (2006). Most extensive on the problem of evil is his book Divine Action from 1990, which came in a new print with a new foreword in 2007. Ward says in the preface that chapters three to seven are about the problem of evil, but most of the other chapters are also highly relevant since they discuss God and creation, human freedom, and the particularity of providence. This introduction will focus on his book Divine Action, since it is the most thorough. In the foreword of the 2007-print, Ward says that he still defends the main content of what he has written there. I will supplement his writing here with other books, when that seems to me to strengthen Ward’s case. Ward is similar to Swinburne on very many points. Much of what Ward says can be found in Swinburne’s writings, which Ward often quotes. Ward’s theodicy will be presented on its own, but in chapter ten the discussion of Ward leaves out the points that are similar to Swinburne and which have already been treated in the discussion of Swinburne in chapter ten, in order to avoid unnecessary repetition. Because the discussion will proceed in this way, I will also in the presentation focus on how Ward differs from Swinburne. This implies no devaluation of Ward, because Ward makes good adjustments in relation to Swinburne. Presenting his theodicy this way is only a matter of more efficient writing. My presentation is based on his own presentation in Divine Action, but I highlight elements that are important for



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the discussion, and arrange the presentation partially in the same order as Swinburne, to ease the comparison. In practice this means that I start with a presentation of Ward’s understanding of God and God’s goals with creation, before I present his theodicy.1 Concept of God According to Keith Ward, Christians must believe that God acts in history. It is very clear from the Old Testament and the New Testament, it is presupposed in prayer, and it has clearly always been a part of the historic faith of Christianity. On the other hand, the success of the natural sciences and the problem of evil seem to suggest that God does not act in the world.2 This can be called the problem of divine action, and by ‘divine action’ Ward usually refers to particular basic acts within the created order, where God brings about a state of affairs in the world as a basic act, which means that he does not do it by means of prior causally efficacious acts. An example would be that God raised someone from death. Relating to this problem of how to understand divine action, Ward argues that it is crucial to start with creation. He does not€ consider the doctrine of creation out of nothing to be explicitly formulated in the Bible – it might even have developed quite late. But Ward’s reflection on how God’s power is understood in the Bible, and

1 ╇ More often than with the other theodices, I find it difficult to know what position Ward himself holds on different questions, because he often uses expressions like ‘it is possible that…’, ‘it may be that…’, ‘if…..then…’, ‘Christians hold that…’, and then it is not always clear whether he holds the opinion himself. Sometimes Ward starts by saying that something is possible, and then he continues by saying that it is actually so, without any comment on that transition. See for example Keith Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium : Christian Belief in an Age of Science (Oxford: Oneworld, 1998), 92, where he says in one paragraph ‘it may be that any world of rich and complex values that God can create must contain some unintended consequences’. Then come a series of sentences all with the verb ‘may’ until suddenly he says about unwanted evils that ‘The reason God cannot actively and unilaterally eliminate such states is that they – or states very like them – are necessarily implied in a universe like this’. The last sentence seems to be a claim made by Ward, but there was here no argument in favour of making the transition from the claim that it may be so, to the claim that it actually is so. And of course he has different focuses in the different books. My way of dealing with these problems of interpretation is the same as with the others: My goal is to present Ward’s theodicy as coherently as possible, and so if something is ambiguous, I comment upon it, and interpret him as well-willingly as I think the text allows. 2 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 1.

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the power he must have to be an adequate object of faith, makes Ward conclude that the doctrine of creation out of nothing is a necessary postulate for faith.3 How should this God be understood? Ward argues that God, who created out of nothing, must also exist with necessity. It is not possible for God not to exist, or be other than what he is. Ward does not claim to understand how something can exist with necessity, but he argues that one can still think that God exists with necessity. He agrees with Swinburne that God’s existence is not logically necessary in a strict sense, like the logically necessary truth that a bachelor must be unmarried. But he still holds that God’s existence is a logically necessary truth, in the broader sense that it cannot be denied without contradiction. However, even if Ward’s position is that God’s existence is logically necessary in this sense, Ward says that we cannot know whether it is so or not. Ward says that it is rather like the belief that all even numbers are the sum of two prime numbers. We do not know if it is true, but if it is true, it is necessarily true.4 Ward insists on God’s necessary existence for several reasons. If God is necessary, then he has a reason to exist, and that then answers the question of who created God: nothing caused God – to understand that God is necessary is to understand that God is self-explanatory. This way one gets a complete and all-embracing theory, where God as a selfexplanatory being elegantly explains everything else and makes the existence of the world probable, as opposed to an unexplainable fact. Ward considers it to be a good scientific principle to accept a hypothesis that makes some state of affairs more probable than it would be without the hypothesis, and he argues that the world is more probable if God exists. Furthermore, if God is contingent, then suddenly a new contingent God may come into existence, being evil and more powerful than God. There can be no possible being not under God’s control, and that is what the doctrine of God’s necessity implies. Only such a

3 ╇Ibid., 4–7, 54–55. What is meant by ‘adequate object of faith’ is that Ward thinks that faith in God presupposes belief in God’s promises, which implies that God is absolutely capable of fulfilling his promises, which implies that he is omnipotent, which implies that he is creator out of nothing. 4 ╇Ibid., 8–13, and Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), 18–19.



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necessarily existing God can make the promises Christians believe that God makes; that one day everything will become good.5 This concept of a necessary God means that God necessarily has the nature that he has. God cannot entirely choose his own nature, because there has to be something there in the beginning that starts to choose. So there must be a necessary starting point. What Ward finds this to involve is the belief that God necessarily is love, that the fundamental possibilities which exist in God – including the possibility of pain – necessarily exist in God, and that he necessarily has the amount of power that he has.6 This amount of power is understood by Ward to be finite. Ward disagrees with Swinburne who understands God’s power as infinite. Swinburne argues that the theory of God’s power is simpler when his power is understood as infinite, because any finite amount cries out for an explanation of why exactly that amount.7 Ward however argues that there has to be one amount, and any amount is as likely as another because the amount is a brute fact anyway. A finite amount is at least something understandable and definite, whereas infinite power is mysterious, un-precise, and therefore less simple. Ward still says that God is ‘omnipotent’, but omnipotent in the sense that he is the cause of everything and as powerful as it is possible to be.8 Does God’s necessary nature mean that God necessarily must create our world? According to Ward, God must necessarily create some world, because God is love, and goodness seeks to share itself. But that does not mean that God must necessarily create our world. Ward defends this combination of necessity and contingency as coherent by arguing that it belongs to the concept of omnipotence also to be able to create freely. When God acts contingently, he also has the opportunity to respond to human contingent acts. Ward compares this idea of God as necessary in some respects and free in others with Whitehead’s doctrine of a dipolar God. Ward holds that the idea of dipolarity in God 5 ╇ Keith Ward, God, Chance & Necessity (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 59, 190; Keith Ward, Pascal’s Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), 18; and Ward, Divine Action, 15–16. 6 ╇ Keith Ward, Religion and Creation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 171; and Ward, Divine Action, 27, 42–43. How to understand more precisely what Ward writes about different kinds of necessities and possibilities is further explained in chapter eight in this book. 7 ╇Swinburne, The Existence of God, 97. 8 ╇ Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 97–98; and Ward, Divine Action, 66.

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is good, but that God otherwise is too passive and abstract in process philosophy.9 Goals for Creation Before moving on to how Ward solves the problem of evil, it is helpful first to consider how Ward understands God’s goals for creation. At different places Ward describes God’s goals differently. A goal often mentioned is love and relationship. Another goal is that God creates the world because of its beauty. One time God’s goal is described as the creation of free self-aware self-directing sentient beings.10 In Divine Action Ward lists up five reasons for God to create the world. The first reason is that God adds value to the world when he creates beings capable of appreciating and valuing the world. The second reason is that by creating our world, he creates unique values which otherwise would not have existed. The third reason is that because of the first two reasons, God himself will also experience new sorts of values. The fourth reason is that the world expresses God’s imagination. The fifth reason is that the world makes it possible for God to enter into loving personal relationships with creatures, and doing so is part of God’s nature as love.11 Beauty and love are the goals most often mentioned, and are said by Ward to be main goals. He also says that love is the final meaning of the universe.12 Beauty refers to the whole world, but also love and good deeds can be enjoyed as beautiful, and one can love what is beautiful, so these goals are partly overlapping. The focus on human freedom and independence can also be integrated with love, as making possible a certain kind of free and independent love. Ward does not argue that we need the kind of independent freedom that humans have in order to love, since in heaven we will be able to be free and love each other without doing evil. Ward specifies independent human souls as a subtype of human souls, and this independent freedom is necessary for the kind of love that we humans on earth experience.13 In Divine Action, conscious human beings seem to be the main ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 16; and Ward, Divine Action, 28–31, 111. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 109, 136; Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 16; and Ward, Religion and Creation, 191. 11 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 23–36. 12 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 195, 256. 13 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 217–218, 224. ╛╛╛╛9 10



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goal of creation, but in Pascal’s Fire, humans are only a small but integrated part of a much larger universe which God values for its own sake.14 This view is also presented by Ward in God, Faith and the New Millennium from 1998,15 so I present as Ward’s view the idea that humans are not the main goal of the universe, but an important part of a universe where there may be other conscious beings as well. Within such an understanding it is not right to say for example that the dinosaurs were a waste of time while God was waiting for human beings – Ward sees the dinosaurs as a beautiful and great success that God enjoyed for their own sake.16 Ward’s Theodicy Ward refers to Hume when he defines the problem of evil in the following way: A perfectly good and omnipotent God would not wish to create suffering and he would be able to prevent any suffering. But there is suffering, and an immense amount of it, in this world. Therefore there is no good and omnipotent creator.17

Ward finds it important to distinguish between people’s cries of agony when they face suffering on the one hand, and a discussion of a contradiction in theistic belief on the other hand. He argues that a theist must be able to show that there is no contradiction in the belief in a good and omnipotent God.18 What is his own solution? God’s necessary nature and God’s goal of creating independent human beings for a certain kind of love are two central points in Ward’s theodicy. These goals can also be found in Swinburne’s theodicy, but are more strongly emphasized by Ward, who alone among the two makes the distinction between different kinds of love for different kinds of free beings. What can God do to make his goals come true? God necessarily creates a world, but is free to choose the kind of world he creates. To reach his goal of creating independent human beings, he must make a law-like and intelligible world. Ward argues that this is the€only way that finite persons can learn to understand and (partly) ╇Ibid., 109; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 7, 16. ╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 26. 16 ╇Ibid., 113–114. 17 ╇ Hume, quoted in Ward, Divine Action, 38. 18 ╇Ibid., 39. 14 15

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control the world, and that only such a world can give rise to a form of being that is truly independent and autonomous.19 One sort of lawfulness would be a totally determined world, but that would be too much. But the law-likeness must not be so controlled by laws that it is totally determined. Radical human freedom also requires an element of indeterminism, so that the future is not already decided before the humans are born. It is the philosophical position of determinism, understood as the belief that there is only one possible and decided future, which Ward rejects. He does not argue that quantum physics or chaos theory proves this kind of indeterminism, but at least they support the claim that determinism is far from obvious. Indeterminism is important for Ward, since a real other must in part be self-determining, and not determined by something else. This combination of law-likeness and indeterminism is then necessary to make human freedom possible. Since the world is very interconnected, the law-likeness has the result of restricting what God can do without disturbing the system so much that it is no longer law-like and independent. But the indeterminism also makes openings for particular basic acts of God without disturbing the system too much.20 Ward agrees with Swinburne in holding that particular divine acts in the world are not contradicted by the natural sciences. The reason is that their method of repeated experiments with observational results excludes this sort of divine action from their area of competence. Experimental science can by definition not deal with particular divine acts, but such acts of God do not contradict physical laws, since a new force gets introduced to the system. Some have argued that it is a great€problem for theology that no good account is given for how God acts in the world.21 Ward however, considers it to be a poor argument against divine causation that we do not know how it happens, when we don’t even know how humans by use of their mind cause their own bodies to move. He argues that even causality in itself is very difficult to understand.22 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 41; and Ward, Divine Action, 67–68, 74, 217. ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 69, 92–97; Ward, Divine Action, 69; and Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 102, 105. 21 ╇ For example, Nicholas Saunders concludes that contemporary theology is in crisis because it cannot account for how God acts in the world (Nicholas Saunders, Divine Action and Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 215). 22 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 76, 80–81, 92–93, 171; and Keith Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins (Oxford: Lion, 2008), 85. Ward also mentions 19 20



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Ward’s understanding of natural science does not make particular divine acts contradicted by science. But does the great success of natural science indicate as well that their methodological presupposition actually is ontologically true – that there actually are no events that are not explainable by the natural laws? Ward argues that it is rather the case that the natural sciences have success because they artificially abstract and isolate the regular, the controllable, and the observable elements from the unique particularity of events, and impose rigid laws on to a physical reality that is in fact more plastic and flexible.23 Ward concludes that God can perform particular divine acts in our law-like but open world, but such a world also places restrictions on divine action. In general, God does not want to disturb the regularities that he has created, and if he interrupts all the time, he ruins the system.24 Interpreting Ward at this point, I find it useful to distinguish between two kinds of system or regularity. One kind of system or regularity is the physical regularities of the world. Ward makes the point that God cannot disturb this system much, because the natural sciences today show us that the world is very much interconnected. This interconnection is often described with reference to ‘the butterflyeffect’, named so because chaos theory has shown that small fluctuations sometimes can have large-scale effects – exemplified by the flap of a butterfly wing leading to a hurricane on the other side of the world. Ward does not use chaos theory to explain how God can interact with the world, but he argues that the interconnectedness of the world indicates that it is difficult to know what kind of openings there are for God to act in such an interconnected system without disturbing too much, and there may not be many.25 But one should think it likely that God could quite often act without disturbing the physical regularities of the world. And this is where the other kind of system or regularity comes in. God has also created a world structure where creatures act independently, that is based on their own desires and purposes. And so when God acts and creates the possibility that divine causality could happen without any detectable change of energy. He uses as an analogy the quantum physics understanding of probability waves that carry no energy but give probabilistic direction to the momentum of particles (Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 205). 23 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 123. 24 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 132–134. 25 ╇Ibid., 62; Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 96; and Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 104.

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changes in the world, this interferes with the independence of the creatures, even if the regularities of the physical world remain much the same. I find Ward’s writing most coherent if it is both these kinds of regularities he has in mind when he speaks of openings in the system where God can act. ‘An opening in the system’ is then an opportunity for God to act without disturbing the independence of his creatures more than how independent he wanted to create our human world in the first place. We do not know exactly how independent God wants the world to be, nor do we see the full consequences of divine acts. This means that sometimes there may be an opening for God to help or heal someone without disturbing the system too much, but at other times there is not – and it is impossible for us humans to know when. In addition to the interconnectedness of the world, the anthropic principle shows that the universe is very finely tuned, suggesting that human life could not exist if the parameters were only slightly different. The anthropic principle and the interconnectedness of the world both suggest that there may only be a limited range of possibilities for creating human life, so that it may very well be necessary that some pain results from necessary laws and indeterminism, but that this was God’s only possibility for creating us.26 The way that God creates independent beings is by means of evolution. Because of lack of food, when there are too many creatures surviving on one type of food, new species will arise that eat new kinds of food – in many cases the new kinds of creatures will eat the old kind of creatures from which they evolved. This makes increased complexity into one of the directions that evolution moves, and Ward argues that it is virtually inevitable that this will lead to intelligent beings evolving. In this evolution, the deaths of many and survival of few, is a necessary means for new species to evolve.27 Ward holds that God both desires to and is able to act in the world. He mentions the same reasons as Swinburne for God wanting to act,

╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 94–95, 103–104. ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 53, 65. In Divine Action, Ward says that the process of evolution cannot be blind, but God must have acted at critical points in the evolution to make certain that beings with minds evolved (Ward, Divine Action, 116–117). In Pascal’s Fire, it seems that God has planned evolution so well that there is no need to interfere at critical points. The account of evolution in Pascal’s Fire does not exclude interference by God in the evolution process, but does not necessitate it either. Since Ward generally believes that God can act and acts in the world, it is not important to choose between these two interpretations of Ward. 26 27



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namely that he wants to enter into relationship with humans, and then€it also follows that he wants to reveal himself and wants to help humans. However, whereas God according to Swinburne always has a self-chosen reason not to act, Ward finds that more often he is restricted by the system, and so cannot act, although he does agree that God sometimes chooses not to act. So Ward does not argue that God allows evil to happen in order for humans to develop as moral beings. But sometimes, if the system of our interconnected world gives God two alternative possibilities to act, but where only act can be actualized, God might make considerations like moral development when he chooses who to help.28 However, God did create this whole system that is our world, although he could have chosen another system – and he can stop the whole process at any time. Does this mean that God wants us to suffer? Ward argues that this question can be resolved with an old distinction between antecedent and consequent willing. For example, I may antecedently want democracy, and must then consequently accept that a party wins which I should wish had not won. In one sense then I want the party to win because I want the party that gets most votes to win, but in another sense I do not want them to win, since I would rather want the party I voted for to win. This is not self-contradictory if we distinguish between antecedent and consequent willing. When I antecedently want democracy, I consequently want the party with most votes to win, even if I antecedently want another party to win. Similarly, God can antecedently want a particular world to exist without antecedently wanting the evils that actually happen there to exist, but if they are a necessary possibility in such a world then he must consequently want them. In other words, when stated more precisely, God can consistently want the world with its possibilities of evil to exist without wanting the actual evils to happen.29 Ward argues that the physical possibilities of evil in this world, and with them the actual evils in the world, follow from the laws of nature and the indeterminism in the world. The amount of actual evil is problematic, and Ward does not claim that it is the case that God could stop the actual evils but allows them to happen. Rather he says that based on the amount of power that God necessarily has, and the possibilities

28 29

╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 212–213; and Ward, Divine Action, 141–149. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 48–49.

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God has to choose from when he creates a world with the goals that he has for our world, it necessarily follows that there will be this amount of suffering.30 But God did start it all, so one can ask if it is worth it. Would it have been better if God had not created? Like Swinburne, Ward holds that God should only have created this world with the risk of great suffering, if he also knew that he could overwhelmingly compensate the suffering, and it was the only way to reach the goal. And God will overwhelmingly compensate the suffering, since he will offer eternal bliss to all humans. Ward argues that God will offer this eternal bliss to all humans (presumably after death to all those who did not have a proper opportunity to choose while alive), and that most people will choose eternal bliss, maybe even all, since that is the most rational thing to do. Ward considers immortality to be crucial for theodicy, and at one time he says that it is important that both humans and animals will have a good afterlife as compensation for their suffering.31 According to Ward, the idea of a good afterlife answers the objection put forward by Ivan Karamazov that it is not acceptable to torture a child as a means for eternal happiness. In Ward’s view, if the evil is not a means, but a possibility which is necessary, and the result is eternal bliss, then it is acceptable. Ward defends this kind of weighing good against evil by arguing that it is obvious that in general an enormous good is worth a tiny bit of suffering, and this means that good in principle can be weighed against evil. Ward does not argue that this is justification of actual evils, because they are not wanted by God – rather they should be fought against. And this argumentation about outweighing evils is not something for the pastoral situation – where listening and care are called for – but it is a matter for doctrinal discussions.

╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 103; and Ward, Divine Action, 67–68, 74. 31 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 139–140; Ward, Divine Action, 34, 72; and Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 202. In Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 65, Ward thinks there will be an afterlife for all sentient beings, without defining precisely which beings fall in under this category. First he speaks of sentient beings only, and then the reference is probably to those who can feel pain. Then he speaks of the animals that have a sense of continuing self (Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 65). Elsewhere he suggests that only animals with advanced consciousness, like the higher mammals, feel pain (Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 65). Therefore, it seems best to interpret Ward as believing that the higher mammals which€have a sense of continuing self will have an afterlife, since presumably it only makes sense with a continued existence after death for those who have a sense of continuous self. 30



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Does the promise of eternal bliss then lead to the conclusion that all women should give birth to as many children as possible, no matter how painful lives they will have on earth? Ward does not think so, because even if it is good for someone to live, we do not have a duty to make people come into existence. It is good for people to come into existence, but we do not have an obligation to do everything that is good to do. Having children is then good, but not a duty.32 One may accept that eternal bliss will make the world overall better than if it had not existed, but still ask why the world is not better. Ward’s answer is that the creation of our world was probably the only way for God to create us as independent human beings. But could we not have been created less independent, and then experience less pain? Ward says that those who make this complaint should think twice about it, since in a different world, we – as in you and me (token individuals, not type individuals) – would not have existed at all. The human individuals who live on our planet could only have come into existence in this particular universe. Even if we are going to exist later in a better world (a Paradisal world for example), we still have to come into existence first in this universe. Ward’s point is that either we are born in this universe, or we do not exist at all.33 One may accept this point and think it better to exist than not, but still wonder why God created this world instead of a better one. At this point I am unsure how to interpret Ward. He seems sometimes to say that it was only possible for God to create any free beings by also allowing much pain. For instance he says in Divine Action that ‘God cannot create a universe in which free creatures always choose the good’.34 But later in the same book he then says that it is not essential to human will to be able to reject God, and he refers to heaven where we shall not be able to reject God. He even says that in heaven humans will be free, but not be inclined to evil.35 Does this mean that God could have created human beings right away that were free, but not free to do evil? I think Ward’s answer is yes, because when he himself asks why God did not create free humans without the ability to do evil, he does not answer that this was not possible. Rather he answers that it was possible for God to create free human beings without inclinations to evil, but it was ╇ Ward, Religion and Creation, 220; and Ward, Divine Action, 47, 56–58, 60–61. ╇ Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 193; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 38–39. 34 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 68. 35 ╇Ibid., 217, 224. 32 33

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not possible for God to create independent human beings without inclinations to evil.36 With this distinction Ward’s earlier sayings do not contradict his later sayings. This means that when Ward then sometimes also says that possibly our world was the only one that God could create,37 I interpret him as mentioning something which is possible, but not argued by him to be probable. To sum up, God chose to create our world, and in order to create creatures with the independent freedom that we have, he had to allow indeterminism and the possibility of pain and suffering. God could have created another world, but not with us in it. Nevertheless, he found it worthwhile to create us, and offers compensation for all we have suffered, so that the world is overall good.

╇Ibid., 217. Ward seems to contradict this interpretation when he writes in 2008 that he has established that God could not create a universe with intelligent beings without there being some evil in it (Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 92). But when he says ‘intelligent beings’ there I interpret him as using a short expression for ‘intelligent beings like us’, because that is what he refers to on the page before, and that is the claim that he has established. So instead of saying that Ward here contradicts himself, I maintain this more well-willing interpretation. 37 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 136. 36

CHAPTER FOUR

David R. Griffin’s Theodicy David Ray Griffin was Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont School of Theology from 1973 until he retired in 2004. In 1973 he founded The Center for Process Studies along with John Cobb Jr. Griffin defends process theism, which is a theology based mainly on the work of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000). Griffin wrote a book on theodicy in 1976 called God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy. In 1991 he published Evil Revisited: Responses and Reconsiderations, which presented some new ideas on theodicy, but mainly responded to critique against the book from 1976. In 2001 Griffin wrote two chapter long presentations of his process theodicy in two different books; his own Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism, and a new edition of the 1981 book Encountering Evil. Live Options in Theodicy edited by Stephen T. Davis. Griffin’s last whole book on theodicy is the book from 1991. His book Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism from 2001 has a chapter on theodicy which is structurally very similar to his 1991-book, but with some changes in Â�content. Because of the changes I will use his most updated text, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, but when there are more details in the 1991book, I will supplement with that. I will follow the structure from the 1991 and 2001 books, and add supplements from other books by Griffin when these supply details that are relevant for the discussion to come.1 First there will be a presentation of how Griffin understands the problem of evil in relation to his understanding of God. Then comes a list of arguments that Griffin has against the theodicies of traditional theism. I include this list because it shows important points where 1 ╇ In addition to these two, the most relevant texts from Griffin are David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts, Suny Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000); his text in Stephen T. Davis, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, New ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001); and David Ray Griffin, Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).

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Griffin thinks differently than the previously presented theodicies, and in addition it functions as a good presentation of many of the arguments that will be relevant in the discussion. After this there will be a general presentation of process theism, since process theism may be unfamiliar to many readers. Then we are ready for Griffin’s theodicy with his answer to why there is evil and why there is so much evil. Finally, there will be some answers from Griffin to various arguments against his theodicy. But first, how does Griffin understand the problem of evil? In Griffin’s work he uses the rational-empirical criteria of selfconsistency and adequacy to the facts of experience. He holds that ‘a worldview proves itself worthy of belief (…) if and only if it meets these criteria at least as well as other available options’.2 Griffin rejects the claim of ‘relativistic postmodernism’ that there are no facts of experience that are universal. He calls such universal facts ‘hard-core commonsense notions’ and by that he means notions that are universally presupposed in practice, even though not consciously or verbally.3 Some relevant notions that Griffin finds non-negotiable are the perfect goodness of God, the importance of self-consistency, and the existence€of genuine evil. By ‘genuine evil’, Griffin means evil which – all things considered – it would be best if it had not happened. We shall soon see that this leads Griffin to think that the only possibility to solve the problem of evil, is to modify the traditional doctrine of divine power.4 Griffin has a ‘generic idea of God’, meaning an idea of God common€in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other theistic traditions. This generic idea of God has thirteen features, which is that God is: 1)╇ A personal, purposive being. 2)╇ Perfect in love, goodness and beauty 3)╇ Perfect in wisdom and knowledge. 4)╇ Supreme, perhaps even perfect, in power. 5)╇ Creator and sustainer of the universe. 6)╇ Holy. 2 ╇ David Ray Griffin, Evil Revisited: Responses and Reconsiderations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 2. 3 ╇ Ibid., 3. The same view is held in David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 29–35. 4 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 2–3, cf Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 29–35.



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╇ 7)╇ Omnipresent. ╇ 8)╇ Necessarily and everlastingly existent. ╇ 9)╇ Providentially active in nature and history. 10)╇ Experienced by human beings. 11)╇ The ultimate source of moral norms. 12)╇ The ultimate guarantee of the meaning of life. 13)╇ The ground of hope for the victory of good over evil.5

The problem of evil then is the following: Does the reality of evil make belief in such a defined God incredible? Griffin states the problem of evil in this way: 1)╇ God is, by definition, all-powerful and all-good. 2)╇ If God is all-powerful, God could unilaterally prevent all evil. 3)╇ If God is all-good, God would want to prevent all evil. 4)╇ Evil does occur. 5)╇ Therefore God does not exist.6

Before presenting his own solution to this problem, Griffin prepares his answer by giving critique of how the problem has been solved in traditional theism. Critique of traditional theism Griffin distinguishes between two forms of traditional theism; according to all-determining theism God fully determines all occurrences in the world, whereas according to free-will theism God has given humans freedom to bring about free decisions. Common to both views is that God’s power in relation to the world is unilateral; God can unilaterally determine what will happen, if God chooses to do so. The power to unilaterally determine states of affairs is referred to as coercive power or coercion by Griffin.7 First Griffin argues against traditional all-determining theism. One way for such theism to solve the problem is by making a distinction in premise number four above, which was ‘Evil does occur’. Evil can be understood as ‘prima facie evils’: that which appears to be evil at first glance, or as ‘genuine evil’: that which actually makes the world less good than it might have been. An attempt to solve the problem could

╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 166. ╇ Ibid., 218. 7 ╇ Ibid.; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 12–13, 103. 5 6

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then be to argue that no evils are genuine, but rather God has a good reason for allowing them all to occur. Griffin does not accept such a solution because he finds the existence of genuine evils to be a hardcore commonsense notion that everybody presupposes in practice. If everything always worked out for the best, then anger, regret, and guilt would always be inappropriate. Griffin argues that this shows that such rejection is no viable solution. He also adds an argument to the implausibility of rejecting genuine evil, which is that there was much suffering in the history of evolution before humans entered the scene with their free will. Another alternative to claiming that there is no genuine evil is to deny that theological propositions must be coherent. Griffin mentions Barth and Brunner as examples of such a strategy, which he considers to be a desperate solution.8 Secondly, Griffin argues against traditional free-will theism. He defines this kind of theism as the view that God allows evil as a necessary condition for humans to have free will, and free will is necessary for virtues such as faith, compassion and courage. Griffin finds this view more plausible than all-determining theism, but still argues that it has some serious problems, and mentions ten counterarguments: 1)╇Is it plausible that every evil is necessary to promote a good world with morally good humans? Would not the world be better without cancer? 2)╇Much of the suffering does not lead to virtue, but the opposite. To justify the view of free-will theism, one must propose that human life continues after death. This is regarded as a weakness by those who do not believe in life after death. 3)╇Free-will theism argues that freedom is important, and most people agree that social, political, and economic freedoms are important. But free-will-theism focuses mainly on freedom vis-à-vis God, and there is no connection between this ‘theological freedom’9 and the other forms of freedom. Griffin argues that God could have created us without theological freedom, and we could have enjoyed all the values we enjoy today, such as music, art, food, love, sex, work, parenting, friendship and sports. The only difference would be that we could not enjoy the feeling that we have freely avoided sin, freely ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 219–220. ╇ ‘Theological freedom’ is Griffin’s term, used in this context at Griffin, Evil Revisited, 17. Elsewhere he defines it as freedom to act against the divine will (Griffin, Evil Revisited, 178). 8 9



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chosen to develop our virtues. Griffin argues that God could have made us believe this, and the only one losing any genuine value would be God. Can we praise the goodness of a God who instead allows all evil so that he can enjoy this one value? Griffin quotes the answer that God as perfect cannot deceive his creatures. But which is better, a God who deceives his creatures, or a God who allows all evil so he can enjoy our right choosing? Griffin finds neither of the two alternatives any good. ╇ 4)╇A response to the previous point could be that God could have created a hedonistic paradise, but instead he wanted to create an arena for development of virtues. Griffin agrees that creative values and virtues are more important than passive enjoyment, but the free-will-theist is forced into claiming that virtues are extraordinarily important, while enjoyment is virtually irrelevant. This weighing is very unbalanced, and does not seem to correlate to the kind of world God wants for us. ╇ 5)╇Free-will-theism is immoral, because it can make us think that evil has a purpose, and it can stop us from fighting evil, since evil has a purpose. If the suffering persons can learn from their suffering, why liberate them? ╇ 6)╇How do we explain the suffering of animals? Some animal pain makes good response possible, but not all. Some claim that the pain that animals feel is a necessary warning signal from the nerves, but could not this warning be painless? ╇ 7)╇Why did God use billions of years to create the humans? If humans were the goal, and he has unlimited power, why has 99.9 % of the creation so far only been preparation? ╇ 8)╇Why does God so seldom intervene? Could it really be that for all the bad instances we can think of, it was always best that God did not intervene? ╇ 9)╇Free-will-theism gives little or no account for natural evils. Some explain it by reference to a satanic figure, which Griffin finds implausible. 10)╇There is a tendency among free-will-theists to deny that any genuine evil occurs. Griffin considers this view to be against what we all – at least in practice – presuppose; not everything happens for the best.10 10 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 16–22. In his texts from 2001, Griffin only criticizes alldetermining theists, and not free-will theists, for denying the existence of genuine€evils.

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For these ten reasons, Griffin finds a free-will theodicy to be a nonsatisfactory solution to the problem of evil. He even concludes in the end that it seems, unless we are willing to violate the law of noncontradiction, that a monistic universe can have no God. Because of this, Griffin argues that we should consider a quite different understanding of God, namely God as understood by process theism. I will now present process theism as Griffin understands it, with special emphasis on the understanding of God’s power. Introduction to process theism In order to understand Griffin’s theodicy, some knowledge of process theism in general is very helpful. Some of the following details are quite abstract, so readers who fall off should just proceed to the next subchapter. Process philosophy and process theism come in many forms, so by ‘process theism’ I always refer to ‘process theism as envisioned by David Griffin’ – unless otherwise specified. In this introduction I will first present the basic entities in the ontology of process theism, and then their interaction, before I move on to the understanding of God, and in particular God’s power and limitations on God’s power. As Griffin defines it, the world view of materialism holds that the fundamental constituents of the world are small bits of matter, which are vacuous and devoid of experience. The world is then understood as built up of these everlasting entities, and anything can be explained by how they move around. Process theism has a very different understanding of the fundamental entities. In process theism time is crucial. The fundamental units of nature have not only spatial extension, but also temporal. These fundamental units are often called ‘actual entities’, but since they are mainly characterized by their temporality, they are also called ‘occasions’. This means that they are events, rather than substances, and that what is usually understood as substances or things, consist of a series of occasions or events. In process theism, what other people usually call ‘things’ are called ‘enduring objects’, but these objects last through time because they consist of a series of occasions.11

Some free-will theists will agree that genuine evils occur, but Swinburne does not and so the critique from Griffin is relevant to include here. 11 ╇ Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 18, 169; and Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 63–64.



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The actual entities are not only called occasions, but ‘occasions of experience’. Since they have temporal duration, they are understood€also to have internal becoming, which is analogous to our own Â�experience. Griffin finds it natural to believe that they have experience, because this is the only way we humans know internal duration. This is called the doctrine of panexperientialism – that all ‘actual entities’ or ‘occasions of experience’ have experience – but this does not have to be conscious experience. Does this doctrine mean that according to process theism, a hat or a telephone has experience? To answer this question, it is helpful to consider how process theism understands the world to be built up. All the enduring objects we see in the world consist of occasions of experience. But there are two ways that societies of actual occasions can form. Either they can become a compound individual, which has a dominant member, such as humans (where the mind is an actual occasion and the dominant member), animals, cells, bacteria, molecules and atoms – and these are understood to have experience, albeit only consciously at the higher levels. Or the occasions of experience can form an aggregational society, in which there is no dominant member, such as sticks and stones, hats and telephones€ – and these are not understood to have experience as stones and hats, but they consist of individuals that have experience, namely the molecules and atoms.12 To sum up so far; the whole world consists of ‘occasions of experience’ organized into either compound individuals or aggregational societies, and these are enduring through time. After this presentation of the parts that the world consists of, I move on to how the elements of the world interact. To understand this, a bit more must be said about the inner life of the occasions of experience. Each occasion of experience has two poles: a mental pole and a Â�physical pole. Each of these poles can receive influence from all other actual entities in the world, and this receiving of influence is called Â�prehension. Prehensions are of two fundamental types: physical and mental. A€physÂ� ical prehension is a prehension of a prior actuality. A mental Â�prehension is a prehension of possibilities or universals (by Griffin called ‘eternal objects’, such as beauty and goodness, logical and mathematical truths, and moral norms). Mental prehension explains how humans can 12 ╇ Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 170; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 120–122, and David Ray Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality: A Postmodern Exploration, Suny Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 133.

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Â� perceive the eternal objects, while physical prehension corresponds to and explains causation. The physical pole is constituted by previous€ actualities, or put differently: by efficient causation. The mental pole, however, is the occasion’s final causation or self-determination. This means that all actual occasions have some freedom to exert selfdetermination. The way this happens in an occasion of experience is the following way: Every actual entity prehends all the actual entities in its environment, including God. The various influences from these actual entities are received as alternatives to decide among. One of the influences is that God always give an initial aim for the occasion. However, it is finally up to the occasion of experience, on the basis of the alternatives prehended, to decide its own subjective aim. This decision is the self-determination or self-creation of the occasion of experience.13 To sum up this process, it is so that one occasion of experience receives influences from all previous occasions of experience, by prehension, as alternatives to choose between. In virtue of its mental pole it is – to a smaller or larger degree – free to decide between the alternatives. When the decision is made, the occasion of experience has created itself by use of final causation, and from then on it can exert causal influence by being prehended by subsequent occasions of experience. This twofold process of self-determination, and then further causation, is called ‘creativity’ in process theism. Many alternatives are prehended by an occasion of experience, which then creates itself (‘many become one’), and then this new ‘one’ becomes part of a new ‘many’ that exerts creative influence upon still newer creative unifications. This way the whole world is built up as an organism of parts continually creating more complex entities.14 With this knowledge of what the fundamental entities in process theism are and how they interact, time has come for presenting the understanding of God in all of this. God is not the ultimate in 13 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 79; Griffin, Religion and ScienÂ� tific Naturalism, 221–222. The physical prehension can be further divided two types of physical prehension. If the prehending occasion prehends the physical pole of another occasion this is called pure physical prehension. If the prehending occasion prehends the mental pole of another occasion this is called hybrid physical prehension. In pure physical prehension, the data perceived are the data that the previous occasion had perceived. In hybrid physical prehension, the data perceived from the previous occasion includes the novelty that the previous occasion added to its prehensions (Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 221). 14 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 22–23.



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Â� process€ theism; rather, there are two ultimates: God and creativity.15 As seen, creativity – the process of determining oneself based the influences prehended, and then exerting influence on coming occasions of experience – is a twofold power which all actual entities have. God did not create creativity, but he is the only omnipresent and all-inclusive embodiment of creativity, and the only one who characterizes creativity with perfect love. However, God is not exempted from the metaphysical principles which have here been laid out. He is rather ‘their chief exemplification’. While Whitehead held God to be a single, actual entity, Griffin differs from Whitehead in understanding God as a serially ordered society of divine occasions of experience.16 The way that God influences the world is by presenting eternal objects, such as the good and the beautiful, as initial aims that the occasions of experience can make come true. But they all have freedom not to do what God persuades them to do. That all actual entities have such freedom is understood by Griffin as a metaphysical principle, which means that it is not created by God, and which God cannot override since it is a necessary part of all possible worlds. This means that God’s will is often rejected by the actual occasions of the world. In high-level occasions like humans, the mental poles are strong, and they have€much self-determination that God cannot override. And in low-level occasions like atoms the mental pole is weak, so that the occasion merely repeats the action of the occasions preceding it in the enduring object to which it belongs. For these reasons it is difficult for God to get his will through. This understanding of God’s power is the process theistic explanation of why evolution has taken such a long time, and why God does not help more suffering people – it is because it is impossible for him to do more than what he already does.17 It is important for the question of theodicy to understand the process view on God’s power, and it is easy to misunderstand it. According to Griffin, God can only persuade and not coerce – but what does this mean? Some readers of process theology think that coercion is the same as efficient causation, while persuasion is the same as final 15 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 264, 277. By an ‘ultimate’, Griffin means the ultimate reality, in the sense of ultimate agency and ultimate power (Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 251). 16 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 22–23; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 140, 150–152, 156–160, 350. 17 ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 108; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 139, 299–300; and Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 309

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causation. Griffin corrects this; final causation equates with the selfdeterminaÂ�tion, which occurs within an actual entity. Efficient causation occurs between entities. Since God is different from the world, his influence is efficient causation, but persuasive efficient causation, not coercive efficient causation.18 But why cannot God exert coercive efficient causation, instead of only persuasive? Put in other words: Why cannot God alone determine what shall happen? To answer this, Griffin distinguishes between the metaphysical and the psychological meanings of persuasion and coercion. The metaphysical meaning of the terms is that in coercion the effect is completely determined by the efficient causation upon it. While in persuasion the effect is not completely determined by the efficient causation upon it; the effect, which is the causally influenced individual, partially determines itself. It is because all occasions of experience necessarily have some freedom to determine themselves that God cannot coerce.19 But humans can coerce. A human being may pick up a small rock and determine completely where it shall be moved. If humans can coerce, why cannot God? Griffin claims that coercion can only be used on an aggregate which has no self, and which therefore has no selfdetermination. And it can only be exerted by an aggregate, and not by an individual. So when we as individuals coerce other aggregates, it is via the aggregates of our bodies. We persuade our body to carry out our wishes, and then use it to coerce other bodies. This is why God cannot coerce; he has no body between him and us. God is not a localized body, but a universal omnipresent agent. His only option is to persuade the individuals in the world, where all have freedom to resist his persuasion.20 Based on this ontology, Griffin rejects ‘supernatural interruptions’ by God, which he defines as coercive acts where God unilaterally determines the effect. But he does affirm God’s variable influence, which means that God can persuade individuals differently. God’s action in the world is formally the same since he gives all an aim, but it is variable in content and effectiveness since God gives different aims to different occasions.21 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 96–100. ╇ Ibid., 101–102. 20 ╇ Ibid., 103–104. 21 ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 93–94; and Griffin, Reenchantment without SuperÂ� naturalism, 147. 18 19



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Griffin’s theodicy According to Griffin, this understanding of power is how process Â�theism responds to the problem of evil. The existence of evil does not contradict the belief in a good God, because God is not the only power. God’s power is power to evoke or persuade, but not to stop, constrain or destroy. By denying that God has a localized body, and thereby can exert a kind of power that demands a localized body, Griffin holds that process theism can consistently say that the supreme power of the universe is good. Because God cannot guarantee that good always will happen, it is necessarily so that evil is possible.22 An important correlating fact to this is that process theism does not believe in creation out of nothing, but rather that God created out of chaos – a chaos in which there was some inherent creative power which God cannot override.23 Griffin finds such a view of creation to be more in accordance with the Bible than the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Arguing this, he refers especially to Gerhard May, who claims that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo did not emerge until the second century a.d., and Jon Levenson, who argues that the Bible, including Genesis 1, is to be understood as creation out of chaos and not ex nihilo. Griffin argues in favour of reading Genesis 1 as creation out of chaos by pointing out that it does not say that God creates the waters and the darkness, whereas everything else is described as being created by God, who said ‘Let there be…(this or that)’. And if one reads God as creating heaven and earth on the first day, it becomes strange that they are also said to be created the second and the third day.24 Griffin’s point is that all evil, natural and moral, results from a freedom inherent in the world, uncreated by God, which God cannot prevent. This is the answer of process theism to why there is evil. Related ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 24–26. ╇ This chaos is not to be understood as something that preexisted independently of God. It is embodied by God. But on the other hand it is another ultimate than God, not created by God (ibid., 186–187). Griffin is a panentheist, and what he means when he claims that the world is in God, is not that the world is a part of God’s essence, but a part of God’s experience (David Ray Griffin, A Process Christology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 188). The chaos, or creativity, is then to be understood as both internal and external to (the experience of) God, since actual occasions transcend God, in the sense that they are outside the divine experience, during their moment of subjective becoming. As soon as this becoming is completed they are again received into God’s consequent nature (Griffin, Evil Revisited, 189). 24 ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 37–44. 22 23

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to how Griffin stated the problem of evil above, this means a rejection of premise number two, that God can prevent all evil. Some argue that such a solution is not a solution to the problem of evil, but rather dissolution of the problem. Griffin still holds that it is a real solution, since to point out a false premise is to solve a problem by showing that there is not a real problem to be solved.25 Still one can ask: why so much evil? Why do humans have the power to do evil? And is God justified in creating a universe where horrible evils like the Holocaust could happen?26 In asking this we should remember that process theism regards the universe as having been created from chaos. This has the consequence that there are some metaÂ� physical principles guiding how this chaos interacts which are necessary and not created by decisions of God. One such principle is what Griffin calls the ‘law of the variables of power and value’. The variables are 1) capacity to experience intrinsic good, 2) capacity to experience intrinsic evil, 3) the power to be extrinsically good (contribute positively to the experience of others), 4) the power to be extrinsically evil (contribute negatively to the experience of others), 5) the power of selfdetermination – which in higher forms is called freedom. The law guiding these variables is that if one of them rises, then the others necessarily rise proportionally. So humans have more freedom to do good and evil and experience good and evil, than dogs, which have more such freedom and experience than fleas, which have more than molecules, and so on.27 This law is considered by Griffin to be a metaphysical principle which would hold in any world God would create. According to process theism, God could not make people who were only free to do good. For this reason God cannot be criticised for not creating people who could only do good since it was impossible for him to do so. But it would still be possible to criticize God for creating humans at all. He could have chosen not to create, or stopped before evolution moved on to human beings. But one must then compare our world with the alternative, ╇ Griffin illustrates with the following conversation:

25

A:╇ How are we going to keep Jones from beating his wife? B:╇ Jones doesn’t beat his wife. A:╇ But that is to dissolve the problem, not solve it. ╇╇ (Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 224.) 26 ╇ Ibid., 225; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 26. 27 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 225–226.



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which is chaos. Griffin finds it clear that the world, even with all its evils, is still better with humans than without humans, since a world without humans would have been so much poorer, and robbed of so many goods.28 With this law Griffin has also answered why there is so much evil. Again it is not possible for God to create much good, without also taking the risk of there being much evil. But will it then be possible for God to make sure life is meaningful, or that good wins over evil in the end? To answer this question, Griffin discusses belief in life after death. All humans die, and most people consider their own death as a coming problem. Griffin sees four dimensions of death as a problem: It is firstly a problem of meaning because many consider their own life and contribution vanishingly small in the history of the world. It is secondly a problem of justice because many live good and long lives, while others live short and horrible lives, often without correlation between virtue and happiness. It is thirdly a problem that many want to live longer, and fourthly a problem that many feel their lives unrealized – longing for a wholeness or ‘salvation’.29 Griffin’s process theism is mainly based on Whitehead and HartÂ�shorne, but in this question he disagrees with his teachers. HartÂ� shorne held that there will be no subjective immortality of humans, only an objective immortality in us being remembered by God, while Whitehead did not affirm subjective immortality, but he did not reject it either. Griffin argues that process philosophy can well be united with belief in subjective immortality, and he even finds it plausible that there will be life after death.30 The possibility of life after death is in process theism provided by the doctrines of panexperientialism and prehension, which make it possible for a soul to exist, perceive and exert causation without the means of a body. God may have persuaded human souls to develop a capacity for living on after bodily death. But Griffin does not only find belief in life after death to be possible, but also plausible. The plausibility is due to parapsychological evidence for life after death. What Griffin has in mind is support from medium messages, cases of the possession type (where an individual suddenly loses his or her normal set of memories, dispositions and skills, and exhibits entirely new and different sets of memories, dispositions and skills), ╇ Ibid., 226–229. ╇ Ibid., 230–236. 30 ╇ Ibid., 236–240. 28 29

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cases of the reincarnation type, apparitions (appearances of persons, especially of persons who have died) and out-of-body experiences.31 Griffin believes that all of these phenomena could also be explained by extra-sensory perception, but this explanation still makes life after death possible, since they indicate that there is a soul which can survive the death of the body. In Griffin’s book on parapsychology, most of the stories of mediums, possessions, and apparitions are from the 19th century. The best cases, which also mostly suggest life after death, are cases of the reincarnation type and out-of-body experiences. Griffin presents some such cases where the persons in question are supposed to have obtained information they could not have obtained by the normal scientific explanations of these phenomena.32 Based on the possibilities of process philosophy and his own investigation of parapsychology, Griffin concludes that life after death is more probable than not, which also gives additional support to his theodicy, since the creation God has brought forth then becomes much better. But is not the God of process theism still so weak that he is unworthy of trust and worship? This is a common critique of process theism, and Griffin’s main answer is that his hypothesis is that no being can have greater power than the God of process theism. He argues that all alternative understandings of a God with more power are inconsistent.33 For this reason God, as understood by process theists, is both trustworthy and praiseworthy since he is perfectly good and the most powerful being there is.

31 ╇ Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality, 169; and Griffin, ReenÂ� chantment without Supernaturalism, 244–245. 32 ╇ See for example the cases in Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality, 186–192, 250–251. 33 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 138–140. When I refer to Encountering Evil it is always to the new edition from 2001 unless otherwise specified.

CHAPTER FIVE

Johan B. Hygen’s Theodicy Johan B. Hygen was professor in philosophy of religion at the Univer­ sity of Oslo, where he worked from 1941 until 1978. He died in 2002. Hygen’s book on the problem of evil came in 1973, entitled Guds allmakt og det ondes problem (The Almightiness of God and the Problem of Evil). The book was never translated into other languages, but contains a summary in German. His work was acknowledged, which can be deduced from the fact that he wrote the article on evil in Theologische Realenzyklopädie.1 The following introduction will be based on his book, which was the only one he wrote on the problem. The presentation of Hygen will be a little more detailed than the presentations of the previous, since nonNorwegian readers otherwise have little material by, and on, Hygen. This applies especially to part three of Hygen’s theodicy, which is the most important. Hygen’s book consists of three main parts. In the first part he defines the problem and gives an overview of types of solutions. Hygen finds none of the solutions any good, and argues that the time may have come to reconsider the most common understanding of God’s power. In the second part he treats the concept of ‘almightiness’, which he claims should be distinguished from ‘omnipotence’. Hygen’s investigation makes him claim that the Bible need not be interpreted so that God is omnipotent. This allows for a new understanding of God’s power, which Hygen discusses in part three. In this third part he attempts at least to clarify the problem, but he is careful not to propose that he has solved it. The Problem of Evil How does Hygen understand the problem of evil?2 Hygen starts his presentation by stating that both for the general understanding of life 1 ╇ Horst Balz, Gerhard Krause, and Gerhard Müller, Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977), (Vol. VII, 1981), 8–17. 2 ╇ This subchapter is based on Johan B. Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem: Mit einer deutschen Zusammenfassung (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1973), 9–68.

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and for ethical reflection, evil in its various forms is problematic, and that it can become a profound crisis for religious faith. The experience of evil is a stark contrast to the human wish for order and the will to find meaning in life. Hygen explains that the religious version of the problem of evil is called ‘the problem of theodicy’, where the term ‘theodicy’ means ‘justification of God’. Since Hygen uses the term ‘the problem of theodicy’ and this is a presentation on his terms, I will also use that expression in this presentation. The problem of theodicy focuses in particular on the problem as a religious problem. But also on religious ground, the problem takes on different shapes and is felt with varying strength. Hygen mentions different aspects which make the problem seem extra difficult. One aspect is whether or not the relationship between God and the world is understood as a causal-nexus. In Christian theol­ ogy this is a common view, which Hygen explains with reference to influence from Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism. A second aspect is whether or not the world view is monistic. Christian theology in gen­ eral has a monistic world view which makes the occurrence of evil harder to understand than in dualistic world views. A third aspect is whether or not God is considered to be omnipotent. And this is also a common Christian view which makes the problem even more diffi­ cult. When the common Christian view, in addition to the already mentioned aspects, also includes an understanding of God as infinitely good, then the religious problem seems extra difficult for Christian theology. Hygen finds that no theoretical solution to the problem has been given, after hundreds of years of working with it. Based on this, he does not expect a solution either. But because the problem has different aspects and the various understandings influence how the problem affects us, he claims that a closer examination of the problem may still be useful. Hygen distinguishes between physical evils and moral evils. He does not define ‘physical evil’, but gives different examples of death and pain, and calls them the mercilessness (‘ubarmhjertighet’) of nature. The moral evil he understands as all the evil that people do to each other. But he also makes it clear that it is difficult to draw a clear line between physical and moral evils. Hygen does not consider the problem of aes­ thetical evil (the ugly), since he does not believe that people under­ stand ugliness as a problem requiring a theodicy. Nor will he treat the problem of metaphysical evil (understood as the finitude of the world and life) by itself, but he believes that the parts of this problem that



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raise religious problems will be covered in his treatment of the problem of theodicy. The meaningless evils, the meaningless pain, the meaning­ less injustice – those are what makes it so hard to believe in a good and powerful God, whom one normally would expect to secure a meaning­ ful world. After this, Hygen claims to have presented the basic sides of the problem that make it so difficult; namely the belief in a creating and sustaining God, a monistic understanding of a God with absolute power, and ethical expectations to God’s actions. Hygen then goes on to present and evaluate different solutions to the problem. He argues that if all solutions contain serious deficits, the time may have come for reconsidering some of the basic sides of the problem. One way to relate to the problem of theodicy is to reject the whole problem. Hygen mentions the book of Job, some writings of Paul (Rom 9, especially verse 20a), and Luther (in De Servo Arbitrio) as examples of this strat­ egy. But Hygen finds it unsatisfactory just to say that human beings should not argue against God. He therefore soon turns to different attempts to solve the problem of theodicy. Hygen distinguishes between two main types of solutions to the problem of theodicy. The first type is that God is not the cause of evil, and the second type is that the world, created by God, is not evil. Concerning the first type – that God is not the cause of evil – Hygen argues that this is not self-evident. There are passages in the Bible where God seems to be the cause of evil. But according to Hygen, Christian theology has mostly considered God not to cause evil. This is a thought that is hard to combine with God’s absolute power, however, for can anything happen if it is not the will of an omnipotent God? Hygen presents different distinctions that theologians have used in their understanding of God’s will. The most common distinction is that God does not want evil to happen, but that he allows evil to happen. God has a primary will, but may have reasons not to effectuate this will. Hygen finds none of these distinctions very helpful. They all make God’s good will relative, and his good will gets a second rank status. Another problem is the unsolved questions. Why would God allow evil to happen? This problem increases if one believes in God’s foreknowledge. Another way of trying to show that God is not the cause of evil is to point to the story of the fall and to original sin. The origin of evil is due to the choice of human beings. But even if one uses the imagery of the fall or of the temptation by the snake, one always ends up asking why

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God would allow this possibility of doing evil. And Hygen mentions a lot of problems connected to this imagery. Why were human beings made so weak? Science does not support the belief in an original per­ fect state of the world. And why would a sin committed by two affect the whole world and all their descendants? Hygen moves on to the other main type of solutions to the problem of theodicy, which is to try to show that the world is as good as it can possibly be. Most such attempts argue that there must then be a reason why God wants or allows the evils that occur. Hygen warns the reader that such theodicies easily become justifications of evil and sin. Hygen mentions various approaches. Some may define evil as merely a lack of good, as having non-being in itself. Some may consider evil to have an aesthetical function – giving the world an extra twist. Others claim that evil is necessary if there is to be any good. And finally some present purposes God may have to allow evil and these are mainly pedagogical reasons – God wants us to learn to be better persons. Hygen comments on these various approaches as follows: Whether evil is non-being or merely a lack of good makes little difference in real life. As Hygen puts it: Whether a condition is called ‘hunger’ or ‘lack of food’ does not matter much to the hungry. Understanding evil as something allowed by God for its aesthetical charm creates an intolerable image of God, according to Hygen. When it comes to the argument that good necessitates evil, Hygen agrees that much is expe­ rienced in pairs of oppositions. But he does not agree that there is any logical or empirical necessity connected to this. If it were, Hygen argues that that too would be a problem with the order of the world, and thus no good solution to the problem of theodicy. When it comes to the solution that€evil serves a greater good, Hygen has many criti­ cal€ remarks. Could€ these goods not be reached by other means? There€also seems to€be much more evil than necessary to realize these greater goods. Furthermore, the evils seem rather to lead to more evil, than more good. Even if you add an eschatological reward – an eternal life of happiness – this does not justify the evils suffered on the way to this goal. After this, Hygen goes on to comment on different justifications of physical and moral evils specifically. When it comes to physical evils, some have had a stoic approach of trying not to be affected by pain. This may be admirable when it comes to persevering through one’s own suffering, but Hygen considers it to be cold cynicism when other people’s suffering is treated the same way. Hygen continues by



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presenting further arguments against a pedagogical understanding of physical evils. If God allows them for humans to become better per­ sons, they should occur when needed, and be adjusted to their pur­ pose. This description does not fit reality. Rather, the physical evils too often have the opposite effect, and reduce human lives so that the goal they were intended to produce becomes impossible to realize. Hygen also rejects the idea that pain is punishment from God. He claims that this is unbiblical, and that it does not fit with reality. Many good people suffer, and many bad people do not. Understanding the occurrence of physical evils becomes even more difficult when one considers the fact that also animals and children experience pain and death. Explana­ tions of learning, or deserving punishment, become even weaker here, according to Hygen. Hygen moves on to consider understandings of moral evil. The most common explanation of why God allows moral evils is the argument of free will. Various thinkers have argued that moral good necessitates the possibility of choosing between good and evil. Hygen has several criti­ cal remarks to this understanding. He quotes Ivan Karamazov in claim­ ing that the prize for free will is too high. A theodicy of this kind also goes far in legitimizing sin. Furthermore, one can ask if most moral evils do not stem from lack of freedom, rather than from freedom. Hygen argues that the whole concept of freedom used in this line of reasoning is a rather vague concept. And it seems to imply that human beings need to have inclinations toward doing evil. Would it be bad if our inclinations for doing good were strengthened at the expense of our freedom to do evil? Hygen ends part one with a summary of the solutions. He con­ cludes€that neither of the two main types of solution is any good. The first type of solution – to release God from being the cause of evil – is difficult or impossible as long as God is understood as omnipotent. And the other type of solution – to show that the world really is good€– is a useless camouflaging of real evil, which easily works against its own goal of justifying God. Hygen then asks whether any possibilities remain. And he reminds the reader of the basic sides of the problem, presented in the start, that make the problem so difficult. One of these was the concept of God’s power. Hygen claims that before the problem is given up as unsolvable, one should seek clearness in understanding the concept of omnipotence, which Hygen wants to distinguish from how he understands almightiness. This is the project of part two in Hygen’s book.

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chapter five The Concept of Almightiness

In part two of Hygens book, he presents a chronological history of the concept of almightiness/omnipotence.3 Has it always been understood in the way omnipotence is understood today, or can it be understood in another sense which helps solve the problem of theodicy? Hygen holds that the understanding of omnipotence as God being able to do any­ thing came late in history, and is not the original meaning of the closest corresponding term ‘pantokrator’ in the Bible. Hygen argues that the original meaning of the almightiness of God is the best approach to what he calls the problem of theodicy. In the following we shall see how he traces back this meaning, and what it is. Hygen follows the concept through history with an interest in how it has been understood and how it should be understood. Hygen presup­ poses that one can speak of terms being more or less adequate than others. This normative view then needs criteria, and Hygen Â�understands these criteria as formal criteria for meaningful speech, and material criteria which he defines as the Bible and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church. He underlines that he is considering the concept of almightiness, and not the almightiness of God in itself. But he still holds that what is said about the concept, indirectly says something about God, even if we are also limited by our human understanding. Hygen starts in the Old Testament. What is said about the concept of almightiness in the Old Testament? According to Hygen the relevant Hebrew terms for this discussion are ‘Shaddai’ and ‘Jahve Sebaot’. ‘Shaddai’ is sometimes associated with the verb ‘shadad’, which means ‘to destroy’. But it can also be an Accadian adjective derived from the substantive ‘Sadú’, which means ‘mountain’. ‘El Shaddai’ then either means ‘God who destroys’ or ‘God of the mountain’. This seems to have little connection to almightiness, but is mentioned since the Septuagint translates the word with ‘pantokrator’, which later in the Latin transla­ tion became ‘omnipotent’. But Shaddai is often translated with other terms in the Septuagint, so Hygen finds few reasons to believe that this term is helpful in his investigation of the concept of almightiness.

3 ╇ This subchapter is based on ibid., 69–121. Note that in Norwegian, the term ‘allmakt’ is commonly used without any distinction between almightiness and omnip­ otence in it.



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The other term that the Septuagint translates with ‘pantokrator’ is ‘Sebaot’. ‘Sebaot’ is the plural form of ‘saba’, which means ‘army’. So ‘Jahve Sebaot’ is the God of the armies. The term is used in several contexts, and gets loaded with meaning throughout the Old Testament. The term expresses honouring, fear, submission, obedience, trust and hope. The two terms ‘shaddai’ and ‘sebaot’ become ‘pantokrator’ in the Septuagint. ‘Kratein’ is a verb that together with the genitive means ‘rule’ and together with the accusative means ‘conquer’ and ‘sustain’. ‘Pan’ means all/everything, and according to Hygen the best and most common translation of ‘pantokrator’ is ‘ruler of all/everything’. The use of the concept is dominantly cultic and doxological, which means that it is used as a glorification of God. This is very similar to the use of ‘Sebaot’, which makes it a good translation which captures much of the connotations. But as with ‘Sebaot’, the concept is loaded with meaning and is thereby a complex concept. Hygen then leaves the Old Testament to investigate what the New Testament says about the concept of almightiness. Is there anything like today’s meaning of omnipotence there? In the New Testament, the term ‘pantokrator’ is rarely used. It occurs nine times in the Apocalypse, and one time in 2 Cor 6:18 – and that is it. The concept is dominantly used doxologically and is often connected to the image of a king. In the Apocalypse (11:17 and 19:6) it is used in eschatological enthronement psalms. Hygen argues that there is a future perspective in the view of God’s kingdom that is clear both in the pantokrator-term, and also other places in the New Testament. Hygen also considers other expres­ sions of God’s power in the New Testament. He finds that they all are equivalent to the pantokrator-term; none correspond to today’s most common understanding of omnipotence. But ethymological considerations alone do not determine the mean­ ing of a term. It is important to consider the fact that there are sayings in the Bible that state that all is possible and nothing impossible for God (for example Gen 18:14, Job 42:2, Luke 1:37, and Matt 19:26). Hygen discusses each occurrence and finds that they are mostly ‘expres­ sionistic’ emotional sayings, not to be understood literally, but rather as doxologies expressing trust. FurtherÂ�more, ‘all’ should not be under­ stood as ‘absolutely everything’ (it seldom has this meaning), but as ‘that which is impossible for humans’. These considerations together lead Hygen to conclude that the sayings do not answer the theoretical question of whether God can do everything or not.

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After having investigated the New Testament, Hygen moves on to consider the occurrences of ‘pantokrator’ after New Testament time, in the Church Fathers, and in art. He investigates numerous sources, but does not find one single instance where the concept has the traditional meaning of omnipotence. He always finds it best to understand it dox­ ologically and in connection with the image of God as king. Hygen also considers the term pantodynamos, which means ‘power to do every­ thing’. But this term is never mentioned in the Bible and is used only three times in the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon. Here it is always used in doxological praise of God and not as a literal Â�description. Some other early Christian thinkers are also considered, but Hygen finds no basis for the traditional understanding of omnipotence. But clearly the church has understood God as omnipotent for a long time, in the sense that he can do everything. When did this understanding arise? Hygen mentions a discussion in the fifth century – in which Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite participated – about whether God can do everything. But when was the first time the issue was discussed? Hygen’s answer is that Origen wrote against Celsos in the year 178, and said that God could not do everything, because then God could do evil. When Origen then was condemned for heresy in 533, this statement was also condemned as false. From this point on a discussion started with all sorts of abstract questions about what God can do. A very important step on the way to the traditional understanding of God as omnipotent was when the theologians in the West from around 200 ad started using Latin in stead of Greek. The term ‘pantokrator’ has no direct equivalent in Latin and was therefore translated with ‘omnip­ otence’, although this word is the equivalent of pantodynamos and not pantokrator. The direct translation of the word ‘omnipotence’ is ‘able to do’ (‘posse’) ‘everything’ (‘omnia’). The way was therefore short to the general idea that God can do everything. But Hygen also shows that the concept of omnipotence was understood in several different ways, some quite similar to pantokrator. Mostly, it was used in poetry, as an epithet to several of the Greek gods. Finally, the concept was translated into ‘almighty/ allmächtig/ allmektig’ in the German language family from about the eighth century. Hygen treats this last translation very briefly, as it added little new to what was already the established under­ standing. Hygen ends his part two by concluding that although the tra­ ditional understanding of almightiness has some support in the biblical material, this is a lot less than one would expect, when the position and prestige of the idea is taken into consideration.



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Hygen’s Theodicy In part three Hygen wishes to draw the lines in the problem more clearly.4 He has found that the Bible does not require us to claim that God is omnipotent, and this is an important finding which Hygen will use in search for a solution. I will now present his line of reasoning quite close to how he presents it himself. He starts by reconsidering the problem, then follows a discussion of religious language, God’s power and dualism in the Bible, and finally the existential consequences for humans if they were not to insist on God being omnipotent. Hygen returns to the problem of theodicy in the beginning of the third and final part of his book. He has shown that the problem has many branches, and that a traditional view of God’s omnipotence makes the problem even worse. But how serious is the problem? Hygen claims that the problem can be formulated as antinomies, which is to claim a proposition and its opposite at the same time. If one claims that God is omnipotent and not the cause of evil, then in one degree or another one claims both that God is the cause of everything, and that God is not the cause of everything. This is most clear when one thinks of omnipotence in a manner like Luther did, which is close to omnifi­ cence or all-causality: that God actually causes every action. Most the­ ologians will think that God does not actually cause evil, but that he allows evil to happen. But Hygen considers the line between allowing and wanting to be smaller than the theologians wish to think. Therefore an antinomy remains, namely: God wants everything that happens to happen – God does not want everything that happens to happen. Talking about different levels of God’s will does not help, according to Hygen, for God cannot have a self-contradictory will. The principle of avoiding self-contradiction is axiomatically valid. If this had only been a matter of formal logic, then maybe it would not matter so much. But the statements involved are very serious and important beliefs about God for the believer. Hygen therefore finds the problem to be very serious, and he does not think it helps to try to avoid the antinomy by sticking to the traditional concept of omnipotence. Then you directly or indirectly still claim that God wants evil to happen. Hygen does not think that anyone holds the position that God wants evils to hap­ pen, but he still thinks that it is hard to avoid ending up with ethical 4

╇ This subchapter is based on ibid., 122–185.

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antinomies when God is considered to be omnipotent: God wants evil to happen, God does not want evil to happen. Hygen considers such antinomies to be a serious problem. But why do people cling on to the idea that God is omnipotent? Which religious motives and interests is the concept of omnipotence supposed to sustain? Religious statements say something about a reality larger than human beings, but they also testify to the religious life of the humans, accord­ ing to Hygen. He wants to investigate places in theological literature where clear definitions of God’s power have been given, and where the author at the same time has spoken of which religious interests and motives this concept of power sustains. He then wishes to consider to what degree the definitions correlate with the motives. Hygen quotes different books where God’s power is defined as omnipotence, and finds that this view of God’s power is supposed to lead to (among oth­ ers) fear, submission, and honouring; prayer, obedience, and praise; and patience, gratitude, and trust. Hygen finds that there is a large degree of correlation between omnipotence and feelings or motives such as fear, submission and honouring. He also considers prayer, obe­ dience, and praise to fall into this category. But it becomes more prob­ lematic when it comes to patience, gratitude, and trust. In times of suffering, it can be more difficult to be patient, grateful, and trusting when one believes that God could put an end to the suffering but does not. Hygen considers the main point to be trust. Trust is not only related to power, but also has an ethical side. Hygen claims that if trust is sup­ posed to be an adequate religious attitude, then there must be some ethical consistency in what is said about God. Hygen asks whether this means that one should abandon the tradi­ tional concept of God’s omnipotence, and rather say that God cannot do everything. John Stuart Mill and William James are quoted as exam­ ples of people who have drawn that conclusion. When it comes to the motive of trust, Hygen does not find it helpful to say that God cannot do everything (which is not the same as saying God cannot do any­ thing). Even if the Bible does not say that God can do anything, Hygen finds it obvious that the Bible wants its readers to think largely about God’s power and believe the unbelievable. Together with this intention it is not suitable to say that God cannot do everything. To speak cate­ gorically in negative terms is not better than to speak categorically in positive statements. But how should people then speak about God? How does religious language work? The antinomies are unavoidable if one reads the religious language of the Bible as objectively and theoretically valid propositions about



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God. Hygen quotes Edmund Schlink, who claims that statements about God most often are words of praise, or doxologies as Hygen calls them. He argues that what the Bible says about God’s power should be understood as doxology. Hygen presents a theory by Ian Ramsey, who understands religious statements as disclosures; they ‘open up’ our understanding of God. He appreciates the theory, but still argues that when it comes to the world and God’s relation to the world, there still needs to be a degree of descriptiveness in the religious language. Hygen finds it best to understand the descriptions of God’s power as doxolo­ gies, which include a certain degree of description, but still are mainly expressionistic. This makes them something in between descriptive and non-descriptive utterances. Why then the prefix ‘all’ in ‘almighti­ ness’ if it is not meant to be absolutely all? Because it is in the nature of praise not to make reservations. One does not praise God and say: ‘You can do almost everything!’, but ‘You can do everything!’ Leibniz rejects critique of God as evil by calling it anthropomor­ phism. Hygen on the other hand values anthropomorphisms as unÂ�avoidable, legitimate, and useful. They are necessary since we are humans, and even the airiest abstractions are human and ‘shaped by humans’ (as ‘anthropomorphism’ means). Anthropomorphisms are legitimate for several reasons; the Bible is full of them; we are created in God’s image; and most of all because of the incarnation. Hygen argues that God’s revelation in Christ is the definite legitimation of anthropo­ morphisms. And they are as useful as they are lively; they remind us of our limitations; and they discipline us. Hygen comments further on the necessary discipline needed in speech about God. If language is to function at all, there must by and large be a common agreement as to what the words mean. When we speak about God, the speech is human and therefore fumbling and limited. But precisely for this reason – the human limitation – the speech needs discipline. The words cannot be defined randomly, but must be in contact with the common human understanding. Hygen exemplifies: If someone, for example, claims that God is love, then this love must be understood as related to what is commonly understood by love, and it cannot be the opposite, something which would com­ monly be reckoned as cruel. If we say that God both wants something and its opposite, then we speak of two gods, according to Hygen. Of course the human mind is limited in relation to God. But exactly for this reason, because we can only speak with human words about God, we should use these human words and respect the rules for meaningful communication.

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Hygen believes that the concept of omnipotence has been based mainly on reason, in line with the logic of via causalitatis – under­ standing God based on the definition of God as the first cause. But for Hygen it is clear that reason is not enough – the revelation in Christ must be consulted in questions about God. But what is said then about God’s power in this revelation? Hygen argues that by looking at what the Bible says about the power of the Son and the Spirit, it becomes clear that this power is a spiritual power, a suffering power, and a per­ suasive power directed towards the future. Christ dies on the cross, appeals to our morals, and talks about the coming kingdom of God. But does that mean that God is weak? Christian belief also holds that God has enough power to create heaven and earth – must not such a creator God be omnipotent? Hygen argues that if God is the sole cause of everything that exists, then sin and evil also have their last cause in God. A causal under­ standing of creation has been dominant in Christian theology. This thinking was especially stimulated by the idea that God had created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo). This ‘ex nihilo’ does not appear in the creation-texts in Genesis, but the idea was established early – for sev­ eral reasons. First of all there was eagerness to avoid the dualism con­ nected with Marcion, and secondly it seemed to reduce the power of God if he had to create out of something material. But on the other side: If God has created all out of nothing, is God not then the ultimate cause of evil? This idea definitely seems to contra­ dict the saying in Genesis that all was good. But how biblical is the idea of creation out of nothing, Hygen asks. He refers to Thorleif Boman, who says that for us, creation is to make something out of nothing,€while for the Jews, it is to bring good out of evil. Hygen finds it most likely to understand the Genesis-account as a creation out of chaos. The terms ‘tohu vabohu’ and ‘tehom’ in Gen 1:2 do not refer to neutral material, but chaotic forces. This is the same line of thinking as can be found in Ps 74 and 89, and Isa 51:9. Hygen quotes the Danish theologian Regin Prenter as a systematic theologian who claims that the biblical wit­ nesses understand the creation dualistically as God’s fight against the powers of destruction. Prenter understands the creation as an ongoing process, with which Hygen agrees. Hygen concludes that the ‘creatio ex nihilo’-doctrine is far from obvious. Even though Augustine defended the doctrine, Hygen does not believe that Augustine by ‘nihilo’ meant ‘absolutely nothing’, but rather that he understood it in Neo-Platonic terms as lack of being. Hygen argues that there are several reasons to



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understand creation differently from the classical causal understand­ ing. Since that sounds dualistic, Hygen proceeds to consider whether or not the Christian religion is clearly monistic, and by the terms ‘mon­ ism’ and ‘dualism’ Hygen refers to whether or not an ontology traces everything back to one source or not. In the start of Hygen’s book, he showed that monistic thinking makes the problem of theodicy harder. It is less difficult with a dualistic under­ standing, as this from the start includes opposite powers or principles. But monism has been the dominant view in the history of the church. Augustine rejected Manichaeism for its dualism, and in the Lutheran tradition dualism is rejected in both Confessio Augustana and The Formula of Concord. Nevertheless, Hygen finds that Augustine has quite a dualistic view in De Civitate Dei, and Luther even more so in his descriptions of the fight between God and Satan. But then, Luther also states that God is the one who ultimately works in Satan – a solution that Hygen cannot accept. Hygen seems rather to appreciate Gustaf Aulén’s understanding of God’s power as the power of love, which is not the power to cause everything, but a power that fights evil. So Aulén recognizes an element of dualism in the Christian faith, but not a com­ plete dualism. Our being still has its ground and goal in God’s loving will, according to Aulén. But more important for Hygen than what the Church Fathers meant, is: What does the Bible say about monism and dualism? Hygen willingly admits that this question is too large to be treated properly in a few pages, but he finds it sufficient to ask whether the Bible presents God’s power as unilateral in the world. Some places God’s power as unilateral is emphasised, especially in the Old Tes­ tament.€ But also in the Old Testament there is dualistic thinking, as already seen in the creation myths, and in speaking of other gods or€ demons. Both monism and dualism carried on into the Jewish religion – dualism especially in the apocalyptic period. In the New Testament there is monistic thinking, and an often cited argument is Matt 10:29, where the Norwegian translation – when Hygen wrote in 1973 – was that no sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s willing. But ‘willing’ has been added to the original text, and Hygen argues it should be translated without this addition. (It has now been left out of the translation by the Norwegian Bible Society.) But the question for Hygen is not to what degree there is monism in the New Testament. His question is whether the New Testament teaches a clear and consistent monism or not, and Hygen finds that the obvious

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answer is that it does not. Jesus fights hostile powers continuously. And he does not treat them as willed by God, but he fights them in the name and power of God. This does not mean that the New Testament is con­ sistent in its dualism. But Hygen considers the dualism in the New Testament to be strongly expressed and even metaphysical in its dimen­ sions – that is, the evil powers that fight God are super-human powers. But the world is never understood as evil in itself, or as created by an evil power. Hygen concludes that the New Testament teaches a dual­ ism, not in God, but between that which is for, and that which is against, God’s power and will. This could be called another type of dualism – an eschatological dualism. A dualism Hygen has not yet considered is the dualism between the ‘eons’, between the current and the coming era. He finds the full realiza­ tion of God’s kingly power to be a main characteristic of the eschato­ logical drama. That the kingdom of God is an eschatological dimension he considers as undisputable. Now this does not mean that God cannot be omnipotent. He could delay his use of omnipotent power. But Hygen finds such an interpretation unlikely because of the New Testament’s clear insistence on the existence of efficient powers against God. Hygen does consider God to be the true king over all and everything, but he reminds the reader that a king’s will does not always happen, and that his commands are not always obeyed. He believes that this will not happen until the end of time. Hygen holds that God’s power is very great and powerful, but that it is not a power to do everything. It is a legitimate power; it is a saving power; it is the power of good. But as long as this eon stands, it is a fighting power, and not a sovereign one. One could object that if God has the power to realize a goal, then by logical necessity he also has the power to control the development towards that goal. The philosopher Nicolai Hartmann has raised this critique. Hygen’s answer is that this critique presupposes a static and material understanding of the goal. But the goal is not statically deter­ mined in that manner. The goal is that God’s will and power shall be all-determining. The process moves from fighting power to winning power. But can Hygen find support in the Bible for such a view on God’s power – that God has to fight? Hygen claims that the traditional understanding of God’s power – that he can do everything – has little Â�support. He finds the concept not to be theologically obligatory based on the Bible. Nor do the confessions of the church support it, although the LuÂ�therÂ�an confessions go far in that direction. But if another



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understanding is more in accordance with the Bible, Hygen finds this understanding to be obligatory. Hygen disapproves of the strong position the traditional concept of God’s power has had. He believes that with reduced metaphysical ambitions, there could have been a pantokrator-theology where the problem of theodicy had been kept within the limits of what the religious mind can tolerate. The abstract concept of omnipotence has been moderated and adjusted through time. The pantokrator-concept is a lot more flexible and nuanced. This alternative understanding of God’s power does not make God weak, according to Hygen. God must be considered to be very power­ ful, because the powers working against him are so powerful. Hygen argues that this is the realism of the Bible. God’s plan does not always happen. The Bible shows us his grief. But it also invites us to fight on God’s side against the evil powers. Hygen states that this is neither a power that ‘can do everything’, nor a modified or reduced such power. It is neither unlimited power, nor a limited power. It is the pure, strong power of love, that fights and suffers and in all this loves its creation towards the goal. This is a different understanding from what has been common in the long tradition of the church. But Hygen does not think a long tradition is good enough a reason for the concept’s authority. Rather, he accounts it as a theological misunderstanding of which the history of the church has several examples. Hygen does not argue that his understanding of God’s power solves all problems. But he finds it far better than the speculations around the concept of omnipotence, and it is closer to what the Bible intends with its speech about God’s power: namely praise. What does this concept of God’s power mean for the understanding of the world and its evils? Hygen repeats his belief that we cannot find a complete explanation of why evils occur. All other theodicies have tried to generalize, but have failed. Hygen argues that the attempt to find a universal explana­ tion fails. But then many of the arguments from the different theodicies can be used – with relative validity. Sometimes evils serve a greater good. But this cannot be made into a general truth. Hygen believes that there is a middle way between making a general statement, which becomes false, and tying the knot so it becomes unsolvable. The middle way is to open up the problems for possible solutions on the personal, existential level. What this means more specifically is that Hygen does not want to make one solution into a metaphysical universally valid truth. He argues that the different suggested solutions become false when they are universalized. However, the different solutions can be

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true for some individuals and false for others, and this is how Hygen thinks that individuals should approach the problem – search for solu­ tions that are true for them. By showing that one is not required to believe in God’s omnipotence as a metaphysical universally valid truth, Hygen hopes to have opened up the field of different solutions that people can choose. How the pantokrator-understanding can be helpful on a personal level is the topic of Hygen’s final chapter, to which we now turn. The concept of omnipotence and the concept of pantokrator appeal to many of the same religious attitudes; humility, trust, and praise. In Hygen’s opinion, these do not demand that God can do everything – it is enough that his power is greater than ours and can help us. But would the traditional understanding of God’s power not give more feeling of safety? Of course the omnipotence-understanding of God’s power can give a stronger feeling of security, but Hygen also argue that it can have the opposite effect. Because then God can be considered responsible for all that happens, and then the trust can fail and turn into atheism. But what happens to the believer’s trust and feeling of safety if she thinks that there is much in existence that does not obey to God’s power? Hygen’s answer is manifold. Firstly, the New Testament preaches trust. Secondly, the ethical side of the trust is still maintained – one can trust in God’s goodness. But a trust that nothing bad will happen to you, is not supported. Hygen calls such a trust an un-Christian illusion. Nor is a trust that everything that happens is God’s will, supported. Hygen rejects such an idea, and argues that it legitimizes evil. There will remain some uncertainty. According to Hygen, this is only to be expected. But the certainty that can remain is the belief that one is loved by the God who opens possibilities where all possibilities seem closed. The feeling of safety, based on trust in this understanding of God, gives both rest and obligation, according to Hygen. It gives obli­ gation in its call to the individual to fight on God’s side against evil and for the realisation of the kingdom of God. And it gives rest (and hope) in the trust that God is the powerful one that will win in the end, by the holy powers of goodness, justice, truth, and love. Some argue that pain should be endured, and is willed by God. Hygen accepts that there may be particular cases where this can be right, but considering Jesus’ atti­ tude towards suffering, he finds it in general more likely that God wants to triumph over it than to allow it. Hygen then ends the book by point­ ing forward, where this trust is directed. His final sentence quotes Rev 19: 6, which says that on the last day God, the pantokrator, has become



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king. Summing up, Hygen’s main contribution lies in opening up for the possibility that God is not omnipotent, but has to fight in order to get his will through. He does not want to call it a universally true theodicy, but rather an understanding which is less problematic than other understandings of God’s power.5

5 ╇ I nevertheless called it a theodicy in the subchapter title, and I will argue in chapter eight that it can be understood as a theodicy.

Part Two

Criteria and Terminology

CHAPTER SIX

First Criterion: Coherence Theodicies can be discussed and evaluated in numerous ways. For this reason limitation is necessary, and a good way to limit the discussion is to apply criteria for evaluation. Applying criteria improves the discussion since it becomes structured and thereby clearer and easier to follow, and the criteria clarify what it means when it is claimed that one theory is better than another, or that one theory is unacceptable. The criterion to be presented in this chapter is coherence. Since people want their beliefs to be true, and coherence is a criterion of truth, most people will be interested in the coherence of a theodicy if they are to believe it. I will now explain what is meant by coherence in this book, and show how the criterion will be applied. The theodicies that have just been presented are soon to be discussed with the goal of deciding which one is the best. Comparing theories this way is a difficult task where precision is required in order to have a good comparison. In order to have a precise and detailed language and methodology that I can use to achieve this comparison, I will to a large degree employ the book Struktur und Sein (2006) by the German philosopher Lorenz B. Puntel.1 In this book Puntel convincingly shows how sentences have different meanings dependent on their theoretical framework, and that sentences often become ambiguous if it is unclear what kind of ontology they presuppose. Puntel on coherence By ontology, Puntel means a theory of beings. ‘Theoretical frameworks’ are instruments that make possible the articulation, conceptualization,€and explanation of theoretical contents. A theoretical framework consists of a language, a logic, a conceptuality, and components that constitute a theoretical apparatus. Since ontological presuppositions

1 ╇ Puntel, Struktur und Sein (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). The whole presentation in this chapter is based on this book.

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are important for understanding the meaning of what else is said, I will spend some time on presenting Puntel’s structural-systematic philoÂ� sophy here. This is a theory which thoroughly explains what it means to compare theories. It is also a very precise and detailed theory which allows me to place both the second criterion and the theodicies within it, and to clarify the relation between them. My presentation of Puntel has a double function. The most important function is to present the criterion of coherence. This criterion is non-negotiable in this book, and that means that coherence is the stable criterion against which all else is measured here. It is not a problem that coherence is non-negotiable in the discussion in this book, for the authors of the four theodicies all have coherence in this sense as a goal for their theodicies. In addition to this criterion, I also present Puntel’s ontology, including his understanding of truth, language, world, and other aspects of his thoughts that have methodological relevance for this book. This allows me to situate the discussion within a larger framework which offers detailed and precise terminology that can be used in the discussion. But at this point, the theodicies themselves may offer resistance, by suggesting other distinctions and other solutions that are more coherent than Puntel, and so can back-fire against his system. Puntel’s ontology is open to suggestions that are more coherent than his, so his theory is used here as a good starting point within which the theodicies can be given a better discussion, but the discussion may then in the second round change the framework. In the end, the conclusion will then also have a framework, to which readers can be referred. Since I do not have space to spell out the details of this framework, nor defend it against other possible frameworks, I refer to Puntel’s writings both for further details on his own position, and for critique against other positions.2 Concerning the ontology of Puntel, I want to specify that I presuppose the general structures of his ontology, namely his configuration ontology as an alternative to substance ontology (to be presented soon). This is what I refer to when I talk about ‘Puntel’s ontology’ elsewhere in this book. I do not agree with all that Puntel says more concretely about€beings, and I especially disagree with his understanding of the soul and€ the mind, but there is no place for a thorough discussion

2 ╇I provide references as the presentation proceeds. More detailed references can be found in Atle Ottesen Søvik, The Problem of Evil and the Power of God, chapter 3.1.



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about€ philosophy of mind here. What I do agree with is Puntel’s understanding of the parts that I briefly present now, and these are the ones that are most relevant for the discussion of theodicy. In a first presentation of the topic of comparing theories, Puntel suggests that the central criterion for comparing theories is coherence. Theories aim for truth, but truth is the goal and not the criterion.3 Puntel argues that coherence is the best criterion of truth. A theory must fundamentally be intelligible at all, and then it is more intelligible the more coherent it is. Coherence is a matter of degrees. It is not just about being consistent, but about developing detailed structures in the theory. Puntel here adds completeness as an additional comparative criterion, concerning the number of elements in the theory and their interconnections. When Puntel spells out further how theories can be compared, he mentions three conceptual pairs to be used as criteria. The first conceptual pair is depth of structuration, which distinguishes between the surface structures and deep structures of a theory. Depth of structuration is a continuum that has to do with whether (parts of) the theory are valid only in a very particularistic theoretical framework, or in a universal framework, or somewhere in between. This criterion does not imply that we human beings can actually develop an absolute theoretical framework, but as we shall see later it can still function as a regulative idea. The second conceptual pair is grainedness, and distinguishes between fine-grained and coarse-grained. Grainedness is a continuum that has to do with the degree of differentiation, detail, and specificity of a theory. Puntel exemplifies by saying that ‘there is a red house on the corner’ may well be true, but it is a coarse-grained truth. The third conceptual pair is greater or lesser coherence. Puntel here€ refers to a book by Nicholas Rescher from 1973, and identifies the€same three aspects of coherence as Rescher did in 1973.4 The first aspect is that of consistency, which means lack of contradiction (and a

3 ╇A philosophical theory is an ordered relation between language, structure, and the universe of discourse. ‘Language’ and ‘structure’ is defined below, and the ‘universe of discourse’ is being that can be understood. According to how Puntel understands theories, theories aim for truth (Puntel, Struktur und Sein, 35, 182, 528, ET: 127, 136, 395). His understanding of truth is provided below. 4 ╇ See Nicholas Rescher, The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 31–38 and 168–175. Puntel explains the aspects, but does not label them, so I use here Rescher’s labels for the aspects, namely ‘consistency’, ‘cohesiveness’, and ‘comprehensiveness’.

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contradiction is to state both p and not-p with respect to the same and at the same time). The second aspect is comprehensiveness, which has to do with the number of elements that are integrated in the theory. This is a material criterion, and what is meant by ‘elements’ or ‘parts’ of a theory will soon be further explained. The third aspect is cohesiveness, and has to do with the totality of relations between the elements of the theory. The theory is more coherent when there are more connections between the elements and these are tighter and more precise. The interconnections refer to any kind of relation or combination, and they determine how the elements of the theory are constituted and conceptualized, as will be clearer below in this subchapter. The theory is more coherent when the interconnections are more detailed, finely grained and precise. Consistency is an either-or-issue, because either the theory is consistent or not. Comprehensiveness and cohesiveness allows for degrees, since there can be more elements, and more and tighter connections. For this reason a theory can be more or less coherent. In this book, focus will be on coherence and the three aspects of coherence. In one sense the criteria of depth of structure and grainedness are included in€ the criterion of coherence, since the criteria of depth of structure and grainedness are specific ways of being comprehensive and cohesive. Puntel understands the various levels of structures as forming an internal coherence. Further, the aspect of completeness is a specification of the aspect of comprehensiveness. For reasons of simplicity, I€will generally use coherence (with the three aspects of consistency, cohesiveness and comprehensiveness) as the criterion, and only refer to completeness, grainedness, or depth of structure when those aspects need to be specified. As mentioned, Puntel refers to Rescher’s book The Coherence Theory of Truth from 1973 when spelling out the criterion of coherence. In this book, Rescher defined truth as correspondence with reality, but used coherence as a criterion for truth.5 Puntel criticized this and argued that a closer link was necessary between definition and criterion, and Rescher accepted this critique.6 It is worth noting that also Wolfhart Pannenberg read this discussion and sided with Puntel.7 Defining truth ╇ See ibid., 23–24. ╇Nicholas Rescher, ‘Truth as Ideal Coherence’, Review of Metaphysics 38 (1985): 796. See also footnote 3 on the same page. 7 ╇ See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 62–63, ET: 53. 5 6



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as coherence establishes a link between definition and criterion, which legitimates the criterion and makes it understandable with what right one can claim one’s own understanding of truth as the actual truth by arguing that one has an opinion that is more coherent than another. Later, Rescher has made claims which seems to contradict this, and he argues that coherence should be used for pragmatic/epistemic reasons,8 but Puntel criticizes Rescher for unclarities which follow from insufficient focus on ontology.9 Theory of truth To clarify the criterion of coherence and also to support my selection€ of€ this criterion, I will now present Puntel’s understanding of truth.€I€will also present some of his ontology, since Puntel makes clear that any theory of truth is unclear if the presupposed ontology is unclear. Puntel criticizes other theories of truth, and since I do not have the space to discuss different theories of truth, I refer the reader to the book Wahrheitstheorien in der neueren Philosophie (1993), where Puntel discusses different theories of truth.10 There is also quite an amount of critique of other theories of truth at various places in Struktur und Sein.11 What is truth? According to Puntel, Tarski captured the fundamental core of what people intuitively mean by truth, with the following definition: ‘a true sentence is one which says that the state of affairs is so and so, and the state of affairs indeed is so and so’.12 But what does this€ mean? In his own theory, Puntel distinguishes between three different€entities that can be true, so-called ‘truth bearers’.13 The three ╛╛╛╛8 ╇ See for example Nicholas Rescher, Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosophizing (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 162, 194. ╛╛╛╛9 ╇ Puntel, Struktur und Sein, 64, ET: 48. 10 ╇Lorenz B. Puntel, Wahrheitstheorien in Der neueren Philosophie: Eine kritischsystematische Darstellung, 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993). 11 ╇ See for example Puntel, Struktur und Sein, 188–206, 297–328, ET: 141–154, 222–245. 12 ╇Tarski, according to Puntel, in ibid., 192, ET: 143. Emphasis in text 13 ╇ Puntel mentions that the term ‘truth-bearer’ is not very good in his account, since it gives assosiations to substance ontology and ‘true’ as a predicate, while he defends another kind of ontology where ‘true’ is an operator. He nevertheless uses ‘truth-bearer’ as a name for what the truth-operator determines or qualifies. For the truth-bearers, see ibid., 197, 303–304, 310–311, ET: 147, 226–227, 232; and Lorenz B. Puntel, Grundlagen einer Theorie der Wahrheit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), 322–333.

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truth bearers are the utterance (of a sentence), the sentence, and the proposition. These stand in a hierarchical order, because the utterance is true only if the sentence is true, and the sentence is true only if the proposition is true – but not the other way around. This means that the proposition is the fundamental truth bearer, but what is a proposition and what does it mean to say that a proposition is true? The proposition is what the sentence expresses, and the sentence expresses a state of affairs. When the proposition is true, it is identical with a state of affairs. This seems strange, because most people are used to thinking of propositions on the one hand as something (semantic) in the mind and states of affairs on the other hand as something (ontological) in the world. But Puntel considers semantics and ontology to be two sides of the same coin. To understand this, we must consider some more details of Puntel’s ontology. After Kant, many have distinguished between the world für mich and an sich, and considered this to be an unbridgeable gap. But Puntel disagrees with the idea that there is a gap between thoughts and language on the one side, and the world on the other side. He understands the world as fundamentally expressible, and if it is expressible there must be something that can express it, namely language. Language is the counterpart to the world’s expressibility. ‘Language’ in this sense is not to be understood as a natural language used in a country today, but as a semiotic system with uncountably many expressions. When this semiotic system is structured syntactically, semantically, and ontologically, it can express the world. Important then is that there is a one-toone-correspondence between semantic and ontological structures. When language is understood this way, Puntel argues that the world is language-dependent. Access to the world is absolutely language mediated. If you claim that the world is independent of any language, then you express about the world that it cannot be expressed, and that is a self-contradiction. The ‘subjective’ thoughts and language and the ‘objective’ world are poles within the same language-dependent dimension – there is no unbridgeable gap between them. How does Puntel understand this language-dependent world? Puntel agrees with the early Wittgenstein that the world does not consist of things, but of facts. In Puntel’s philosophy, a ‘fact’ is what is the case – it is the existence of states of affairs. So the world consists of facts, or differently put: the world consists of true propositions. How can that be? All the facts of the world (particles, waves, forces, and anything that is the case) are structures. ‘Structures’ are differentiated and ordered



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interconnections or interrelations of parts.14 Puntel argues that facts are the only entities in the world, and that every entity is a structure. The simplest structures are those structures, which only structure themselves. These are called simple primary structures. These simple primary structures can be combined into a configuration of simple primary structures, which then becomes a complex primary structure. And these again can be combined into new configurations of complex primary structures. The world consists of structures, and language is structures, and the job of systematic philosophy is to bring those two dimensions into agreement, because when they agree the true structure of the world is manifest. Only through the structures of language can the structures of being be understood. How does this happen? A fundamental fact about language is that the linguistic items in the language require determination. Language semantically determines its own items, and this happens internally to language. When a proposition is fully determined, it is true, and then it is identical with a fact. What this last sentence means is that when a proposition is fully determined, its place in the world has been clarified, and then its place in the world is a fact. The full determination means explicitly identifying one item in the semantic dimension (the proposition) with an item in the ontological dimension (the fact). This reminds us of the correspondence theory of truth, but whereas it is unclear how to understand the correspondence in normal correspondence theories, the ‘correspondence’ is by Puntel understood as identity. This can be coherently done since the world is understood as consisting of facts only, and so Puntel has an explicit theory of the relation between language and world. Facts are ontological structures that can be understood by means of language only.15 Does this mean that humans construct the world randomly? No, Puntel claims that experience is important when it comes to understanding the world. The world presents itself as a grand datum for

14 ╇ Proper parts are characterized by irreflexivity (a proper part is not a proper part of itself), assymetry (if a is a proper part of b, then b is not a proper part of a), and transivity (if a is a proper part of b, and b is a proper part of c, then a is a proper part of c) (Puntel, Struktur und Sein, 358, ET: 268). 15 ╇Does this make Puntel into a realist or an anti-realist? Puntel rejects both sides of the debate, since they do not distinguish between natural languages and language as such (in the general sense understood by Puntel). The world is not dependent on natural languages, but the world is dependent on language as such. See ibid., 500–504, ET: 374–377.

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philosophy, but it is accessible only as prestructured. The task for philosophy is to comprehend, explain, and articulate this world as precisely and adequately as possible. For this job, the natural languages are the necessary starting point for philosophy, but they are very unprecise. The task for philosophy is then to make natural language more coherent and precise. Puntel argues that this can be done also with religion and religious language – at least with Christianity because Christianity presents a theory about the world. Puntel calls his ontology contextual or configuration ontology. He is very critical to substance ontology in all its forms, because they all have the same root problem: the substance is an unintelligible entity. A substance is most often understood as a substrate of attributes (properties and/or relations), but when the attributes are removed, what is left (the substance) is unintelligible. In Puntel’s alternative ontology, every simple primary fact (the basic entities) is determined by a network of relations and/or functions. This means that in Puntel’s ontology, relations are more basic than substances, while the opposite is the case in substance ontology. Syntactically, Western languages have a subjectpredicate form which reflects substance ontology, since the sentencesubject taking a predicate is similar to the substance and its predicates. Puntel argues that philosophical language should syntactically reflect his alternative ontology, by using the form ‘It is the case that some state of affairs occurs at time t at place p’.16 However, he still uses the subjectpredicate form (and so do I in this book), but then only as a convenient abbreviation of sentences without subject and predicate. With his alternative way of constructing language, Puntel has made ontology, semantics, and syntax cohere with each other in a precise way. What is the relationship between substance ontology and Puntel’s own ontology? Puntel considers substance ontology to be a coarsegrained truth, and his own ontology to be a fine-grained truth. SubÂ� stances or objects and attributes in substance ontology must be understood as abbreviated sentences that express primary propositions and configurations of propositions in Puntel’s ontology. What it means for a substance to ‘have’ an attribute, is that the attribute is a part of a configuration. This is relevant for this book, since Swinburne defends 16 ╇ Puntel describes this as language based on a strong version of the context principle (that words get their meaning only in the context of a sentence) as opposed the the composition principle (where the sentence gets its meaning from the parts of the sentence). See ibid., 247–278, ET: 185–208.



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substance ontology, and according to Puntel process ontology (such as defended by Griffin) is also a sort of substance ontology. Hygen’s ontology is not so clear, and Ward and Pannenberg have ontologies similar to Puntel. What is common to the ontology of all the other five scholars in this book (Swinburne, Ward, Griffin, Hygen and Pannenberg) is that they can be considered as more or less coarse-grained ontologies that can be made more precise within Puntel’s ontology. The criteria of coherence and authenticity are here based on Puntel and the German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, who both presuppose this kind of configuration ontology, and they function as a theoretical framework in this book. However, some of the theodicies presuppose substance ontology. This is not a big problem since they can be understood as coarse-grained candidates for truth which at important points may offer good answers or good connections, although they may be vague at other points. And since both Puntel and Pannenberg have open systems, the theodicies can back-fire and problematize the theoretical frameworks of the criteria. I have not applied the frameworks to decide a conclusion in advance, only to stage the ground for a nuanced discussion. Value judgments Some words should be said in particular also about ethical sentences, especially value judgments, since it is a common part of theodicies to discuss whether or not God is good, and whether or not various states of affairs in the world are good or bad. The criterion of coherence is meant to help deciding the truth of a theory, but can value judgments be true, and if so: what does it mean to say that a value judgment is true? In the following I present Puntel’s theory about ethical sentences, which will be presupposed in this book. Puntel develops a cognitive ethics where ethical sentences are sentences that can be true, or otherwise put: they can express propositions that are identical to facts. How does he understand the ontological dimension of ethical truth? First of all, Puntel makes some distinctions€concerning ethical sentences. He considers ethics to be a theoretical discipline, but some confusion arises since ethics also involve practical sentences in the sense of normative sentences. Puntel distinguishes between primary practical sentences and theoretical-practical sentences. Primary practical sentences are sentences that directly

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make€requests or demands, like imperatives. However, such primary practical sentences can be the subject matter for theoretical investiÂ� gation (for example if we discuss an imperative), and so be the content of theoretical-practical sentences. Puntel argues that ethics should not create its own primary practical sentences, but rather reflect theoretically upon primary practical sentences by use of theoretical-practical sentences. Note, however, that such reflection is not just reflection upon the meaning of primary practical sentences, but also on whether or not the considered moral norms are valid. So, for example, ethical reflection on the imperative ‘you shall not kill’ can come to the conclusion that this imperative is true in such and such circumstances. Normative sentences can be further divided into deontic sentences on the one hand, concerning what is obligatory, forbidden, or allowÂ� able, and valuative sentences on the other hand, making value statements (that something is good or bad). A deontic sentence can be primary practical, in the form: ‘It is obligatory/ forbidden/ allowable that…’. But it can also be a theoretical sentence, in the form: ‘It is the case that it is obligatory/ forbidden/ allowable that…’. Concerning such theoretical deontic sentences, Puntel distinguishes between empirical and universal sentences. The empirical sentences have the form: ‘It is empirically the case that it is obligatory/ forbidden/ allowable that…’, and the universal sentences have the form ‘It is universally the case that it is obligatory/ forbidden/ allowable that…’. The operator ‘it is empirically the case that’ indicates that an empirical situation affects the deontic operator ‘it is obligatory/ forbidden/ allowable that’. In other words, it specifies a specific context where something is obligatory/ forbidden/ allowable. Universal sentences, on the other hand, express that something is valid in all contexts. In addition to these theoretical-deontic sentences, there are theoretical-valuative sentences, which can also be understood indicatively and€ so as true, according to Puntel. Again they can be distinguished into empirical and universal sentences, in either the form ‘It is empirically the case that it is good/ bad that…’ or ‘It is universally the case that it is good/ bad that…’. The question can be raised whether such sentences are true or not, but what does it mean that such a sentence is true? In Puntel’s understanding, theoretical-deontic and theoretical-valuative sentences (or the propositions they express) are true when they are fully determined. And what does it mean that they are fully€determined? It means that they are identical to facts in the world. A true theoretical-valuative sentence expresses a basal-valuational



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proposition that is identical with a basal-valuational fact in the world, and a true theoretical-deontic sentence expresses a moral-valuational proposition that is identical with a moral-valuational fact in the world. Note that Puntel adds the qualifier ‘basal’ in the valuative sentences and ‘moral’ in the deontic sentences. The reason is that values are more basic than deontic norms since something is first good or bad, and then the deontic sentences connect a practical way of acting in relation to the value (being forbidden is connected to being bad, for example). What then is a basal-ontological value? To understand this we must remember that Puntel understands the world as a structured whole consisting of structured individual beings. Every item has its own ontological constitution, and every item has a location in the whole which fits it. In its location, the ontological constitution of an entity determines what the capacities for actualization are for that entity. Value is the measure for those capacities. Every being, in virtue of its structure and place in the whole, has a value, which is ontological. Puntel suggests briefly that the term ‘value’ could be replaced with ‘good’. Since he also places his own view in a Christian tradition where Thomas Aquinas is particularly important, I interpret his ethics in an Aristotelian way. When beings actualize their capacities, their structures function with maximal order. Changes in the entities or their surroundings can lead to more ordered structures, and I understand Puntel as defining something as more or less good when it is more or less well-orderly structured. Recall that order is part of the definition of structure, such that more structured means more ordered. When the good is so defined, it is a descriptive definition of the good, and so sentences about something being more or less good are descriptive sentences that can be true or false. The account in the previous two paragraphs focused on basalontological values, but Puntel also writes about moral-ontological values. To explain these, he distinguishes between first order and second order ontological status, and says that the first concerns human persons, while the other concerns everything that emerges from human acts. But Puntel is then very brief, and does not explain much more. He does not explain how moral values emerge from basal values. He does say that he does not hold that primary practical sentences have truth value, but he argues that they are ‘correct’, ‘rational’, ‘justified’ etc, when they are grounded in basal-ontological values. However, he does not say how primary practical sentences can be grounded in basalontological values. What is important in this book on the problem of

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evil is that Puntel explains precisely and coherently what it means to say that theoretical-valuative sentences like ‘It is (universally) the case that God is good’ have truth value and can be judged by the criterion of coherence. All four theodicies agree that ethical sentences have truth value, and can be judged on coherence. I therefore presuppose my interpretation of Puntel’s ethical theory about values, and since this book mostly discusses whether various states of affairs in the world are good or bad, it suffices with the account Puntel gives of values, although certain aspects of his theory of deontic norms and moral values have not been so thoroughly explained. After this account of ethics and truth, it is appropriate to add a few words in the end about truth and relativism. In Puntel’s theory of truth,€the subject is not primary. The subject is a part of the world, and the perspective of the subject is a part of the world. The perspective of the€ subject can be formulated as something which is the case, for example ‘It is the case from the perspective of subject S that S knows that€P’.€‘Perspective’ is the same as ‘theoretical framework’ in Puntel’s ontology.17 But Puntel does believe that truth is relative to theoretical frameworks, so is he a relativist after all? He is not an ontological relativist, defined as one who denies that truth is one, because Puntel does believe that something can be absolutely true within all theoretical frameworks. He may be called an epistemic relativist, defined as one who thinks that human access to truth is dependent on perspective or theoretical framework, since Puntel does not claim that we human beings can reach absolute truth, or ever make a final decision that something is true within all theoretical frameworks. But he does argue€that the concept of absolute truth is understandable and functions as a regulative idea which explains what absolute truth is and the role of coherence. Puntel identifies universal coherence with the universal structuration of being. To conceive of anything is to place it within this structuration, and a proposition is true when it has been given its right place. This is how truth is defined with reference to coherence, and thus how the criterion of coherence functions as a criterion of truth, since the more coherent the theory is, the more likely it is to be structured rightly. Tarskis definition that ‘a true sentence is one which says that the state 17 ╇Although Puntel does not define the two as the same, I interpret him this way, since he seems to use them with interchangable meaning. See for example ibid., 545, ET: 408.



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of affairs is so and so, and the state of affairs indeed is so and so’ rightly makes the state of affairs fundamental. Puntel’s ontology explains the little word ‘indeed’ which makes the difference in the first and the second half of Tarski’s definition: a true sentence expresses that the state of affairs is so and so, and it is fully determined that the state of affairs is so and so. In agreement with his own theory, Puntel ends by stating that another theory may be more coherent and thus better than his. But of all the current alternatives he knows of, he finds his own theory to be the best thus far – and so do I, although a new theory may come that is better. I will end the presentation of this criterion with a comment on how it will be applied in the discussion. There are four theodicies that will be evaluated and compared with regard to coherence. To give a final positive account of how coherent they are is impossible. There are innumerable possible connections between the elements, and equally many considerations to make concerning their comprehensiveness. Focus must therefore be on the negative side of the aspects of coherence: on inconsistency, lack of connections and so on. Practically, the criterion will therefore be used in the following way: First of all I will focus on uncovering inconsistency. While the other aspects of coherence can be fulfilled to various degrees, consistency is an either-or-aspect. If a theory is inconsistent, it is not coherent. Consistency is therefore the most important aspect of coherence, and the one I will focus on. When there is no inconsistency, the aspects of cohesiveness and comprehensiveness (including completeness) become more relevant, and again with a negative focus: Is there a lack of connection between elements in one theory that are connected in another? Is something important integrated in one theory that is not integrated in another? Is something less complete in one theory than another? Since a theory could be considered with regard to its coherence with all the data in the world, I have practically solved the problem of which data to select for discussion and evaluation by focussing on the issues that the scholars themselves consider relevant when they defend themselves and criticize the others. In practice, the discussion will be a discussion of the main claims of the theodicies, and these will be criticized, mostly be the defenders of the other theodicies. I do not use the coherence terminology much in€ the discussion, but implicitly it should be clear that I am guided by€the criterion of coherence, namely in the following way: Firstly, I try to discover inconsistency in the theodicies, since this is the most

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heavy-weighing critique. In practice this means I will try to show that the thinkers contradict themselves. Secondly, I try to discover lack of comprehensiveness by finding important elements that are not integrated in the theodicy under discussion, compared with whether or not they are integrated in the other theodicies. Thirdly, I try to discover lack of cohesiveness (connections) by posing important questions that the theodicies cannot answer, compared with how the other theodicies answer the same questions.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Second Criterion: Authenticity Since this book discusses Christian theodicies, and since we will see later that some criticize some of the theodicies for not being Christian, I need a criterion to clarify what I mean by ‘Christian’. This second criterion clarifies a material aspect of the first criterion, which makes authenticity a part of the criterion of coherence. Coherence is also central to the criterion of authenticity, so the methodological approach is also coherent and unified.1 The link between the two criteria will soon be made clearer. I will now explain what is meant by authenticity here2, and show how the criterion will be applied. Since this book discusses the problem of evil within Christianity, a criterion is necessary to ensure that the solution to the problem in this field is not a solution outside its field. The solution that God does not exist, or that the law of karma is the answer, is not considered here, since the question of this book is whether or not there is an acceptable solution within the limits of Christianity. One cannot give a clear and exact answer to what is Christian or not, but the goal of this criterion of authenticity is to decide to some degree how serious a candidate is for consideration of what counts as Christian. Since I have no room to make a full discussion of whether or not something is an authentic Christian position, I limit myself to this goal only: to make it a little more clear how good a candidate is for further discussion of whether or not it should count as authentically Christian. Such discussion will only be made when there are claims in the theodicies that have been criticized as un-Christian. Such critique has been made and considered very important. Some do not bother to discuss process theodicy as it is ╇ That they are separated into two criteria instead of one criterion with a subcriterion is for stylistic reasons only. 2 ╇ The term ‘authenticity’ for this kind of criterion is borrowed from Niels Henrik Gregersen. Some of the content here is similar to his work since he also uses PannenÂ� berg€(see Niels Henrik Gregersen, Teologi og kultur: Protestantismen mellem isolation og assimilation i det 19. og 20. århundrede (Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1988), 236–238). 1

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considered as not Christian.3 For this reason I will look into it, but as mentioned, the actual discussions can only be made very superficially. Does that mean the criterion should be left out? No, since the criterion also has the important function of clarifying what I mean by a Christian theodicy also when it is not controversial that a theodicy is Christian. This means that I will spend some time on how something is established as Christian, even if the actual discussions that this criterion leads to will be brief. It is difficult to establish such a criterion, since there is much disÂ� agreement concerning what is Christian, with good arguments on many sides. This makes it likely that no sharp criterion can be found. But still, a criterion may at least be sharper than no criterion. Some theories are clearly not worth considering seriously as expressions of authentic Christianity,4 while other theories are worthy of such consideration, for example the beliefs of the major churches that are commonly called Christian. There are elements that are clearly not a part of Christian belief (like the examples in the previous footnote) and there are elements that clearly are a part of Christian belief (for example the belief in a creator God), and there is general agreement about these examples. But between these ends of the scale of ‘certainly in’ and ‘certainly out’ there is a lot of disagreement on different elements, whether or not they belong to Christian belief, and if they belong: how they relate to the other constituents of Christian belief. The previous criterion of coherence is concerned with what is true, and so it is related to the huge question of what truth is. This criterion of authenticity is meant to make it somewhat clearer how seriously a theory is worth considering as Christian, and so it is related to the huge question of what Christianity is. In the chapter about the coherence 3 ╇ Griffin says that one of the chief criticisms of process theology is that their theoÂ� dicy should be ignored in Christian discussion of theodicies since they deny basic Christian premises, and he refers to John Hick as an example of such critique (Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 137). 4 ╇ For example Ann Madden Jones’ theory that Jesus was an alien, and the Holy Spirit a space-ship (Ann Madden Jones, The Yahweh Encounters: Bible Astronauts, Ark Radiations, and Temple Electronics. (Chapel Hill, NC: Sandbird Pub. Group, 1995)â•›), Ralph Ellis’ theory that Jesus was the last Pharao (Ralph Ellis, Jesus – Last of the Pharaohs (Coventry: Edfu Books Ltd, 2000)â•›), or Fransesco Carotta’s theory that Jesus was Julius Caesar (Francesco Carotta, Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity: An Investigative Report (Soesterberg: Aspekt, 2005)â•›). (I am indebted to Bjørn-Are Davidsen for an orientation in the world of strange ideas about Jesus). Of course, very few hold these views, but when we start in the extreme end, when do the alternative theories start becoming worthy of serious consideration?



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criterion I presupposed a non-negotiable criterion of coherence and situated it for the sake of clarity within a larger theory of truth (and this larger theory is negotiable and not forced upon the theodicies). In this chapter on the criterion of authenticity I will also presuppose a nonnegotiable criterion of authenticity, namely that the goal of a Christian theory is to have an understanding of God’s revelation in Christ that is more coherent than alternative understandings. I will situate this criterion within a larger theory of how to establish what Christianity is, which I myself presuppose, but this larger theory is negotiable and not forced upon the theodicies. Both the question of what truth is and the question of what Christianity is, are too big to discuss here. But I have chosen two scholars who have worked extensively on the topics, who explain their views in great detail, and who in my opinion do a solid job of criticizing other alternatives. The scholar behind the coherence criterion was Puntel, and the scholar behind the criterion of authenticity is the German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, whose theology can be integrated within the framework of Puntel. Since I have no place to discuss these theories in total, the best I can do is to present them briefly and then refer to the writings of these two authors for those interested in more. The criterion of authenticity is quite flexible, since Pannenberg has an open understanding both of how to do systematic theology and how to understand revelation, and he is willing to adjust the content of his theology and his understanding of revelation if a more coherent presentation can be made (within a limit, as will be presented later). This means that even though the content of Pannenberg’s theology in many ways differs from the content of the theology of the theodicies, this is not a problem, since I am only using as a framework his method of how to establish the content. And Pannenberg’s method is open to the fact that one can use his method and end up with a better argued view on what should be the content of Christian faith than what Pannenberg himself has managed by use of his own method. My reason for using Pannenberg even though he is different from the theodicies in many ways, is that I needed a criterion of authenticity, and few have worked more thoroughly than Pannenberg on the method of how to decide what is Christian (in particular I have in mind his understanding of revelation, and how to do systematic theology in general). Yet another reason for using Pannenberg is that it allows me to refer to a broader theological framework within which the problem of evil and my conclusion can be placed. I place the discussion of the Â�theodicies

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within the framework of Pannenberg’s theology, and then Pannenberg’s theology fits within the theoretical framework of Puntel. But both Pannenberg and Puntel have open systems, so that even if the theoÂ� dicies in many ways are more coarse-grained than the theories of Puntel and Pannenberg, the theodicies may for example have some good answers and connections that are lacking in Pannenberg’s theology, or otherwise make some points that suggest that something should be changed in Pannenberg’s and Puntel’s theories. I think the discussion will show that the the practical use of the criterion is less controversial than the specific theory of revelation. Following now is a presentation of the criterion of authenticity within the larger framework of PannenÂ� berg’s methodology concerning how systematic theology should establish the content of Christian belief. Pannenberg on systematic theology When it comes to the method of deciding what is authentically Christian€(as this criterion is supposed to help us with), I adhere to the impressive work that Wolfhart Pannenberg has done in this field. I find Pannenberg’s theological method to be the best argued way of doing systematic theology, but as mentioned there is no room to discuss this here, and so I must refer to Pannenberg’s own discussions with alternative understandings. I will give a short presentation of Pannenberg’s method, based on his most relevant books, namely his systematic theoÂ� logy, his book on metaphysics and the idea of God, and his book on theology and philosophy of science.5 Pannenberg argues that the only thing human beings can know about God, is what God himself has revealed. According to Pannenberg, 5 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische TheolÂ�ogie 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991); Wolfhart Pannenberg,€System­ atische Theologie 3, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988); and€WolfÂ� hart Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie (Frankfurt (am Main): Suhrkamp, 1973). All these books have English translations, and in my references I will refer English-speaking readers to where they can find the translation of my reference. This is indicated by the abbreviation ‘ET’, and for these five books, the English translations are respectively Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1, (Grand Rapids, MI:€ EerdÂ� mans, 1991); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 2, (Grand Rapids, MI: EerdÂ� mans, 1994); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 3, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990); and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976).



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this is self-evident if God is considered to be incomparably transcendent or the power that determines everything. But even if God is not€considered to be such, Pannenberg believes that it is an implicit or explicit premise in all talk about God or gods, that such knowledge must be based on revelation. He argues that this grounding in revelation gives claims about God a sense of authorization by God himself, whereas statements not based on revelation are extremely presumptuous. This does not determine the kind of revelation that God chooses in order to reveal himself. The world could probably have been such an evident result of God’s power and nature that no extra revelation was needed. But Pannenberg claims that the evidence from nature and our use of reason only provide some basic clues about God, whereas special revelation is needed to say more about God than the basic descriptions.6 At this point I would like to add a reason to support Pannenberg’s claim that a theory of God must be based on special revelation. A great problem with constructing a hypothesis about God based on evidence from nature and reason alone, is that numerous theories about God match the data equally well, and so you have no good reason to pick one instead of another. Because we have so little certain knowledge about God, and because of the problem of evil, there are many theories about God that are pretty much equally coherent. God may be an impersonal force which is morally neutral; or good, but finite in power; or a deistic amoral God; or a dualistic principle, and so on. If a theory is based on revelation, it has a much better foundation than a theory which makes guesses about God. If you have a theory of God that is not based on revelation, the chances are extremely high that you will be wrong. Your odds of being right about God are a lot better if you choose between theories that claim to be based on revelation, since if they are correct, you have ‘inside information’. But is God not incomprehensible in his essence? Yes, but Pannenberg argues that God has made his being known through revelation in history. One could still argue that God cannot express his eternal being through the medium of creation, but Pannenberg argues that God, through the incarnation, is so closely tied to his creation that it nevertheless is possible. Of course, he agrees that God is beyond our knowledge, and that we should recognize this so that our speech about God is doxology, where we acknowledge that God is beyond our Â�reason. But the way Pannenberg understands it, doxology can also be Â�systematically 6

╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 12, 207–213, ET: 202, 189–194.

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reflective. This means that within its limitations, what we say about God can be understood as hypotheses about God that are more or less likely to be true.7 How does Pannenberg understand revelation? He notes that there are many different understandings of revelation in the Bible, and if they are all interpreted as direct revelations from God, then they contradict each other. Sometimes in the Bible, Jahve declares that in the future he will show himself clearly as the creator God for all people, for example in Isa 40:5. Pannenberg therefore distinguishes between the many different manifestations of God and the one self-revelation of God. The many manifestations are historical actions where God indirectly and partially reveals himself. These manifestations are all part of the one self-revelation which is completed in the end when God will show himself as God for all people. This way of understanding revelation is not very clearly presented in the Bible, but it is explicit sometimes and implicit other times, and so Pannenberg finds it defensible.8 But why is that defensible? Pannenberg often presents theories which he supports with implications in the Biblical material. ‘Implication’ is a vague term, which can be understood in a number of ways. Does it mean strictly logically deducÂ�ible; or something which is actually presupposed by the author; or something that has to be presupposed in order for a position to be consistent; or something that should be presupposed in order for the position to be as coherent as possible; or something that may be presupposed in order for the position to be more coherent; or some other more inductive interpretation? Pannenberg uses the term without defining it.9 Sometimes he says that systematic theology must ‘systematically reconstruct’ Christian doctrines or the content of the Bible.10 He does not explain what ‘systematic reconstruction’ is, but it fits well to interpret it in the same way that his colleague in Munich, L.B. Puntel, uses the term ‘rational-systematic reconstruction’.11 A theory is systematically reconstructed when it is integrated in a model that makes the theory more coherent. Systematic reconstruction is then an integration of one or more theories within a larger theory that is more ╇Ibid., 15–16, 65–69, ET: 16, 55–58. ╇Ibid., 211–213, 266–267, ET: 193–195, 243–244. ╇ 9 ╇Ibid., 213, 281, 318, 428, 429, ET: 195, 257, 292, 395, 397. 10 ╇Ibid., 215, 281, ET: 196, 257. In the last example he also uses the term ‘implication’, which suggests that he uses the two terms interchangably. 11 ╇ Puntel, Grundlagen einer Theorie der Wahrheit, 90–98. ╇ 7 ╇ 8



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comprehensive and more coherent also in other ways.12 Pannenberg argues that his understanding is the most coherent interpretation of what the Bible says about revelation, and he discusses his understanding of revelation with other understandings through church history. There is not room for me to discuss his understanding of revelation against other understandings here, but those who are interested can read the discussion that Pannenberg makes himself, referred to in this footnote.13 Pannenberg’s understanding of revelation is a systematic reconstruction of what the Bible says about revelation: There are many manifestations of God in history that are vague and partial, but they are part of the one self-revelation where gradually it becomes more and more known that God is not only one of many Gods, not only the God for Israel, but the one God for all people. Pannenberg argues that God has also revealed himself partially in other religions, but then again these are only manifestations on the way to the full self-revelation of God. Decisive in this history is the revelation of God through Jesus. Even after Jesus, God is still not known for all people. But in Jesus, the kingdom of God that will come fully in the end is already present. Many of the things that will not be fully revealed before the end are already present through Jesus: the power of God, resurrection from the dead, justification of those who believe. The end has been anticipated through Jesus, which makes his revelation final, although there is still some revelation to come in the return of Jesus.14 Pannenberg systematically reconstructs an understanding of revelation based on the content of the Bible, and his systematic theology is an understanding of the content of Christian revelation, which has also been systematically reconstructed. Such reconstruction is the first step in how to do systematic theology with Pannenberg’s method. PannenÂ� berg then argues that there is a crucial next step for systematic theology to do, namely to discuss whether the content of Christian theology is 12 ╇ When I use the term ‘implies’ myself, it is also in this wider sense, that a theory implies something when it can be systematically reconstructed with the implied element. This definition could be understood very widely, so that almost any addition to a theory is understood as ‘implied’, since the addition makes the theory more coherent in the sense of more comprehensive. I suggest that focus must be on a reconstruction which first and foremost tries to make the theory more cohesive, so that we should use the term ‘implied’ about propositions that makes the parts of a theory more interconnected. 13 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, chapter 4. 14 ╇Ibid., 164, 186–187, 230–234, 266–270, ET: 149, 170–171, 210–213, 243–247.

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true. As we know from the hierarchy of Puntel’s truth bearers, statements in the Bible cannot be true because they are written in the Bible, they can only be true if they express propositions (states of affairs) which are true. And how can systematic theology argue its truth? Pannenberg argues that since truth is one, the different parts of truth cannot contradict each other. Pannenberg refers to Puntel and argues that coherence must be both crucial in the definition of truth and be the criterion of truth. Does this make human reason the judge over faith? Human verdicts are of course subjective, but the truth is not€under our control, and so truth is basic (and hence the content of Christian faith is basic if it is true), not the human subject. Note that Pannenberg, in addition to understanding truth as coherence, also defends an ontoÂ� logy where relations are understood as more basic than individuals. Substances are understood as configurations of attributes, and so again his theology fits very well into the framework supplied by Puntel.15 Based on the Bible, Christian theologians must reconstruct the content of the historical acts of God. Note that Pannenberg’s understanding of revelation gives a different degree of authority to the different parts of the Bible. The revelation of God in Jesus is definitive, while different manifestations of God in the Old Testament only partially reveal God. According to Pannenberg, the Old Testament receives authority insofar as it prepares and prophesies about God’s revelation in Christ. When the content of the Bible is reconstructed, the reconstruction is then considered as a hypothesis to be tested on coherence. An important part of how doctrines about God can be tested on coherence is their implications for our experience of the world. What is said about God has implications for our understanding of the world, and so common experience can be used in the testing of theological hypotheses. An obvious example is that when God is understood as good and omnipotent we expect the world to be good.16 Another part of testing theology on its coherence is to determine the interrelation of parts in the Christian world view. Pannenberg has an understanding of meaning where meaning is antiÂ�cipatory, because the true meaning of anything depends on its relation to the whole. The ‘true meaning’ must be understood as an objective meaning, as opposed to a subjective meaning, which is what individual ╇Ibid., 29–32, 58–63, 390–399, ET: 319–322, 348–353, 360–367. ╇Ibid., 66–69, 175–184, ET: 156–159, 159–167, 232; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 510, ET: 463. 15 16



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persons mean when they say or think of something. Pannenberg then argues that in the all-encompassing totality of meaning, truth and meaning coincide.17 This is very similar to how Puntel describes how language must determine its parts, and then when it is fully determined it is true, so that meaning and truth are two sides of the same coin. For Pannenberg it is important to stress that all meaning is anticipatory, so that the meaning of something cannot be fully determined before it is a completed whole, which means that it must have completed its journey through time. Pannenberg expresses this by saying that time and becoming constitute the whatness of a thing. The future may prove us wrong, but we anticipate the future in our concepts of things.18 Puntel does not focus on time in his philosophy, but Pannenberg’s point can be made within Puntel’s pilosophy by distinguishing between something as fully determined in the world now, and fully determined in the world at the end of history, and so I accept Pannenberg’s position here. The consequence regarding theological language is that language about God is anticipatory and not finally fully determined. But the more determined it is, the more coherent it is, and so coherence is an appropriate criterion also in theological language, even if the final coherence cannot be reached by humans living now. The coherence of the Christian hypotheses about God functions as a temporary verification. But since history is un-ended and God reveals himself through history, God’s self-revelation is not yet final, although it has been given a definite anticipation in Jesus. The truth about God is therefore not final, but temporary.19 Since the truth about God is not final, and since no hypothesis can ever be finally verified, Pannenberg formulates in his book from 1973 on theology and philosophy of science some negative criteria for when a hypothesis about the content of Christian theology is not satisfactory, namely when: 1)╇It is intended as a hypothesis about the implications20 of IsraeliteChristian belief, but cannot be shown to express implications of Biblical traditions (even in light of changed experiences). 2)╇It has no connection with reality as a whole, which can be supported by contemporary experience. ╇ Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, 216–224, ET: 216–224. ╇ Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, 75–78, ET: 104–107. 19 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 63–65, ET: 53–55. 20 ╇ Pannenberg here uses the term ‘Tragweite’, while the English translation of his book uses ‘implication’. ‘Tragweite’ is even less precice than ‘implication’. 17 18

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3)╇It cannot integrate relevant experience, or does not attempt to integrate it. 4)╇Its ability to explain is inadequate to the stage where theological discussion has come, and so it is less coherent than competing existing hypotheses, and does not overcome the limitations of these.21 Point two and three are expressions of coherence that have to do with cohesiveness and comprehensiveness. Point four is also an expression of coherence which has to do with being more comprehensive and cohesive than alternative Christian hypotheses, and so this highlights relevant material data. The first one is especially connected to the Bible, although it is not very clear how one shows that a hypothesis expresses implications of Biblical traditions or not. As mentioned, it is probably a matter of systematic reconstruction, but are there any limits on systematic reconstruction? How far can one go in rejecting parts of the Bible, or reinterpreting them very far away from an immediate interpretation, while arguing that one gives a more coherent Â�understanding? The question is relevant, since for example David Griffin has an interpretation of the Bible where he argues that there are some truths there, many things are not true, and that a process theological interpretation of the Bible is the most coherent – while, as seen above in this subchapter, others claim that Griffin’s position is not worth considering as a Christian position at all. The problem is that first the Bible is to be reconstructed as coherently as possible, and then this reconstruction is to be tested on coherence, but what if someone first reinterprets everything in the Bible symbolically, or as fairytale, or as mostly wrong – and then in the second round argues that the reconstruction is very coherent with natural science and a naturalistic world view; is such an interpretation then a serious candidate for what Christianity is about? How low is it acceptable to score on the first part (a coherent understanding of the Bible) in order to score high on the second part (coherence with our current understanding of the world22) while still remaining a candidate seriously to be considered as Christian? As seen, Pannenberg argues that any theory about God must be based on revelation. Pannenberg also seems to hold that for a position ╇ Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, 348, ET: 345. ╇Of course, ‘our current understanding of the world’ is for many partially influenced by their understanding of the Bible, but partially it is not, and so the question makes sense concerning all the other parts of their understanding of the world to the degree that these parts are not influenced by the Bible in the first place. 21 22



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to be Christian, it is a minimal requirement that the position holds that God has revealed himself through Jesus.23 By accepting these two statements, a good answer can be given to whether there is a limit to how the content of the Bible can be reconstructed: a Christian interpretation of the Bible should make it more plausible that there has actually been a revelation of God through Jesus than not. The way to do that is that an understanding of God’s revelation through Jesus should be tested against the alternative theory that God did not reveal himself through Jesus to see which of these theories is the more coherent. This means that the interpretation of God’s revelation through Jesus needs to let the New Testament appear as a reliable witness to this revelation. If an interpretation of God’s revelation through Jesus does not make the Bible trustworthy as a witness of revelation, then the interpretation undermines itself. The reason is that if the interpretation is too unrecognizable from the original text, then it does not support the trustworthiness of the interpretation, but rather undermines the trustworthiness of the basis for the interpretation, namely that the New Testament contains witness reports of God’s revelation through Jesus. This means that if you have a theory about God’s revelation in Christ which does not make it likely that the Bible is a witness of such revelation, then it is more coherent to believe that there has been no revelation in Christ. With this presentation, a quite detailed account of what a theory must do to argue that it is Christian has been presented. What has become clear is that it takes a lot of discussion to reach a conclusion on whether or not something is authentically Christian, and that one alternative cannot be discussed alone – it must be discussed against other alternatives as well. After this discussion of Pannenberg’s four criteria, the criterion of authenticity can be formulated as follows: A serious candidate for what is authentically Christian must argue (or be based on argumentation which implies) that God has acted in Christ so that Christ reveals God, and this should be an understanding of God’s revelation in Christ which is more coherent than alternative theories. This specifies how I think that a theory can be established as authentically ╇ This is how I interpret Pannenberg when he says that, regardless of interpretations, there is a subject matter in the Bible that all interpreters must refer to, and he identifies this common subject matter treated by all the writers of the New Testament as the claim that God has acted through Jesus of Nazareth (Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 25, ET: 15). 23

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Christian. I cannot discuss the authenticity of the theodicies as such, but when they are criticized for not being Christian, I will discuss the specific critique compared with the alternatives that the other theodicies give, and so indicate superficially their relation to each other concerning how well they score on this criterion. Since my discussions will be superficial I claim only to give a brief evaluation of how serious they are as candidates for further discussion of their authenticity. The philosophical idea of God So far, Pannenberg’s understanding of revelation and methodology in systematic theology has been presented. But given this understanding of Christian theology, how does Pannenberg understand the relation between Christian theology based on revelation, and the philosophical idea of God?24 The question is relevant since several of the theodicies in this discussion have a more philosophical approach to their understanding of God, while Pannenberg is a Christian thinker and is supposed to supply a criterion for evaluating these. Does this mean that Pannenberg’s theology is unfit as a criterion for evaluation of the theoÂ� dicies? The theodicists understand revelation differently from Pannenberg, or do not focus much on the subject at all. But that is not so important – what is important is that they believe that Jesus reveals God, and that they want to show that the content of this revelation is coherent. Since they have this aim to fulfil the minimum requirement, it is no problem that they disagree with Pannenberg’s understanding of revelation or its content, since Pannenberg is open for there to be other and more coherent understandings than what he has provided himself. This difference between Pannenberg and the theodicies is no methodological problem in this book. Indeed, Pannenberg’s understanding of revelation and systematic theology suggests that this kind of discussion between his understanding and alternative understandings should take place. In the following, I will also show that the philosophical 24 ╇ Pannenberg uses the term ‘the philosophical idea of God’ with reference to a Â� tradition of philosophers and theologians who, with roots in Greek philosophy, by the means of reason, have thought similarly enough about God as the one origin of the world that one legitimately may refer to it as the philosophical idea of God (WolfÂ� hart€ Pannenberg, Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 298–308). This is the same tradition as I present and refer to as ‘theism’ in chapter eight, and this is what I refer to in this chapter when I use the terms ‘philosophy’ or ‘philosophical’ in various constellations.



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discussion of God has an important place within Pannenberg’s theoÂ� logy, so that the discussions made by the theodicists in this book can fit well within Pannenberg’s theology. So, how does Pannenberg understand the relation between Christian theology based on revelation, and the philosophical idea of God? As seen, Pannenberg argues that any theory about God must be based on revelation. But what do we mean by the term ‘God’? When someone experiences something that they interpret as revelation of God, how do they know that it is a revelation of God? According to Pannenberg’s interpretation of the Bible, when God manifests himself, those to who experience it already have an understanding of God.25 This means that ‘God’ cannot just be a proper name; it must also be a designation, even if it is a category with only one instantiation. The reason is that if Jahve or Jesus is to be identified as God, or if God is to be determined as one, it presupposes a predicative use of the terms ‘God’ and ‘divine’. ‘God’ must be a category in order to be intelligible, because even proper names presuppose that they can be linked to a category.26 Christian theology took over the terms ‘God’ and ‘divine’ from a preChristian use. The Church Fathers used these terms to show that God was God for all. The philosophers had made criteria for how God had to be in order to be the creator of the world and God for all, and the Christians tried to show that their God was like that. Of course, the Christians made some corrections to the philosophical idea of God, but even the changes had to be argued philosophically if they wanted to argue that God was the one God for all. So Christian thinking did not avoid the question of a philosophical criterion of what is the true divine origin of the world. And Pannenberg argues that philosophical reflection on God continues to be a criterion of what is worth calling ‘God’, because if we drop that we lose the good reason to argue the universality of God. So this is how Pannenberg understands the relation between Christianity and philosophical theology: Philosophy provides the basic conditions for speech about God if it is to cohere with God being the origin of the world. Christian talk about God must fulfil these minimal criteria in order to consistently claim that God is the creator and sustainer of the world. That does not mean that philosophy defines the essence of God; philosophy only decides the minimum requirement

25 26

╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 220, ET: 201. ╇Ibid., 78–79, ET: 67–68.

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for determining that the one who reveals himself is God, and not someone or something else.27 But the concept of God gets its actual content from the subject to whom it applies, who acts as God in his revelation, and thus shows us what it means to be God. As we shall see several times later, Pannenberg’s view is that philosophy provides abstract notions like ‘first cause’ and ‘infinity’, which theology makes more concrete by its understanding of God as creator and Trinity. This also fits well with Puntel, who holds that Christian theology, with its understanding of God who has acted in history, gives an account of the world which is more fully determined than the abstract account of the world that philosophy gives with its abstract categories of necessary being, first cause, and so on.28 Due to the considerations right above, Christian doctrines also get a critical function in relation to the requirements for consistent God-talk that philosophy has formulated. One example is the thesis of God’s immutability, which Christian theology has changed. Such change also happened when Gregory of Nyssa argued that the doctrine of God should not be based on God as first cause, but on God as infinite (which does not mean that God is not the first cause, but that that is secondary to his infinity).29 That the concept of God may change as a result of philosophical discussion is important in this book also, since Griffin and Hygen argue in their theoodicies that it is more coherent to understand God as finite than infinite. The problem of evil Since the point where Pannenberg meets philosophical theology in this book is the problem of evil, I will end the presentation of Pannenberg with his reflections on theodicy. This way I clarify where in the paradigm of Pannenberg’s theology the discussion of the theodicies is situated. In the end I will also explain why Pannenberg’s own theodicy is not selected for discussion in part three. For Pannenberg it is primary that the problem of evil is a practical problem that can only be solved when God actually defeats all evil and makes all things good at the end of this world. As I will show in further ╇Ibid., 78, 89–91, 120, 426, ET: 168, 178–180, 107, 394. ╇ Lorenz B. Puntel, ‘Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Beiheft 9 (1995): 37–39. 29 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 427, ET: 394–395. 27 28



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detail in the next chapter, Pannenberg understands the problem of evil more widely than how it is defined in this book, where it is defined as a theoretical problem. Pannenberg nevertheless recognizes that there is also a theoretical aspect to the problem, such as defined here, and he does discuss the theoretical side of the problem. First he criticizes theoretical theodicies for being too focussed on creation, and not on what God will do in the end of history. This critique does not apply to any of the theodicies in this book, since they all have as an important part of their theodicy what God will do in the end of history. Pannenberg then says that even from an eschatological point of view, one can ask why God created a world with pain in the first place, and so Christian theoÂ� logy should deal with the question also theoretically from a creation perspective. Even if God acts in history against evil, one may ask why God allows evil in the first place.30 Pannenberg thus clearly identifies a theoretical problem of evil where the core problem is the same as that which is discussed in this book, namely that a God being love, with power enough to create the world, presumably should have created a world without pain in the first place, and yet did not, and that seems to be inconsistent. In the next chapter I will demonstrate in closer detail the relation between how Pannenberg and the other scholars understand the problem of evil, and conclude that they have this theoretical problem in common. Like the four theodicists presented in part two, Pannenberg also offers a theoretical answer to the theoretical problem of evil.31 His answer is that God wants to create independent beings, but as such they need to become and die in time. God’s reason for wanting to create independent creatures is that a certain amount of independence is necessary in order to live alongside the eternal God. Physical evils are a means to bring out new forms, and so a part of the cost of creating independent creatures. Our independence can be used to rebel against our finitude. When God wanted us to be independent, he had to accept corruptibility and the possibility of evil as a result of our striving for autonomy. He also had to accept his own hiddenness in creation,

╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 191–197, ET: 164–169. ╇ He does write early in volume two that it is beyond human understanding why God allows suffering (ibid., 31, ET: 17). But later in volume two and in volume three he does give an answer, which I present now in the main text. I therefore interpret his first comment as meaning not that Pannenberg does not have an answer, but that he does not have a full answer. 30 31

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meaning that his existence is far from obvious, so that the creatures in their independence question the existence of God. As this shows, Pannenberg’s solution resembles that of Ward, and even adds some aspects which would fit well into Ward’s theodicy. On the other hand, Pannenberg is very brief on many points that Ward has developed much better, like the questions of natural evils, animal suffering, why the goal of independence, why God does not act more often, why the acts of God seem arbitrary, and why God did not create a better world. This is my main reason for using Ward to present this kind of theodicy rather than Pannenberg himself. In my opinion, Pannenberg has the best argued theology, and so he is used for the criterion of authenticity, but he has a poor theodicy, and so Ward is used instead of Pannenberg for the discussion of theodicies. I will end the presentation of this criterion with a comment on how it will be applied in the discussion. I have shown earlier that Pannenberg’s method for establishing what is authentically Christian is to reconstruct a historical hypothesis based on the Bible as a witness report, and then test this negatively against four criteria. Based on these criteria, I formulated as one criterion of authenticity that a theodicy and its framework, in order to be seriously considered as a candidate of authentic Christianity, should argue an understanding of Christian belief which makes it more coherent to believe that God is revealed through Christ than alternative understandings. Despite this specification, such a criterion can be fulfilled in several ways, and it is open for debate how well a theory fulfils the criterion of authenticity. But at least this discussion now is a bit more precise. In practice, when the question arises in this book whether or not a theodicy (or more specifically: a part of a theodicy) can be called authentically Christian, there will be a limited consideration of how this way of thinking results in a reconstruction of God’s revelation in Christ which is more coherent than the other reconstructions given by the other theodicies. At the very least, a Christian theory should make it more coherent to believe that God has revealed himself through Christ than not, but it should also be compared with alternatives. Such a discussion can only be made very superficially among the theodicies, but some indications are better than none, since the question of authentic Christianity is important for many of those who seek a theodicy in the first place. The practical use of the criterion should be less controversial than the theoretical framework it has been given. Even if one disagrees with Pannenberg’s theology, most people calling themselves Christian will



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have a view of revelation where the Bible is central, and they will also try to understand the Bible coherently. Another reason that the criterion will be less controversial than its background theory is that the problem of evil is mainly concerned with central issues of Christian belief, and not the typical areas of debate. However, there are some controversial issues that need to be discussed, for example the question of monism and dualism together with creation from nothing or chaos, and the question of whether or not God performs miracles that contradict the laws of nature.32

32 ╇ The terms ‘monism’, ‘dualism’, ‘miracles’, and ‘laws of nature’ will all be defined in due course.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Terminology In this chapter I clarify the theoretical frameworks of the theodicies by relating them to the theoretical framework of Puntel and Pannenberg. Parallel to this I define important terms and distinctions, and place the terminology of the theodicies within my more comprehensive, nuanced and precise terminology. All of this is important in order to under­ stand the theodicies more precisely and avoid misunderstandings, even if there is not room for an evaluative discussion of the content of their frameworks. Developing a common terminology will make com­ parison clearer and the discussion more precise. Concerning termino­ logy and placing within a framework, focus will be on how the scholars understand the problem of evil and the attributes of God. But before I€ present this, I will briefly show that the scholars think similarly enough on the two criteria, language and ontology, so that they fit in the larger framework and that evaluating them by these criteria is fair. I start with how the scholars relate to the criterion of coherence, then the criterion of authenticity, then how they understand ethical lan­ guage, theological language and finally ontology.1 Concerning the criterion of coherence, all five scholars have as goals the three aspects of coherence (consistency, cohesiveness and compre­ hensiveness), even if they use the word ‘coherence’ differently.2 When it comes to the second criterion – authenticity – the scholars are more different. Hygen believes that if there is an interpretation that is ‘more biblically right’ than another, then that interpretation is theologically 1 ╇ For a long and detailed version of this chapter with references and arguments, see Søvik, The Problem of Evil and the Power of God, 110–192. When I use the expression ‘the four scholars’ I refer to Swinburne, Ward, Griffin and Hygen, while ‘the five schol­ ars’ refer to those four and Pannenberg. 2 ╇ Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, Rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 11–50; Swinburne, The Existence of God, 1; Keith Ward, Religion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World’s Religions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 320; Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 190; Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 118; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 52–53, 118, 250, n. 186; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 355; Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 123–124; and Johan B. Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien (Oslo: Land og kirke/Gyldendal, 1977), 30.



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obligating. For him, what the Bible says on an issue is binding, although it is not very clear how he reaches a conclusion on what is ‘more bibli­ cally right’. Hygen also gives authority to church confessions. Swinburne too argues that it is highly plausible that the Bible is a witness of revela­ tion from God, and that no other purported revelations are nearly as plausible. He places great weight on what the Bible says, and focuses even more on church doctrines when it comes to the interpretation of the Bible. Ward argues that God has revealed unique knowledge in Christian revelation, but stresses more than the two previous that this must be critically appropriated. He argues that the Bible testifies about God’s self-revelation, and sees Jesus as an anticipation of the end of history, so that Christians intelligibly can claim a final revelation. But Ward also argues that God has revealed himself in other religions, although there are specific things that God has only revealed through Jesus. Griffin is probably the most critical reader of the Bible. He believes that the Christian truth has been distorted already in the Bible, but he uses the Bible also to defend that claim, and he does want to give a trustworthy interpretation of the Bible which includes revelation in Christ. He does not believe that Jesus was God who became a human being, but rather he believes that God persuaded Jesus so strongly that it is nevertheless correct to say that Jesus deci­ sively reveals God.3 In general, the scholars do not spell out their relation to Christianity and theological method at the same level of detail as Pannenberg. However, they do care about the goal of the criterion of authenticity, which is the most authentic interpretation of Christian revelation, and the means of that criterion, which is a coherent presentation of that revelation. They all fulfil the minimum requirement that they believe in a decisive revelation through Christ, and want to interpret this as coherently as possible. I consider this to be reason good enough to claim that an evaluation of the theodicies by the criterion of authentic­ ity is fair. Concerning both criteria, I have found that all the scholars are sufficiently concerned with them in the way that they are used, so that they can be fairly evaluated and compared with regard to these. ╇ Richard Swinburne, Revelation : From Metaphor to Analogy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Ward, Religion and Revelation, 221–222, 245–246; Keith Ward, Re-Thinking Christianity (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), viii, 232, 254, 258, 280; Griffin, A Process Christology, 156–159; Griffin, Two Great Truths, 29–31, 35–36, 108–111; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 69, 170. 3

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But no matter how much the writers are concerned with the criteria, a€reader may apply a set of criteria for evaluation – regardless of what the author had in mind. I use these criteria, but it is up to the reader how much she wants to emphasise them. The next question is how the scholars understand ethical language. None of the five scholars have theories of moral objectivity and truth that are nearly as detailed as Puntel’s understanding. But the relevant issue here is whether or not the scholars behind the four theodicies think that ethical sentences like value judgments have truth value. Since theodicies include value judgments, and since they are to be eval­ uated in this book by coherence as a criterion of truth, this procedure would be best if all the theodicies held such value judgments to have truth value – and they do.4 Concerning theological language, Ward and Hygen express a slightly more careful and pessimistic approach concerning what human lan­ guage can convey about God than what Swinburne and Griffin do. But when it comes to the actual use, they develop this in the same manner as the two others, namely a meaning close to an everyday meaning of words which must be as coherent and adequate to experience as pos­ sible.5 Even if they do not share Pannenberg’s theory of anticipatory meaning, they all agree with Pannenberg that God can be so described that what is said about God has implications in our world that count for or against what is said about God. It is because they agree with Pannenberg in this that all four consider the problem of evil as here understood to be a problem to be solved by showing coherence. In sum, all four understand theological language as so close to our eve­ ryday use that what it expresses can be evaluated on the implications it has for our world. This is the minimum requirement that must be present in order for it to be fair to use the criterion of coherence on their theories. 4 ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 208–209; Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 18; Keith Ward, Ethics and Christianity (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), 38–39, 268; Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 88–89; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 298–300, 314–315; Johan B. Hygen, Etikk: Om livssyn, holdning og handling (Oslo: Fabritius, 1976), 36–38; and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Grundlagen der Ethik: Philosophisch-theologische Perspektiven (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 62–87. 5 ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 72–73; Ward, Religion and Creation, 114–116, 150; Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the Perplexed (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002), 230; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 344–351; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 134–141.



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Concerning ontology, Swinburne defends a substance ontology, and also substance dualism.6 That is the kind of ontology that Puntel criti­ cizes and to which he develops his alternative. Swinburne is therefore very different from Puntel and Pannenberg here, but as mentioned, Puntel does consider substance ontology to be a coarse-grained ver­ sion of his own ontology. Substance ontology can therefore to a large degree be translated into the ontology of Puntel, for example by under­ standing substances as configurations of more basic structures, and properties as parts of the configurations. Ward on the other hand is critical to substances as independent, enduring existents that remains unchangeable while its properties change. Rather, he understands sub­ stances simply as collections of instantiated properties.7 He claims to have a relational and process view of reality where relations change all the time and let new relations emerge, which seems similar to Puntel’s ontology.8 Griffin understands Whitehead’s process philosophy as an alterna­ tive to substance ontology. But even if Griffin’s way of thinking is a step in the direction away from substance ontology, Pannenberg points out that Whitehead’s philosophy (also in Whitehead’s own words) is a ver­ sion of atomism, where the actual occasions are fundamental entities.9 Griffin confirms that it is atomistic.10 Puntel briefly makes a similar remark when he claims that process metaphysics does not manage to free itself from substance ontology because the processes are under­ stood as entities with properties that stand in relation to other enti­ ties.11 Hygen does not present his own ontology, but several times he makes criticisms and comments that have ontological consequences. The most important one in this regard is his critique of the kind of theology that focuses too narrowly on using reason to deduce the con­ tent of the concept of God based on God as the first cause.12 Hygen’s critique of this is that the concept of God should be based more strongly on revelation; it should take the future into consideration; and it should have a Trinitarian focus rather than strictly on God as creator. These three points are crucial in Pannenberg’s understanding of theology, ╇ Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 7–9. ╇ Keith Ward, Religion and Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 196. ╛╛╛╛8 ╇ Ibid., 197. ╛╛╛╛9 ╇ Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, 81, ET: 114. 10 ╇ Griffin, A Process Christology, 167. 11 ╇ Puntel, Struktur und Sein, 259, ET: 193. 12 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 141–142. ╛╛╛╛6 ╛╛╛╛7

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and as seen, Pannenberg’s ontology fits well with Puntel’s. Hygen does mention in passing that the concept of substance is not easy to inte­ grate into modern thinking, but he does not develop that comment any further.13 The general conclusion concerning the ontology of the four scholars is that they fit into Puntel’s ontology as coarse-grained ontolo­ gies. I now move on to consider how the scholars understand evil and€ the problem of evil and the attributes of God, still with a focus on€their place in the larger framework, but now with more emphasis on terminology. ‘Evil’ All five scholars speak of evil, distinguish between moral and natural or physical evil, distinguish between pain and suffering, and discuss whether or not evils exist that do not serve a greater good.14 The rela­ tion between these terms is very similar in the different accounts: pain and suffering are effects that have human or non-human causes, and the terms ‘moral’ and ‘natural’/‘physical’ are used to distinguish between the causes. For all except Griffin, the terms ‘moral evil’ and ‘natural evil’/‘physical evil’ include both the cause (human or non-human) and the effect, which is most often pain and suffering, although it may also be other states of affairs considered as bad. The big question then is whether these evils are outweighed by a greater good or not. If they are outweighed by a greater good, then the evils were only apparently evil, but not genuinely evil. If they are not outweighed by a greater good, then they are genuine evils, because then they should not have happened. ‘Evil’ is then a term which means ‘bad state of affairs’, but where it is unspecified whether the evil is genuine or only apparent. This means that ‘evil’ could be called ‘prima facie evil’ to signalize the undeter­ mined status of the term. For simplicity, I will generally use the term ‘evil’, and mean it in an undetermined sense (‘apparent evil’ or ‘prima€ facie evil’), because the scholars in this book disagree on the ╇ Ibid., 150. ╇ The next three paragraphs are based on Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 4–5, 68–69, 163; Ward, Divine Action, 38, 68, 144; Griffin, God, Power and Evil, 22–28; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 3, 193–194; Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 14–18, 48–52, 66–67; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 189–201, ET: 162–173. 13 14



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status of evil. Concerning ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’, ‘pain’ is often used more Â�narrowly to refer to a physical sensation, while ‘suffering’ includes an awareness and negative evaluation of the pain. Since the crucial ques­ tion is whether or not the pain, suffering or bad state of affairs is out­ weighed, I do not need to make a very clear distinction here. Swinburne and Griffin both distinguish between moral and natural evil, but they define them differently. Hygen and Pannenberg have the€same distinction, but they use the term ‘physical evils’ instead of ‘natural evils’ – and add that they are closely intertwined.15 For€Swinburne and Hygen, moral evils are evils caused by humans. Swinburne speci­ fies that they are evils caused deliberately or by neglect, so that evils not caused deliberately or by neglect belong to natural evils. They both include the results of human evil acts in the term ‘moral evil’, while Griffin excludes this, and uses the term for evil intentions only – not including the acts that result from such intentions. From now on, I shall use the terms ‘moral’ and ‘natural’ evil, with a definition that is closest to Swinburne. In understand his comment on deliberation or neglect as specifying that the moral evil is due to some­ thing morally blameworthy. ‘Moral evils’ are then bad states caused by humans in a way that makes them morally blameworthy, and ‘natural evils’ are all other evils not caused by morally blameworthy actions. There are some cases which are hard to categorize, but the distinction is useful even if not perfectly sharp. The specific causes of the evils are included in the terms, so that ‘moral evils’ and ‘natural evils’ are terms that include both cause and effect. When a cause of evil is understood as evil, it should be understood relatively fine-grained, so that one does not say that the sun in itself is a natural evil, although the sun giving me skin cancer is a natural evil. Again the definitions are not very accurate, but they are accurate enough for the purposes in this book. As seen, the crucial question is whether or not there are any genuine evils, and so this term must be defined more precisely. Hygen speaks of evils that do not serve a greater€good. Griffin uses the term ‘genuine evil’ to describe something which it would be better had not happened, which must mean that it does not serve a greater good. Swinburne is dealing with the same

15 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 15; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 199–201, ET: 172–173.

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concept when he speaks of morally bad states (E) that do not satisfy the four criteria ╛a)╇ God has the right to allow E to occur. b)╇Allowing E (or a state as bad or worse) to occur is the only morally permissible way in which God can bring about a logically necessary condition of a good G. ╛c)╇ God does everything else logically possible to bring about G. d)╇ The expected value of allowing E, given (c), is positive.16

I shall use Griffin’s term ‘genuine evil’ with the definition that Swinburne gives it. By the expression ‘God has the right to allow E to occur’ I shall only mean ‘God does not do anything morally wrong by allowing E to occur’. I use Griffin’s term as it is the best short term already in use by€one of the scholars, while I shall need to be as precise as Swinburne in order to discuss his opinion on the topic of whether genuine evils exist or not. ‘Gratuitous evils’ is a comparable term often used in theo­ dicy literature, but with different definitions. Because of the specific definition I have given here, I stick to ‘genuine evils’ to indicate that there is a special definition used here, not to be confused with the eve­ ryday use of the word. A few comments should be made on this definition of genuine evil. Firstly, it is a minimum definition. There may be evils that fulfil this definition, and still one could argue that there are good reasons to believe that God should not have allowed that evil. That is, there could be instances where a good G fulfils all the demands, and yet some will claim that God should not have allowed that good, because of the evil that was also allowed. But I use it as a minimum definition, so that if there are evils that we have good reason to believe do not fulfil those criteria, then we have good reason to believe that there are genuine evils, since they do not even fulfil the minimum criteria. Secondly, this definition involves weighing good against evil, which is very difficult. This subject is discussed in chapter nine, where I con­ clude that it is acceptable to do such weighing in certain circumstances. In the discussion I will try to appeal to as clear and obvious cases as possible, where it is very likely that the evil is worse than the good involved, in an overall evaluation. Given these precautions, I believe that the definition does work, and it is difficult to make it sharper. The common definitions are then from now on: ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 14.

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•  ‘Evil’ is an unspecified term referring to bad states of affairs, includ­ ing their causes, but it is not clear from the term whether the evil is genuine or not. •  ‘Moral evils’ are bad states of affairs partly caused by immoral human acts. •  ‘Natural evils’ are bad states of affairs not partly caused by immoral human acts. •  ‘Genuine evils’ are defined as evils (E) that do not satisfy the four criteria â•… a)╇ God has the right to allow E to occur. â•… b)╇Allowing E (or a state as bad or worse) to occur is the only mor­ ally permissible way in which God can bring about a logically necessary condition of a good G. â•… c)╇ God does everything else logically possible to bring about G. â•… d)╇ The expected value of allowing E, given (c), is positive.17 ‘The Problem of Evil’ There is much overlap between what Swinburne and Ward call ‘the problem of evil’, what Griffin calls ‘the theoretical problem of evil’, and what Hygen and Pannenberg call ‘the problem of theodicy’. Even if Hygen and Pannenberg have a wider understanding of the problem, they include the narrower problem that Swinburne, Ward and Griffin have chosen to focus on.18 What their different descriptions of the problem have in common, is that there is an apparent inconsistency between the existence of a good and powerful God, and the existence of evil – and this is how the problem of evil is understood in this book. They all agree that there is a perfectly good God, but they disagree on the understanding of his power, and whether there exist genuine evils. They also agree that it is difficult to believe in the existence of a good and powerful God because they find this to be contradicted by the existence of evil, and they suggest that this would be easier if the ele­ ments could be shown to be more coherent.

╇ Ibid. This last definition quotes Swinburne directly. ╇ Ibid., 13–14; Ward, Divine Action, 38–39; Griffin, God, Power and Evil, 9; Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 9–15; Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 189–192, ET: 162–165. 17 18

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Swinburne, Ward, and Griffin intend to give a plausible understand­ ing of how belief in God coheres with the existence of evil, which they call a theodicy or a solution. Pannenberg does not believe in any defini­ tive solution to the wider problem, but he finds it important to give a coherent answer to the theoretical problem. Hygen intends only to clarify the problem and hopefully make it less difficult. But even if his intention is different from the others, and more humble, he is doing the same as the others in trying to make the elements cohere with each other.19 This means that they all see a theoretical problem in the appar­ ent inconsistency between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil. And they all want to suggest how this could be under­ stood more coherently. Since ‘the problem of evil’ is the term generally used in the discourse that Swinburne, Ward and Griffin are part of, I shall use it as well and by that mean ‘the apparent inconsistency between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil’. I shall understand by ‘theodicy’ an attempt to understand the elements of the problem of evil in as coherent a way as possible. This means that all the scholars – Ward, Hygen and Pannenberg included – suggest theodicies in my definition of the term.20 Since they all want to make€theodicies in my definition of the term, I see no need to define ‘defence’ here. Swinburne, Ward, and Griffin claim that they present theodicies that are plausible, while Hygen and Pannenberg do not make such a claim. The goal of the theodicy is that belief in the existence of a good and powerful God should be plausible. That does not mean that the theod­ icy alone should make such belief plausible, but rather that it should contribute to making belief in God plausible. That a theodicy is plausi­ ble must then mean that it fits in with a belief in God that is plausible. There are many arguments that one can use in order to argue that God exists. But many think that evil is a good argument against belief in God, since it seems to indicate a contradiction in belief in God. What is then meant by ‘a successful theodicy’ or ‘a solution to the problem of evil’? Swinburne argues that the theodicy should be ‘justifiable’;21 Ward defines a solution as ‘showing that there is no contradiction involved in ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 123–124. ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 15; Ward, Divine Action, 67; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 42–50; Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 14; Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 189–192, ET: 162–165; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 104–105, ET: 192. 21 ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 15. 19 20



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belief in God’;22 Griffin wants the theodicy to show that belief in God is not ‘invalidated’;23 Hygen wants to avoid inconsistencies;24 and Pannenberg wants to demonstrate as far as possible how close theol­ ogy€ is to true reason.25 Their common goal is to show that belief in God is not contradictory, and so I will use this common goal to define ‘a successful theodicy’ or ‘a solution to the problem of evil’ as show­ ing€that evil does not make belief in God contradictory. This is then to be understood as a minimum requirement in order to be successful instead of failing. But more than one theodicy might be successful with this minimum requirement, and so to distinguish among them to find the best, I use their goal of maximal coherence as the criterion. That means that the best theodicy is the theodicy that understands the relation between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil in the most coherent way. The common definitions are then from now on: •  ‘The problem of evil’ is the apparent inconsistency between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil. •  ‘Theodicy’ is an attempt to understand the apparent inconsistency between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil in as coherent a way as possible. •  ‘A successful theodicy’ or ‘a solution to the problem of evil’ is to show that evil does not make belief in God contradictory. •  ‘The best theodicy’ is the theodicy that understands the relation between belief in a good and powerful God and the existence of evil in the most coherent way. ‘God’ as Concept In the rest of this chapter focus is on how the concept of God is under­ stood by the four scholars. Again this will have the function of develop­ ing a common terminology, but this chapter will also clarify more of the theoretical frameworks of the theodicies. This will give a better understanding of the theodicies, since more connections (or lacks of connection) to other elements of the thinking of their originators

╇ Ward, Divine Action, 39. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 9. 24 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 122. 25 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 476, ET: 442. 22 23

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become clear. This chapter will clarify the context of the theodicies, how they relate to each other, and indicate particular areas of disagree­ ment, which will become important in the discussion in part three. The four theodicies in this book are constructed by scholars from quite different contexts. Swinburne and Ward are leading proponents in a tradition called theism, mostly defended in the analytical tradition in the English-speaking philosophy of religion. Griffin is a process theologian and a panentheist (in a specified version of panentheism that he calls ‘process panentheism’26). Hygen is a philosopher of reli­ gion in a Scandinavian Lutheran tradition with a strong emphasis on Bible interpretation, and he relates to both the analytical tradition in€the English-speaking philosophy of religion and to the continental (especially German) tradition of theology. How can these different contexts be related to each other, and also to the framework of Pannenberg? Relating the theodicies and their contexts to each other is not easy. For this task, several of their books must be consulted. The scholars are sometimes more and sometimes less nuanced in comparison with the others. Some nuances will be overlooked in this presentation, in order to draw a general picture on limited space. Focus will be on the disagree­ ments they have that are relevant for understanding their theodicies. These differences will be presented in more detail than their agree­ ments, since these disagreements are the crucial points when deciding which of the theodicies are more coherent and authentic. Concerning the agreements, I will be satisfied with establishing an overlapping common ground, where the views of the scholars often have different levels of nuance. I will not spell out nuances of differences on topics where they mainly agree, but rather prioritize their main differences for the upcoming discussion. What is then a good way of contextualizing these theodicies, taking Pannenberg also into consideration? Only a few times do some of the four scholars relate themselves to Pannenberg. But fortunately, all five relate more or less critically to the same theological tradition, which I will here refer to simply as ‘theism’. Even though this tradition is pre­ sented and understood in many different ways, the same names are usually mentioned: first the roots in Aristotle and Plotinus, and then 26 ╇ Griffin, in A.R. Peacocke and Philip Clayton, In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being : Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 36–47.



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the continuation in the Christian tradition by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes and Leibniz. Reference is also often made to theists today, like Plantinga and Swinburne, who continue many aspects of the classical tradition. Since the five scholars mostly refer to Western Christian theologians, this will be the focus here as well. I will not give a presentation of the tradition of theism. I have a sys­ tematic goal of relating the theodicies to each other, and I can do this by seeing how the four scholars relate to the tradition of theism. They relate positively or negatively to various sides of the tradition, and from how the scholars relate to the tradition, I find that there are groups of attributes of God that are closely linked to each other. The four scholars agree with each other and with a common strand of theism, in thinking of God as personal and as a perfectly good moral actor in the world. Although this was not part of Plotinus’ vision of the One, Augustine famously rejected Neo-Platonism at this point in favour of how God is presented in the Bible. The scholars further agree with each other, but disagree with a common strand of theism, in how they think of God as immutable, impassible, timeless and omniscient. What they reject €is€the view that God is completely outside of time and that there is no change in God, and they do not think that the perfection of God requires this immutability. The scholars are divided in how they think of God as infinite, omnipotent and the source of everything. Griffin and Hygen reject all these three descriptions of God, while Swinburne, Ward and Pannenberg affirm all three. But Ward wants to qualify God’s power because of the necessity of God’s being how he is, while Pannenberg wants to qualify God’s power because of the Trinity of God. The structure of the rest of the chapter is as follows: I will briefly introduce the topic of God first, by showing how the scholars them­ selves present their concept of God when this must be done briefly. This draws up a wider picture before we enter the details. Then I will present attributes of God that the four scholars agree with theism upon, first their understanding of God as a perfectly good moral actor in the world, and then God as personal. Then follows their common under­ standing of God as immutable, impassible, timeless and omniscient which is different from how these attributes used to be understood in€the tradition of theism. After this, I present attributes of God where there is internal disagreement among the four scholars. I start with their understanding of God as Trinitarian, then God as necessary, and finally God as the infinite source of everything, who is creator ex nihilo and omnipotent. In this final group I treat infinity first, then God as

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creator, before ending with their different understandings of God’s power. Their different views on God as necessary, infinite, and creator give them the specific different understandings of God’s power that I end up with, and these are the four understandings of God’s power that will be discussed in part three. Focus will be on areas that are important for the question of theodicy, and where the scholars dis­ agree. I concentrate on the four scholars, since the discussion is about which of the four theodicies is the best. But I also compare their views with Pannenberg as we go along, in order to place them within the wider framework as well. But first, how do the scholars describe God when this must be done briefly? Swinburne gives a short presentation of God this way: There exists necessarily and eternally a person who is essentially bodiless, omnipresent, creator and sustainer of any universe there may be, per­ fectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and a source of moral obligation.27

Swinburne argues that all these attributes are entailed in the descrip­ tion of God as pure limitless intentional power, and that this descrip­ tion of God on the one hand and the attributes of God on the other hand mutually entail each other.28 Ward gives the following description of God: There is one self-existent source of the universe, having the nature of con­ sciousness and intelligence. It is the most perfect possible being, since it actualises in itself and enjoys states of supreme, consciously recognised value. All things emanate from it, by a combination of necessity and intelligent will. It seeks to maximize value among created beings, and wills to unite them to itself in conscious knowledge and love. This being is God, who expresses the divine nature in a particular human life and is present in all human lives to unite them to the divine.29

Griffin defines a ‘generic idea of God’ where God has the following thirteen features: 1)╇ A personal, purposive being. 2)╇ Perfect in love, goodness and beauty 3)╇ Perfect in wisdom and knowledge. 4)╇ Supreme, perhaps even perfect, in power.

╇ Swinburne, The Christian God, 125. ╇ Ibid., 153. 29 ╇ Ward, Re-Thinking Christianity, 206. 27 28



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╇ 5)╇ Creator and sustainer of the universe. ╇ 6)╇ Holy. ╇ 7)╇ Omnipresent. ╇ 8)╇Necessarily and everlastingly existent. ╇ 9)╇ Providentially active in nature and history. 10)╇ Experienced by human beings. 11)╇ The ultimate source of moral norms. 12)╇ The ultimate guarantee of the meaning of life. 13)╇ The ground of hope for the victory of good over evil.30

Hygen has great affinity to Luther’s existential definition of God in the catechism: A god is the one from whom one is to expect all good and to whom one is to take refuge in all distress (…) That upon which you set your heart and put your trust is hence your god.31

Concerning the theoretical content of the concept of God, Hygen dis­ tinguishes between a philosophical and a religious concept of God. The philosophical concept is an attempt to rationally explain the world, where God for example is understood as the first cause. The religious concept of God, however, refers to a life-determining power that humans are related to. Hygen understands the philosophical concept of God as a revised version of the religious concept. He is skeptical to the philosophical concept, and claims that religious people need to deter­ mine the concept of God based on God’s relation to humans.32 How does Hygen understand the relation between the philosophical and the religious concept of God? Hygen holds that the Bible is the primary source for knowledge about God. He says that if an understanding of God is ‘more biblically right’ than another understanding, then Hygen finds the first understanding to be obligatory.33 Besides what has been mentioned now, Hygen does not himself give a brief presentation of the theoretical content of the concept of God. Pannenberg says that God by definition is the all-determining power.34 But he finds this definition insufficient. Pannenberg argues that philosophy can help us with a minimum definition of the concept

╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 166. ╇ Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien, 54. My translation. 32 ╇ Ibid., 52–54. 33 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 170. 34 ╇ Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, 304, ET: 302; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 175, ET: 159 30 31

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of God, but that it must also be filled with content from revelation. More concretely, Pannenberg holds that philosophy shows us that God must be infinite, and he uses his understanding of true infinity to inter­ pret the Christian revelation of God. According to Pannenberg, only the doctrine of the trinity can explain how God can be truly infinite. More concretely, it is God’s love that makes him transcend the distinc­ tion between immanent and transcendent, and this makes God truly infinite and one.35 Pannenberg uses many pages to unpack this concept of God, so this was merely a brief description of how he determines the concept of God. Since the different concepts of God are so complex, I will not give a common definition of God, but only refer to the differ­ ent concepts of God that the scholars hold, as ‘Swinburne’s concept of God’, ‘Ward’s concept of God’, ‘Griffin’s concept of God’, ‘Hygen’s con­ cept of God’, and ‘Pannenberg’s concept of God’. God as a Perfectly Good Moral Actor in the World Swinburne thinks that to claim that God is perfectly good means to claim that God always does ‘the morally best action (when there is one), and no morally bad action’.36 He argues that what makes the action morally good is that it is overall better to do than not to do. This can be decided in an objective manner, according to Swinburne, since he holds that moral judgments have truth value. Since moral judgments have truth value, and since God is omniscient and perfectly free, it is logi­ cally necessary that God is perfectly good, according to Swinburne. He argues that a perfectly free being will always choose what there is over­ riding reason to do, and this is the morally best action. When moral judgments have truth value, and God is omniscient, it follows that God, being perfectly free, will know and do the morally best action. There is no general formula that Swinburne employs in order to pick out what is good and what is bad, since he finds that to be too complex to be put on a formula. Rather, he gives different arguments throughout the book for why something is good.37 Ward believes that God is perfectly good, and that he is necessarily so. He says that God has actualized in himself the highest degree of intrinsic goodness, and that that is what it means to say that God is ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 427, ET: 394–395, 414–415, 445. ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 184. 37 ╇ Ibid., 208–209; and Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 5–7. 35 36



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supremely good. Ward agrees with Swinburne that a rational being with perfect knowledge can do nothing but bring about good states (or necessary consequences thereof). God has full empathy with the world and will for this reason not choose evil for its own sake, only good for its own sake. God is a moral agent who acts in history and has a Â�purpose with events in nature. God’s goodness makes him want us to be happy, and he does not want us to suffer. This reminds us of the image of a good and loving father, which Ward considers to have an Â�important€place in Christian theology. But he also warns us that this picture should be balanced with the mystery of the necessity of God. God’s goodness is his possession of maximal perfection. God is necessarily good in the sense that he could not have been otherwise, and since he has created everything, also evil is fundamentally a result of God’s creation. For this reason, Ward argues that our praise of God’s goodness should€not€be understood as us congratulating God for making good moral choices, but rather our awe and admiration in facing divine perfection.38 Griffin believes that God is necessarily good, and that this follows from his omniscience. It follows from Gods omniscience because God’s prehension, like all prehension, is sympathetic prehension. God’s knowledge of the world is like our knowledge of our own bodily mem­ bers since God is the all-pervasive soul of the universe. As we naturally love our own bodies, God naturally loves all creatures and is incapable of feeling hatred or indifference to them, according to Griffin. The idea of God’s perfect goodness is not negotiable for Griffin. He draws an important consequence of this goodness when he gives a formal state­ ment of the problem of evil in his book God, Power and Evil. There he states that God is a perfect reality, and that a perfect reality is a morally perfect being. Then he states that by definition ‘A morally perfect being would want to bring about an actual world without any genuine evil’.39 This means both that Griffin considers God to be a moral agent, and that God’s goodness is given an empirical implication, namely that there should be no genuine evils in the world.40 Hygen does not define God’s goodness. He speaks of God’s ‘perfect goodness’, and says that the existence of evil is problematic since God

38 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 26, 30, 39, 41–47, 61, 66, 130; and Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 89. 39 ╇ Griffin, God, Power and Evil, 9. 40 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 2–3, 31–32, 205.

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is given ethical attributions like goodness, love, charity, justice, and faithfulness. Hygen also understands God as a moral agent, and argues that words applied to God should have a similar meaning to how the words are used to describe humans.41 In sum, all four use the term ‘per­ fect goodness’ and believe this to be an attribute of God. They all con­ sider God to be a moral agent. Even if they may disagree when it comes to the more exact content of how they understand God’s goodness or the understanding of moral judgments, they all agree that God’s good­ ness makes him want to prevent evils (presupposing that they are genu­ inely evil, and not only means to a greater good in a way that makes them good in a broader perspective). The problem of evil retains its difficulty as long as this is agreed upon, and so it is not necessary to define his goodness further. Even if Pannenberg does not use the term ‘perfect goodness’, he does say that God is characterized supremely and above all beings by his goodness, a goodness which even includes love of enemies. It is Jesus who characterizes the Father like this, also calling him ‘truly good’ in Mark 10:18. When God is understood as good in addition to omnipo­ tent, one should expect the world to be good.42 Pannenberg’s under­ standing of divine action is quite different from the other four scholars.43 But he too thinks that the goodness of God, together with his power, have the implication that we expect there not to be evils in the world. Since Pannenberg’s alternative views are not relevant in the discussion, I leave it here. It is the basic and common understanding that all five have, which makes the problem of evil difficult since there seem to be genuine evils in the world. This minimum agreement is sufficient for discussing the problem of evil as it has been defined, and so this is what I will mean by calling God a moral agent. The common definition of God’s perfect goodness is then from now on: •  ‘God’s perfect goodness’ means that God is a moral agent who wants to prevent evils. God as Personal All four agree that God is personal. Ward stresses that God is not a person like other persons, but still thinks that it is right to call God ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 10–12, 122, 139–140. ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 349, 466–467, 476–377, ET: 321, 432, 441–442. 43 ╇ Ibid., 418–423, ET: 386–390. 41 42



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personal in that God is conscious, purposive, and relates personally to human beings. He therefore has affinity to Swinburne’s expression that God is ‘the personal ground of being’.44 Swinburne says that he uses the term ‘personal’ in a modified sense about God, which means that per­ sonal aspects of God (like thoughts and actions) resembles persons more than non-persons.45 Griffin also finds the term ‘person’ appropri­ ate for God, but it should be understood analogically, since there are similarities and dissimilarities between God and other persons.46 Hygen says that Christian theology has a concept of God that is ‘personalistic’, which means that God is conscious, knowing, willing and acting. Since Hygen also says of religious language that it is partly descriptive, he seems to be in line with the other three here in thinking that there is an overlapping similarity between God and other persons, which makes it right to say of God that he is personal.47 Pannenberg is here very similar to the four others. He criticizes understandings of God as infinite or first cause for not including that God is personal. He does not understand God as a person like human persons, but he still argues that God is personal because of his selfconscious acting, and because he is constituted by three divine per­ sons.48 The common definition of God as personal is from now on: •  That ‘God is personal’ means that God is person-like in being con­ sciously thinking and acting and relating to human beings. God as Immutable, Impassible, Timeless and Omniscient There is an old strand within the tradition of theism which held God to be perfect in the sense that he was immutable and impassible, timeless and omniscient. In this old line of thinking these terms were under­ stood to mean that there is absolutely no change in God, and that God knows what is future to us. In the following, I use these terms in those senses. But there is also a newer tradition for rejecting or revising these ╇ Ward, God : A Guide for the Perplexed, 230–232. ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 283. In the second edition of The Existence of God (2004), Swinburne has replaced ‘personal ground of being’ with ‘divine being’, because he finds the first to be a ‘clumsy expression’ (Swinburne, The Existence of God, 96, n.94). 46 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 158–160. 47 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 26–27, 134–136. 48 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 192–193, 378, 401, ET: 175–176, 349, 370. 44 45

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attributes in the tradition of theism. A common argument for rejecting immutability and impassibility is that God’s immutability and impas­ sibility makes it impossible for God to be a loving and acting God.49 Common arguments for rejecting that God is timeless and omniscient are that it is hard to understand what such timelessness means and implies, and that it is difficult to unite omniscience (understood as including knowledge of the future) with the idea of human free choices.50 It is often argued as well that it is more in accordance with the Bible to believe that God is mutable, passible, in time and does not know the future depending on human free choices51 – although the last point is hotly debated nowadays in the discussion of open theism.52 All four scholars in this book reject traditional understandings of these four attributes of God, or at least qualify them – and they do so quite similarly. This does not mean that they reject that God is perfect, but rather that they disagree with some traditional theists in what perfec­ tion is and how perfection can be coherently thought.53 The aspects of immutability and impassibility are important for the problem of evil because of the understanding of God as good. The aspects of timeless­ ness and omniscience are important for the question of whether God created the world knowing of all the evil that would occur, or whether the creation of independent and free human beings was a risk from God’s side. Swinburne holds that God is immutable in a weak sense; that he does not change character, but he does not understand God as immu­ table in a strong sense; that God does not change at all. His rejection of immutability includes a rejection of impassibility. Furthermore, Swin­ burne does not believe that God knows the future of human free 49 ╇ See for example Griffin, Evil Revisited, 193; Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 221–222; or Jürgen Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott: Das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik christlicher Theologie (München: Kaiser, 1972), 237. 50 ╇ See for example Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 131–134, 179, 228–229. 51 ╇ See for example Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 182, 221–224. 52 ╇ See for example Clark H. Pinnock, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994); William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000); and James K. Beilby, Paul R. Eddy, and Gregory A. Boyd, Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001). 53 ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 221; Keith Ward, The Big Questions in€Science and Religion (West Conshohocken, PA.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), 115–116; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 148; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 141–142.



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choices, and he does not believe that God is timeless (as in outside of time), but rather eternal in time, because he considers timelessness to be an incoherent notion.54 Griffin agrees on all points: God is neither immutable, nor impassi­ ble, nor timeless, nor does he know the future. But Griffin understands God as dipolar, so he distinguishes between the abstract essence of God, where God is timeless, immutable, and impassible, and the con­ crete essence of God where God is temporal, changeable, and passible. Nevertheless, Griffin specifies that when God is considered as a whole, then it is right to say that he is changeable and passible, and that he is in time and does not know the future. Like Swinburne, Griffin finds the idea that God should know the future incoherent.55 Ward argues that God is immutable in the sense that he is change­ lessly perfect in being, but God is changeable in his knowledge and purposes in the world. This changeability also means that God is not impassible, for he could not be love if he was impassible. Ward does not think that God knows the future, because this is undetermined. This means that there must be temporality in God. But Ward also says that God is not bound by our time, but that he is rather ‘trans-temporal’, both in our time and not bound by our time, which Ward does not think that we can imagine.56 Hygen does not relate as explicitly as the others to these attributes of God, but I do find it quite clear from reading his book that he agrees€with Swinburne and Griffin on these points. He shows himself critical to the traditions in theology which base themselves more on reason and on thinking of God as cause, than on the Bible. Hygen claims that the position which is most in accordance with the Bible is obligatory for theology. He then describes the God of the Bible as a God in ‘sorrow and pain’, a God who ‘works, fights, and suffers’ towards the final goal. This God will not have all power or have his will fully realized until the kingdom of God is fully established.57 I think it is clear that Hygen considers this God not to be immutable (since he works and fights in history), not impassible (since he suffers), not timeless (since he works in history and will have all power sometime in ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 180–181, 219–222, 228–229. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 156; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 160–162. 56 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 133, 210, 215–216; and Ward, Divine Action, 110, 130, 156, 191. 57 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 142, 167–173. 54 55

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the future) and not omniscient (since he is not omnipotent, but that last point is less clear). Pannenberg notes that the philosophical thesis of God’s immutabil­ ity led to many problems, and here he includes impassibility in the immutability, which led to the problem that the father was not affected by the passion of the Son. Pannenberg offers instead God’s faithfulness, which does not exclude historicity and contingency in divine action. Pannenberg says that in God’s world government, God integrates the evil actions that we actually perform, into his purposes.58 Concerning God and time, Pannenberg wants a middle understanding between God as timeless and God as temporal. He interprets Boethius as offer­ ing such a middle way in his definition of eternity as the simultaneous and perfect presence of unlimited life. This definition by Boethius is the same definition that Swinburne refers to and calls ‘timelessness’.59 But Pannenberg understands it as a middle way, because he holds that God both sees all of time before his eyes as a whole, and that God acts contingently in history. But he considers such an understanding only as possible with the doctrine of the Trinity. So even if all time is present to God, Pannenberg also says of God that God is not tied to an established order of events, but that the future is open for God to act freely and contingently in history. And he says that there is room for becoming in God: God can become something God was not before, like in the incarnation. It is the concept of true infinity which allows Pannenberg to make this move. Fichte argued that an infinite God could neither be one nor personal.60 Pannenberg uses Hegel to answer the critique from Fichte. Hegel distinguished between mathematical and logical infinity, where logical infinity is the opposite of the finite. But logical infinity must not be understood as that which is not finite, for then the infinite is defined by the finite, and becomes itself finite. Hegel called this ‘bad infinity’. ‘True infinity’, on the other hand, is infinity which transcends the distinction and integrates the finite within itself. Pannenberg argues€ that God as the true infinite is one, and by determining true €infinity more concretely as the Trinitarian God, he can also make ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 471–473, ET: 437–438; Pannenberg,€SysÂ� temÂ�aÂ�tische Theologie 2, 76, ET: 59. 59 ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 224. 60 ╇ Philip Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 442, 446. 58



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God personal.61 Pannenberg uses the concept of true infinity also to describe God’s relation to time; the infinite God embraces finite time in his true infinity, whereas timelessness would have been an expression of bad infinity.62 In sum, all five think very similarly that God is not totally unchange­ able (even if some aspects of God are unchangeable) and that he is pas­ sible. They also all think that God is in time, even if Ward, Griffin and Pannenberg add that God is also outside of time. Swinburne, Ward and Griffin think that it is right to say of God that he does not know the future in detail. Hygen’s opinion on this is unclear, but since God is not understood as omnipotent, it is likely that Hygen would also say that God does not know the future in detail. Pannenberg says that all time stands before God as one, and so it seems to follow that God knows the future. But he also says that the future is open for God to act freely and contingently, and that the order of events is not set.63 For Pannenberg, God embraces the whole timeline of human history. But within this timeline there is human independence and autonomy for us to act freely. This can be thought together because of the Trinitarian God, who as infinite embraces the world, but who as truly infinite and Trinitarian also has created a world of independent beings, where he participates in human life and human time, most notably in the incar­ nation and sending of the Spirit.64 I interpret this as meaning that from one perspective it is right to say of God that he does not know every­ thing about the future, understood as that which is future to us. This interpretation coheres with the fact that Pannenberg writes that God himself took a risk in creation – the risk that the creatures would turn away from him.65 Pannenberg here differs from at least Swinburne, who argues that the future is future to us and future to God in the same way. I do not have space to raise the discussion of God and time here. The important thing is that there is partial overlapping in the understanding of the real openness of human future. So even if some of the scholars want to say more about God than what is expressed in the common definitions, 61 ╇ Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, 28–29, ET:34–35; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 397–398, ET: 367. 62 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 437–441, 452, 472–473, ET: 404–408, 418, 438. 63 ╇ Ibid., 452, ET: 418. 64 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 75–76, ET: 57–58. 65 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 3, 690, ET: 643.

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the common definitions express an area of overlapping where all five agree. In the discussion it is these established areas of agreement that will be generally presupposed, if nothing more specifically is said about them. The common definitions are then from now on: •  ‘God as omniscient’: God knows everything that can be known, but many aspects of our future are still open, and so God does not know everything about what is future for us. •  ‘God as temporal’: God relates to us in time, and there is future for us that is unknown to God. •  ‘God as passible’: God is responsive in relation to humans, in want­ ing good for us, and not wanting bad for us. •  ‘God as mutable’: Since God is responsive to what happens to humans, his thoughts, intentions and actions change as new things happen to€us. God as Trinitarian Swinburne and Griffin do not consider the belief that God is Trinitarian to be important for the question of theodicy. Swinburne believes in the Trinity, but says that since the three persons always act together, it makes no difference to the problem of evil whether you speak of the one God or the Trinitarian God.66 Ward hardly mentions the Trinity when he discusses the problem of evil, but he does make the point that a Trinitarian understanding of God implies that God is not simple and necessary in every respect, but may rather act contingently and be mutable in some respects.67 This point is relevant in Ward’s theodicy, so the doctrine of the Trinity has some relevance for his theodicy. Griffin uses a discussion of God as Trinitarian to argue that the intentions of the doctrine of the Trinity are best developed in a process doctrine of a persuasive God. He uses the claim that Jesus decisively reveals God to claim that Jesus then reveals that God’s power is persuasive.68 But it is still a very monistic and a-historical understanding of God, where God’s general use of persuasiveness is what is relevant for the question of theodicy. Other than that, Griffin does not make use of any other ideas that are commonly connected to the doctrine of the Trinity in his€ theodicy. The doctrine of the Trinity is emphasized more by ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 253. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 42. 68 ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 102–114. 66 67



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Hygen,€who wants to understand God’s power not based solely on an understanding of the creator God as first cause, but also on how God’s power is revealed to us through the Son and the Spirit.69 This gives him a different approach than what Swinburne has, who understands God’s omnipotence as a property of God as substance. Hygen’s focus on how Jesus reveals the power of God is similar to Griffin, but Hygen empha­ sises history more. Hygen can incorporate changes in God’s power, also in the future, in another way than Swinburne and Griffin can. Hygen is here more in line with Pannenberg, who criticizes theoretical theo­ dicies for focussing too much on God as creator and too little on God’s action in history and eschatology.70 How does this critique from Pannenberg apply to the four theodices in this book? Regarding eschatology, Ward and Hygen find it absolutely crucial that in order for a theodicy to work there must be a possibility for compensation in the afterlife.71 Swinburne and Griffin used to think that a theodicy could work without the argument about an afterlife, but they have both changed their mind, and now consider the possibility of an afterlife as important for their theodicies.72 All four then have this eschatological premise in their theodicies, which is also presumably what Pannenberg considers most important for a theodicy to work. Regarding God’s action in history, this is very important in Hygen’s theodicy, but not so much in the other theodicies. The reason is prob­ ably that the works of Christ and the Spirit do not solve the problem of why God in the first place created a world where suffering is possible. Since this is a core problem when the problem of evil is understood theoretically, Swinburne, Ward and Griffin place their focus there. And as seen, Pannenberg admits that that problem remains even if God’s action in history is considered. It seems then that the question of Trinity is most important for the question of theodicy as here defined when it comes to how God’s power is understood and determined. And since a central question in the problem of evil is why God in the first place cre­ ated a world where suffering is possible, questions of necessity, infinity, monism, and how creation happens are more important than the ques­ tion of Trinity. Since discussion about Trinity is a very small part of the

╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 143–148. ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 191–192, ET: 164–165. 71 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 72; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 175. 72 ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, xi; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 34–40. 69 70

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discussion that the four scholars make, I will not spend more place on their different understandings.73 God as Necessary The question of God and necessity is difficult, but important. One should distinguish between the questions of whether God’s existence is necessary, and whether God necessarily has the attributes he has. Focus here will be on God’s existence, and whether or not he has some attributes with necessity, but not on which attributes are necessary, or how such internal necessities in God should be understood – that will be discussed below when the subject is God’s power. Unfortunately, the different scholars use the term ‘necessity’ quite differently, which is a good reason to consider this now. I will start with Ward and Griffin, who are quite similar in this respect, and for whom the question of necessity is important in their theodicies. Then I will move on to Swinburne, who offers some more precise distinctions, before I con­ sider Hygen and Pannenberg. Concerning God’s existence, Ward criticizes Swinburne for claiming that God is a logically contingent being. On the other hand, Ward does not think that God’s existence is logically necessary, in the narrow sense that it is true by definition. Ward argues that there is a broader sense of logical necessity, which has ‘eluded all attempts at precise specifica­ tion’74, but which applies to propositions like ‘all even numbers are the sum of two prime numbers’. This means that Ward claims that God’s existence is ‘logically necessary’ in the sense that it cannot be denied without contradiction, and in the sense that it holds in every possible world. But he specifies that we do not know if it is true that God’s exist­ ence is logically necessary in this broader sense. ‘God exists’ is either 73 ╇ Pannenberg differs from the others in his strong integration of the doctrine of the Trinity in everything else he says about God. The other scholars would need to make some changes in order for their theology to fit into Pannenberg’s at this point. One could argue that this is a serious reason not to use Pannenberg as a framework for the€theodicies. But as we see from the other topics in this chapter, they are quite similar to Pannenberg on all the issues that are relevant in the discussion in part three, so that their differences are in the periphery when it comes to the problem of evil. And as previously mentioned, it is first of all Pannenberg’s method which is the framework for the theodicies. And so for this reason, I think that it nevertheless works well to use Pannenberg as a framework for the theodicies, although some changes would be required in order to fit them within his very detailed Trinitarian theology. 74 ╇ Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 18.



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necessarily true or necessarily false, in the same way as it is either necessarily true or necessarily false that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers, but we do not know which one it is. According to Ward, God’s existence is self-evident in itself, but not self-evident to us. Concerning God’s attributes, Ward holds that God cannot be other than he is in his essential divine properties. But he also argues that there is contingency in God, and that it is perfectly coherent to believe with Whitehead that God is necessary in some respects and contingent in others. The contingency follows with necessity when God is omnip­ otent, because if God is able to do anything, then he must also be able to create contingently.75 Griffin more often use the term ‘metaphysical principles’ than ‘neces­ sities/necessary’, both about God’s existence and about some of God’s properties. ‘A metaphysical principle’ he defines in various ways: as a necessary feature of existence, which could not be otherwise, and as an eternal feature, not freely created, the negation of which would be non­ sensical. He also defines it as a principle which holds in every possible world. But Griffin specifies that the existence of these metaphysical principles is a speculative hypothesis that he puts forth, and not a priori truths. This means that his claim of metaphysical principles that are logically necessary is only meant to be so – given his metaphysical hypothesis. This further means that he is also using the term ‘logical necessity’ in a broader sense, since he admits that the logical necessity may not be true. Griffin argues that logical possibility about actualities depends upon metaphysical assertions about the nature of actualities. He understands logical possibility to involve the absence of contradic­ tion among propositions, but in order to find out if there is a contradic­ tion among the propositions, he argues that it depends on how the propositions are interpreted, and that depends on given metaphysical premises. Whether it is true that the metaphysical principles that Griffin suggests exist are necessary, is something that Griffin thinks that he can only argue very indirectly, by showing that it leads to a coherent world view. Finally, Griffin also holds that there is both con­ tingency and necessity in God.76 Ward and Griffin seem very similar in content. They agree that God’s existence is necessary in a very strong sense, but they do not know if it ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 8–13, 29–30. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 118, 137–139; Griffin, Reenchantment without SupernatÂ� uralism, 162; and Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 142. 75 76

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is true that it is necessary in this sense. They also agree that there are attributes which God has with necessity, although they do not agree on which these are (a difference that will be discussed together with their understanding of God’s power below). And they argue that God is also contingent in some respects. Ward says of his own view on the internal necessities in God, that it is very similar to Swinburne,77 although there is some difference here which will be discussed below in relation to their understandings of God’s power. Concerning God’s existence, Ward wants to go further than Swinburne in claiming that God’s exist­ ence is necessary.78 Swinburne argues that the most important kinds of necessity are ontological and metaphysical necessity, and none of these should be understood as what many others call ‘broadly logical necessity.’ Contrary to what many others hold, Swinburne does not think that logical necessity is an important feature of the world. Rather, it is super­ ficial, because it is only about relations between statements or proposi­ tions, and such relations are merely abstract fictional constructions. In Swinburne’s understanding, logical necessity is about how people use language; it is not about the world. Swinburne distinguishes between proposition and statement. A proposition as Swinburne defines it is that which a sentence expresses that could also be expressed with a synonymous sentence. This is independent of how the world is, so that ‘The king is dead’, ‘His majesty is dead’, and ‘Der König ist tot’ all express the same proposition regardless of any actual dead kings. Statements on the other hand pick out the individuals, times and places that they describe in the world.79 Propositions are logically related to each other. They may entail each other, or entail negations of other propositions. ‘The king is dead’€entails ‘The king is not alive’ and ‘The king is not dancing’. Logic is€about such relations that hold regardless of how the world is, and these relations are codified in the laws of logic. Some propositions are necessarily true based merely on conventions of language, like ‘this triangle has three

╇ Ward, God : A Guide for the Perplexed, 227. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 8. 79 ╇ Swinburne, The Christian God, 96–99. Swinburne’s view corresponds well with the three truth bearers in Puntel’s philosophy. The tertiary truth bearer corresponds to Swinburne’s ‘token sentence’, the secondary truth bearer corresponds to Swinburne’s ‘proposition’, and the primary truth bearer (which Puntel calls ‘proposition’) corre­ sponds to Swinburne’s ‘statement’ (Swinburne, Revelation, 7–8). 77 78



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corners’. But some also claim that statements about the world can be broadly logically necessary. For example, the sentence ‘The Morning Star is the Evening Star’ is broadly logically necessary if the expressions ‘The Morning Star’ and ‘The Evening Star’ refer to the same planet, namely Venus. People try to define ‘broadly logical necessity’ by refer­ ence to possible worlds, but Swinburne claims that the notion of ‘broadly logical necessity’ can simply be boiled down to saying that a statement is broadly logically necessary if its negation entails a selfcontradiction.80 If you say that The Morning Star is not The Evening Star, you say that Venus is not Venus, which is a self-contradiction. Swinburne is a Nominalist when it comes to whether abstract enti­ ties like numbers and logical relations exist in a different realm inde­ pendent of humans and language. As opposed to Platonists, Swinburne does not think that that is the case. Logic then, does not limit the world, but only which descriptions of the world make sense. But Swinburne also thinks that there are kinds of necessity that depend not on lan­ guage, but on extra-linguistic entities. ‘Accidental necessity’ refers to statements that are true, and which no agent at time t can make false. This means that true statements about the past are accidentally neces­ sary, while statements about the future are not. ‘Natural necessity’ refers to events that have full causes, and so natural necessity constrains the possibilities of events. Swinburne equates this with what is often called ‘physical necessity’. ‘Temporal necessity’ is that which exists forever, and probably the universe is temporally necessary.81 Finally, there are two kinds of necessity which Swinburne calls ‘onto­ logical necessity’ and ‘metaphysical necessity’. The ontologically neces­ sary is that which is temporally necessary, and which has no cause of itself, while the metaphysically necessary is that which is (either onto­ logically necessary or) temporally necessary, but is caused by Â�something ontologically necessary. If there is no God, then the universe is proba­ bly ontologically necessary. If there is only one God, then God is onto­ logically necessary. But there could have been several divine beings that were metaphysically necessary, and because of Swinburne’s under­ standing of the Trinity as three divine beings, he says that God is meta­ physically necessary. If the one God had to create the universe by necessity, then the universe would be metaphysically necessary. If God has created the universe freely, then the universe is temporally Â�necessary, 80 81

╇ Swinburne, The Christian God, 99–104. ╇ Ibid., 105–106, 114–118.

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but not metaphysically necessary. But Swinburne does not think that God is logically necessary, for it is not self-contradictory to claim that God does not exist. He therefore concludes that until someone can put forth positive evidence that it is self-contradictory to say that God does not exist, we should not claim that God’s existence is logically necessary.82 What then is the relation between Swinburne on the one side, and Ward and Griffin on the other? Leaving possible worlds aside, I believe the important thing to notice is that Swinburne defines broadly logical necessity as that, the negation of which is ‘self-contradictory’, while Ward defines it as that, the negation of which is ‘contradictory’ and Griffin as that, the negation of which ‘makes no sense’. As Swinburne has shown, the negation of a statement can be self-contradictory either because of what words mean (‘I know a bachelor who is married’), or because of rules for what is referred to by a language (‘The Morning Star is not The Evening Star’). But the negation of a statement may be contradictory in the sense that it contradicts something that is true about the world which actually could not not have been true (because of some basic and unchangeable principles and/or structures of being). I believe this is what Ward and Griffin are after.83 Griffin says that the metaphysical principles are applicable to being qua being.84 Ward and Griffin argue that denying that God exists or denying some statements about God contradict something that is necessarily true about the world, namely that God exists and is so and so. They argue that God has to exist, and exist in a certain way, but they cannot prove this; they just have the hypothesis that it is the case that the world is so and so, and it could not have been different.85 While Swinburne is very precise, Griffin and Ward often uses the terms ‘possible’, ‘impossible’ and ‘necessary’, without explaining if they ╇ Ibid., 118–122, 144–145, 179. ╇ Both Swinburne and Ward refer to Plantinga concerning the concept of a broader kind of logical necessity. (Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 246, n.242; and Ward, Divine Action, 9). According to Swinburne, this broader logical necessity seems to be the one he described with the example of picking out Venus (called ‘necessity of type B’ in Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 244). I do not think that this description by Swinburne fits with how Ward and Griffin uses the term, and I present my alternative interpretation here. 84 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 16. 85 ╇ This means that when Griffin says that the negation of a metaphysical principle makes no sense (ibid., 139) it means: if it is true, it makes no sense to negate it. But of course it is not non-sensical to argue against Griffin’s hypotheses that specific princi­ ples are necessary. 82 83



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mean them in a logical, physical or metaphycial sense. They use the distinctions here and there, but the distinctions are sometimes problematically mixed up.86 In order to clarify the relations between SwinÂ�burne, Ward and Griffin here, I introduce a terminology where I distinÂ�guish between what is logically possible, impossible, and neces­ sary; what is physically possible, impossible, and necessary; and what is metaphysically possible, impossible, and necessary, and this is the ter­ minology I shall use from now on: •  Something is logically possible if it can be theoretically articulated without self-contradiction. •  Something is logically impossible if it cannot be theoretically articu­ lated without self-contradiction. •  Something is logically necessary if it cannot be denied without selfcontradiction. In all three cases, this is a matter of ordinary language, what words mean and how they are used.87 •  Something is physically possible if it can happen or be in our physical universe, given both what that universe consists of and how it is gov­ erned by laws of nature. •  Something is physically impossible if it cannot happen or be in our physical universe, given both what that universe consists of and how it is governed by laws of nature.

86 ╇ Concerning possibility and necessity, Ward uses the qualifyers logically, physi­ cally and metaphysically in Ward, Divine Action, 41, 171, while Griffin distinguishes between logical and metaphysical (Griffin, Evil Revisited, 139). An example of confus­ ing use can be found in Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God. Ward argues against Richard Dawkins that laws of nature and matter cannot be a final explanation, because they are not necessary. They are not necessary because we can imagine that they could have been different (Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 54). In other words, it is logically possible that matter and the laws of nature could have been different, and so matter and the laws of nature are not logically necessary. Then Ward says that since God exists with necessity, God is a final explanation (Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 57). But God is not logically necessary, since we can believe that he does not exist without self-contradiction – God is metaphysically neces­ sary. Ward just uses the terms necessary and possible without qualifying whether it is meant logically or metaphysically. But when the meaning is specified, it becomes clear that Ward’s argument against Dawkins loses its point, because the fundamental physi­ cal constituents of the universe might as well as God be metaphysically necessary. 87 ╇ I leave out ‘epistemically possible’ which could be used to describe uncertainty about a possibility. If one is uncertain about whether or not something is logically pos­ sible, or uncertain about whether or not something is physically or metaphysically pos­ sible, one could indicate this by saying that it is epistemically possible. I leave this expression out since I do not need it in the discussion.

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•  Something is physically necessary if it must (‘cannot not’) happen or be in our physical universe, given both what that universe consists of and how it is governed by laws of nature.88 •  Something is metaphysically possible if it factually could have hap­ pened or have been, either in our physical universe, or in another (metaphysically) possible universe or world, or in our physical uni­ verse if our universe had been different (different content, different laws of nature), and the reason that it is metaphysically possible is because of basic and unchangeable principles and/or structures of being. •  Something is metaphysically impossible if it factually could not have happened or have been, neither in our physical universe, nor in any other (metaphysically) possible universe or world, nor in our physi­ cal universe no matter how our universe had been (different content, different laws of nature), and the reason that it is metaphysically impossible is because of basic and unchangeable principles and/or structures of being. •  Something is metaphysically necessary if it must (‘cannot not’) hap­ pen the way it happens, or be the way it is, because of basic and unchangeable principles and structures of being. From now on, these terms have the meaning they are given here, unless otherwise specified. With this terminology then, what Ward and Griffin claim about God’s existence is that it is metaphysically necessary, and they also claim that God’s being is the way it is of metaphysical necessity.89 Most important for the coming discussion is what Ward and Griffin think that it is met­ aphysically impossible for God to do, because of what is metaphysically necessary and metaphysically possible. Swinburne does not think that

╇My reference here to laws of nature indicates that I leave divine action out of the picture when I define physical possibility/impossibility/necessity. When discussing divine action, the relevant notions are logical and metaphysical possibility/impossibil­ ity/necessity. There is also a distinction between physical possibility in general (type physical possibility) and token physical possibility. Something which is physically pos­ sible in general may for various reasons be physically impossible in a given situation. I€do not need this distinction in the discussion about God and necessity, but I use it in the discussion of free will in chapter ten. 89 ╇More precisely, God’s being is metaphysically necessary at least to some degree. They both believe that there are metaphysical necessities that are not chosen by God (Ward, Divine Action, 27–28; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 139). But since they also believe that God has power to act contingently, he can partly change himself (for exam­ ple by exposing himself to new experiences, which do not change his character, but his experience). 88



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God’s existence is logically necessary, and with the terminology pre­ sented right above, Ward and Griffin agree. All three also agree that God is eternal, which Swinburne called temporal necessity. But Swinburne does not understand God as metaphysically necessary, in the sense just defined by me, since God’s existence would then depend on this metaphysical necessity.90 Ward on the other hand argues that God cannot just happen to exist, and says that the metaphysical neces­ sities are part of God’s being, so that God is not dependent on anything outside of himself.91 Griffin agrees that the metaphysical necessities are part of the being of God, but like Ward he does not think that it is God who has decided what these necessities are.92 As far as I can see, Swinburne has not discussed the question of whether there exist some metaphysical necessities in the sense that Ward and Griffin envision. It seems to me that Swinburne’s view could be integrated in Ward’s and Griffin’s view here, and for now it is enough to note this. Later, we shall see that Ward and Griffin have different opinions on the content of the metaphysical necessities. Concerning God’s being, Ward and Griffin again agree that there are some metaphysical necessities determining how God is. One Â�important example of a metaphysical necessity is the amount of power which God has, according to Ward and Griffin. Swinburne, on the other hand, underÂ�stands God’s being as necessary in the sense that God would not be God if his being was not such.93 Ward and Griffin agree that there are some minimum requirements that must be fulfilled if God is to be God,94 so they agree with Swinburne on that part. And again, I can­ not see that Swinburne has discussed Ward’s and Griffin’s understand­ ing of metaphysical necessity. Therefore it is unclear what Swinburne thinks about this, but it seems to me that his view could be integrated with Ward and Griffin, although they disagree on how God’s being by necessity is. Hygen has so far been left out of the discussion, because he says very little about God’s existence and nature being necessary. This is in accordance with his ‘reduced metaphysical ambitions’ and his priority of the Bible over philosophical speculation. Concerning God and ╇ Swinburne, The Christian God, 146. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 42–43. 92 ╇ Griffin, God, Power and Evil, 298, 300; and Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 142–143. 93 ╇ Swinburne, The Christian God, 156. 94 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 164–167; and Ward, Religion and Creation, 332. 90 91

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necessity, Hygen’s view is undetermined. He seems to agree with Hume that nothing can exist with necessity, since we can imagine that God does not exist.95 This is the same argument that Swinburne made above in this subchapter, and shows that Hygen does not think that God exists with logical necessity. Concerning the other questions of God and necessity, Hygen’s opinion is not clear. Pannenberg thinks that it may be the case that necessary existence can be derived from the idea of the infinite, but he does not accept that it can be proved from this that there exists a being that possesses neces­ sary existence. In Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, Pannenberg briefly defines a necessary being as one which exists through itself (‘durch sich selbst existierendes Wesen’).96 He does not think that the cosmological proof of God can be used to argue that God is a necessary being, since it may be that matter has necessary existence and not God. On the con­ trary, Pannenberg argues that the concept of God must first be estab­ lished, and then one can show that this concept necessarily implies infinity, absoluteness, highest perfection, and necessary existence.97 Pannenberg distinguishes between God as necessary cause for the existence of the world, and God’s necessary existence as a basis for the existence of God. In the latter case, the point is that God exists abso­ lutely, so that it is not possible that God should not exist. Pannenberg affirms both views.98 But he does not argue that we can prove any of this solely by use of reason, for knowledge of God is only possible when revealed by God. So Pannenberg does not claim that the ontological argument can show that God’s existence is logically necessary.99 But he does speak of aspects that belong to the concept of God, or aspects that contradict the very concept of God,100 and this would refer to that kind of logical necessity that Swinburne defined with the example of Venus. All five agree that God’s existence is not logically necessary. If we leave Hygen out of the picture, the views on God and necessity held by the other four can be summarized as follows: All four agree that there are some aspects of God without which God would not be God, so that some of the attributes of God are logically necessary because ╇ Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien, 100, 103–104, 110. ╇ Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, 30, ET: 37. ╇ 97 ╇ Ibid. ╇ 98 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 94–95, n. 56, ET: 83, n.55. ╇ 99 ╇ Pannenberg, Metaphysik und Gottesgedanke, 106–108, ET: 193–195. 100 ╇ For example in ibid., 207, ET: 189. ╇ 95 ╇ 96



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of the meaning of the term ‘God’ – but that does not mean that God exists. All four agree that God is eternal and un-caused. All (except maybe Swinburne) agree that God exists with metaphysical necessity. All (except maybe Swinburne) agree that God has some attributes by metaphysical necessity. But as will be clearer in the subchapter on God’s power, there are important differences in how these metaphysically necessary attributes are understood more concretely, because Ward and Griffin uses the idea of metaphysical necessity to say that there are some things that are metaphysically impossible for God to do, which Swinburne and Pannenberg do not claim that it is impossible for God to do. Hygen’s position with regard to these views remains unclear. A lot of terminology has now been considered, and it would proba­ bly be more confusing than clarifying to make a common terminology for all of it. I will focus only on those aspects where there is disagree­ ment that will be further discussed in chapter five. These are then the common definitions from now on: •  Something is ‘logically possible’ if it can be theoretically articulated without self-contradiction. •  Something is ‘logically impossible’ if it cannot be theoretically artic­ ulated without self-contradiction. •  Something is ‘logically necessary’ if it cannot be denied without selfcontradiction. •  Something is ‘metaphysically possible’ if it possible because of basic and unchangeable principles and structures of being. •  Something is ‘metaphysically impossible’ if it is impossible because of basic and unchangeable principles and structures of being. •  Something is ‘metaphysically necessary’ if it is necessary because of basic and unchangeable principles and structures of being. From this it follows that: •  God’s existence is logically necessary if it cannot be denied without self-contradiction. •  God’s existence is metaphysically necessary if it is necessary because of basic and unchangeable principles and structures of being. •  (Some of) God’s attributes are logically necessary if it cannot be denied that they are the way they are without self-contradiction •  (Some of) God’s attributes are metaphysically necessary if they are the way they are because of basic and unchangeable principles and structures of being.

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Swinburne does not describe God as infinite, nor does he describe infinity as an attribute of God. Rather he speaks of the different proper­ ties of God as being infinite. God’s knowledge is infinite, his wisdom is infinite, his power is infinite, and his goodness is infinite. When Swin­ burne argues in favour of God’s properties being infinite, his focus is constantly on how that makes God into a simple being. Swinburne thinks that infinity is simple, whereas a finite amount of power or wis­ dom would cry out for an explanation of why it is that exact amount. Theism is a simple hypothesis because of the infinity of God’s proper­ ties, and because of its simplicity, Swinburne also finds it plausible. I have not found a place where Swinburne directly says that God is infinite. Sometimes he does seem to say so by implication, for example when he describes a finite object as any object other than God, or when he says that the hypothesis of a finite God is less probable than the­ ism.101 But then again, based on his other writings mentioned above in the previous footnote, it seems likely that what he would mean by ‘God is infinite’ is that God’s power, goodness, and wisdom is infinite. A good reason why Swinburne may choose not to say that God is infinite is that it has been common in the tradition of theism to conclude from God’s€ infinity that God is also immutable, impassible, and timeless (thereby also knowing what is future to us).102 As seen above, Swin­ burne does not think that God is completely immutable, impassible, and timeless, and so this may be a reason for Swinburne to use ‘eternal’, ‘omnipotent’, and ‘omnipresent’ instead of ‘infinite’, to avoid being mis­ understood as having a more traditional theistic understanding of God as infinite. Keith Ward discusses the problem of infinity more directly, and notes the problem of thinking of infinity as implying that God is immu­ table and timeless. He finds this especially difficult since he also wants to maintain that God acts contingently in history. His solution is to posit internal complexity in God, where God is immutable and neces­ sary in some respects, but not in others. He distinguishes between ‘exclusive infinity’ where necessity and freedom contradict each other, and ‘inclusive infinity’ where the infinite is unlimited because it includes

╇ Swinburne, The Existence of God, 96–109, 111,114, 133, 146. ╇ Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 214–215.

101 102



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the limited within itself. Ward here refers to Hegel. But Ward also wants to make sure that the finite creatures are not ‘swallowed up’ by God, but retain their autonomy. He argues that this part may be lost on some interpretations of Hegel’s inclusive infinity, and prefers Whitehead’s dipolar God, except that God becomes too passive in Whitehead’s con­ cept. So Ward suggests that God is ‘dynamically infinite’, which means that God is the all-inclusive source of everything that exists, but he also grants his creatures autonomy and participates actively in creation. Ward does not draw the conclusion that since God is infinite, he has an infinite amount of power. Rather, he suggests that God has the amount of power that he has, by metaphysical necessity. So even if Ward holds that God is the source of everything, that does not make him conclude that God’s power is infinite; rather, the amount of God’s power just happens to be what it is because of some metaphysical necessity.103 In 1976, Griffin writes that God is finite.104 In 1991, he does not accept the critique that the God of process theism is finite, and he even writes that God is not one finite being among others. However, he defines ‘finite’ in the same sense as ‘imperfect’, which for him means ‘inferior to some conceivable being’. Griffin distinguishes ‘conceivable’ from ‘imaginable’ in that he uses ‘conceivable’ only for consistent ideas, while ‘imaginable’ ideas need not be consistent. He also says that God is not one finite being among others, but the all-inclusive being, and so by this he must mean spatially infinite, or better: omnipresent.105 In another book from 1990, Griffin specifies his various uses of God as infinite. He accepts that God is infinite in the sense of being everlasting in time and omnipresent in space, but he rejects that God is equal to all things as in pantheism, and he rejects that an infinite amount of pos­ sibilities are already actualized in God. Griffin thinks that the choice between finite and infinite is misleading. That sounds similar to€Pannen­ berg, but Griffin criticizes Pannenberg for accepting Ficthe’s critique that if God is infinite he cannot be a being.106 Clearly, Griffin holds that God is finite in power, and this limitation is not considered to be a selfchosen limitation.107 And he also argues that God is finite in the impor­ tant sense that God is not the source of everything that exists.108 ╇ Ibid., 214–219, 227–231; Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 113. ╇ Griffin, God, Power and Evil, 272. 105 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 146, 199. 106 ╇ Griffin, A Process Christology, 187–188, 259–260, n.113. 107 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 147, 215. 108 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 277. 103 104

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Pannenberg’s understanding of infinity has already been briefly presented. His understanding is very similar to that of Keith Ward. Like Ward, Pannenberg agrees with Hegel that true infinity cannot be defined as that which negates the finite. The reason is that if the infinite is that which negates the finite, then the infinite is limited by the finite, and then the infinite becomes finite. True infinity, therefore, must tran­ scend its own antithesis to the finite. Infinity is not a biblical term for God, but Pannenberg thinks that it is implied in the ideas of God’s eternity, omnipresence, and omnipotence (infinity with regard to time, space, and power), and the idea of God as holy. The concept of infinity can be used to integrate what the Bible says about God concerning these aspects. Pannenberg specifies that freedom from limitation is not the main point of infinity – the main point is to be opposed to the finite. And in order for infinity to be true infinity it must then integrate the finite within itself.109 This is the abstract definition of true infinity, and Pannenberg considers it to be deficient with regard to God.110 He does think that God is truly infinite, but that the concept of true infinity must be given concrete content. Pannenberg gives the concept of true infinity concrete content in different ways, but the most impor­ tant concrete explication is that it is the Trinity of God which makes God truly infinite, and more specifically, it is the love of God which makes God transcend the opposition to the finite and integrate the finite within himself.111 Does Pannenberg think that the infinity of God implies that the amount of power he has is infinite? Does the qualitative understanding of true infinity imply a quantitative understanding of God’s power, so that the amount of power that God has is quantitatively infinite? Power is the ability to make something happen, and so by ‘quantitative amount of power’ I here refer to what the power can make happen; the more it can make happen, the greater the power is from a quantitative perspec­ tive. Does Pannenberg then think that God’s infinity implies an infinite amount of power, meaning that God can make anything happen? It may seem so in one passage, where Pannenberg writes that God’s omnipotence corresponds to the structure of the true infinite, and then that God’s omnipotence means that his power knows no limits, but is ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 428–433, ET: 395–400. ╇ Ibid., 192–193, ET: 175–176. 111 ╇ Ibid., 192–193, 428–433, 448–449, 480–481, ET: 175–176, 395–400, 414–415, 445–446. 109 110



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unlimited and infinite.112 And Pannenberg also defines God as the all-determining power.113 On the other hand, Pannenberg thinks that God’s omnipotence must not be understood abstractly, but concretely as qualified by love. Because of God’s love, he respects the independ­ ence of his creatures. Since God presumably has not chosen to be love, this could be described as a limitation on the amount of God’s power. But Pannenberg does emphasise that God’s love is not impotent, and so Pannenberg writes that God could have intervened but refrains from doing so because of his patience.114 As we shall see below, all the schol­ ars add this limitation on God’s power, that he does not act contrary to his own goodness. But they draw different conclusions from this. While Pannenberg argues that God’s love makes him not overrule the choices of independent human beings, Griffin argues that God’s love should make him overrule the choices of independent human beings (if that had been possible for God).115 Pannenberg differs from Ward in that Ward speaks of a limitation which makes it the case that God’s power happens to be of a certain finite amount because of some unknown metaphysical principle, while Pannenberg explains the limitation on God’s power with reference to God’s love. Except from what is pre­ vented by love, Pannenberg seems to think that there are no limitations on the amount of God’s power. Hygen hardly discusses the infinity of God. Once he mentions that the understanding of God as infinite, with the implication that God is omnipotent, is based on human reason, and is lacking in relation to understanding God and God’s power based on revelation.116 In another book he writes that God is eternal, and then later in the same book that ‘eternal’ can mean something which is qualitatively different from eve­ rything in our world.117 That is similar to how Pannenberg thinks of infinity. But the important thing is to look for how Hygen relates to the content of the concept of infinity. And like Griffin, Hygen thinks that God is finite in power, and that God is finite in the important sense that God is not the source of everything that exists.118 ╇ Ibid., 449–450, ET: 415–416. ╇ Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, 304, ET: 302; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 175, ET: 159. 114 ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 1, 473,480, ET: 438, 445; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 30–31, ET: 16. 115 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 154. 116 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 141–142. 117 ╇ Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien, 55, 123. 118 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 151–153. 112 113

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The infinity of God is an important concept, which has many impli­ cations. As seen, it is very important in Pannenberg’s theology. In this book, focus is on the problem of evil and different understandings of God’s power. When it comes to infinity, we see that Pannenberg’s quali­ tative understanding of infinity makes him go very far in letting that imply also a quantitative infinity on God’s power. Ward, on the other hand, who thinks very similarly when it comes to qualitative infinity, does not draw the same conclusion concerning the quantitative amount of power that God has. Both Pannenberg and Ward seem to think that qualitative infinity can be qualified, so that quantitatively infinite power does not follow with logical necessity from qualitative infinity. And Swinburne says that he does believe that God has a quantitatively infi­ nite amount of power. Infinity is a complex issue, but in the discussion I will focus on the differences between the scholars when it comes to whether God has a finite or infinite amount of power, and whether God is finite or infinite in the sense that he is the source of everything or not. These two aspects of infinity are very important for the discussion€of€the problem of evil, and these are the two aspects that we will be concerned with from now on. I will not use the terms ‘infinite’ or ‘finite’ to describe God either as the source of everything or not, but rather just speak about God either as the source of everything or creator ex nihilo on the one hand, or not the source of everything or creator out of chaos on the other hand. These are then the common definitions from now on: •  That God is ‘truly infinite’ is a formal but qualitative description which means that he embraces the distinction between finite and infinite. •  That God has ‘infinite power’ is a quantitative description which means that God can do anything which is not logically impossible. God as Creator Under this headline I treat ‘God as source of everything’ and ‘God as creator out of nothing’ together, since they are so closely intercon­ nected. There is a divide between the four scholars in how they under­ stand God’s creation. Swinburne and Ward think that God created the world out of nothing, while Griffin and Hygen think that God created out of chaos. Swinburne and Ward are monists in the sense that they believe that God is the source of everything other than himself, while Griffin and Hygen have a dualistic aspect in their thinking since they think that there was something not created by God out of which God



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created the world. This is the sense in which the terms ‘monism’ and ‘dualism’ will be used in this book. In this question, Pannenberg is on Swinburne and Ward’s side.119 Swinburne holds that God is the uncreated creator and sustainer of everything that exists (except for logical truths and whatever is entailed in God’s own existence). That he creates and sustains means that he either brings about himself, or makes, or permits others to bring about, or permits to exist uncaused.120 Ward thinks very similarly to Swinburne that God has created everything except himself, and that he has created everything out of nothing.121 According to Griffin, God is not the source of all things. There are correlations in the world that are beyond the decision of God, and all creativity is not embodied by God. At some points in time, some actual occasions ‘transcend God, being outside the divine experience’.122 This means that there is a dualistic aspect in Griffin’s theology, a dualism between God and the world. This is expressed in his understanding of God as creating out of chaos, and not ex nihilo.123 Griffin explicitly rejects that there is only one ultimate. He agrees that the simplicity of a theory suggesting one ultimate as opposed to two favours the theory that there is only one. But then he says that consistency is more important, and he believes that all monistic theo­ ries are ship-wrecked on the problem of evil, because of the inconsist­ ency that the problem of evil represents in monistic theories.124 Hygen is similar to Griffin in many ways. He also admits a more dualistic understanding, where God is not the source of all things and not creator ex nihilo. The difference between Griffin and Hygen is that Griffin considers the aboriginal chaos to be something morally neutral, while Hygen adds that there are also morally evil powers not created by God.125 The common definitions are then from now on: •  ‘God as creator ex nihilo/creator out of nothing’ means that God is the source of everything that exists other than himself, and that the world was originally created by God out of absolutely nothing.

╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 29, ET: 15. ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 130–134. 121 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 6–7, 104. 122 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 189. 123 ╇ Ibid., 22–29, 183–195. 124 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 277. 125 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 149–155, 165. 119 120

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•  ‘God as creator out of chaos’ means that God is not the source of everything that exists, and that our world was originally created out of something. God’s Power What has been said above about God as creator and about metaphysi­ cal necessities is very relevant for the understanding of God’s power that the four scholars have. The previous topics of creation and neces­ sity must be referred to in this subchapter about power, and so this topic on God’s power will end up with summarising the four different views on God’s power that will be discussed in part three. Swinburne believes that God is an omnipotent being, and under­ stands an omnipotent being as ‘one who can do anything logically pos­ sible, anything, that is, the description of which does not involve a contradiction’.126 This means that God has the power to do anything that is not logically contradictory. As Swinburne says, God cannot€make a square circle, but he can cover the earth with water just like that.127 According to Swinburne, there is one additional limitation on God, namely that he can do no immoral action. This follows with logical necessity from God’s freedom and omnipotence, since someone who is free will only do what he considers to be good, and someone who is omniscient will know what is good.128 Ward and Griffin both agree on these two descriptions of God: that he cannot do what is logically impossible, and that it is a metaphysical necessity about God that he cannot act immorally.129 I now use the ter­ minology I introduced in the subchapter on God as necessary. Ward and Griffin both add more limitations to God’s power –limitations which they claim to be metaphysical necessities that are internal to the being of God. The necessities now to be mentioned are not necessi­ ties that follow from other attributes of God, such as God’s goodness; rather, they are hypotheses of something that is metaphysically neces­ sary. Ward thinks that there is an original matrix of metaphysical ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 3. ╇ Ibid. 128 ╇ Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 208–209. The argument presupposes uni­ versally valid ethics, which Swinurne explicitly defends. 129 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 42–43; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 148; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 31–32. 126 127



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possibilities, a list of what is metaphysically possible to do/to be/to happen and metaphysically not possible to do/to be/to happen. For instance, the metaphysical possibility of pain is a possibility inherent in the divine being that God cannot make metaphysically impossible. But Ward does think that God can make one specific world where pain is physically impossible, so what God cannot do is to make pain physi­ cally impossible in all metaphysically possible worlds.130 Ward’s posi­ tion is then that there are some things that are metaphysically possible for God to do, and other things that are metaphysically impossible for God to do. Ward thinks that God has a finite amount of power, and that this amount of power is a brute fact.131 He also thinks that God’s nature necessarily is what it is in every possible world, and that God is as pow­ erful as it is metaphysically possible to be.132 I interpret this as meaning that Ward has a hypothesis that there is a list of certain things that are metaphysically possible and impossible, which then by definition are valid in every possible world. This means that since not everything is possible for God to do, he consequently has a finite amount of power, which does not have any other explantation – that is just how God’s nature is. Nevertheless, God’s power is as much power as it is meta­ physically possible to have. Interestingly enough, Griffin makes a very similar kind of limitation on God. By hypothesis, Griffin thinks that there is a list of metaphysical principles that are metaphysically necessary, and these principles decide what God can and cannot possibly do in every possible world.133 God has as much power as it is metaphysically possible to have, but there are some things that God necessarily cannot do.134 I repeat that this is a hypothesis Griffin has about what is metaphysically necessary, since this is often not under­ stood or misunderstood.135 Now, the kind of limitation that Ward and Griffin add, and which Swinburne does not add, is very similar. But the content of the limita­ tion is very different. Ward thinks that God could not create the kind of ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 27–28, 43–45, 217. ╇ Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 97–98; and Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 113. 132 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 27, 66. 133 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 142. 134 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 56. 135 ╇ See for example Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 142; or Griffin, Evil Revisited, 118, 139. 130 131

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independent world that we live in without accepting the possibility of pain and suffering in this world, and that the reason for this has to do with what is metaphysically possible and impossible.136 Griffin on the other hand thinks that it is a metaphysical necessity that God cannot coerce. His understanding of coercion presupposes process philoso­ phy, and is roughly as follows: God does influence the world by efficient causation, but this causation is metaphysically necessarily persuasive, and not coercive. The difference is that in coercion the effect is completely determined by the efficient causation upon it, while in persuasion the effect is not completely determined by the efficient causation upon it; the effect, which is the causally influenced individual, partially deter­ mines itself.137 The reason why God cannot coerce is that coercion can only be used on an aggregate, which has no self, and therefore no selfdetermination. And it can only be exerted by an aggregate, and not by an individual. So when we as individuals coerce other aggregates, it is via the aggregates of our bodies. We persuade our body to carry out our wishes, and then use it to coerce other bodies. This is why God cannot coerce; he has no body between him and us. God is not a localized body, but a universal omnipresent agent.138 The limitation on God’s power that Griffin adds is much greater than the limitation on God’s power that Ward adds. Griffin uses this limita­ tion to claim that very often God cannot stop a car accident, heal Â�cancer, and so on, and this means that there are very many things that God cannot do. For this reason, Griffin cannot accept creation out of noth­ ing, because that would imply that God has much more power than Griffin ascribes to him. Then God could create a giant air bag out of nothing to stop the car accident, or make the cancer disappear into nothing. Ward, however, believes in creation out of nothing, and must give another reason for why God does not prevent more evils in this world. Summing up these three, we see that Swinburne argues that God can do anything, except for logical impossibilities and immoral actions. Ward and Griffin both add a limitation that is similar in kind, but very different in content. Ward thinks that God can do much more than Griffin thinks, and so they differ also in their understanding of God’s creation. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 67–68. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 101–102. 138 ╇ Ibid., 103–104. 136 137



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Hygen seems many places to say that God cannot do everything. For example, he says that God’s power is powerful, but not a power to do everything. It is a legitimate power, it is a saving power, it is the power of good. But as long as this eon stands, it is a fighting power and not a sovereign one, according to Hygen. Further, he says that God is the king over all and everything, but he reminds the reader that a king’s will does not always happen, and that his commands are not always obeyed. Hygen believes that the will of God will not fully happen until the end of time. Hygen also says that some of God’s plans do not always come true. But Hygen also says that we should not categorically say that God cannot do everything.139 His point is probably that he does not want a theodicy to be a universally valid metaphysical explanation, but rather he wants to keep different solutions in play that different people can find to be valid in their lives. Nevertheless, Hygen does provide one main way of thinking about God’s power, which is supposed to be help­ ful in the question of theodicy, and he subjects this theory to the crite­ ria of coherence and authenticity. In the discussion I do not want to discuss Hygen’s general suggestion that different people should search for different answers – I want to discuss the one theory he puts forth that God cannot do everything because he is fighting evil. I find it legit­ imate to select this part of his thinking for discussion in this context of systematic theology. This is in line with my goal of well-willing inter­ pretation since in the discussion of the problem of evil as it is under­ stood here, I believe that Hygen can make a good case of this theory as a universally valid theodicy. This means that in part three I will discuss Hygen’s theodicy, and by Hygen’s theodicy I mean my interpretation of Hygen, which is that in the context of doing systematic theology he argues in favour of a con­ cept of God where God cannot do everything. The reason why God cannot do everything is that his power is a fighting power, and not a sovereign power. The powers that fight against God are not willed by God, they are super-human powers, and they are strong. But because these powers are so strong, we should also think large about God’s power.140 Summing up all four, they all think that God cannot do what is logically impossible or act immorally. Swinburne and Ward think 139 140

╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 131–132, 167–173. ╇ Ibid., 163–172.

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that God is creator ex nihilo, while Griffin and Hygen think that God is creator out of chaos. While Swinburne adds no more limitations to God than moral and logic, the three others add each their own limita­ tion. Ward thinks that it is metaphysically impossible for God to create an independent world like ours without the physical possibility of pain and suffering. Griffin thinks that it is metaphysically impossible for God to coerce. And Hygen thinks that God’s power is reduced by another power against which God has to fight. Pannenberg’s view on infinity indicates that his position is some­ where in the area of Swinburne or Ward. As seen in the subchapter on God as infinite, Pannenberg goes far in describing God’s power as infi­ nite. On the other hand, he clearly seems to agree with Ward that God could not have created an independent world without the physical pos­ sibility of pain and suffering. Pannenberg writes that when God wanted the existence of finite and independent creatures, he had to (‘musste’) accept their corruptibility and suffering and the possibility of evil. He also had to accept that the creatures would question his existence.141 What does ‘had to’ mean here? Is it that it is logically impossible for God to create independent beings that do not suffer? That does not seem to be the case. Rather, Pannenberg seems to presuppose a meta­ physical necessity. In another passage, Pannenberg writes that inde­ pendence is necessary if humans are to live alongside God.142 Again, it is not likely that it is so by logical necessity, nor that God chose that it should be necessary that humans need to be independent in order to live alongside him, but rather it seems to be a metaphysical necessity that that is the case. Within the focus on power that is presupposed here, I put Ward and Pannenberg in the same category, and treat their understanding of God’s power as one from now on. Terminologically, the five scholars use different terms to describe Gods power. Griffin calls God omnipotent, but he distinguishes€between C-omnipotence and I-omnipotence. I-omnipotence is the understand­ ing that Swinburne has, and the ‘I’ stands for ‘incoherent’. Griffin believes this understanding of omnipotence is incoherent because it does not cohere with how he believes coercive power can be used.143 C-omnipotence is the understanding that Griffin has, and the C stands for ‘coherent’. The terms that the four scholars use themselves to€describe ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 200, ET: 173. ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 3, 689, ET: 642. 143 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 56. 141 142



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their understanding of God’s power are ‘omnipotence’ (Swinburne, Ward and Pannenberg), ‘C-omnipotence’ (Griffin) and ‘almightiness’ (Hygen). Griffin uses the term ‘I-omnipotence’ for Swinburne’s under­ standing of God’s power, and Hygen calls the kind of definition that Swinburne gives ‘omnipotence’. In the following I will call Swinburne’s understanding ‘unlimited omnipotence’, Ward’s understanding ‘limited omnipotence’, Griffin’s understanding ‘process omnipotence’, and Hygen’s understanding ‘almightiness’. If I use the term ‘omnipotence’ only, it refers more unspecified to the kind of understanding of God’s power that Swinburne and Ward have in common. The common defi­ nitions are then from now on: •  ‘God’s unlimited omnipotence’ means God’s ability to actualize any state of affairs, except for logical and moral limitations to this. •  ‘God’s limited omnipotence’ means God’s ability to actualize any state of affairs, except for logical and moral limitations to this, and except for the metaphysically necessary limitation that God cannot create our independent world without pain. •  ‘Process omnipotence’ means God’s ability to actualize any state of affairs, except for logical and moral limitations to this, and except for the metaphysically necessary limitation that God cannot coerce, only persuade. •  ‘God’s almightiness’ means God’s ability to actualize any state of affairs, except for logical and moral limitations to this, and except for the limitations implied by the evil powers fighting against God. These are the four different positions that will now be discussed in part three.

Part Three

Discussion of the Four Theodicies

CHAPTER NINE

Swinburne At the outset of this discussion one thing is clear: many big questions are raised in the four theodicies, and a thorough discussion of all traits is impossible. What is then the best way to proceed in order to discuss the theodicies with a meaningful and worthwhile result? A superficial discussion trying to cover most subjects would add little to what has already been given in the presentations. Some elements must be focused upon and discussed more thoroughly. The obvious choice is to choose the central claim in each theodicy if there is one, and I believe that all four theodicies are based on one main claim more crucial than the other claims in the theodicy. I shall argue that for Swinburne the crucial claim is that there are no genuine evils, for Ward that God created an independent world, for Griffin that God cannot coerce, and for Hygen it is that God’s power is a fighting power. Given lack of space, discussion of the main claims is the most efficient procedure for evaluating the theodicies, since if their crucial claim fails, the theodicy most certainly also fails. However, I must again make the disclaimer that this discussion is limited to a discussion of main claims, and so my evaluations and conclusions should be interpreted in that light. More specifically then, the discussion will consider each of the four theodicies by discussing counter-arguments to their main claims. Since Ward is very similar to Swinburne, but Swinburne has written more about theodicy, Swinburne’s theodicy will be given a fuller discussion, while similar points will not be discussed once more in Ward. The discussion of Ward will also be structurally similar to the discussion of Swinburne, in order better to compare them. The same applies to Griffin and Hygen. Since Hygen is similar to Griffin, but Griffin has written more about theodicy, Griffin will be given a longer discussion, while similar points will not be discussed once more in Hygen. The discussion of Hygen will also be structurally similar to the discussion of Griffin, in order better to compare them. But the first theodicy to be discussed now, is Swinburne’s theodicy. The main claim in Swinburne’s theodicy is that there are no genuine evils. After discussing various versions of the problem of evil he ends

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up with the claim that there is no genuine evil in the world.1 Recall that ‘genuine evil’ is here not used in its everyday meaning, but refers to evils which do not fulfil the following four criteria: a)╇ God has the right to allow E to occur. b)╇Allowing E (or a state as bad or worse) to occur is the only morally permissible way in which God can bring about a logically necessary condition of a good G. c)╇ God does everything else logically possible to bring about G. d)╇ The expected value of allowing E, given (c) is positive.2

Any evil not fulfilling these criteria would be a genuine evil, but Swinburne uses his book to show for all types of evils that these criteria are fulfilled, so that no evils are genuine evils. I find it clear from Swinburne’s presentation and the content of his book that the claim that there is no genuine evil is the main claim of his theodicy – and that the validity of his theodicy hinges on this claim.3 Swinburne sometimes says that it is not the claim that evils lead to greater goods, but rather the amount of evil, which is the crux of the problem of evil. It may be that this is what most people experience as the most difficult part, but the claim that there is no genuine evil is still the most fundamental claim in Swinburne’s theodicy. It even entails the problem of the amount, since criterion (d) right above states that all evils are outweighed by the good that they bring about.4 Swinburne’s definition of genuine evils explicates the content of what it means for him to claim that there are no genuine evils. By claiming that there are no genuine evils, he claims that 1) all evils lead to goods, 2) God has the right to allow the evils, 3) the evils are the only way to the goods they make possible, and 4) the value of the good that they make possible, outweighs (and thereby justifies) all evils.5 Each of these part-claims, which explicate sides of the main claim, can be criticized. One can argue that 1) that there are evils (for example some natural evils) which do not lead to greater goods; 2) that God ought not use evils as a means to a greater good; 3) that there are better ways to

╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 3–14. ╇Ibid., 14. 3 ╇Ibid., 24–25, 29, 45. 4 ╇Ibid., 239. 5 ╇Claim 1 corresponds to the claim that there are no genuine evils, claim 2 corresponds to criterion a, claim 3 corresponds to criterion b and c, and claim 4 corresponds to criterion d. 1 2



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achieve God’s goals than the evils suggested by Swinburne; and 4) that€sometimes evils are not outweighed by the goods they lead to. Examples of these critiques can be found in Ward, Griffin and Hygen. The following discussion will consider counterarguments of these four kinds, which are all meant to refute Swinburne’s main claim that there are no genuine evils. The arguments will now be discussed in the mentioned order. Some evils do not lead to greater goods Genuine evils as a hard-core commonsense notion As seen in the presentation of Griffin’s theodicy, Griffin believes that there are some hard-core commonsense notions, which are beliefs that are inevitably presupposed in practice; they are common to all human beings at the presuppositional level, and they cannot be denied verbally without self-contradiction.6 Griffin claims that the belief that there are genuine evils is a hard-core commonsense notion; all presuppose it, and if they deny it they contradict themselves. Griffin argues that this presupposition is shown by the fact that we show anger, resentment, regret, and guilt feelings, which would be inappropriate if evils actually lead to greater goods.7 How should this claim by Griffin be evaluated? Is it self-Â�contradictory to believe that there are no genuine evils? There are several problems with Griffin’s use of ‘hard-core commonsense notions’. The problem in this case is that the anger, resentment, regret, and guilt feelings are themselves greater goods that the evils lead to – they are the signs of compassion and moral development that God intended in allowing the evil, according to Swinburne. This means that there is no self-contradiction in Swinburne, since in his theory regret and guilt and so on are appropriate responses. His reason why it is good that we are sad when something bad happens and happy when something good happens, is that then we are paying the proper tribute to what is good and bad in things.8 Griffin could still argue that it follows logically from Swinburne’s theory that one should be happy if for example your spouse dies, since ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 29–35. ╇Ibid., 219–220. 8 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 150. 6 7

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the death of your spouse leads to the good of making compassion and grief possible. But Swinburne’s point is that it is a good thing that you become angry or mourn when your beloved dies, instead of being indifferent to it or even happy.9 As a reaction to the death of your spouse, you are sad. But if you are asked for an evaluation of your own sadness in a larger perspective, you think it is better that you become sad than indifferent or happy, according to Swinburne. So there are two levels here: that the evil happens is bad, and sorrow is the right response to the evil that happened. But the fact that sorrow is the response to evil is good. And Swinburne believes that this good outweighs the evil in a larger perspective, but it does not mean that you should be happy in your time of sorrow. Rather it means that contemplating the situation later on a meta-level, Swinburne suggests you should conclude overall that it was better that you were sorry than not. This presupposes that you were sorry first, and so sorrow is the right response to evil, but Swinburne argues that it was good in a larger perspective. Whether or not this larger perspective justifies her death is of course another question, to which we will return. But here I am just concerned with Griffin’s critique that Swinburne’s claim is self-contradictory, and I believe the argument right above shows that it is not. Griffin’s claim that regret or guilt would be inappropriate does not follow deductively from Swinburne’s theory, if we distinguish between the thing that happened with its immediate reaction, and the general structure of what happened contemplated later in a larger perspective. Griffin could refine his claim to say that also in a large perspective all still inevitably presuppose that something was not good, and so they presuppose that something is genuinely evil. But is that true? Swinburne seems seriously to believe that in a large perspective, everything is good. He says he understands that many feel that some evils are genuine, but suggests that long reflection on the issue would make them think otherwise.10 I€think that both Swinburne and others actually do think and act as if God has a greater plan, also when they face evils, and so it is incorrect when Griffin claims that they inevitably presuppose something else. The main problem with Griffin’s use of hard-core commonsense notions is that when he argues that a claim is self-contradictory, he often presupposes something which is not presupposed by the ones

╇Ibid., 77. ╇Ibid., xiii.

╛╛╛╛9 10



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who make the alleged self-contradictory claim. In this case Griffin presupposes that if evils lead to greater goods, then regret or anger is inappropriate, but such a presupposition is not logically necessary.11 In one passage, Griffin even argues that all people are aware of a Holy Power, and so it is a hard-core commonsense notion that there exists a Holy Power.12 According to Griffin, it is self-contradictory to reject a hard-core commonsense notion, but I cannot see why it would be selfcontradictory to believe that there is not a Holy Power. I believe this shows that it is very difficult for one person to decide what is ‘inevitably presupposed’ by others, and that this must be shown by arguments. Appealing to hard-core common sense is of little value if someone else does not consider this to be common sense. Good arguments are needed to support the claim of common sense, and I believe the examples right above show why. But even if the non-existence of genuine evils cannot be claimed to be self-contradictory, there are still many arguments as to why it is false that there are no genuine evils, and to such arguments we now turn. Natural evils that do not lead to a greater good Swinburne spends quite much time discussing animal pain, which in many cases are clear examples of natural evils – and this will be the focus in this subchapter as well. In particular, Swinburne focuses on the case of a fawn caught in a forest fire, dying slowly in pain.13 The reason is that this is a common example in discussions of natural evils in theodicy literature, first presented by William Rowe.14 The argument 11 ╇ This happens several times when Griffin argues that there is a self-contradiction. For example, he thinks that scientists contradict themselves if they claim that everything can be explained by efficient causes, because they must presuppose that human actions are guided by aims and purposes (final causation) (Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 46). But it is very possible to believe that such aims and purposes also have an efficient cause. Griffin thinks that denying free will is also self-refuting, for there is no reason to believe in such a conclusion if it was determined (Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 47). Swinburne disagrees. He thinks chosen beliefs are more suspicious than beliefs caused in us by meeting facts, and so a belief that determinism is true can be both caused and justified if it is caused by relevant factors, for example by hearing good arguments in favour of determinism (Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 233). 12 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 380–381, 391. 13 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 103, 171–173, 190, 217–218. 14 ╇William Rowe, ‘The Problem of Evil and Some Varities of Atheism’, American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979), referred to in Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 103, n.113.

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is that the pain of this fawn leads to no greater good.15 Swinburne mentions three different goods that fawns caught in fires lead to. It makes courage possible for other animals and humans to rescue the fawn, it makes knowledge possible for humans and animals that forest€ fires should be prevented and avoided, and it makes it possible for€ humans and animals to show compassion for the poor fawn.16 Swinburne then asks: Why not only let those fawns suffer that we know about and can rescue? His answer is that then we would either find out, and stop bothering about rescuing from or preventing fires. Or we would not find out and try to prevent suffering or show compassion for€ animals who never suffered, but if God were to let us believe that€ they suffer when they did not, God would violate the Principle of€Honesty.17 I do not see why we would stop worrying about rescuing them if we found out that they only suffer when we can rescue them, because then they still have to actually be rescued in order not to die. However, I will not discuss this argument further, since I think there is another argument which is far better, and which show how such animal pain happens without leading to any good. Leaving humans out of the picture for a while, consider all the lower-level animals that died in forest fires before humans evolved. Swinburne believes that invertebrates do not feel pain since their brains are so different from ours, and he thinks that lower mammals feel less pain than us.18 Nevertheless, he holds that sensations in animals (like pain) evolved before purposes, desires, and beliefs did.19 This means that in his account there will be many animals that can experience at least some pain, but they do not have the sophisticated mental life that is necessary either for courage, knowledge, or compassion, nor to know whether or not the Principle of Honesty has been violated. I think it is likely that many of these animals act on instinct when meeting a hot fire, without being able to learn inductively from the death of a particular individual.20

15 ╇ Part of the debate around the fawn has been about skeptical theism, but as mentioned in the introduction chapter I have left out this discussion. 16 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 217. 17 ╇Ibid., 218. The Principle of Honesty was introduced in my presentation of Swinburne in chapter two. 18 ╇Ibid., 174. 19 ╇Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, 181–182. 20 ╇Swinburne thinks that animals learn by induction (Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 189).



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This means that for all these lower animals experiencing pain early in evolution, the goods of courage, knowledge, and compassion do not apply. But Swinburne also argues that we humans, living after the event, may show compassion with deer who lived before us, and use our knowledge to prevent fires killing future fawns. This sympathy with anonymous deer and knowledge derived from their suffering is something good which was made possible by that anonymous suffering. But still, there would be no need for all the pain that occurred before animals and humans with higher mental life evolved, because this is pain we do not know anything concrete about to learn from or show compassion with. Swinburne here distinguishes between anonymous suffering and suffering we do not know anything about. Regarding the anonymous suffering, he then argues that we can show compassion and learn from anonymous suffering.21 But concerning the anonymous suffering that happened before humans evolved, I think there is very little we can learn, the compassion we can show is very vague and diffuse, so it is hardly convincing that this vague response outweighs all the actual pain that was suffered. Regarding the suffering that we do not know anything about, Swinburne says that there is no reason to assume that such pain ever occurred.22 But since Swinburne believes that lower animals have sensations, and that they died – many by the actions of predators – it is very likely on such an account that they experienced pain. To suggest that God saved all lower animals from such pain seems like an implausible ad-hoc hypothesis, but it is not impossible in any sense. This means that I find it likely in Swinburne’s account that there are animals that have experienced pain which did not lead to any greater good. But I will elaborate the point a bit further by discussing Swinburne’s argument about human learning and compassion after the pain has occurred, and also consider further the amount of evil involved. For these reasons, I shall now discuss an important argument by Griffin against the non-existence of genuine evils: the evolution record. Griffin claims that the existence of genuine evils is a claim that can€ be ‘driven home’ by the argument of the evolutionary process.23 Griffin argues that there has been an enormous amount of animal pain experienced by animals with no capacity for spiritual or moral virtues. ╇Ibid., 218 ╇Ibid. 23 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 220. 21 22

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This has gone on for millions of years, and an omnipotent God could have made it so that they could have had the same life-saving reactions that pain lead to without experiencing pain. If humans were the goal of this process – why did it take such a long time, and why did it involve so much pain?24 Swinburne’s reasons for the existence of animal pain were just stated: courage, knowledge, and compassion. As seen, these are hard to apply to the early stages of evolution where, according to Swinburne, there was pain, but not courage, knowledge, or compassion. One answer Swinburne gives to the question of long evolution is beauty. This goes for the formation of stars, mountains, plants, and animals – even if it is long by our timescale, it has been good all along for God to contemplate their beauty.25 This argument is not very good, since the point is all the pain that has been experienced. A great amount of pain is not beautiful, and Griffin’s point is that it should have been prevented by an omnipotent God. Swinburne argues that all humans and all animals live a life that is on balance good. When it comes to animals, he thinks€that they have lesser pain than humans, and so since they are also useful for others, their lives are overall good.26 This argument would be stronger if the animals were to have a good life after death, but Swinburne argues on the assumption that they may not have a life after death.27 To underline Griffin’s argument on the amount of evils in the slow evolution, and also to press further the discussion of human learning and compassion later in history, I want to draw attention to the fact that there have been some great catastrophes in the history of our planet. Although there have been many, five in particular are often mentioned, which all led to the extinction of more than 75 percent of all life on earth. One of these catastrophes led to the extinction of as much as 95 percent of all life on earth.28 Above, the goods that remained to justify

24 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 19–20; and Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 220. 25 ╇Swinburne, The Existence of God, 188–189. 26 ╇Ibid., 262. 27 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 121; and Swinburne, The Existence of God, 262. 28 ╇Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (London: Black Swan, 2004), 416–417. The mass deaths were caused by rapid changes in nature, often also changes in temperature, but the causes of the changes are uncertain. Solar flares is one explanation, meteor impacts another, but there are also other possible explanations, like



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this kind of evil were that humans may learn and show compassion after it happened. This is not very helpful in this case. A likely cause of some of these catastrophes is meteors hitting the earth. There are billions of potential meteors, moving at extremely high speed, enormously difficult to detect, that can hit the earth and bring massive destruction. By all we know of today, meteors hitting the earth will be impossible for humans to prevent.29 This means that the knowledge we have today about earlier meteor hits is of little use, and whatever use it has, it would have been enough with one such catastrophe. Against this one could say: If only one meteor hit the earth, people would not bother, but when several have hit, they might see the need to do something and prevent it. But whether one or five, hardly anything is done to prevent meteors from hitting the earth, since we see that it is practically impossible. And€if a new one were to wipe out all life now, then we would all die. A€ smaller meteor not killing all humans would probably improve the€motivation, but it would have done so regardless of whether there had been zero or one or five such hits in early history. And of course, it€seems strange to suggest that God let us be hit by meteors so that we€ should learn to defend ourselves against meteors. The argument of€ compassion is also of little use here, since the number of animals which died here is so great. To a certain degree we feel (and should feel) more compassion the more tragic something is, but in the case of billions of animals dying, the limit is reached, and we do not (and it is not bad that we do not) feel more compassion for each new million of animals that died. Swinburne has one extra argument in favour of a long evolution including pain, and it has to do with a certain kind of knowledge. Swinburne argues that we need to learn about very long-term consequences of our actions. We learn this by looking through the geological record, for example about the effect of climate changes.30 It is true that we have knowledge from the geological record, and it is also true that we can learn from history. But learning from history is difficult, since every new period is unique, and for that reason it is hard to know which period of history it is best to compare ourselves with. History may also fool us, and so historical knowledge becomes one argument among diseases. The different catastrophes probably had different causes (Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, 418). 29 ╇Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, 237–257. 30 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 190–192.

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many when we are to consider what to do in important questions. Take€ for example the climate changes. Geological history teaches us that there have been warm periods before which killed many animals.€We can learn from this that we should be careful when it comes to global warming. But many draw the opposite conclusion from history, namely that global warming happens and there is little we can€do about it. History is very complex and the world is different now than it was millions of years ago. In the question of global warming, the principle of better safe than sorry is therefore a better guide than the lessons from history. So, the suffering of ancient history provides one weak argument among many. I find it likely that this weak argument is not a greater good that justifies the great amount of animal suffering. Summing up more generally on animal pain, what it comes down to is that it seems very unlikely that an omnipotent God would let almost all life die out again and again for no good reason when he could easily prevent it. One could argue that this was the means for good mutations to flourish, but Swinburne believes that God can cause good or bad mutations directly, and so God could presumably let good mutations take over in an easier way. Maybe God needed to get rid of the dinosaurs, but why did he then let them come in the first place? Maybe for their beauty, but then to let them all die afterwards seems to be a high price to pay for beauty. In Swinburne’s account, I see no good argument for letting these great catastrophes happen, and so in his account it is very plausible that there are some genuine evils, for example all the pain that these five catastrophes led to. I just used the expression ‘in Swinburne’s account’, for there is one argument not considered by Swinburne or Griffin that is very relevant for the discussion above, namely a version of the argument that animals do not feel pain at all. Keith Ward finds it likely that animals, especially the lower animals, do not feel pain as we do. Maybe they feel€very little pain, but it may even be the case that they feel no pain at€ all. Ward entertains that possibility – he argues that they might show€ the same aversion to pain and have the same reactions as us, but€maybe without being conscious about being in pain.31 This same

╇Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 72.

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sort of distinction is also made by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who distinguishes between an organism having pain reactions and an organism being conscious about being in pain.32 Swinburne argues that all animals that energetically try to avoid danger probably feel pain, otherwise they would not be so eager to avoid danger.33 But this argument is not valid regarding the possibility that Ward mentions, namely that animals might have life-saving instinctive reactions to pain, similar to humans, but without consciousness of being in pain. Signals could be sent through the c-fibres (socalled pain nerves), triggering the same motoric response in the brain (pull out your leg from the fire!), without there being the extra dimension of a self, conscious of being in pain. Since they look like us when in pain, it is easy to infer that they feel pain, but that need not be the case, as is clear from cases like ‘blindsight’, ‘deafhearing’, etc.34 But Hygen comments on the possibility that animals might not be selfconscious of being in pain, by saying that it would still be bad for them to be in pain.35 Michael Murray makes a long discussion of whether or not animals feel pain, where the main arguments are the same as here. The different arguments in favour of animals feeling pain may be accounted for even if they do not have a conscious experience of being in pain, and there are theories of consciousness, like higher-order-theories, which suggest that animals do not feel pain. But Murray argues that since we do not know, we must act on the worst-case-scenario, and act as if animals feel pain.36 I agree, which means that also in the question of theodicy, we should suppose that animals feel pain. However, the possibility that animals do not feel pain does not help Swinburne much anyway. If animals lack a conscious self and so do not feel pain, then virtues like compassion, courage, and learning are inappropriate to ascribe to them since these virtues presumably require a conscious self in order

32 ╇Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 73. In the following, by ‘feeling pain’ I refer to this (phenomenally) conscious sense of feeling pain. 33 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 174, n.176. 34 ╇ Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 53–54, 62. 35 ╇Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 52. 36 ╇ Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, chapter two.

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to be virtues. And human compassion later also loses its relevance if the animals did not feel pain. So either they feel pain, and the critique about pointless pain through great catastrophes in the history evolution is valid, or they do not feel pain, but then the arguments by Swinburne about the virtues pain leads to are not valid. But of course, if they do not feel pain, animal death will not be as bad a state of affairs as it is if they do feel pain. If animals do not feel pain, then animal death is not an obvious example of genuine evils. But Hygen does have a point that animals having diseases and dying are bad states of affairs even if they do not feel pain. One may argue that the long evolution is meaningless waste, but Swinburne and Ward disagree with such a critique, since they think that the evolutionary process provides beauty for the creator to enjoy.37 But of course it is a lot worse if animals do feel pain, and we should not suppose that animals do not feel pain when we do not know for sure. We may hope that they do not, but a plausible theodicy should not be based on the hope that animals do not feel pain, but should rather be able to account for the case of higher animals who might very well feel pain. I conclude therefore on the counterargument of animal pain not leading to any greater good, that in Swinburne’s own account there are evils that do not lead to a greater good – even if there is a possibility that animals do not feel pain. Evils Lead to more Evil A final argument to support that some evils do not lead to greater goods, is a point made by Griffin and Hygen that evils often lead to more evil instead of good.38 Although some evils lead to people acting courageously or developing other virtues, sometimes the experience of evil just makes people more depressed or they react with more evil themselves. But if this argument is directed against Swinburne, it does not fit very well. The reason is that Griffin and Hygen give examples of how actual evils lead to more actual evils. But Swinburne usually considers the opportunity for doing something good that the evil leads to, as itself a greater good than the evil. It is not the case that the evil is only outweighed when someone acts well in response to it, but rather, it is

37 ╇Swinburne, The Existence of God, 188–189; and Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 113–114. 38 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 16; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 48.



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the opportunity and thereby the choice that the evil make possible (the opportunity to act courageously or to learn). That this opportunity arose is in itself better than the evil that occurred.39 Consequently, Swinburne can for example say that it is a privilege for us when we suffer under the violence of a wrong-doer, since we make available for him a serious choice of changing his character. This naturally leads to two counter-arguments, which could have been raised already, namely that it is wrong to use someone this way as a means to a good, and that the good consequence does not outweigh the evil which occurred. Even if Swinburne appeals to contemplation in retrospect and meta-perspective, one can argue that there are cases of suffering not outweighed, such as for example a murder which left no possibility for contemplation in retrospect for the one who was murdered. The first counter-argument about evils as means will be discussed now, and the second one about weighing good against evil towards the end of this chapter. God ought not to use evils as a means In the theodicy literature, a passage from The Brothers Karamazov is often quoted, where Ivan tells Alyosha that he does not think it is worth it to have the harmony of heaven if the price is the torture a small child. Ivan famously declares that he returns his ticket.40 Hygen refers to this critique, and he seems to do so approvingly. While Hygen can admire those who choose to suffer some pain themselves in order to reach a greater good, the same admiration does not apply to those who let other people suffer in order to reach a greater good.41 Dorothee Sölle put it very strongly when she wrote that no heaven can compensate for what happened in Auschwitz.42 Common to all this critique is the statement famously argued by Kant that no human beings should be treated merely as the means for something else, but should always be treated as a goal in themselves.43 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 162, 217. ╇F. M. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, ed. Mortimer J. Adler, vol. 52, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 132–133. (Book 5, chapter 4.) 41 ╇Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 49–59. 42 ╇ Dorothee Sölle, Leiden (Freiburg: Herder, 1993), 182–183. 43 ╇Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, vol. 4, Kants Werke: Akademie-Textausgabe (Preussen: Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1903), 429. 39 40

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Swinburne interprets this Kantian principle in a special way. He argues that people may be used as means as long as they are goals ‘on balance’ – that is, that their life is good overall. As long as God is our source of being and our benefactor when our life is seen as a whole, he also has the right to use us as means for someone else’s good. Swinburne compares the situation with parents’ rights to make their children do something the children do not want for the good of the children or their siblings. In addition, Swinburne makes some important qualifications; that God has a greater right to allow another free being to cause us harm, than he has himself to cause us harm; that this right increases if the harm is the only way to achieve some other good; and that it must be possible for God to compensate for the evils allowed.44 With these qualifications in mind, how should God’s right to use humans as means to greater goods be evaluated? This is a difficult moral question, known from debates where utilitarian arguments about great goals achieved by causing some suffering are met with deontological arguments about the right to cause suffering. Swinburne argues that God as our source has a right to use us as means in a limited way, in the same way as parents may demand for example that their daughter baby-sit her younger brother. Probably most would agree that parents have such a limited right, but the limitation here is crucial. The examples Swinburne gives on how parents may use their children as means do not involve much suffering, although at one point he can be interpreted as claiming that good parents may well threaten their children with beating in order to stop them from running into the road. Elsewhere he argues that beating a child may do that child much good, whereas I find it obvious that parents’ use of violence against their children should be extremely limited.45 Anyway, people in this world often experience much more suffering than what parents should allow their children to suffer, but according to Swinburne this suffering is always allowed by God as a means to a greater good. Against this argument, I€would claim that if they could prevent it, parents neither would nor should let their children be tortured or be hit by a car so that someone should learn to help, and I find this claim to be so obvious as not to need further argumentative support. Swinburne then distinguishes between causing harm and allowing harm, and although the distinction has relevance, it is still generally ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 223–236. ╇Ibid., 10–11, 152.

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wrong not to prevent evil if one can – and in the case of natural evils God is often the only one supposed to be able to prevent it. Swinburne makes yet another important distinction, which he himself does not have much use for, but which we shall see is important for Keith Ward. The distinction is between allowing the possibility of evil and allowing€the actual evil.46 If a possibility of evil led to a great good, and this was the only way of reaching the good, this could justify even the actual occurrence of evils if it also included that the evils could not be prevented. For example: It is not morally wrong for parents to have children, although it is possible that the children will suffer in their life. By€ having a child, parents allow the possibility that the child might suffer. But it is the only way to the great goods that life can give, and so the parents are justified in allowing the possibility of evil happening to their children, although they should not allow actual evils to happen to them. However, for this example to apply to God there must be a good reason why God must allow the possibility, and why he cannot prevent actual occurrences afterwards. This is not given in Swinburne’s theodicy, since God, in his view, can prevent every actual evil from occurring. Even though this road is closed for Swinburne, one can still make the case that allowing some evils is justified since they lead to great goods, and allowing the evils is the only way to reach the goods. The argument is often made with examples such as that it would have been right to kill Hitler or someone about to destroy the whole world. These are utilitarian arguments, and they are countered by deontological argument, such as for example that one should never kill, and that consequences cannot be predicted with certainty. Maybe things would have become even worse during WWII if Hitler had been killed. Again, it is a difficult kind of question where each concrete case would need to be discussed. But if for example it was very certain that a man was about to press a button leading to the nuclear destruction of the whole world, and the only way to stop him was to kill him, I think that would be the morally right thing to do. However, there is a difference between preventing a great evil, and doing something evil in order to achieve something good – which is the case in Ivan Karamazov’s example. Can one also use someone as a means, not to prevent a great evil, but to achieve a positive goal? Parents having children is mentioned as an 46

╇Ibid., 11.

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argument in favour of it, but one should note that it involves a good for the child, it is the only way to reach the good, and it only involves allowing the possibility of unpreventable evil. If you could make the case that God’s only way of achieving eternal bliss for many, the baby included, involved the physical possibility of letting the child suffer torture without God being able to prevent it – then that would be morally acceptable for God to do, since it is analogue to what we do when we give birth to children.47 I conclude that there may be cases where it is not morally wrong to allow suffering, but that there are important qualifications for when this is acceptable. The next arguments to be considered say that Swinburne’s theodicy does not contain the required qualifications, so that God’s actions are not morally acceptable. The first argument is against Swinburne’s claim that God can only reach his goal by allowing suffering. The argument is that God could reach his goals in better ways than allowing suffering. There are better ways to reach god’s goals Free will is over-estimated Free will is crucial in Swinburne’s theodicy. Of all the good goals of creation that Swinburne mentions, free will is necessary for most of them, although there are exceptions like beauty. In a condensed version, Swinburne claims that free will is good in itself, and it is necessary for responsibility, for doing good actions, and for love – all of which are also good in themselves. Free will is then used to explain moral evils, since their possibility is claimed to be a logically necessary result of free will. But free will is not used to explain natural evils. Rather, natural evil is a necessary presupposition for the possibility of responsibility and good actions that natural evils lead to. Ward, Griffin, and Hygen have quite similar critiques against this point, and even if they are a little different, Swinburne has the same response, so I present their critique first, and then Swinburne’s response. ╇I think this is how Swinburne would reply to the challenge from Ivan Karamazov, based on the very brief allusion Swinburne makes to Ivan’s speech in ibid., 246, n.245. This is also Keith Ward’s response to Ivan Karamazov (Ward, Divine Action, 57–58). As seen in the presentation, Ward thinks it is obvious that an enormous good is worth some suffering (Ward, Religion and Creation, 220). 47



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Ward mentions briefly that if the evils of this world are the price for freedom, maybe some would rather not be free under such conditions. He seems to agree with the argument, since he says that because of this argument he sees the need to place some emphasis on the necessities€ inherent in the nature of God.48 Griffin distinguishes between two€ kinds of freedom: theological freedom, which means being free vis-à-vis God, and other kinds of freedom.49 Theological freedom makes it possible to freely develop oneself as a moral and spiritual being, but also to sin by doing morally bad actions. Griffin then argues that God could have taken away this freedom, and we would still be able to enjoy music, art, food, love, sex, work, parenting, friendship, and sport. All these goods would still be available, and the only thing lacking would be the sense that they were freely developed by ourselves. God could even make us believe that we had developed them ourselves, and then we would have enjoyed that too – the only one who knew and would not gain would be God. Griffin mentions the possible answer from a free-will theist that this would be deceit by God (and indeed Swinburne makes this argument50), but Griffin then asks what is worst: that we are slightly deceived by believing that we are better than we actually are, or that we experience all the pain of the world?51 Hygen’s critique of this aspect of free-will theodicies is that when we choose between good and evil, we are led by the desires within us to do good or bad. But why could the good desires not be stronger, and the bad desires weaker? Is that not what we believe will happen in heaven, Hygen asks – that we will only want the good?52 In the following I will concentrate on Griffin and Hygen, who both argue in some detail that it would be better if our free will was reduced. But how should this reduction of free will be understood more precisely? There are many nuances in what is meant by free will, and precision is important here in order to evaluate the arguments having to do with free will. For this reason I will now present the distinctions that€Swinburne makes in his understanding of free will. Swinburne

╇Ward, Divine Action, 67. ╇Concerning the following argument, see Griffin, Evil Revisited, 17–18. 50 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 139. 51 ╇ Michael Murray makes the argument that if the deception is necessary in order to reach a greater good, it is not wrong for God to deceive (Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 138). 52 ╇Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 56–57. 48 49

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distinguishes between various kinds of freedom:53 He calls freedom to choose between things that are equally good ‘very unserious free will’. Freedom to choose between goods of different value he calls ‘unserious free will’, whereas freedom to choose between good and evil he calls ‘serious free will’. To this list I would like to add freedom to choose between goods of different value and morally neutral things (such as to choose between sitting on a chair and buying someone flowers). This may be included in his ‘unserious free will’, but I will anyway highlight it as a relevant distinction which I will use later. For simplicity I will refer to these in the following as ‘freedom to choose between goods’,54 ‘freedom to choose between good and bad’, and ‘freedom to choose between good and neutral’. Swinburne also distinguishes between freedom to choose and freedom to act, where the latter also makes the free will efficacious.55 This is a relevant distinction concerning the significance of the free will, and allows us to consider the freedom to choose in our mind between good and bad, but not to act badly. An example would be if God prevented any evil act attempted to be carried out. This is relevant since if this was the case one could still have the goal of developing one’s character so as to freely choose to do good. Finally, Swinburne also distinguishes between various degrees of free will, having to do with the strength of the temptation from good and bad desires. In summary then, Swinburne claims that the goodness of having free will is a function of its freedom, namely its kind (serious, unserious etc); and degree (strength of temptation); and its significance (the greater the importance and range of difference its exercise makes to the world; the difference it made by it being efficacious).56

With this more precise terminology, we can ask what kind of freedom Griffin and Hygen suggest. Griffin seems to suggest that God should only give us freedom to want and choose to do good. In Swinburne’s terms, Griffin wants a limitation on the kind of freedom humans have. Hygen is more open for interpretation; he wants the degree of freedom to be changed, by strengthening the good desires and weakening the€bad. In Swinburne’s terms, he wants a limitation on the degree of 53 ╇Concerning the distinctions within the concept of free will, see Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 84–89. 54 ╇ This includes both goods of same and various positive value. 55 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 11. 56 ╇Ibid., 88.



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freedom we have. But does he also want other kinds of limitation? At the moment, these distinctions are not very important, since SwinÂ� burne gives the same answer anyway – but we will return to these distinctions soon, and then they will be important. Swinburne considers various versions of reduction of free will, but the structure of the answer is the same all along: Free will is better the more serious it is. The main reason for that is that it gives greater responsibility, and responsibility is also better the greater it is – until a certain limit.57 So, although God could have made us naturally good by€ only giving us good desires; or made us always freely choose the€good; or only made good actions possible, Swinburne argues that it is better that we have made ourselves good struggling with bad desires to do evil, and so there are certain good acts (namely overcoming evils) which would not have been available if there were no evils. As seen, Griffin does not think that the value of us freely choosing to do good is worth all the pain that it involves, and this is the crucial point here: how€ great a value to place on being able to do evil and have great responsibility. Griffin would certainly rather live in a happy world of food, music, sex, relationships, enjoyment, and work with reduced responsibility. According to Griffin, God’s goal with creation is that all€entities in the world shall experience existence as good, and constantly experience it as better.58 Swinburne, on the other hand, has a total view where it is more important that humans are good than that humans are happy.59 Does the discussion end there – on how great value one ascribes to responsibility? As argued in the chapter on coherence, also moral values can be argued for and against. I do believe that most people rightly would want a reduced responsibility if it would also greatly reduce suffering. Campaigns for banning guns are good examples of this, and so is the fight against nuclear weapons. In my opinion, it is not good that more and more countries get nuclear weapons, even though the country leaders thereby get increased responsibility by having a more significant free will. Swinburne, however, seems to think that it is good that many people have guns, and that this is a supreme mark of God’s trust in us.60 ╇Ibid., 87–88, 141, 147–148, 159. ╇ Griffin, A Process Christology, 185. 59 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 248. 60 ╇Ibid., 150. This claim by Swinburne made Richard Gale write in a review that ‘you know that something has gone wrong with a theodicy when it reads like a National 57 58

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My chief reason for disagreeing with Swinburne here is that this increase in freedom and responsibility with regard to general human capacities, very often leads to a greater decrease in freedom and responsibility with regard to the total amount of freedom and responsibility among humans because of those who are bombed or shot, and have their lives and freedom destroyed by this. Griffin makes the point that by reducing individual freedom, the total amount of freedom in the world would probably increase, because so many use their freedom to rob other people of their freedom.61 The value of being able to kill someone must be weighed against the value lost for the person who died, and I find it obvious that our preference should be in favour of the weak. By giving someone the opportunity to take away the same opportunity from many more, the total effect is worse than had they not had this opportunity. My possibility of killing you is less worth than all the possibilities you lose if I kill you. What this means is that with efficacious free will to do good and bad, there will be a stronger degree of freedom and responsibility, and some€ actions which are only possible given freedom to do bad (for example freely resisting the desire to something bad). But except for this limitation, all of Swinburne’s good goals of creation could be reached with a free will only to choose between good and neutral actions. There could certainly be beauty, thoughts and feelings, learning, and the enjoyment of goods that Griffin mentioned, like food, drink, music, art, and sex. One could still do good things to each other as opposed to doing neutral things or not doing anything. But some options would be reduced; responsibility for others and possibilities for self-creation would be reduced. But as argued above, in total these possibilities are probably more reduced in a world with serious free will, since so many are deprived of their possibilities by power abuse by others. For this reason, Swinburne’s argument of increased responsibility is not very good. Love does not require free will But are there no other goods which require the freedom to do evil, or which legitimate the freedom to do evil? We have so far considered the Rifle Association bumper sticker’. (Richard M. Gale, ‘Swinburne on Providence’, Religious Studies 36, no. 2 (2000): 217). 61 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 178.



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good of responsibility, but the most common suggestion is love. Many free-will-theodicists claim that love is a great good, but that it requires free will. This is often supported by the claim that dolls or machines cannot love.62 Swinburne agrees that love, and thereby loving relationships, are the most important things in life, and that a loving relationship requires freedom, interdependence, and responsibility.63 Griffin disagrees with the claim that love requires free will.64 For this reason we must ask: Must one be able to choose between good and evil in order to love; or is reduced free will enough; or is no free will required at all? In discussing this we should distinguish between two kinds of love: love as in personal relationships between lovers or friends on the one side, and love as required in the command of loving thy neighbour, which requires good actions towards others, unknown and enemies included. These are different kinds of love; in personal love the other person is so highly appreciated that a mutually wanted relationship is a goal in itself, but it is impossible to share this kind of close love with everyone. Neighbour-love, however, one should strive to show towards all (anonymous people in need on another continent included), but this is not based on appreciation of and desire for a mutually wanted relationship with the other. Neither of these two kinds of love requires the freedom to do both good and evil. Regarding neighbour-love, one may be naturally inclined only to do good, and that would be a good thing. If this natural inclination is due to a self-made character, that is fine, but even if it just was so from nature’s side that we only had good desires, we should still consider it good. After all, is not God claimed to have only such good desires? Or we could have only good and neutral desires, or only free

62 ╇See for example Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 195; or Vincent Brümmer, The Model of Love: A Study in Philosophical Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 160–163. 63 ╇Swinburne can be interpreted as thinking that the relationship with God is the most important thing in life, because he says that the primary point of life is the afterlife, the primary point of the afterlife is the beatific vision, and the beatific vision can be interpreted as divine relationship. That love is the most important, or at least as important as free will and responsibility, can be interpreted from Swinburne’s agreement with Vincent Brümmer on the importance of love. Swinburne also agrees with Brümmer that free will is a necessary requirement for love. In several passages, Swinburne claims that relationship requires freedom, interdependence, and responsibility (Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 93–94, 106, 119, 195, 232, 250; and Swinburne, The Existence of God, 119–120, 223). 64 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 18.

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will to choose between good and neutral things, which meant freedom only to do good or neutral actions. In that case, the ones receiving our good deed would also be grateful since we did something good we did not have to do. The extra gratefulness that would be added by them being happy that we did something good instead of something evil towards them is of little value compared to all the evil that results from our ability to do evil. So I conclude that neighbour-love does not require free will to do bad things. But what about personal love? Is it not better to be with someone who freely wants to be with us? Can there be personal love without free€will, or would that make us into dolls or machines?65 On the other side, consider the mother who can do nothing but love her child. Is there anything wrong with this love, or is it rather a good example of love? The relation between personal love and free will is important in free-will-theodicies, and it is also important in the final conclusion. For this reason I will spend some space on how Swinburne understands love, before answering the question of whether personal love requires free will. According to Swinburne, love is an emotion which is complex and involves beliefs, desires, and sensations, as well as various intentional actions. Swinburne describes the involuntary sides of love as follows: Loving someone involves the belief that some aspects of them are good. Centrally it involves desire: Loving someone also includes the desire that things go well with the beloved; the desire that we may interact closely with them and share desires with them; the desire to know them and that we desire the same things; and that the beloved should desire the same of us as we desire of them. And love involves (but less centrally than the desires) some sensations connected to the satisfaction of these desires, or lack of satisfaction of desires. Unique love is good because it values someone for their particularity.66 But love also has an active component: Love involves doing and seeking to do things with and for the beloved. According to Swinburne, there is a special value in love which is freely given, in which the actions are freely chosen.67

╇Brümmer suggests that free will is required for such love (Brümmer, The Model of Love, 160–163), and Swinburne agrees with him (Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 195). 66 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 77–79. 67 ╇Ibid., 100–101. 65



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Based on what Swinburne writes about the components of our mental life, it can be inferred what he thinks about the passive and active aspects of love.68 Loving someone includes the involuntary belief that they are good. But one may relate actively to beliefs and try to change them over time. Beliefs can be changed by new thoughts and experiences, and this can be achieved by further investigation of the belief. Relating actively to thoughts could be done by repeating thoughts and deciding to focus on a subject. Concerning love then, from the considerations above it can be inferred that the belief that the beloved person is good is a result of our experience with and thoughts about that person. If we want to strengthen the belief that this person is good, we can focus our mind on the positive aspects of the person, instead of thinking about the negative. In addition to belief, Swinburne thinks that love has to do with desires: the desire that things go well with the beloved; the desire that we may interact closely with them, and share desires with them; the desire to know them and that we desire the same things; and that the beloved should desire the same of us as we desire of them. All of these desires are involuntary, but are most often combined with the belief that they are good. Sometimes, however, desires might be combined with the belief that those desires are bad, for example if the beloved person is married to someone else, or you have just broken up, and then you want to change your loving desires towards the person you cannot have. But in other cases you often think that your loving desires are good, and want to strengthen the desires in order to keep up a good relationship, like marriage. How can desires be actively influenced? According to Swinburne, desires cannot be chosen, but you can influence and change them. You can use drugs, you can seek or avoid situations that stimulate the desire, and you can think thoroughly through them. The reasoning behind this last point is that beliefs can change desires. Relating actively to the desires involved in love, you can seek or avoid (depending on whether you seek to increase or decrease your desire) situations that stimulate the desires of love. If you want to get over someone, you should not have their picture in a heart frame on your wall, for example. And you can focus your thoughts on negative€or positive sides of the beloved. Finally, love also involves the sensations

68 ╇Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, 17–19, 63–65, 126–141. I argue a long version of this case in Søvik, The Problem of Evil and the Power of God, 213–217.

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connected to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the desires. In order to actively change this, one must either seek or avoid situations where the various desires can be satisfied. It becomes clear that there are a lot of active elements also in the passive sides of love. Swinburne called beliefs, desires, and sensations passive, while he said that love also had the active component of doing good against the beloved. This is clearly an active element, and you can change the love you feel by doing more or fewer actions. These are all tightly connected. For example, you can focus on positive thoughts of the beloved, and increase your desire to be with him or her and do good actions towards him or her. And if you do a good act towards the beloved, his or her belief about your relationship may change in a positive direction, increasing the desire for relationship and thereby also leading to sensations of satisfied desires. This means that love is a process combining passive and active aspects, where one can actively work in order for there to be a good circle or a vicious circle. Having seen now what sides of love one can act freely in relation to, and which sides of love one cannot act freely in relation to, what kind of freedom is necessary for love to be love? What does it mean that love requires freedom? The common illustration is that a machine cannot love you, nor a doll. And a common conclusion that is drawn is often that one must be free to do good and bad actions, but is that right? As we have seen, Swinburne argues that the beliefs and desires connected to love are involuntary. They just arise, and you cannot help it. You do not decide whether or not they should arise. On the other hand, if they arise, you can relate actively towards them. You can either try to enter a loving relationship with the one you love, wherein the active part would be to seek the relationship, be together with the other, make commitments, and do good actions. Or you can decide not to enter such a relationship for one reason or another, and also try to lose the desires and beliefs connected to the other. Why would we not think of it as love if a machine said ‘I love you’? It is because it would be programmed to love you. But why does that matter if the beliefs and desires of love are involuntary anyway? The reason is that I want the involuntary desire of love to arise in the other as a result of meeting and getting to know me; I want to be the cause of their love. Furthermore, I want the whole person (including beliefs, desires and higher order desires) to decide that they would like to form a relationship with me. One reason for this is that when you love someone you express that that particular person is unique and valuable,



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so valuable that you want to be in a loving relationship with just him or her, even if you do not have to, or could have been with others. By seeking such a relationship, you implicitly say that the other is the most valuable person you know. A machine does not do this, since I am not the cause for its love; it has been programmed. And if it could do nothing else, then that does not mean that I have this special value that love otherwise expresses. Does this mean that we have to be able to do good or bad actions in order for such love to be free? No. The desire may arise involuntarily – but it cannot be programmed or destined; the other person’s encounter with me must be the cause of their love. And it must be possible not to enter into a relationship even if the desires are involuntary, but there is no need for a possibility to do evil actions. Concluding on this third argument against Swinburne, it seems that as long as God has the power to give us any kind of free will, serious and efficacious free will and its results are not that good in themselves, nor are they the only and necessary way to achieve such goods as responsibility and love. Within the framework provided by the concept of an omnipotent God, there are good arguments suggesting that there are other ways to reach better worlds than in the picture drawn by Swinburne. Some evils are not outweighed This kind of argument has already been touched upon several times, but it has many sides and not all have yet been discussed. One can talk about a) a concrete evil being outweighed by another good, about b) evils being outweighed by goods in the life of an individual, and of c) evils being outweighed in the world as a whole. In addition to all being relevant for the fourth aspect of Swinburne’s claim that there are no genuine evils, the first (a) is relevant since Swinburne argues that God allows every evil for the sake of a greater good, the second (b) is relevant since Swinburne argues that for God to have the right to allow evils against one individual for the good of another, each individual’s life must on balance be good, and the third (c) is relevant for the question of the amount of evil and whether or not God should have created our world at all. So far we have considered some cases of type (a) – concrete evils versus concrete goods, and I have argued that the goods of very serious free will do not outweigh the evil results of very serious free will, nor

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does our knowledge about or compassion for animals who died in pain early in evolution outweigh the pain that they probably suffered. This kind of animal pain would extend to type b as well – if animals feel pain, and an animal died in pain like in a forest fire right after being born, then most likely that life as a whole was overall bad. Under this point we will therefore focus on the balance of good and evil in the life of humans, and in the history of the world as a whole. But before we start discussing various weighings, it is useful shortly to discuss what is involved in this weighing. Weighing good against evil In the discussion above I have already concluded that some weighing is acceptable, and there have been some concrete instances of weighing of good against bad, which then presupposed that such weighing could be done in those instances. Under this point I will consider more precisely what such weighing is and how it can be done. First of all there is a difference between making such a weighing theoretically, and then acting based on the result of this thought process. Sometimes one can make a weighing, but does not need to act according to it, whereas other times one has to act, and must make a weighing before the action takes place. One can then discuss the moral side of this weighing, and this has already been done to some extent in the discussion of whether God ought to use evils as a means to good. I did not consider weighing evils against goods when we are ourselves agent and recipient of the evil (for example when we choose to help someone lift something heavy), which obviously is acceptable in many situations. Focus was on weighing good against evil when others were the ones who had to experience the evil, and we found that there may be moral openings also for this, but under strict conditions. But there is also a practical side to this weighing – is it operational, and if so, with what degree of certainty? It can be quite difficult to weigh an evil against a good. One thing is questions where the weighing is obvious (I will let my shoes become wet in order to save a child from drowning). But there are very many moral dilemmas where it is very difficult to choose the right alternative. And when we then move on to enormously complex questions like weighing all the goods in the world against all the evils, it is practically impossible to get an answer with any certainty. Both Griffin and Swinburne admit this, but they consider€there to be some thought experiments that nevertheless suggest



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that the world’s existence is overall better than had it not existed.69 I maintain the conclusion that weighing good against evil is morally acceptable in some situations, but that this is often difficult both morally and practically, and more difficult the more complex the comparison becomes. We do not even now what restrictions God may have on his creating, but the discussion is made based on what we know or believe to be the case. These considerations are then presupposed as we now proceed to the difficult task of such weighing. Human lives where good did not outweigh evil According to Griffin, many have lives so miserable that they curse their creator rather than praise him.70 Hygen does not see much support for the claim that good outweighs evil on a larger scale – it rather seems to be the opposite which is true for many. According to Hygen, little can be made out of this point.71 For Swinburne, on the other hand, the claim is crucial for the success of his theodicy.72 Also for Ward, it is crucial that human suffering is overwhelmingly compensated for each individual.73 In order to defend the idea that good outweighs evil in human lives, Swinburne makes use of two different kinds of thought experiment, where the first examples are to argue that human lives are actually generally considered by the humans living them to be overall good, whereas the second kind of examples are to argue the value of being in use. We will consider each type in the following. The first experiment is that if there was a machine one could hook up to and become unconscious for a few hours a day, few would use this machine, and rightly so. This shows that life is good in itself, and few want to escape from it.74 One could jokingly suggest that this machine is already invented and is called TV. Joking aside, I think that many actually do want to escape this world, for instance by the use of drugs. Many especially want to escape suffering, as when they seek the doctor’s help in order to have euthanasia. Swinburne continues to press 69 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 237–246; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 164; and Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 229. 70 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 16. 71 ╇Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 48. 72 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 239. 73 ╇Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 197; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 139. 74 ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 240.

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this argument by pointing out that very few also commit suicide. Although some probably abstain for the sake of others who would be left behind in grief, Swinburne still thinks the majority abstain for their own sake and the hope for something better. Of course many are happy, but the question here is whether each and every person has a better life on balance. Many actually do commit suicide, but this opens a difficult debate about whether that is because of mental illness or if it can be freely and rationally chosen – a debate which I will not enter here since that would lead us too far astray. Many consider committing suicide but do not do it, because, as Swinburne says, they hope for better times. Yet these better times may not come before they die. So I think that arguments claiming that people generally do not want to escape from their lives have little support in reality and serve poorly to establish the point that all people have a life which is better overall. Even if the point cannot be driven home by descriptions of how people live, Swinburne may still argue that one should consider one’s life as good overall, and that one should not try to escape from it. He thinks that our culture has dulled us into not recognizing the greatness of being in use, while focusing too much on pleasure. Although I share this general opinion, there is still a question of balance. Swinburne has some thought experiments on the greatness of being in use, which I find unbalanced. Swinburne asks us to consider a case where we could only live for five minutes (five minutes as adults): Would we choose to have a five minute heroin trip or give birth to a baby? Swinburne argues we should choose to give birth to a baby, and I agree because that would be a great good for the baby born. Swinburne also has an example where we should help a happy zombie to a better life of moral awareness, because it would be better to become aware of good and bad even if he was happy as a zombie.75 These examples only support the uncontroversial side of Swinburne’s claims about the value of being in use. Most people will agree that it is sometimes good to be in use. But what if some of the alternatives are changed: Would you rather have a five minute life on a heroin trip, or be innocently tortured for information you do not have? Or even: Would you rather have a five minute swim not being useful to anyone, or be innocently tortured? Or would you rather die in a forest fire ╇Ibid., 242–244.

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without anyone knowing it, but the usefulness of it is that you would be part of later compassion with anonymous sufferers? I think these examples are much more on target when we are to consider Swinburne’s claim, because he claims that it was good for the fawn that died, it was good for the slaves that they helped the slave owners make serious choices about whether or not to stop keeping slaves, and Swinburne even claims that it was good for the Jews who died in the Holocaust that they made many serious choices possible as to helping Jews or preventing genocides later.76 So the question of how we weigh these things against each other becomes essential. What arguments can be given to support the one or the other? Swinburne suggests that our moral sense is corrupted so that we need moral truths revealed to us. This he argues that the Bible provides, and he quotes various passages where the Bible says that it is good to be in use, and suffer for the sake of others.77 Concerning these passages, most of them are about self-chosen suffering or self-chosen being in use, which of course is an important difference compared to someone else deciding to use you. Furthermore, I believe that all of the passages praise the suffering of being in use as good because it relieves other people’s suffering. It is good to relieve such suffering because it is bad that other people suffer. But this is very different from suffering in order to give other people a choice to help you stop suffering, which is Swinburne’s way of legitimating much suffering. The value of being in use is much greater when it relieves other actual suffering than when it means ‘suffering in order to create a possibility of relieving that same suffering’. Returning from the Bible and back to the question of how to weigh suffering against being in use, the problem is again to find arguments for or against the value of the good against the value of the evil. What resources do we have for judging in such a case? I argued in chapter six that coherence could also be used as a criterion of value judgments. The three aspects of coherence – comprehensiveness, cohesiveness and consistency – are all relevant in that regard, and I will use them now to discuss the question of how to weigh the evil in the world against the good in the world. Comprehensiveness has to do with integration of data. For the topic at hand, experience is an important datum. ╇Ibid., 103, 151, 245. ╇Ibid., 246–249. The passages are Acts 20:35; Mark 10:42–5; John 13:1–16; Acts 5:41; Col 1:24; 1 Cor 9:18; John 3:19; and Matt 5:1–12. 76 77

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For example, there are many concentration camp survivors from WWII who have become great people and have done great things afterwards. For some of them, that probably partly has to do with what they experienced in the war. But does that justify what they experienced, or outweigh it? I know of none who survived the concentration camps who think that it was worth it, but on the other hand I do not have much knowledge of this field. I will not discuss the question in detail here, since I believe it is safe to say that in general, people who have experienced horrible things would rather wish that they had not happened. Swinburne’s argument against this has already been mentioned. He thinks that our culture has dulled our moral judgments so that we do not recognize the greatness of being in use, but rather focus mostly on pleasure.78 This means that he rejects the moral evaluation that sufferers have who do not agree that their suffering led to goods that outweigh the evilness of their suffering. In order to argue against this last argument by Swinburne, the coherence-aspect of cohesiveness can be used. Cohesiveness has to do with the connection between elements in a theory. Evils can lead to evils and evils can lead to goods. But most often, evils are connected with more evils than with goods. One can take the case of a person being beaten to death in blind violence, and list up all the evils that it led to and why they were evil, and match this against the goods that it led to. In so many cases of such evils, be it abusive upbringing of children or be it war, the general picture is that evils are connected with new evils, and vicious circles are the rule. Vicious circles can of course be broken, but it seems very plausible that in some scenarios an evil led to more evils in such a manner that considered in total, good did not outweigh evil. Swinburne would of course disagree with my evaluation of the evils that the evils led to. Remember that he considers the opportunity to do something good in a situation where someone suffers to be a greater good than the suffering undergone.79 Against this claim, I will use a third aspect of coherence, namely consistency, and argue that Swinburne’s position is not consistent. Swinburne wants us not to make other people suffer, but why it is not good that we make other people suffer if it is overall good? Swinburne says that only God has the right to allow suffering, but why is that? If the suffering is overall good, then

╇Ibid., 244. ╇Ibid., 162, 217.

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I am doing something good when I beat someone. The one beaten gets to be useful for the goodness of me seriously influencing the world and freely shaping my character, and although I actually become a worse person, which is bad, I make it possible for others to show courage and compassion by helping the person I am beating. What I did must be overall good, otherwise God would have stopped it. If Swinburne’s theodicy is right, all evil-doers can rightly say: ‘My action is overall good, otherwise God would have stopped me from doing what I do’. So why should I not be violent? Swinburne’s reply is that we humans do not have the right to cause other people suffering.80 But why do we not have that right if what we cause is overall good? Because of the other people’s freedom? But do we not give them more freedom when we beat them since we then give them the possibility of being in use? Of course I agree that we do not have the right to beat others, but this prohibition is so much more understandable when we also believe that beating others leads to more evil overall considered. And if our lives are overall good, should we not also suffer in heaven? Why not, if it is overall good for each individual? I believe Swinburne’s answer to this is that it is both good of God to€ make a world with suffering and good to make a world without suffering – he does not have to choose the one or the other, but is good in making both.81 But is it not better with our world of suffering where there are goods like serious responsibility than a paradise where these goods are not available? Swinburne’s reply to this is that God only has the right to allow suffering for a limited period of time.82 One could still wonder why, if it is overall best with the suffering, but Swinburne’s answer would probably be that it is only overall best if it is limited, and so I will grant Swinburne that point. As this discussion shows, it is possible to go very far with Swinburne’s strategy in claiming that something should be considered of high value, such as he does with his evaluation of being in use. Logically speaking, if evil is good (in a larger perspective), there is no problem of evil. But although it is possible to claim this, it is difficult to make a convincing€ case that it is. The discussion above showed that many things make€more sense if not all evils are outweighed by goods. And this is

╇Ibid., 245–246. ╇Ibid., 249. 82 ╇Ibid. 80 81

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probably why most people reject Swinburne’s theodicy, because of the arguments he must make out of Auschwitz or slavery when he argues that they were overall good. It fails to make a coherent account of our experiences with such evils. Good does not outweigh evil in the world overall Moving from the question of weighing good against evils in individual lives, we now turn to the question of the overall goodness of the world. Swinburne gives some thought experiments to show that the world, as it is, is overall good – and is better than other alternatives. If you could choose, would you rather have a world where all your choices mattered ten percent of what they do today? Suffering would be reduced, but so would the goodness. Is it obvious that such a world would be better than the one we have today? Swinburne’s answer is ‘of course not’.83 Again, Swinburne puts up two alternatives that strengthen his case, where other alternatives would be more relevant. What about making the good choices matter 100 percent and the bad choices 10 percent? One way would be to strengthen the good desires, as Hygen suggested. And above I made the case that freedom between good and neutral would give a good world where freedom to do evil was not necessary. Swinburne’s second thought experiment is to ask what you would choose if you were given the choice before birth between entering this world of serious choices where what we did mattered greatly, and a world of eternal low-grade kicks of pleasure. Since we cannot be asked before birth, God had to choose for us, and Swinburne says that God pays us the compliment of assuming that we would have chosen to be heroes.84 An important presupposition is not made explicit in this thought experiment: Do both worlds exist, and can we choose which of them to enter? Then it would be best to enter the world of suffering in order to help. But in order for the thought experiment to be relevant, it should be that we could choose which of the two worlds should exist. Then it would be wrong to choose the world of suffering, because we would then have to choose that other people should suffer so that we could be heroes. Then it would be more heroic to choose the world of low-grade kicks (why not high-grade kicks?), because we would then make sure that no one suffered. ╇Ibid., 243. ╇Ibid., 244.

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This means that I do not find Swinburne’s thought experiments at all convincing. And they have further problems. Swinburne says that the thought experiments should not be turned around and our freedom increased too much, because at one point the world will then become overall bad. But Swinburne does not think that limit is crossed yet. There are two different questions here. On the one hand: Is the world overall bad, so that it would be better if it did not exist? On the other hand: Is this world worse than some other alternative God might have created? Concerning the first question of whether the world is overall bad, neither Swinburne nor Ward nor Griffin think that.85 And if you add that after this life it will be eternal bliss, then you can always make the case that it will be overall good. Swinburne has a more difficult task, since he argues that our lives must be overall good also before we die, and then he gets the problems discussed above about human lives where good did not outweigh evil. Another question is whether this world is better than an alternative world, and Swinburne tries to make that case as well. Above I made the case for a world with reduced free will, where people had freedom to do good and neutral actions, which I argued would have been a better world as far as we can tell. I will not repeat the argumentation here, just the conclusion that I think such a world would have been better than the one we have now. Griffin discusses a counterargument to this, namely that there is no best world, so no matter how good the world was, one could always complain that God should have made a better world. Although agreeing that there is some abstract plausibility to this argument, Griffin still asks if anyone can find it plausible in the face of concrete evils like the Holocaust?86 I would say that there is an important difference between something being bad and you want it to be good, and something being good and you want it to be better. If the world was nothing but pain, its inhabitants would be right in wanting a better alternative and should not be satisfied with the argument that they probably would still complain when they got a good life. The worse the world is, the more justified the complaint is, and I cannot see that we are beyond justified complaint yet, although some of us are.

85 ╇Ibid., 237–246; Ward, Divine Action, 34; and Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 229. 86 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 38–39, 88–89.

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Another argument against the claim that there are better alternative worlds is that then it would not have been we (as in you and I, the token individuals who live in our world) who existed, but someone else.87 The problem with this reply is that when we token individuals first exist, it is still difficult to understand why God lets us suffer the amount we do if he could prevent it. It would still be you and I who existed, even if God prevented more of the evils that happened. So I agree with Swinburne and Griffin that it is better that we exist than not, especially if there is a good afterlife, but it is still a difficult question why people suffer so much now. Do the accounts of Swinburne, Ward, and Griffin presuppose that all must be saved and have a happy afterlife? Griffin believes in life after death, but he does not believe in damnation, whereas Swinburne and Ward think that all will have a real choice of whether or not to participate in the kingdom of God, either in this life or after death.88 By a ‘real choice’ I here mean a free and informed choice where it is possible to say yes or no, with a full understanding of the consequences of this choice.89 If such was the case, then probably most would choose eternal relationship with God, but it would also be possible for some to reject it and choose annihilation instead. Maybe some do not want eternal life for some reason they find good. That choice would then be their responsibility. Swinburne’s answer is the one being discussed here, but I must make the disclaimer that this question of salvation is too big to discuss here.90 To conclude the discussion of Swinburne’s theodicy: I have now discussed four elements in Swinburne’s main claim that there are no genuine evils: that all evils lead to greater goods; that God has the right to allow the evils; that the evils are the only way to reach the goods they make possible; and that the value of the goods outweighs the evils. Against this I have claimed that based on Swinburne’s account it is highly likely that there has been a great amount of anonymous pain ╇Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 192–193. ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 37; Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 198; Ward, Divine Action, 34; and Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 143. 89 ╇ This seems also to be how Swinburne defines a ‘considered choice of destiny’ (see Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 198), and how Ward understands a ‘knowing rejection’ (see Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 143). 90 ╇I have briefly defended such a view as authentically Christian elsewhere, but written in Norwegian only, see Atle Søvik, ‘Hvordan kan Gud alene skape troen, og mennesket samtidig være ansvarlig for sin vantro?’, Ung Teologi 35, no. 4 (2002). 87 88



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early in evolution, which has made no good choices or actions possible and with which no one showed compassion. Further, this pain has been in an amount too large to make any difference for our compassion, and it has brought no helpful learning – with one possible exception: that we have learned from it that there are genuine evils. But that would of course be of no help for Swinburne, who is trying to make the opposite case. The possible exception to this counterargument is if animals do not feel pain, but we have no good reason to say for sure that they do not, and then we should not presuppose it. Furthermore, although God may have the right to allow some evils, there are many evils which do not fulfil the criteria for his allowing them, since these evils were not the only way to reach the goods they made possible. A reduced free will to only do good and neutral actions would have done the job better. The increased responsibility that only comes with the freedom to do evil is probably not increased when considered in total, because such freedom and responsibility take away even more freedom and responsibility from others. For this reason, I found a world of reduced freedom to be better overall. This case does depend on the difficult question of weighing how good a good is in relation to how bad the correlating bad is. By considering the coherence of various arguments especially with experience, and by considering thought experiments for and against, I found it reasonable that there were many cases where free will and being in use did not outweigh the evils that had happened. These last cases are to be added to the case already discussed with animal pain. As a preliminary conclusion on Swinburne, I conclude€that it is plausible that there are genuine evils. Swinburne’s main claim that there are no genuine evils is thereby implausible and then his whole theodicy becomes implausible. This is a great problem for Swinburne, since he claims (and I agree) that a theodicy must be plausible. In order to be plausible it must be coherent, and the problem of coherence (in my definition of the term, not Swinburne’s) in Swinburne’s theodicy is the amount of data and arguments contradicting his main claim that there are no genuine evils.

CHAPTER TEN

Ward Compared to the other theodicies in this discussion, Keith Ward’s theodicy does not have one obvious main claim. There are several important claims in his theodicy that work together in mutual support, and in different books he has different emphases. But even if he does not focus as much on one main claim as the others, I still believe that there is one claim that is more important than the others, in the sense that it is crucial in order for the theodicy to work. This is his claim that God could only create this unique world with the risk of pain, and what is so unique with this world is that it is an independent world. In many senses Ward is similar to Swinburne, and for this reason much of the discussion of Swinburne is relevant also for Ward. Many discussions of the two could have been identical, and many of the counterarguments are the same. Those discussions that would have been identical will not be repeated. Focus in the following discussion will be on bringing out the differences between Swinburne and Ward to ease the comparison. The critique of Ward is similar to the critique of Swinburne, and much of the critique I listed from Griffin and Hygen against Swinburne is also relevant against Ward. For this reason, and for the sake of comparison, the counterarguments against Swinburne are very similar to those against Ward. The first argument against Swinburne was that there are evils that do not lead to a greater good. Ward agrees with this, so this is not an argument against Ward. However, the critique from Swinburne, Griffin, and Hygen then becomes that a God with the power Ward ascribes to him should prevent these genuine evils.1 This is the first counterargument against Ward: God should not allow genuine evils. The second argument against Swinburne was that God should not use evils as means to a good. This has already been discussed, and at this point Swinburne and Ward agree: Evils can be used as a means for good, if the evils are overwhelmingly outweighed and the evil is the 1 ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 29; Griffin, Evil Revisited, 20; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 53.



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only way to reach this good. Since I accepted this conclusion in the previous chapter, this discussion will not be repeated in this discussion of Ward. The third argument against Swinburne was that there are better ways to reach God’s goals. Although Ward envisions a slightly different goal than Swinburne, this objection is relevant here. Against Ward, one may argue that there are better ways to the goal: God could have made an independent world without having to make people suffer on the way. The fourth argument against Swinburne was that there are evils that are not outweighed by the goods they lead to. Although Ward does not claim that each evil leads to a specific greater good which outweighs it, the argument is relevant against Ward. One could argue that the goal of an independent world is not worth all the suffering it took to make it. Finally, an extra argument is added against Ward, and this is the fifth€counterargument: There are other goals that would have been better than the independent world, for example a world with less independence and less suffering. This critique is somewhat similar to critique that has been raised against Swinburne, but since the focus on an independent world is special for Ward, I add it in the end as an argument on its own. The logic of this structure is as follows: The first argument is the basic critique that an omnipotent and loving God should prevent genuine evils. Even though there are important distinctions in Ward’s answer to this critique, his main answer is that God allows genuine evils for the sake of an independent world. This is his main claim, which is then attacked from various sides with three different arguments, namely that there is a better way to the goal; that the goal is not worth the way; and that there could have been a better goal. These three counterarguments can all be found in the long argument by David Griffin, where he argues against free-will-theodicies that there could have been a world with free humans but no suffering, and that this would have been better than what we have today.2 God ought not to allow genuine evils There is a fundamental belief to be found in Swinburne, Griffin, and Hygen, namely that there seems to be evils in this world that God ought 2

╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 17–19.

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to prevent if he had the power to do so. This is their chief problem, which they try to solve in different ways. Swinburne believes that God has the power required, and so he rather argues that there actually are no such evils that God should prevent – this only seems to be the case. Griffin and Hygen, on the other hand, hold that genuine evils are a fact, and so rather explore a concept of God where God does not have the power to prevent many of these genuine evils. But they all agree that God ought not to allow genuine evils to happen, and so they try either to deny the evils or reduce God’s power. Ward, on the other hand, does not deny the existence of genuine evils, nor does he deny that God has the power to do miracles – so how does he respond to the critique that God should not allow genuine evils to happen? Concerning this critique, Ward has two important distinctions. These are on one hand the distinction between antecedent and consequent willing, and on the other hand the distinction between actual evils and the possibility of actual evils.3 According to Ward, God does not antecedently want anyone to suffer. But God (antecedently) wants a certain kind of world, where suffering is a physically necessary possibility. I believe this means that God does not want that suffering to be a physical possibility, but by metaphysical necessity, suffering must be a physical possibility in the kind of independent world that God (antecedently) wants.4 This means that God must consequently will the physical possibility of evil, since that is a necessary part of the world he wants. In ordinary language, we would say that one must accept what necessarily follows from your wish; for instance, you must accept that a party you do not like might win, when you want to have democracy. If you want democracy, it follows that a party may win which you did not want to win.5 Likewise, if God wants an independent world, the physical possibility of suffering follows by metaphysical necessity, according to Ward. In terms of the distinction: God antecedently wants an independent world. An independent world necessarily contains the possibility of suffering. As a consequence of this, God consequently wants a world where suffering is possible. Hygen is critical to the distinction between antecedent and consequent willing when it is used to defend God’s relation to evil. He argues that if God is considered to have power over all circumstances, he ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 47–48. ╇ Ibid., 49–50. 5 ╇ Ibid., 48–49. 3 4



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knows what he must consequently want, and if he allows that, then the consequent will is God’s will. Hygen rejects that God’s will should be divided so that God’s will becomes self-contradictory.6 The critique does not apply to Ward, since he does not argue that God has power over all circumstances. There are metaphysical necessities that are excluded from what God decides. The distinction saves God’s will from being contradictory, since it is only inconsistent so say p and not-p at the same time with regard to the same. If this is so, it is entirely correct to say that God does not want anyone to actually suffer, although he has accepted the physical possibility that they may. That does make God responsible for making a system where suffering is physically possible, because he did not have to make the system at all, but if he did make it, there had to be the physical possibility of suffering in it. That an independent world must contain the physical possibility of evil is a metaphysical necessity that is not chosen by God, according to Ward. But that God creates our independent world where suffering is physically possible instead of not creating it, is a free choice by God. Therefore, God is only responsible for having actualized our world at all, when he could have chosen not to. He is not responsible for the fact that an independent world like ours must contain the physical possibility of suffering. This also means that God is not responsible for actual evils, because he only created a world where they were physically possible, and so it is not physically necessary that they become actualized. When evils become actual, it is not God who make them actual, but someone else. This would become more complicated if God could prevent each evil, because then he could be accused of being a guilty bystander. So far, the two distinctions that have been presented are used also in Swinburne’s theodicy, but Swinburne has an extra problem, because he believes that God’s power is infinite, and that God can therefore prevent any actual evil. When that is the case, God can be accused of being a guilty bystander. Against Swinburne, one could therefore argue like Hygen that distinguishing between antecedent and consequent willing is irrelevant, because how could something happen that a God with unlimited omnipotence does not want to happen? At this point, another difference between Swinburne and Ward becomes relevant, namely that Ward believes that God has a finite amount of power (limited 6

╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 29–33.

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omnipotence), whereas Swinburne holds that God has infinite power (unlimited omnipotence). Ward argues that God has the nature he has by metaphysical necessity, and that also goes for the amount of power that God has. He does not find one amount to be more probable than another, since any amount will be a brute fact anyway. If God has an infinite amount of power, it is easy to assume that God is able to create any kind of world without suffering. This means that Ward uses the idea of a finite amount of power in God in order to answer the question of why God could not create an independent world without the physical possibility of suffering.7 Griffin claims that one cannot believe in both creation out of nothing and that there are metaphysical necessities not chosen by God. Creation out of nothing implies that there are no metaphysical necessities, according to Griffin.8 Hygen agrees, and claims that if God has created the world, he cannot bow to any necessities.9 But Griffin and Hygen do not support this claim by arguments. Ward however, argues that God must have an unchosen nature before he makes his first choice. I can see no incoherence in the claim that there might be metaphysical principles that are part of God’s being, which are not chosen by God, even if God creates the world out of nothing, and so I see no reason to reject Ward’s claim here. Concerning God’s power, it is of course very difficult to assess how much power is needed to make a world with or without suffering, since the world is so complex that we humans cannot know what is possible and impossible when it comes to creating a world. Nevertheless, it seems prima facie more plausible that God has some limitations on his possibilities if the amount of his power is finite than if it is infinite, although at this point we must admit that it is beyond our human capacity to assess which worlds are possible to create. Ward uses the anthropic principle and the phenomenon of interconnectedness as support that it might be very difficult to create a world where humans can develop, and maybe only a few options are metaphysically possible.10 This understanding of God’s power as finite could be emphasised strongly in Ward’s theodicy, and interpreted as a main claim. At one point Ward says that in light of the many evils in the world, ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 27, 42–43, 67–68. ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 227. ╇ 9 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 26. 10 ╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 94–95, 103–104. ╇ 7 ╇ 8



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he has ‘sought to put a great deal of emphasis on the necessities inherent in the Divine nature’.11 However, since my intention is to read the different theodicies as coherently as possible, I have not interpreted the finiteness of God’s power in Ward’s theodicy as the main claim, and the reason is as follows: Reducing God’s power in Ward’s theodicy to the extent that God cannot prevent the evils that occur would have been very problematic. The reason is that the way that Ward understands God, God must still be extremely powerful. He thinks that God created matter and natural laws out of nothing, which must mean that he could still create almost anything out of nothing. And he believes that God will be able to offer all humans eternal bliss. I guess this must be as close to infinite power as you can come. It does seem likely then that God, also with the finite power that Ward ascribes him, should still be able to create a world with less suffering, and even no suffering, or prevent more evils in this world. Ward’s distinctions are clarifying, and his concept of finite power may help somewhat as support to the case that God could not create an independent world without the possibility of suffering. But if he thinks that God’s power is very limited by God’s nature, then this becomes inconsistent with God creating out of nothing, and creating a world of eternal bliss. In order to be coherent, Ward must think that God’s power is almost equal to infinite power, and this is why it would be problematic to emphasize too strongly the finiteness of God’s power. But how does Ward then answer the question of why God accepts and allows so many evils to happen when it seems likely that a God with the amount of power that Ward ascribes to him could have created a world with less and even no suffering? Ward’s best answer to this is that God wants a certain unique world with unique goods of beauty, but especially the unique good of independent human beings. In order for our world to be a world of independent beings, God created it law-like and not determined, which had the result that evils could happen that God could not prevent. Since Ward’s theory is that God could not prevent the evils, he can agree that there are genuine evils in the world – evils that God does not (antecedently) want to happen. Since he does not make Swinburne’s claim that there are no genuine evils, his theory is not contradicted by the claim that there are genuine evils. However, since he does affirm creation out 11

╇ Ward, Divine Action, 67.

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of nothing and belief in a God of extreme power, it is still God who has made this world where God cannot prevent evils. God must have a good reason for this goal, and this is what the next three counterarguments will criticize. The counterarguments are: 2) There are other and better ways to the goal: God could have created independent beings without there being suffering. 3) The goal is not worth the way to get there: Independence is not worth all the suffering that has happened in world history, and 4) There is a better goal: God could have chosen to create less independent beings, which would be loving and free without having to experience pain. Or put differently: Why did God not create a better world? The first of these three counterarguments is now to be discussed. Independence does not require suffering In the discussion of Swinburne, it was argued that many of Swinburne’s goals could be reached by better means, for example that love could be achieved without freedom to do evil actions. The problem with this for Swinburne is that he claims that the suffering which God allows must be the only way to his goal, and Ward agrees with that claim. However, the goal to be considered now is different, namely the goal of independent beings, and I will consider whether the only way to reach this goal is to allow the possibility of suffering. We have seen so far that Ward claims that God could not create an independent world without allowing the possibility of suffering, but this claim has not been much discussed yet. This will now be discussed, and the first counterargument is that God could have created a world with safe surroundings where people could develop their independence. We do not need earthquakes and cancer in order to become independent. This counterargument will be discussed in the first following suchapter. An important part of Ward’s answer is that God had to allow indeterminism in order to give us free will, and this indeterminism then gave us natural evils. Against this, those who are compatibilists with regard to the question of free will would argue that free will does not require indeterminism. Since indeterminism is the answer to the question of natural evils, this is an important point that I will spend some pages on. I also spend some pages on this since it is a weak point in Ward’s account where I will suggest an improvement. This second counterargument will be discussed in the next subchapter after this.



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God could have created a safe and independent world The counterargument made against Ward here is that God could have made a world of independent beings without allowing suffering, or at least allowing much less suffering. Why did God make such a risky world where he could not prevent evils, instead of making a safe world without any diseases or natural disasters where humans could have free will to develop as independent beings? As seen, Ward argues that that is not possible for God because of metaphysical necessities concerning the amount of God’s power and the list of metaphysical possibilities that God must relate to. This is again Ward’s hypothesis of a metaphysical necessity that prevents God from doing certain things. Whether this hypothesis is true or not is difficult to assess, but Ward does offer some arguments, and these will now be discussed (with the constant acknowledgement that these matters are difficult to evaluate with our finite minds). One argument Ward makes in favour of it being impossible for God to eliminate many evils, is that the anthropic principle and the interconnectedness of the world suggest that there may just be a few possible ways to create a world of independent beings.12 The anthropic principle states that with only minor variations in many of the Â�constants of the universe, there would not have been any universe.13 This can be interpreted such that there are not many metaphysical possibilities to make the kind of beings that we are. The interconnectedness refers to the fact that small events can have great consequences in the world, so that even what looks like a small interference can have great effects, and so it can be difficult for God to act at one place, without disturbing much else that he does not want to disturb.14 This interpretation by Ward could be criticized by offering an alternative interpretation of the anthropic principle and the interconnectedness, namely that the world is much more complicated than it had to be. Ward says that the universe needed approximately 15 billion years for stars to be born and die and make the carbon out of which humans ╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 94–95, 103–104. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 59, 105–106. 14 ╇ Ibid., 59. Against belief in miracles, some argue that God only seems to heal certain kinds of diseases, like cancer and back-problems, but not other problems, like amputations and glass-eyes. Ward could answer to this critique by saying that different diseases demands different degrees of interference, and so some kind of diseases can more easily be healed than others. 12 13

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are made,15 but why could God not create carbon out of nothing? Could God not create human beings out of nothing who had free will but were invulnerable to pain? These beings could then be free to develop themselves and their personalities in independent ways, but without suffering pain. Even if Ward thinks that there are limitations on how something can be created out of nothing, no reason has been given to think that God could not have created carbon out of nothing instantly. Michael Murray argues that the best theodicy (at least with regard to animal pain) is to argue that it is intrinsically good that the world develops from chaos to order through lawful regularities, which then involves pain for animals and humans. The argument to support this is an appeal to intuition that it is better with the world being a ‘machine-making machine’ able to bring forth flowers, animals and so on than just to create the world finished with flowers and animals and so on right away.16 But when this machine-making machine in order to create good things also creates vast amounts of bad mutations and short, painful lives I find the appeal to intuition to lose its force, and would prefer the alternative of just good things being created right away. Ward argues that God could not create independent beings without the physical possibility of pain, and again; it is almost impossible to know which kinds of alternative worlds are metaphysically possible. But there does not seem to be any clear connection in Ward’s account between the possibility of suffering and independence. It seems that independence could have been achieved in safer surroundings. Maybe there is a connection between independence and the physical possibility of pain, but it is not easy to see that there is any connection, or to understand why these things should be connected. Maybe it is a metaphysical necessity that the two are connected, but we have no good reason to assume that it is. This means that Ward’s theodicy is not very cohesive at this point. The connections that Ward does establish are that independent beings must be free to partly self-create themselves, they must live in a law-like world where they can control the results of their actions, and there must be indeterminism. Both the laws and the indeterminism can then result in pain. Against this, one could say that the world could be like today, but that it was still possible for God to interact actively to prevent evils, and by interaction I now refer to special divine actions – actions of God at ╇ Ibid. ╇ Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 180–192.

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a particular point in time that have local physical effects in the world. Ward believes that God does perform special divine actions, also actions that go against the laws of nature (= miracles).17 Griffin, on the other hand, does not believe in such divine interaction, both because of the problem of evil and because it goes against a common presupposition in the natural sciences. I will now discuss first the argument from Griffin that God does not act this way in the world at all, and then return to the question of why God does not act this way more often if he can. Concerning the critique that the natural sciences presuppose no violations of laws of nature, Ward understands this as a methodological reduction by the natural sciences, which does not contradict violations of laws of nature.18 Against the argument that this presupposition of science is only methodological, Griffin argues that it is a fundamental ontological assumption made in the scientific community, which they have no good reason for giving up.19 I think that they have no good reason for making the claim ontological, as opposed to merely methodological, either. Ward argues that the natural sciences’ method of repeated experiments with observational results excludes special divine actions from their area of competence.20 Experimental science can by definition not deal with special divine actions. But does the great success of natural science not indicate as well that their methodological presupposition is actually ontologically true – that there actually are no events that are not explainable by the natural laws? Does the predictive success of the natural sciences not indicate their truth? Ward argues€that it is rather the case that the natural sciences have success because€they artificially abstract and isolate the regular, the controllable, and the observable elements from the unique particularity of events, and impose rigid laws on to a physical reality that is in fact more plastic and flexible.21 17 ╇ I understand laws of nature as ontological entities in the world which make states of affairs behave as they do, but I do not think there is any good account of their deeper ontological nature. I agree with Swinburne and Ward that exceptions to laws of nature are possible. 18 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 92–93. Swinburne and Hygen make similar arguments, see Richard Swinburne, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 78; and Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien, 134–138. 19 ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, see both 25–28 and 133, especially n. 135. 20 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 80–81. 21 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 123.

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That the natural sciences often predict correctly, means that God cannot often violate the laws of nature as they are described today. But it does not mean that the laws cannot ever be violated. Ward even thinks that the regularities in nature go as before, but that sometimes God introduces a new force in the system. All laws of nature allow for the exception that a stronger force may interfere in the system, and so I do not break the law of gravity if I throw a stone up in the air and thereby make it ‘fall upwards’. And you can never be sure that you have a closed system, since there may always be something on the outside, which can break in to the system.22 I conclude that it is not incoherent to believe that God may perform special divine actions, also contradicting the laws of nature. But then we can return to the objection mentioned above: If God can interact in this way, why does he not do so more often? To this Ward says that both because of God’s goal of independence and because of the physical interconnectedness of the world, it would destroy the independence of the system if God was too active. Against this one could complain that the system did not have to be so complicated and interconnected – which we have seen that Ward answers with the anthropic principle and God’s finite power. But it is not only the physical interconnectedness which explains why God does not interact more often, it is also God’s intention of the world being independent which partially explains why he does not interact more. Swinburne and Pannenberg use our independence as an argument to explain the hiddenness of God, by arguing that in order for us to be independent, God’s existence must not be more obvious to us than it already is.23 But a problem with this is that Ward says that God wants to act in the world in order to have a relationship with us and help us. This seems to contradict that he does not want to interact in order that we can be independent. A possible answer to this is that he might want a relationship with independent beings, and so he has to balance the degree to which he interacts or not. Ward does not discuss this himself, but he makes a point that could work as an answer to this critique. Ward could be interpreted as suggesting that the 22 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 92–99. Ward also thinks that the phenomenon of non-Â� locality supports the belief that one cannot conclude with certainty that a system is closed (Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 83). And in addition, Ward mentions the possibility of divine causality without detectable energy changes, with reference to similar phenomena in quantum physics (Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 205). 23 ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 206–207; and Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 200, ET: 173.



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relationship that God will have with us in the afterlife is the most important.24 This can then be used to argue that God lets us be more independent now, but he will be more actively involved in our lives later, and so his intention will be fulfilled. If the afterlife is said to be most important, one could argue against Ward and Swinburne that this reduces the importance of life on earth. Ward argues the opposite, however. Because of the possibility of immortality, this life has eternal significance.25 Ward’s position is then a combination of what God cannot do and will not do in a world made for independent beings. Maybe God could only make an independent world which was interconnected and where he could not interact very much, and maybe he also wanted to be prevented from interacting too much. There are a number of arguments in Ward’s account that support each other mutually, but without the connections being very strong. But on the other hand, this is very difficult to assess anyway. So I conclude that the claim that independence metaphysically necessitates suffering is not inconsistent, but nor has it been shown to be very cohesive. Strengthening the cohesiveness at this point would be helpful. Another attack on the cohesiveness of this point is the claim that free will does not require indeterminism, and this must now be discussed. Free will does not require indeterminism When free will was discussed in the chapter on Swinburne, focus was on the range of actions that the free will had at its disposal, for example free will to do evil actions. Differently from Swinburne, Ward uses indeterminism as an explanation of natural evils, and says that the indeterminism is necessary for there to be free will. The majority of philosophers dealing with the question of free will, however, are socalled compatibilists: they deny that indeterminism is required for there to be free will; rather, they think that determinism and free will 24 ╇ Ward says that God’s purpose is to persuade people to be loving, and in the end (emphasis added) to respond to his love above all things (Ward, Divine Action, 141). That Ward thinks that the most important goal is after this life is supported when he writes that ‘the ultimate religious goal is a life in God beyond this cosmos’ (Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 257). Swinburne can be interpreted as having the same opinion. He says that the point of life is the beatific vision, and he interprets the beatific vision€as€relationship with the divine (Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 119, 250). 25 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 250.

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are compatible.26 Swinburne and Griffin agree with Ward that free will requires indeterminism, and none of the other scholars in this book criticize that assumption. Swinburne even says that his theodicy is much more plausible if free will is understood as libertarian (which means that there must be indeterminism), and not compatibilist.27 So this is an important counterargument, because if free will is compatible with determinism, then God could and should have determined that only good things would happen, and we would have free will in this world. I cannot discuss this whole problem in its full length, but it is necessary to spend some time on some aspects here because if it is valid, this argument creates a great problem for Ward’s theodicy. First of all, we should distinguish between freedom of action and freedom of will. The classical compatibilists, like David Hume and John Stuart Mill, meant by ‘free will’ that one can do what one will, and for them that was the important thing. They thought that even if it is determined what your will wants to do, you are free as long as you can do that which your will wants to do.28 This would mean that if God had determined that all people had only one desire all their lives, for example to sing hymns, then they would have free will if they had the opportunity to sing hymns, and lack free will if someone prevented them from singing hymns. However, many newer compatibilists do not find this solution any good, because they do not think that it is enough to be able to do what you will, you must also be able to will what you will.29 It seems to be generally agreed among philosophers of free will that the agent herself must be the origin or source of her own choice, and that it is up to her what she chooses among alternative possibilities.30 This is what it means to have free will. Compatibilists still think that 26 ╇ Robert Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 10. Determinism is here understood as the metaphysical position that everything that happens, necessarily must happen exactly as it does, because of previous causes, so that there is at any time only one possible future. Indeterminism, on the other hand, holds that there is not only one possible future. But indeterminism need not mean that everything is random, since events may be caused without being determined. Kane uses the terms ‘Epicurean’ and ‘non-Epicurean’ indeterminism to distinguish between these two kinds of indeterminism (Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 172–174). 27 ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 34; Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 47; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 29, 210. 28 ╇ Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 12–13. 29 ╇ Ibid., 20. 30 ╇ Ibid., 5.



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this requirement is compatible with determinism, while libertarians do not. Libertarians are those who hold that we have free will and that free will is not compatible with determinism. One of their chief arguments against the compatibilists is the so-called Consequence Argument. One formulation is as follows: If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born; and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us.31 Ward makes a similar argument, saying that freedom requires an open future, and so freedom requires indeterminism.32 It is important for the coherence of Ward’s theodicy that free will really requires indeterminism, since the indeterminism explains natural evils. I find the arguments against compatibilism convincing. But there are problems also with libertarianism, because free will seems to be incompatible not only with determinism, but also with indeterminism, since indeterminism seems to imply randomness.33 Indeterminism would be a lot stronger argument for free will if one could show the link between indeterminism and free will. There are two main types of libertarianism, namely agent-causal theories (AC-theories) and teleological Â�intelligibility€Â�theories€(TI-theoÂ� riÂ�Â�es). AC-theories hold that a free choice can only be explained by reference to an irreducible agent causing the act in some special kind of causation. TI-theories hold that free choices can only be made intelligible by reference to reasons (motives/intentions/purposes), and so be explained teleologically.34 Each of these two theories can be further divided into a causal and a non-causal version, depending on whether they believe that intentions are the cause of what the will becomes or not.35 Yet another subdivision is that some AC-theories are substance dualist (the agent may for example be an immaterial soul), whereas others are not.36 From what they have written on free will, it seems most reasonable to identify Swinburne, Ward, and Griffin as libertarian AC-theorists, since they refer to the soul or mind as the last instance when they ╇ Van Invagen, quoted by Kane, in ibid., 20. ╇ Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 20; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 68. 33 ╇ Van Invagen, in Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 169. 34 ╇ Ibid., 23–24. 35 ╇ Ibid. 36 ╇ Ibid., 24. 31 32

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explain free will.37 They also all argue against determinism.38 Hygen, on the other hand, is skeptical as to whether the problem of free will in relation to determinism and indeterminism can be solved, and Â�suggests rather that we stick to the realities of freedom, responsibility, and guilt as we know them from our everyday life. From his writings, he seems sympathetic to compatibilism, since he argues that morality does not become meaningless even if all is determined.39 I have already Â�criticized compatibilism by use of the Consequence Argument, rejecting that we can have free will if all is determined so that only one future is possible. But can indeterminism be used as an argument in favour of free will, when free will seems equally incompatible with indeterminism? In agent-causal theories, the point with indeterminism is that the agent must have open alternative possibilities to choose from.40 The most common critique of agent-causal theories is that they are often vague. What is the agent, how does the agent emerge if he/she/it emerges, how does the agent cause the will, or what does the agent actually cause?41 A great problem when the agent is so vague is to€underÂ� stand why the agent ends up wanting what he/she/it wants as opposed to something else, and so what makes the agent free, because if choices are random they are not free. Another critique against AC-theories is a critique against the noncausal versions of both AC- and TI-theories. Donald Davidson wrote the article ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’ in 1963, which deeply challenged both non-causalist versions. He pointed out that even if a person has a reason for doing something, that does not mean that his reason was the actual reason for why it happened. A link must be demonstrated between a personal reason and the action, and so Davidson claimed that in lack of a better alternative this had to be understood causally.42 The only version of libertarianism not yet criticized is causal TI-theories. I think the best proponent of this is Robert Kane, who has a theory of free will where he argues why indeterminism is necessary 37 ╇ Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, 103–106, 259–261; Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 177; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 160. 38 ╇ Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, 231; Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 20; and Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 269. 39 ╇ Hygen, Etikk, 28–31. 40 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 210; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 72. 41 ╇ Much of this critique can be found in O’Connor, in Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 337–355. 42 ╇Davidson, referred by Ginet, in ibid., 386–388.



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for free will, and even mentions that this could help those trying to make a free will theodicy.43 A theory explaining why indeterminism is necessary for free will would strengthen Ward’s theodicy. Although Kane’s theory is the best available theory, it is a problem that Kane requires there to be indeterminism at the neuronal level in the brain. The main critique of this is the so-called luck-objection, that it seems to be a matter of luck whether certain important choices become what they do.44 Since the link between indeterminism and free will is so weak in Ward’s theodicy, while it is also very important (since it accounts for the natural evils), I find it well worth spending some time on it. On the other hand, the question of free will is so big that it requires a book on its own. My next book is a defence of a causal TI-theory which explains why indeterminism is necessary for free will. And my thesis there is that indeterminism in the brain is not required, but only some undetermined effects at the macro-level in the world outside of the agent, which is a kind of indeterminism that could also lead to natural evils like bad mutations or earthquakes. It is impossible to defend this theory within the limits of the present book, but I will indicate the main idea briefly, and follow up this part of the discussion in my next book. I understand the self as a process including all the body structures and activities which make the self-understanding and sense of self possible and actual. This is a wide definition involving desires, emotions, thoughts and memories in the self. I argue that the physical substrata of our experienced self must be included in our concept of the self since so much of our experienced self depends on the physical substrata and is inexplicable without it. Deliberation is a many-facetted process. Input from the body and the world triggers desires, but also thoughts and memories connected with emotions. These emotions can give feedback to the initial desires and may then change them so that our different desires may change in strength. In some deliberation processes our own self is highly involved and changes the initial desires we felt, at other times the whole network which is our self is hardly involved 43 ╇ Kane, in John Martin Fischer, Four Views on Free Will (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 39. 44 ╇ Randolph K. Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 77–82. Another critique is that quantum indeterminacy seems to cancel out at the neuronal level, so that there is little reason to believe that there is indeterminism in the brain (Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 8; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 93).

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in the choice. Our self influences all choices, but sometimes to a very small degree, and other times to a very large degree. The self develops from the biological potential we are born with, the input we are given from outside ourselves, and the reactions we feel which constantly influence our choices. When we make choices where our self has been highly involved before we act, we shape our own selves to become more independent. So not only can our self be more or less involved in our choices, our selves can also be more or less independent. We have different degrees of free will in different situations depending on how independent selves we have, and how involved our selves are in our choices. In the legal system they operate with various levels of responsibility, and all these levels and mitigating factors can be explained by reference to different levels of independent selves (so for example brain washing or being a child is mitigating) and different levels of involvement of the self (so for example crime is considered worse if it is planned than if it is not planned). So what is free will? Extremely briefly, we have free will when the following process occurs: our body and/or surroundings trigger desires which again activate images of different alternatives for actions. These images of possible actions activate memories and emotions which reshape (change or approve) the immediate desires (first-order desires). The new reshaped desires (second-order desires) then activate motor neurons, which lead to action. When this happen, our self causes the motive which causes the action, and then we are the cause of what the choice became. It does not matter whether the imagined alternatives actually were token physically possible or only type physically possible, as long as the self caused the motive that led to action. The whole issue is further complicated by the fact that we do not only have free will when our self changes our immediate desires – we also€have€free will when our self (which we have shaped through earlier choices) influences what our immediate desire is – and this all means that different individuals have different degrees of free will. Individuals may even have responsibility for not having more free will than they do, but I cannot even begin on that issue. Concerning determinism and indeterminism, in the process described just above everything in the brain may have happened as if it was determined, and maybe only one thing was token physically possible to do. But the only requirement for having free will in such a situation is that there is indeterminism in the world at the macro level of humans. For if the world is determined, then it is wrong to select the self as cause of the motive that led to action, because the self is not the



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cause of the choice between alternatives A and B since this was determined before the agent was born. But if the world is undetermined, then the self is more or less involved in the choice, and has more or less free will. Then it will sometimes be correct to select the self as the cause of why the agent chose A as opposed to B, since this was not determined in advance. That the self influences the desires connected to the imagined alternatives and thus causes the final motive, is what it means that we are the source of our choice and that it is up to us what we choose among alternatives. And since being the source of your choice and it being up to you what you choose among alternatives is the requirements for having free will, this is how my theory of free will fulfils those conditions. As far as I know all libertarian accounts of free will place indeterminism in the brain, whereas the theory I suggest is unique in that it only requires undetermined events in the world in general and not in the brain. Put differently; libertarian theories usually require agent-internal indeterminism, while in the theory I suggest agent-external indeterminism suffices. This way I offer a causal TI-theory which avoids the common critique against the idea of indeterminism in the brain, and which explains why indeterminism which may give natural evils is necessary for free will. If this understanding is correct, then it is necessary that there is indeterminism with some undetermined effects at the macro-level of our human world in order for us to have free will, and indeterminism involves the risk of natural evils. God easily becomes the most important cause of our wills, if he makes our will, or us, or our surroundings directly. This way of understanding free will lets free will also be an explanation of natural evils, since it explains the necessity of indeterminism in nature in order for there to be free will. This understanding then establishes a much better connection between indeterminism in the world and free will than the one given in Ward’s account. However, even if independence does necessitate the possibility of suffering, another counterargument against Ward is the question of whether the goal of independence is worth all this pain. To this counterargument we now turn. Independence is not worth the suffering In the case of Swinburne I concluded that there were many instances where the good did not outweigh the evil, and so there were occurrences of suffering that God should not have allowed since the good it

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led to did not outweigh the evil it entailed. A similar charge can be made against Ward: Is God’s goal for creation worth all the suffering it entails? God contemplating the beauty of the universe will not suffice alone, since there is so much ugly suffering involved. Here, however, focus has been on the independence that God wanted for this world. But does the goal of independence outweigh all the suffering that has occurred, thereby justifying the risk God took in creating a world where evils could happen that he could not prevent? As seen in the discussion of Swinburne, Griffin claims that the slow evolution with all its pain is argument good enough against there being an omnipotent God as envisioned by Swinburne and Ward.45 But Ward argues that the way God creates independent beings is by means of evolution, which requires much death along the way.46 In the science and theology literature, where most theologians believe in Darwinian evolution, it is common in the context of theodicy to make the Â�argument that death is necessary for life.47 Ward makes that point, 48 but I think it is too unspecified just to say that death is necessary for life. With the power that Ward ascribes to God, God could have made enormous amounts of space and food, and God could have caused mutations and gene combinations or just created species out of nothing. To say that death is necessary for life presupposes a Darwinian process where it is important that there is too little food, but in the context of theodicy one should then ask why there is too little food. But in Ward’s account one can specify that death is necessary for life if life is to be very Â�independent€– in the sense that it is self-created to a large extent.49 For not even God can alone and instantly create out of nothing something which is partly self-created. Ward argues that very independent life is God’s goal, so

╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 220. ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 53, 65. 47 ╇ See for example A.R. Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age : Being and Becoming€– Natural, Divine and Human, 2nd ed. (London: SCM, 1993), 63. 48 ╇ Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 53, 65. Griffin also makes the same point, but then with reference to necessary principles in process theism, and not Darwinian evolution (Griffin, Evil Revisited, 180). 49 ╇ Pannenberg makes the point that natural evil is part of the necessary entropy that makes independent beings possible Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 118–119, ET: 197. But his use of the term ‘independent’ (‘selbständig’) here seems only to refer to independence in the sense of being one individual entity as opposed to another, and not independence in the sense that I use it here, namely as relatively independent in relation to God. 45 46



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death fits in with his theory, and he should add this Â�specification to his account of death. Regardless of this, one may still argue as above: the independence is not worth all the suffering it requires. Several other responses can be made in favour of Ward’s case here. First of all, in Ward’s understanding of God, God does not consider each instance of suffering to decide whether he should allow it or not, for there are many instances of suffering that God cannot prevent in the system he has made. He can end the process, or disturb the system so much that the goal of independence is ruined, but as long as he wants the system to continue there are many situations that he cannot prevent. But he can stop the whole process at any time. So, in Ward’s case we must rather ask whether the goal of independence for the whole world was a good enough goal to take the risk of making a world where so much evil as there is in our world could occur. Ward agrees that God has responsibility for the evils in this world. At the fundamental level, he created a world where such evils were possible, even if God does not want any actual evils to happen. Ward also agrees that in order for this to be justified, God must see to it that good not only outÂ� weigh,€but overwhelmingly outweigh, the evils that have been suffered. However, since he does not claim that God considers each situation of suffering, Ward does not make (or need to make) the point that independence is so valuable that it outweighs all evils. Rather, he offers eternal bliss as the compensating good which will overwhelmingly outweigh all evils.50 Galen Strawson makes a relevant distinction between causal responsibility and moral responsibility.51 The way I understand the distinction, causal responsibility is a matter of being the cause of an action, and then you are responsible in a basic sense of the term. But ‘being responsible’ is not the same as ‘being held responsible’. When people are being held responsible, it is almost always a matter of holding someone morally responsible. When someone is held morally responsible, it is not just a matter of causing an action. In the phenomenon of holding someone responsible, something is added, and what is added is a moral standard of what a person in general should have done in such a situation. This means that when you are in a situation, people will hold you 50 ╇ Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 197; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 139. 51 ╇ Strawson, in Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 441.

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responsible according to a standard for that situation, which means that you can be held responsible also for something that you have not done. Applying this to God, it means that God may not be morally to blame for the evils in the world, even if he is the main cause of the world where these evils are possible. And of course Ward does not think that God is morally to blame, since this world is the only way for us to reach an overwhelmingly outweighing good.52 In the discussion of Swinburne I accepted that goods can outweigh evils, and by definition eternal bliss overwhelmingly outweighs all finite evils. However, considering now this good of eternal bliss instead of the good of independence, the point from counterargument number two could be repeated: is there not a better way to achieve eternal bliss? Even if eternal bliss outweighs evils, why suffer first instead of creating a world of eternal bliss right away? Suffering or independence is not necessary in order to experience eternal bliss. So why did God create this independent world first with all its suffering, and then let the humans experience eternal bliss, instead of taking a route of less suffering? To this complaint, Ward answers that you and I could not have taken another route to eternal bliss. God could have created other beings who could either have had no suffering first and then eternal bliss afterwards, or just be created into eternal bliss right away. But that would not have been you and me, for we are products of this independent world and it alone.53 This means that you cannot complain that God should have created you in a better world from the start, for then it would not have been you who had been created, but someone else. It is like wishing that you had other parents, because you could not 52 ╇ The distinction between moral and causal responsibility can be used to interpret Bible material like Isa 45:7 in a sense compatible with Ward’s theodicy. In Isa 45:7 God claims to be the cause of good and evil. This is right at a fundamental level since God has created the world. But even if God is causally responsible for this world where much evil can happen, that does not necessarily make him morally blameworthy. Ward does comment upon this Bible verse, and on moral responsibility for causing the world in Ward, Divine Action, 46. But his whole comment starts with ‘it may be’, and continues with ‘perhaps’ and ‘if then’, and what Ward says here does not fit very well with what he says elsewhere. Here he discusses the possibility that God by inner necessity had to create a world with suffering. But elsewhere he says that God did not have to create our world, just some world, and that God could have chosen to create a world without suffering (Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 16; and Ward, Divine Action, 29–30, 217). Since this does not fit with what Ward says in Ward, Divine Action, 46, and since what he says there is not very plausible, I interpret that well-willingly as Ward mentioning a possibility that he does not himself defend. 53 ╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 192–193.



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have other parents – it would have been someone else who had other parents. Likewise, you are the product of this world only. Since I do not believe that we are souls waiting to be born into a world, but rather that we are processes in this world, I think that this point by Ward is correct. One cannot complain that one should have been born in another world, for that person born in another world would not have been you. This point is maybe harder to make within a classical substance ontology, because then there is an underlying substance€which is you, and which would also have been you in a different world. But in the kind of ontology that Ward together with Pannenberg and Puntel presupposes, relations are constitutive of identity, and then the point remains valid that you can only exist in this world. You can complain that God could still interact more in this world where you are you, but as seen, Ward argues that this world is not of that kind where God can interact all the time. We, as in you and me, could only come into existence in this kind of world where God can only interact sometimes. I want to add a suggestion that Ward could have used in order to support the goodness of an independent world. Ward focuses on the fact that we are partly free to create ourselves.54 In the discussion of Swinburne’s theodicy when the subject was the question of whether love requires free will, I made the case that when we are loved, we want to be the cause of the other person’s love. If we are partly self-created, then to a greater extent God loves us for who we are, and not for who he has made us into. Ward makes the point that God gives us freedom because he wants to be loved for who he is.55 But this point can be turned around as well, that God wants to love us for who we are, and not for what he has made us into. So the more independent we are, the more it becomes right to say that we are loved for who we are.56 This does strengthen Ward’s theodicy a little bit, but one may still argue that less independence and less suffering would have been better, and to this argument we now turn. ╇ Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 131. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 136. 56 ╇ John Haught makes the point that God needs to love something which is different from him, and Michael Murray criticizes that this should require painful evolution since God could create something different from him out of nothing (Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, 170–175). Murray’s critique against Haught does not frame the suggestion I make here, since the point is that God wants to love us for who we are and not for what he has made us into, and this can be achieved to a greater degree if we have ourselves shaped who we are. 54 55

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Given that we, as in you and me, could only have come into existence in this world, there remains a question that challenges the coherence of Ward’s theodicy: Why did God choose to create this independent world with all its constraints on God’s action, instead of another world with less suffering? We, the actual inhabitants of Tellus, would not have existed in this other world, but still we are justified in wondering why God did not make a better world. It is like when someone asks how it is possible that our universe is so fine tuned, and someone answers: If it was not, you could not have asked the question. That is right, but when this now is the case, it is still a good question.57 So, why did God create this independent universe? At this point Ward refers to beauty, love, learning, moral virtues, and so on – the same as Swinburne does. And as argued in the discussion of Swinburne, it is likely that these all could be reached in other ways, with less suffering. And it is difficult to argue that this goal justifies the suffering. Ward does specify that these distinct beauties and this love that is actualized with these independent human beings are unique to this world, and that is probably right. But the question that this book started with remains: We expect from someone with the power and goodness that is ascribed to God that he will create a world with less suffering. The case can be made that it is overall good that the world exists, and that the distinct people, beauties, and love of this earth were only possible here. But another world would have had other unique goods, so that does not answer why a good and powerful God chose to create a world with so much suffering, when it seems that he could have made one without it. I do not write that God should have made a world without suffering, since God is under no obligation to create. Nor do I blame God for creating this world if our suffering will be overwhelmingly compensated by eternal bliss. But there is a big open question remaining: why did God not create a better world? Ward does not answer that God could not, since he believes that God can and will create a better world for human beings in their afterlife. He argues that in heaven we shall be human, but we shall not have the freedom to reject God.58 In heaven, humans will be free, but will have full mastery of their inclinations, and

╇ As argued well by Swinburne in Swinburne, The Existence of God, 156–157. ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 217.

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so will not be inclined to do evil, in the same way as Jesus had mastery of his inclinations and did no evil.59 Sometimes Ward also speculates on the possibility that there could be other universes with other kinds of beings, angels perhaps, and that these universes could be all good.60 He even mentions the possibility that perhaps God has created all universes where good outweighs evil, ours being one of them.61 But he does not argue that God has done so, and his constant point is that all these other possible universes would not have been us. So his answer to the critique that God should have made a better world is that God created our universe for the sake of the unique goods that have been actualized in it. But that does not answer why God made something poorer than he could have – something under which many people have suffered. To conclude the discussion of Ward’s theodicy, I find that it is quite coherent, and more so than Swinburne’s. But we are left with a question quite similar to the one we started with: why is the world not better? From a good God with such immense power as Ward envisions, a better world would be expected. Ward’s answer of independence was able to resist many counterarguments, but it did not answer this last big question. Another problem in Ward’s account was that the link between independence and suffering is weak. Do we have any good reason to believe that God must allow suffering in order to create an independent world? To this I suggested an improvement that could be made with another understanding of free will. But it does not solve the main problem. Since I so far have not found a good answer to the problem I started with, I will now consider two quite different understandings of God’s power, starting with David Griffin.

╇ Ibid., 224. ╇ Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 192; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 67. 61 ╇ Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 91–92. 59 60

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Griffin Griffin claims that he solves the problem of evil by the argument that God cannot coerce. This claim is rooted in process theism, which of course is claimed to be true. The layers of argument are here to a large degree interconnected and interdependent, since they so closely and mutually support each other: The solution to the problem of evil is claimed to be good, since God cannot coerce and process theism is true. Process theism is claimed to be true, since it shows why God cannot coerce, and it solves the problem of evil. And it is claimed to be true that God cannot coerce, since process theism says so, and it solves the problem of evil.1 The claim that God cannot coerce is the main claim in Griffins’s theodicy,2 and so this will be the focus for the discussion here. There are many indirect arguments that could have been discussed, but that could not have been done thoroughly within the limits of this book. Griffin will therefore be discussed in the same way as the others, namely by focussing on the main claim and discussing counterarguments against this. The most common critique against Griffin’s claim that God cannot coerce is that such a claim is either metaphysically problematic or not Christian. I have selected the best arguments among those that are discussed in my material, and have divided them into these two categories; God’s non-coercion is either incoherent or inauthentic. Under the charge of incoherence I will first discuss the critique against Griffin that his concept of a non-coercive God is metaphysically unsatisfying and then the critique of the notion of God’s non-coercion as incoherent. A final discussion under the charge of incoherence is the claim that God’s non-coercion is inconsistent with other features of God. Under the charge of inauthenticity I will first discuss monism in the Bible, and then coercion and the Bible.

╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 118. ╇ See for example Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 124.

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God’s Non-Coercion is Incoherent Dualism is a Metaphysically Unsatisfying Explanation The first critique to be discussed is directed towards Griffin’s concept of God, where God does not have coercive power over everything, since he is not the creator of everything. This concept of God is criticized because dualism does not have the self-sufficiency and completeness that monistic theories have. In the first edition of Encountering Evil from 1981, John Hick criticizes David Griffin by saying that Griffin’s concept of a finite God is ‘metaphysically unsatisfying’.3 Griffin answers that the critique is too brief to understand what the content is. But then Griffin goes to Hick’s Evil and the God of Love to find out what the critique implies.4 In Evil and the God of Love, Hick says the following: Natural theology adds the related criticism that dualism is metaphysically unsatisfying. If neither of the two factors lying behind the creation of our world – matter and a finite deity – is ultimate and self-existent, we still have to ask, Who or what created them? The existence of a finite god raises the same metaphysical queries as the existence of our own finite selves. Accordingly dualism does not constitute a logical terminus as does the monotheistic conception of an eternal self-existent Being who is the creator of everything other than himself. This latter idea brings its own problems with it – above all, the problem of evil – but as a primary theological premise, it has a metaphysical self-sufficiency that dualism lacks.5

Griffin summarizes this critique by Hick in the following way: ‘if God were not ‘the creator of everything other than himself ’, God would not be ‘an eternal self-existent Being’. Hence one would have to ask who created God’.6 But Hick does not say that if God is not creator of everything else, then he is not eternal and self-existent. Rather, he says that if a deity is not self-existent, we must ask who or what created it, and then you do not get the metaphysically self-sufficient explanation that you get with a God who has created everything but himself. Anyway, 3 ╇ Hick, in Stephen T. Davis, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, 1st ed. (Atlanta: J. Knox Press, 1981), 122. The critique is not repeated in the new edition from 2001. 4 ╇ Griffin, in ibid., 134. 5 ╇ John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1977), 29–30 (=John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, (London: Macmillan, 1966), 35–36, which Griffin refers to). 6 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 1st ed., 134.

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even if Hick does not claim that a finite deity cannot be self-existent and eternal, it may be that he presupposes it. This is what Griffin focuses on in his reply to Hick’s critique. Griffin answers that Hick’s ‘argument itself is metaphysically unsatisfying, since a being could well be eternal and self-existent without being the creator of everything else’.7 A being might be eternal and self-existent without being the creator of everything else. But I believe that it is quite clear from the quotation from Evil and the God of Love that Hick’s point has to do with dualism being metaphysically unsatisfying as an explanation. If there is one God who has created everything other than himself, then that is an explanation that has a self-sufficiency that dualism lacks. And logically, there can only be one source of everything else. Keith Ward has a similar focus on explanation when he argues against dualism. Ward argues that if there is a complete explanation of anything, it must start with a self-explanatory being. A self-explanatory being must be metaphysically necessary: If it depended on something else, or was contingent, then it would not be self-explanatory. Furthermore, Ward argues that there can only be one self-explanatory being, since if there was more than one, the relation between the two would not be explained with reference to one of them only.8 Ward likes the idea of one selfexplanatory cause of everything else, because it gives a complete and all-embracing theory where God elegantly explains everything else and makes the existence of the world probable, as opposed to an unexplainable fact. Ward argues that it is a good scientific principle to accept a hypothesis that makes some state of affairs more probable than it would be without the hypothesis, and he finds the world to be more probable if God exists.9 If something is logically necessary, it is self-explanatory. But it is not as easy to see that something metaphysically necessary is self-Â� explanatory. Ward even criticizes those who claim that matter and laws of nature may be necessary, because one can imagine different laws of nature, and so it is still left unexplained why we have the laws of nature that we have.10 This shows that something metaphysically necessary is ╇ Griffin, in ibid. ╇ Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 9–14. Pannenberg makes a similar point: If there were two last principles, there would be a difference between them presupposing a source of that difference (Pannenberg, Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, vol. 1, 302). ╇ 9 ╇ Ward, God, Chance & Necessity, 190; and Ward, Pascal’s Fire, 18. 10 ╇ Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 54. ╇ 7 ╇ 8



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not self-explanatory in the sense that it is obvious to all, although it may be self-explanatory in the sense that its explanation lies in itself. Still, Ward’s general point holds, that a theory that starts with one metaphysically necessary source of everything else has a completeness€to it that alternative explanations lack. I think that Griffin’s reply to Hick misses the spot, because Hick, like Ward, is interested in having such a complete and self-sufficient explanation. But Griffin does answer this kind of critique elsewhere in a discussion of whether there is one ultimate source of everything else or not. Griffin’s answer is that monistic theories are inconsistent because of the problem of evil, and dualistic theories are therefore better, because the most important point is to avoid inconsistency.11 It is in agreement with the criteria for this book that consistency is a more important aspect of coherence than completeness. The question then is whether or not monism really is inconsistent. Ward comments on Griffin and says that monism can be as coherent as process theism, because an omnipotent monistic God may have good reasons for selflimitation.12 Griffin, on the other hand, can see no good reason that God should limit his own power so that he cannot help others more.13 And so this point becomes a question of whether the theodicy of Ward or Griffin is most adequate, and this is a question so big that it must be postponed to the conclusion. God’s Non-Coercion is Incoherent Above, focus was on the concept of a God who only has non-coercive power. Focus is now on how to understand the use of this power. In this point I will refer a critique from David Basinger, which Griffin discusses in his book Evil Revisited. Basinger refers the claim of process theism that God cannot unilaterally control the action of other entities because all entities have some degree of self-determination. But how is this unilateral control or coercion which God cannot do more precisely to be understood? Does it mean 1a) that God cannot bring about a condition where other entities are totally devoid of power, including the power to control their own thoughts? Or does it mean 1b) that God cannot bring about a condition where other entities are devoid ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 277. ╇ Ward, Religion and Creation, 168–169. 13 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 87–89, 154. 11 12

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of power to act as they want to? If 1a is the case, that is not relevant for the problem of evil, because God need not make evildoers totally devoid of power, he only needs to prevent them from doing evil actions. If 1b is the case, this does not seem to follow from the principle of selfdetermination which is meant to explain why God’s power is noncoercive. A person still has some self-determination even if she is physically forced to do something. What is it then in process theodicy that makes it true that God cannot overpower humans?14 Griffin’s answer to Basinger’s critique shows that Griffin has only partially understood the weight of the critique. He argues that Basinger can only reach his conclusion because he fails to distinguish between true individuals (like the human soul) and aggregates (like the human body). When a father puts a child in bed against her will, then that is coercion of the child’s body, but not its soul. But such coercion is impossible for God, since God does not have a body, and coercion can only happen between aggregates, and so Basinger’s critique fails, according to Griffin.15 But Basinger’s point here remains: From the principle that all actual entities have some power of self-determination, it does not follow that aggregates (like human bodies) cannot be coerced in the sense of God stopping them from doing what they want to do. The reason is that even if God stopped a human being from doing something, that person would still have some power of self-determination, for example to protest and dislike being stopped. It is important to note here that I do not say that it follows from the concept of God in process theism that God should be able to stop€humans from doing evil actions. Griffin has another reason for denying this, as we shall soon see. But I do say that it does not follow from the principle of self-determination that God cannot coerce in the sense of stopping a human action. One can still have some power of self-determination while at the same time being prevented from doing what one wants to do; the girl put in bed still has some power of self-determination, for example to scream and protest. My point here is only that the principle of self-determination is not sufficient to explain that God cannot coerce in the sense of forcing someone not to do an evil act. This does not prevent Griffin from nevertheless having an answer to why God cannot coerce in the sense of coercion described by 14 ╇ David Basinger, Divine Power in Process Theism: A Philosophical Critique (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 36. 15 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 112.



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Basinger as 1b. Griffin’s answer is that God does not have a localized body, but in the understanding of process theism, an aggregate is needed to coerce another aggregate. The father can only use his own body to coerce the body of the daughter being put to bed.16 I argued above that the principle that only a body can coerce a body does not follow from the principle of self-determination. But it does give an explanation of why God cannot coerce. I do not think it is a good answer, however. Basinger discusses the possible reply that God has no body, and Griffin says that Basinger, with that reply (that God has no body), provides himself with a good answer to his own critique.17 Basinger goes on to criticize the reply, by arguing that God could coerce by psychological means.18 Griffin dismisses this critique, however, saying both that this would be persuasion and not coercion, since it can be rejected, and also that God probably does persuade people in this manner all the time, and makes us change our minds.19 I find this to be a good answer by Griffin to Basinger’s critique that God could coerce psychologically, but I will add another critique of Griffin’s answer that God cannot coerce (in the sense of 1b) because he has no body. According to Griffin, God only persuades in the same way as we persuade our bodies to do actions. But our persuasion of our own bodies is very efficient. By persuasion I can make the aggregate of my arm do all kinds of things. So why can God not persuade the aggregates of our bodies equally efficiently? Is the power of persuasion exerted by my soul greater than the persuasive power of God when it comes to the aggregate of my body? If so, it seems that humans have more power than God, but Griffin defines God as having as much power as is consistently conceivable. Griffin says that we do not have full control over our body, only some parts, and this has been achieved gradually over billions of years.20 But in Griffin’s theology God has had even more years. Why has he not achieved this kind of efficient persuasion over the aggregates of glowing lava in the earth core so that he can prevent volcano eruptions? Why has he not achieved efficient persuasion over a gun, so that he could kill persons like Hitler when it was needed? ╇Ibid. ╇Ibid., 113. 18 ╇ Basinger, Divine Power in Process Theism, 32–35. 19 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 114–116. 20 ╇Ibid., 24–25, 148. 16 17

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Griffin says that God is a universal soul with the whole world as his body, whereas we are finite beings with localized bodies, and only these can coerce. But we only coerce parts of our bodies, like our hands. Why can God not coerce parts of his body (the world), like causing a big rock to drop on people about to murder or rape? Or best of all, why has God not persuaded a body-like aggregate to obey his persuasions so that he can act coercively (or a billion of them, or a superman-like aggregate)? Griffin says himself that God can coerce indirectly by persuading something in the world. And according to Griffin, God should coerce if he could. We humans can persuade an aggregate to act coercively for us. So when Griffin says that God both can and should coerce in the sense that is relevant, why does God not? Griffin could reply that there is an extra close connection between a soul and a body. But Griffin understands God as the soul of the world.21 Maybe he uses ‘soul’ in another sense here, but furthermore, Griffin believes in telekinesis – that humans can make matter move at a distance, as in examples of poltergeist and controlled psychokinesis.22 If humans can persuade aggregates to move at a distance, then surely God should be able to move some rocks or a gun, which would often be very helpful. The argument that particles like electrons are hard to persuade since they do what they have always done,23 is not helping Griffin here, since again humans so efficiently persuade such particles when they are parts of aggregates, either in our bodies or by telekinesis. To conclude this point: By persuasion we humans have managed to do something which God has not managed to do, namely to persuade an aggregate to help us coerce, and this is something God should do. This creates the inconsistency in process theism that God is claimed to have the greatest power, and the greatest power consistently Â�conceivable, yet there is no good reason why God should not persuade an aggregate to exert indirect coercive power as efficiently as we humans have€accomplished this. This means that even given the presuppositions of process theism, it seems to be the case that one can consistently conceive of God as having more power than what is claimed by Griffin. It follows that even God, as conceived in process theism, should be able to Â�prevent more evils. God’s power is then not only not the greatest consistently conceivable, but is even less efficient than human power in this regard. ╇Ibid., 25, 104, 154, 220. ╇ Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 224–227. 23 ╇Ibid., 309. 21 22



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God’s Non-Coercion is Inconsistent with Other Features of God Griffin has given a generic definition of God, where God is said to be alone worthy of worship and the trustworthy ground for hope in the ultimate victory of good over evil.24 But is God praiseworthy and trustworthy if his power is only non-coercive? These two questions will now be discussed, and I start with the argument that a non-coercive God is not praiseworthy. This is a critique that has been made against Griffin many times, and which he has discussed several times with some different answers. Griffin replies to Sontag, Davis, Roth and Hick in Encountering Evil.25 One reply by Griffin is that God has as much power as it is consistently conceivable that any being might have. As discussed above, this seems not to be the case, since we can consistently conceive that God had perÂ� suaded some aggregate by which he could exert coercive power, just like humans have done. Another reply by Griffin is that a God who€wants to prevent evil but cannot, is more praiseworthy than a God who can, but will not.26 This raises the question of what praiseworthiness requires, and Griffin discusses with Philip Hefner and Peter Hare whether or not praiseworthiness requires perfect goodness and perfect power.27 In the discussion with Philip Hefner, Griffin seems to argue that a being would be praiseworthy if it was perfectly good, even if it was not perfect in power.28 In a discussion with Peter Hare, he then distinguishes between two types of praiseworthiness. One type is to be unreservedly worthy, and Griffin argues that this worthiness only applies to that greater than which nothing can be coherently thought. The other type is that which actually evokes worship, and this does not need to be perfect in goodness or power. But Griffin still thinks that in some sense it should be conceived as the most effective power.29 Griffin holds that the God of process theism is perfectly good and has perfect power, and so this God is worthy of worship in both these senses. Since I believe that the discussion with Basinger showed that God can consistently be ╇ Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 166. ╇ See Davis, Encountering Evil, 1st ed., 133–135; and Davis, Encountering Evil, 138–141. 26 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 139–140. 27 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 185, 199–200. 28 ╇Ibid., 185. I write ‘seems’ because Griffin does not assert that a perfectly good being is praiseworthy, but he asks questions that seem to be rhetorical, so that the answer should be: ‘Yes, a being who is perfectly good is praiseworthy’. 29 ╇Ibid., 199–200. 24 25

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thought as having more power than in process theism (even within the framework of process theism), I consequently believe that the God of process theism does not fulfil what Griffin argues that unreserved praiseworthiness requires, namely to be the being greater than which nothing can be thought. Another concern that Griffin discusses several times is the claim that a non-coercive God is not trustworthy since the God of process theism gives no reason for hope in the future. He replies to Sontag, Roth and Davis in the first edition of Encountering Evil, that process theism gives more reason for hope for the planet than belief in an omnipotent God, because those who do not believe that God is omnipotent realize that they must save the planet.30 When Griffin wrote his text in Encountering Evil in 1981, he did not believe in life after death. In 1991, he writes that the year after the first edition of Encountering Evil, he looked into the parapsychological evidence and became convinced that there is life after death.31 This gives much more reason for hope for each individual, since we can now have hope in our own survival and hope that God will continue his work for as long as it takes until everything is good.32 But can we have a realistic hope that God as envisioned by process theism will ever be able to make everything good? David Pailin writes that the God of process theism seems extremely inefficient. God wants to lure and persuade chaos into higher and more complex life forms. But in billions of years, it seems he has managed to do so only on earth, while in the rest of the universe, as far as we know, God has only managed to create gas.33 And on earth, for each good mutation God persuades into being, there are extremely many bad mutations. Pailin then finds it more plausible to attribute the good mutations to chance than to the power of God.34 Can a God who seems to have so little power give us a good life after death? Is the fact that God has billions and billions of years the only thing that makes the hope of a good world realistic? These are not good reasons for hope. On the other hand, the argument from hope can only ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 1st ed., 132. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 39. 32 ╇Ibid., 38. 33 ╇ Pailin, in A.R. Peacocke, Svend Andersen, and Per Lønning, Evolution and Creation : A European Perspective (Århus: Aarhus University Press, 1987), 182. That God actually tries to create something good on the different planets of the universe, seems implied by Griffin when he writes that ‘God has perhaps been more successful on other planets, and perhaps less successful on others’ (Griffin, Evil Revisited, 222). 34 ╇ Pailin, in Peacocke, Andersen, and Lønning, Evolution and Creation, 185. 30 31



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be evaluated by what is actually true. It is not good to hope for something that is not true, and so it is not the case that the theory that gives the most hope is the best. I conclude therefore that the God of process theism does not give much hope for a good future anytime soon, but that this is an argument with little weight. To sum up, the God of process theism does not fulfil the condition for unreserved praise that Griffin thinks such praise requires,€namely to have as much power as is consistently conceivable. Nor does the God of process theism evoke much trust. In general, I do not consider these arguments to carry much weight against the process concept of God. The arguments are given more weight by the fact that Griffin himself says that being worthy of trust and reason for hope are essential features of what it means to be God.35 Concerning the whole discussion of incoherence so far, the critique from the debate with David Basinger was by far the weightiest since it showed inconsistency. God’s Non-Coercion is Inauthentic In chapter seven the criterion of authenticity was introduced. The criterion said that a serious candidate for what is authentically Christian must argue (or be based on argumentation which implies) that God has acted in Christ so that Christ reveals God, and argue this as an understanding of God’s revelation in Christ which is more coherent than alternative theories. It was also argued that in order to be more coherent than the alternative theory that Christ does not reveal God, a Christian theory should let the Bible remain trustworthy as a witness of revelation. This is not a rejection of novel reconstructions, but rather a requirement to these reconstructions. Of course, one might have a theory of God and not care about what the Bible says, nor be interested in revelation. But the importance of such theories being based on revelation was defended by showing that if you do not base a theory of God on revelation, there are numerous theories of God which are equally coherent. For example God may be an impersonal force which is morally neutral; or good, but finite in power; or a deistic amoral God; and so on. If a theory is not based on revelation, you have no good reason for preferring one of these over the others. For Griffin it is important that the Bible remain trustworthy.36 But does the Bible 35 36

╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 11. ╇ Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality, 8.

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remain trustworthy as a witness of revelation if God is understood not to have coercive power? In the debate between Basinger and Griffin, we saw that ‘coercion’ could have several meanings, but that the relevant sense in order to solve the problem of evil was the question of whether or not God can bring it about that other entities are devoid of power to act as they want€to. Even if Griffin should disagree with Basinger on this definition of coercion, that is not so important, because Griffin and his critics in the following discussion agree about which arguments would count as arguments against coercion or not. If God has an infinite amount of power, then he also has the power to coerce, and so Griffin believes that God is finite in power. The first counterargument against Griffin here is that the most authentic interpretation of the Bible describes God as having an infinite amount of power.37 Griffin also thinks that if God created the world ex nihilo, then God has coercive power, and so Griffin does not believe in creation ex nihilo. That the Bible describes creation as ex nihilo is the second counterargument against Griffin in this subchapter. Finally, Griffin argues that some of the miracles in the Bible suggest coercive power, and so he does not think that they happened. That the Bible describes miracles that presuppose coercive power is the third counterargument against Griffin. Griffin argues that the Bible is less trustworthy if God is interpreted as having coercive power, because you then get the problem of evil; why does God not perform more coercive miracles in order to help more people?38 Whether the Bible remains trustworthy as a witness of revelation when God’s power is interpreted as non-coercive will now be discussed. I repeat the general disclaimer I made in the chapter about the criterion of authenticity: I can of course give no full discussion of which interpretations of the Bible are most authentic. But by limiting myself to the discussions made in my material, I can say something of relevance about these issues, even if much more could have been said. The conclusions should be read in light of this disclaimer. The Bible Describes God’s Power as Infinite Griffin has been criticized several times for having a concept of God’s power that does not fit with a biblical description of God’s power. 37 ╇From now on I will for short write ‘the Bible describes’, but it should be read as ‘the most authentic interpretation of the Bible describes’. 38 ╇ Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality, 281–283.



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S.T. Davis criticizes Griffin with five different arguments which support Davis’ claim that the Bible teaches a God who is not limited in power the way Griffin pictures it.39 Davis discusses creation out of nothing, but also other arguments, like the Bible saying that everything is possible for God. When Griffin replies to Davis, he only replies to the arguments that have to do with creation out of nothing, and not to the other arguments by Davis. Griffin’s understanding of creation out of nothing is the topic for discussion below, and so that discussion will be postponed until then. In another discussion, Griffin replies to critique by Philip Hefner, which is similar to that given by Davis.40 Here Griffin says that he denies that monotheism means monism, and says that he wants to modify the Christian tradition on this point. His only argument with reference to biblical material is that Genesis should be interpreted as creation out of chaos, and so this should influence how we understand God’s power in general. I guess this means that when it is written in the Bible that everything is possible for God, Griffin would say that that claim is wrong. In his book Two Great Truths, Griffin says that he relates to the Bible by thinking that some of it is true; some of it is true, but not when interpreted literally; and some of it is wrong.41 Since he never comments on the passages which say that everything is possible for God, it seems reasonable to conclude that he thinks that these passages are untrue. Even if Griffin does not give a direct answer to how to interpret the biblical passages that describe God’s power, Hygen has done this in a way that would be very helpful for Griffin’s argumentation. Hygen discusses whether the descriptions of God’s power must be understood as God having an infinite amount of power. Concerning the biblical material that states God’s great power, Hygen suggests that it should be read as doxology praising God, and not as literal descriptions of God.42 The importance of this argument is that there is a difference between doxology and descriptive statements; praise does not mention the exceptions, but literal descriptions do. A person who gives God praise does not say: ‘Glory to you, great God, you can do everything, except for logical impossibilities and immoral actions’. No, he or she just says ‘God, you can do everything!’, even if they would say that God cannot ╇ Davis, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 135. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 183–185. 41 ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 33. 42 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 83–86. 39 40

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do logical impossibilities or immoral actions, had they been asked to give a literal description of God. But can one honestly say ‘God, you can do everything’, while also believing that there are some things, neither illogical nor immoral, that God cannot do? Can one say ‘God, you can do everything’, meaning only that God can do very many things, but there still being things God cannot do even if he wanted to? Is Hygen making an unreasonable interpretation in suggesting that one can? Gijsbert van den Brink considers the argument that the descriptions of God’s power should be read as doxologies, but he dismisses that this could mean that God’s power is finite, because even if the statements are doxologies, he argues that they must implicitly express an actual content; otherwise they would be incoherent.43 But is that the case? Hygen gives good arguments in favour of the view that such statements can reasonably be interpreted as being said by someone who also accepts that there are great exceptions to the statement. One argument is that people make such statements all the time in contexts where they clearly do not believe the one praised is omnipotent, as in ‘John, you can do everything – nothing is impossible for you!’ A similar example would be ‘My beloved wife, you are the most beautiful in the world! You shine like the sun!’ In addition, the terms ‘all’, ‘everything’, and ‘nothing’ are seldom used in an absolute sense. Importantly, Hygen argues that even the Bible gives an example of this when Jesus says ‘everything is possible for the one who believes’ (Mark 9:23).44 We rightly do not conclude from this that all believers are omnipotent. The example shows that a statement about power in itself does not decide in this question. Rather, the context is more important, and here Hygen makes yet another important argument. He gives historical evidence that in ancient times several gods within one religion were called omnipotent, a use which does not correspond to the definition of unlimited omnipotence given in this book.45 So, I believe Hygen is right in believing that one can say something in a context of praise which one would deem untrue if it was Â�interpreted literally. And even if it is not a context of praise, for example when God 43 ╇ Gijsbert van den Brink, Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993), 177. 44 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 84. 45 ╇Ibid., 115. The example is that Jupiter, Neptune, Juno and Fortuna all were called omnipotent in Roman religion. The pantokrator-term was also used to describe a king (Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 79).



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is reported as announcing himself that nothing is Â�impossible for him (Jer 32:27); it is still the case that the words ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’ rarely mean ‘absolutely nothing’ or ‘absolutely everything’. But it is important to note that these arguments by Hygen do not favour interpreting ‘You can do everything’-statements as statements claiming that God is not omnipotent. There is a difference between ‘not saying that God is omnipotent’ and ‘saying that God is not omnipotent’. The arguments now mentioned by Hygen do not show that an omnipotenceÂ�interpretation is poorer or less reasonable than an alternative interÂ�preÂ� tation. What they do show, however, is that there are also good arguments for an interpretation where God is not understood as omnipotent, but still very powerful. I find Hygen’s argumentation to be sound, and helpful to Griffin in this case. Even if other arguments could be made from other texts of the Bible describing God as powerful, I think that Hygen’s argument about doxology would include these as well. Other texts can hardly put the point clearer than those who directly say that everything is possible for God, so when Hygen’s argument covers those, I believe that he also covers other relevant texts. Within the limits of this short discussion, I conclude that the question of the amount of God’s power in the Bible is an open question which does not count against Griffin, when this topic is considered alone. The Bible Describes Creation out of Nothing It is important for Griffin to reject the doctrine of creation out of nothing, because he finds it to imply unlimited omnipotent power, and that makes it difficult to solve the problem of evil.46 Philip Clayton agrees that the doctrine of creation out of nothing implies the unlimited power of God, since there is then nothing that limits God.47 Keith Ward, on the other hand, argues that God may very well be the source of everything and still be finite in power, since God necessarily has the nature he has, which may be a nature with finite power.48 I believe that Ward has a good point in that the nature of God may limit God’s power. But creation out of nothing, also in Ward’s account, implies that God has ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 109. ╇ Philip Clayton, God and Contemporary Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 21, 28. 48 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 27; and Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God, 97. 46 47

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coercive power, although it may not be infinite. And so creation out of nothing functions as an argument against God’s power being noncoercive that it is important for Griffin to dismiss. Creation out of nothing does not imply with logical necessity that God has coercive power, since there could be something else in God’s nature preventing him from acting coercively. But none of the scholars in this book who hold that God is creator out of nothing, think that God cannot act coercively, and so creation out of nothing is here taken to imply coercive power. For this reason Griffin rejects the doctrine of creation out of nothing. Griffin’s rejection of creation out of nothing as a biblical doctrine relies heavily on two books, namely Jon Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil (1988) and Gerhard May’s Creatio Ex Nihilo (1994).49 According to May, the doctrine of creation out of nothing is not found in the Old Testament, nor in inter-testamental time, nor in the New Testament. Griffin finds this important, since biblical arguments in favour of creation out of nothing are most often based on the texts written after the Old Testament, such as 2 Macc 7:28, John 1:13, Rom 4:17, Col 1:16, and Heb 11:3. But even if the term ‘out of nothing’ is here sometimes used, that did not necessarily mean out of ‘absolute nothingness’, such as the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo later came to mean. Philo, for example, could say that God had created out of nothing, even though Philo defended creation out of chaos, and another ancient example is Xenofon, who says that parents bring forth their children out of nothing.50 When Griffin writes that according to May the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not in the Bible, that does not mean that according to May the doctrine of creation out of chaos is in the Bible. Rather, May’s point is that this distinction was not a question for the biblical authors.51 It was not until the second half of the second century that the doctrine of creation out of nothing was established because of the controversy with the gnostics.52 The fact that the distinction between creation out of nothing or out of chaos was not present for the biblical writers is reason 49 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 109, cf Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); and Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine Of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994). 50 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 110. 51 ╇ May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, xi-xii. 52 ╇Ibid., xiii.



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enough to argue that it leaves the question open. But when the problem arose, the question became which of the two understandings is implied in the Bible. May says that creation out of nothing was historically considered to be the understanding best in accordance with how the Bible describes God’s power, but Griffin mentions Hermogenes as an example of a theologian who disagreed.53 May himself agrees that creation out of nothing is implied in the Bible.54 Ward agrees with May, in thinking that creation out of nothing is not explicitly formulated in the Bible, but that it is implied in the descriptions of God’s power, and so by reflection on God’s power it became the standard view.55 But Griffin disagrees, and to make his case, he employs Jon Levenson. When Griffin presents Levenson, he focuses on the creation account found in Gen 1. Should the first verse of the Bible be interpreted as ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’ or ‘In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth’? The first sounds like creation out of nothing, while the other is much more open to creation out of chaos. Griffin mentions two arguments for why the story in Genesis 1 should be read as creation out of chaos. Firstly, if the first translation is chosen, it says that God created the heavens and the earth on the first day. But then the text becomes inconsistent because it says that the heaven was created on the second day and the earth on the third day. This inconsistency disappears if the second translation is chosen. Secondly, the waters and the darkness are not said to be created, such as all the other things are. It might not be so strange that the darkness is not said to be created, since darkness is only absence of light. But the point is still valid for the waters. Griffin does not comment on the inter-testamental and New Testament texts, more than what he has already said, namely that they need not be interpreted as creation out of nothing, since ‘nothing’ at that time could mean ‘chaos’. He ends his case by claiming that the church fathers were too quick to accept the doctrine of creation out of nothing, and that we should return to the more biblical doctrine of creation out of chaos.56 Hygen also notices the two possible interpretations of the first verse in the Bible, and argues that the darkness and the waters should be ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 111–114. ╇ May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, viii. 55 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 5–6. 56 ╇ Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 108–114, 125. 53 54

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interpreted as threatening powers of chaos, similar to what is described in Psalm 74, Psalm 89 and Isa 51:9. Hygen thinks that God fights these powers and that they are not yet beaten – an understanding he supports with Isa 27:1: ‘On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea’ (NRSV). Hygen refers to Regin Prenter as a systematic theologian who supports the idea that God’s creation should be understood as a fight. Griffin and Hygen here differ, since Griffin understands the chaos as something morally neutral, but which still may offer resistance to the creator. In Hygen’s understanding, God is fighting evil powers in his creation, and this will be further discussed later. Hygen links the terms ‘tohu vabohu’ and ‘tehom’ in Gen 1:2 to evil and chaotic forces, closely linked to the sea monster Tiamat in Babylonian creation myth.57 Old Testament scholar D. Tsumura disagrees, arguing that tohu vabohu has nothing to do with chaos, nor is there a direct link to Tiamat.58 But there is no place here for an exegesis of all the biblical material. This has only been a brief evaluation of the argumentation that is found in my primary material. I find Gerhard May’s book convincing in his argumentation that the distinction between creation out of chaos and out of nothing was not present for the Biblical writers. No writers discuss the distinction before the second century, but several philosophers and theologians can write both that God created out of nothing and out of chaos. Ward, Griffin, and Hygen agree that the doctrine of creation out of nothing is not present in the Bible, but that it developed later. The difference between them is that Ward considers the development good, while Griffin and Hygen consider it unfortunate.59 From this I draw the conclusion that in the question of creation out of nothing or out of chaos, it is possible to interpret the Bible both ways. Going into details to consider which interpretation is most adequate will demand too much space, and is not done here. Both sides of the discussion will interpret some biblical material literally, and other passages not literally. Those who believe in creation ex nihilo can ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 151–152. ╇ David Toshio Tsumura, Creation and Destruction : A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 196–197. 59 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 5–7; Griffin, in Davis, Encountering Evil, 125; and Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 149. 57 58



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interpret the descriptions of a fight against chaos as poetry while the descriptions of God’s power are interpreted literally. Those who believe in creation out of chaos, on the other hand, can do as Hygen and read the fight against chaos literally and the passages on God’s power as mostly doxology. The Bible Describes God as Acting Coercively What about the miracles of Jesus, and in particular the resurrection of Jesus? Should they mostly be understood as expressions of coercive power? Here the conclusion from Griffin’s debate with Basinger is relevant. The important question is not whether the miracles of the Bible are to be understood as persuasion or coercion. If you allow for massive telekinesis on God’s part, Jesus could be levitated to walk on water and bodies could be healed, probably even from death. But if this is achieved by persuasion, then the problem of evil remains as difficult for process theists as for free will theists, because then we would expect God to heal more people and resurrect more young innocent victims of death by such efficient persuasion. So for Griffin’s theodicy to work, most of the miracles in the Bible must not have happened as described. Commenting on miracles, Griffin does not rule out the possibility that some of them may have happened. Griffin believes in paranormal phenomena, and so spectacular things may happen, but he stresses that they must not be understood as supernatural.60 By ‘supernatural’, Griffin means something that disturbs the normal cause-effect-chains.61 It is not all that clear what ‘the normal cause-effect-chains’ are, especially not if paranormal phenomena like telekinesis are included. But as mentioned, whether you call it natural or supernatural, coercive or persuasive, is not so important: if Griffin accepts that God can do all the miracles that the Bible ascribes to him, then the process view of God’s power does not help with the problem of evil, because then God should do more of these miracles. It is not very clear how many miracles Griffin rejects as untrue. He seems to reject a bodily resurrection of Jesus, since he claims that one need not believe in the resurrection in order to be Christian,62 and since he claims that the early Christians did not believe ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 35; and Griffin, A Process Christology, 6. ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 2, 6. 62 ╇ Griffin, A Process Christology, 12. 60 61

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in a bodily resurrection, but rather that this view arose at the end of the first century.63 Concerning the latter claim, Griffin refers to Gregory Riley’s book Resurrection Reconsidered.64 Riley argues that the resurrection was not bodily, and also that writers of that time could write about a spirit eating or having wounds without that implying that the spirit had a physical body. Whatever the gospels say that is supposed to prove a physical resurrection could also be said about a spiritual resurrection, according to Riley.65 N.T. Wright has worked thoroughly on this question, and shows convincingly that Riley’s view fails, but I do not have space to present his case here.66 There are very many miracles described in the Bible, and even if only some of these happened, it suggests that God has efficient power in the relevant sense that he could cure diseases, make blind see, and make paralyzed walk. In order for Griffin’s theodicy to work, most of these miracles cannot have happened. But if most of the miracles, or the crucial miracle of the resurrection, did not happen, then the Bible is not trustworthy as a witness of revelation. If so much, and so central parts of the Bible, are not true, why should we believe any of the other things Jesus is supposed to have said about God, like that he is good and personal? Griffin would probably answer: Because it is a good theory explaining the world. But as he says: Such a theory must be better than other theories.67 As mentioned earlier, I have stressed the claim from Pannenberg that a theory must be based on revelation. There is little reason to believe in a constructed God-hypothesis based only on knowledge about the world, since there are so many hypotheses that are then equally coherent or better – like for example God as an impersonal neutral force that is the source of everything; that is a monistic theory which solves the problem of evil. This means that since process theism is not able to let the Bible remain trustworthy as a witness of revelation, it gets a low score on the criterion of authenticity. Since it is not sufficiently based on revelation, it loses its foundation and becomes nothing more than one theory among many equally good theories. ╇ Griffin, Two Great Truths, 112. ╇ Gregory J. Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995). 65 ╇Ibid., 9. 66 ╇ Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003). Direct critique against Riley can be found at pages 41–42, 50, 57, 62, 64, 83, 476–477, 525, 536, 552, and 677–679. 67 ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 2. 63 64



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Is this argument also a good argument against Ward? Ward’s Â�theodicy states that most often God cannot interfere, since that would disturb the system too much. But in the New Testament, it seems that God disturbs all the time. The argument against Ward is then as follows: if God could disturb much then, he should be able to disturb much now. Or: if Ward rejects most of the miracle-stories in the New Testament, then his theodicy gets a low score on the criterion of authenticity. Ward does not reject most of the miracle-stories of the New Testament. Rather, he claims that in general God lets his independent creation go on without divine interference. When God does interfere, it is mostly because he wants to accompany special persons, like profets, with signs, to confirm that they reveal an authentic message from God.68 But against this, one could argue that God should interfere more often, if he can do so without disturbing the system too much, because that would be good for those who would be healed from their suffering. But if God were to interfere very often, it would not be the independent world that he wanted to create. Hence, he only interferes like that when he has an especially good reason, namely to reveal himself. And that God reveals himself is important since the goal of this independent world is to enter into a fellowship with God – there must be at least one decisive revelation. For these reasons, the argument of miracles in the New Testament works better against Griffin than Ward. To conclude the discussion of Griffin’s theodicy, it has been found to get a low score on the criterion of authenticity because it must reject almost all miracles in the Bible, and then the Bible does not remain trustworthy as a witness of revelation. If Griffin, on the other hand, should accept most of the miracles of the Bible, then his understanding of God’s power does not provide a good theodicy, since we would then expect more efficient prevention of evils by God as envisioned by Griffin. Griffin’s theodicy has also been found to get a low score on the criterion of coherence, because God’s power is claimed to be the Â�greatest power consistently conceivable, and yet there is no reason within process theism why God should not be able to persuade more efficiently, something which humans can easily do. So far, it can be concluded that Griffin’s theodicy has great problems both with regard to coherence and authenticity.

68

╇ Ward, Divine Action, 180–182.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hygen The main claim in Hygen’s theodicy is that God is very powerful, but temporarily limited by having to fight against strong, personal, evil, supernatural powers. Hygen’s argumentation for this is given in my presentation of Hygen, and is mainly based on interpretation of the Bible. In many ways, Hygen is similar to Griffin, and for this reason many of the counterarguments against Griffin could also be directed against Hygen. In the same way as the arguments against Swinburne were used as an outline for counterarguments against Ward, the argu­ ments against Griffin will now function as an outline for counterargu­ ments against Hygen, but with adjustments when that is suitable. The reason is again to clarify the comparison. The discussion of Griffin started with counterarguments against the coherence of his concept of God. The first argument against Griffin was€that dualism is metaphysically unsatisfying, and this argument is relevant also against Hygen. This discussion will not be repeated here, since the conclusion would be the same, namely that dualism is prefer­ able if the monistic alternative is inconsistent, whereas monism is preferable to dualism if both are otherwise equally coherent. The sec­ ond argument against Griffin was from David Basinger on the inter­ pretation of coercion. This was a good argument against Griffin, but not relevant against Hygen, who does not adhere to the ontology of process theism. The third argument against Griffin was that his con­ cept of God does not make God trustworthy and praiseworthy. I con­ cluded that the arguments were valid, but did not carry very much weight. Concerning these arguments, Hygen’s theodicy has resources for giving a more coherent answer to why humans can have a realistic hope in God and why he is praiseworthy, and so this will be the first argument against Hygen that will be discussed, namely that his under­ standing of God as one who fights evil powers does not make God praiseworthy and trustworthy. In addition to the counterarguments against Griffin that are relevant for discussing Hygen, there are also some counterarguments from Griffin against positions like Swinburne and Ward that are relevant in Hygen’s case. Griffin argues that belief in coercive power in God is



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contradicted by the natural sciences and the problem of evil, since God seems to use his coercive power too arbitrarily and seldom. That coer­ cive power is contradicted by the natural sciences was discussed and dismissed in the discussion of Ward, and so this discussion will not be repeated here. But that God’s power seems arbitrary and too seldom used is an argument that Swinburne and Ward have answered differ­ ently, and which also Hygen must answer. This will be the second argu­ ment against Hygen: Why does God act coercively sometimes, but not at other times? Hygen’s answers to the previous questions all involve a reference to an opponent against God (Satan), and so another relevant counterargument from Griffin must be discussed, namely the argu­ ment that such evil supernatural powers as Hygen refers to, do not exist. This is the third counterargument against Hygen’s main claim that God fights evil powers. Moving from coherence to authenticity, the first argument against Griffin was that the Bible is best interpreted as implying monism. This argument is relevant against Hygen, and in the discussion above Hygen was used to defend Griffin. There I concluded that the question is open. The second argument against Griffin was that the Bible teaches creation out of nothing. This is also relevant for Hygen, and again I concluded that this is an open question. There is no reason to repeat these discussions here. The third argument against Griffin was that one cannot reject all of the miracles in the Bible while still letting the Bible remain trustworthy as a witness of revelation. This argument is not relevant against Hygen, since he accepts the miracles of the Bible. However, it can be argued that the Bible does not describe God as gen­ uinely fighting evil powers in the Bible, and by ‘genuinely fight’ I here mean that there are powers that efficiently prevent God from doing what God wants to do. This will be the fourth and final argument against Hygen. Hygen’s God is not praiseworthy If God is like Hygen argues, how can we have hope in such a God who is fighting evil and seems to be losing all the time? Can he be trusted and praised? Hygen says that our trust in God is based on his promise that he will be victorious in the end.1 But can that promise be trusted? 1

╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 183.

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Does God not rather seem to be losing the fight? Hygen says that we cannot trust that God will save us from every evil in the world – such a hope is not realistic. But we can have hope in God’s final victory. Such a hope is not more certain if God is said to be omnipotent, because then there is great chance that one will lose hope that such a God exists at all. Rather, God is to be thanked and praised for all he has done, and for what he will do.2 But this God seems very weak. There are so many evils happening all the time – does Hygen think that God wants to prevent them all, but does not manage to do so? In that case, God seems very weak. Hygen discusses the argument, and his reply is that God is very strong, but that he has a very strong opponent as well.3 Compared with process theism, where God does not fight one strong opponent, Hygen’s view does entail that God is more powerful in an important regard. In one sense, God is equally weak in Hygen’s and Griffin’s theodicies, since God does not manage to do all that he wants to do. But in another sense, he has great power, and when the opponent is then defeated, his power will not be limited anymore. God can then be praised as omni­ potent in anticipation of what will happen. Nevertheless, Hygen does not give any arguments to support the hope that God actually will win a final victory over evil, and so it seems to be a good point that God is losing all the time. To this I would sug­ gest that Hygen, within his understanding of the fight between God and Satan, could answer that God has won all the important fights so far, and that the will of God is being gradually and increasingly fulfilled all the time. By ‘winning the important’ fights, I refer to creation and the resurrection of Jesus, for Hygen probably thinks that Satan wanted Jesus dead. By God’s will being gradually and increasingly fulfilled, I refer to creation developing creatures capable of relationship with God, and more and more people being saved for the kingdom of God. Despite setbacks, God’s will comes through more and more. And of course we do not know the amount of victories in relation to the amount of losses. Every day most people survive, most people are healthy, and life goes on. Within the theology of Hygen there are several arguments that could be used to support the belief that God will finally win.

╇ Ibid., 180–185. ╇ Ibid., 172.

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Why does God only perform miracles sometimes? Against understandings of God where God has supernatural power, Griffin argues that such a God should intervene more often, and not so arbitrarily.4 These are two different arguments: God should act more often, and God should not act arbitrarily. Hygen’s answer to the charge that God should act more often is that God’s opponent is very strong,5 and this is the reason why God does not act more often. This could then be criticized for portraying God as too weak, but this has already been discussed in the previous counterargument. For this reason we move on to the other argument – that God acts arbitrarily. If God has the power to do great miracles, he seems to act arbitrarily, since for example some are healed while others are not. This is a common argu­ ment against those who hold God to be omnipotent. But for Hygen this is different. Hygen does not explicitly discuss the charge that God acts capriciously, but his general idea contains an answer to this critique. Hygen’s main idea is again that God is fighting evil powers. In war, it is common to win some fights and lose others, and so this is a possible answer for Hygen to give. But this again raises doubt about the whole imagery of spiritual fighting, which can be formulated as the following critique: Is the concept of ‘spiritual fighting’ intelligible? What would it imply that two spiritual powers were ‘fighting’? We know fighting only from phys­ ical bodies which can be hurt and die, but how can this concept be meaningfully applied to spiritual beings? Hygen does not discuss this,€but I will make a suggestion as to how the concept could be intel­ ligible. In chapter eight I showed that the four scholars had a common understanding of theological language, which involved that what is expressed in language about God should be understood and tested on its implications for our world, so that if God is good and powerful, for example, we expect the world to be good. And if he is personal we expect that we should be able to have a personal relationship with him, and this is what is being expressed in the personal pronoun ‘he’, not that God is male.

4 ╇Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 222; and Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, 236. 5 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 172.

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When we use terms about humans, they often indicate something about the person’s physical interior as well, so that one who is strong has big muscles, or one who is compassionate has certain neurons working. But when the terms are used about God, they do not say any­ thing specifically about God’s interior, only about what can be expected as implications for our world. And so, saying that God fights evil pow­ ers should not lead us to believe that something like a physical fight is actually taking place somewhere, with the only exception being that we should exchange physical persons with spirits. Similarly, when we say ‘God speaks’, we should not think that spiritual vocal chords are actu­ ally vibrating and a spiritual tongue is moving. But it does have the implication that a meaningful message can be perceived in the world. Saying that ‘God fights’ does not say anything about how this fight hap­ pens, or what determines who wins or loses the various fights. What it implies is that sometimes God’s will will come through in the world, and sometimes it will not. To think of a spiritual fight like this would imply that both good and evil happen in the world, and so the concept of a spiritual fight can be put forth by Hygen as a revelation-based description that is coherent with experiences in the world. But what actually goes on might be very different from what we think of as a ‘fight’ in our world. If one believes that there is a God who is a spiritual being, who can make things happen in the world, and who is good, then little extra is required for adding a being who is similar, but evil.6 We know from physics that forces can move material objects, and vary in strength,€ and cancel each other out. God’s power could work like a force exerting his will, but then sometimes being disturbed by another force which makes God’s will not come through. This is a way of inter­ preting Hygen, where the concept of a spiritual fight is as meaningful as other things said about God. That the fight is genuine does not mean that actual wrestling is going on, but that God’s will does not always come through because it has an efficient counter-power to it. While some may accept that the fight can be understood in some symbolic way, there is a bigger problem, namely that there must actually be an opponent for God to fight. By God’s opponent, Hygen refers to some­ one who actually exists. But this has been criticized, and to this argu­ ment we now turn. ╇Griffin quotes this argument by Plantinga in Griffin, Evil Revisited, 48.

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There are no supernatural evil powers No evidential support for supernatural evil powers Griffin does not find the idea of a satanic figure plausible.7 At one instance he says that Taken literally, the idea of Satan – as a personal, all-knowing, ubiqui­ tous€being who rivals God in power, and who presides over a hoard of demons (the original Evil Empire) – is surely false. No mere creature could approximate the divine power, let alone be omnipresent and omniscient.8

He does not give much argument to support this, probably because he€finds it ‘surely false’. The only argument given is that no mere crea­ ture could approximate the divine power, but then he does not con­ sider€the alternative that Satan is not a mere creature, as in Hygen’s case, since Hygen with his dualistic view suggests that Satan is not created by€God.9 It is more likely, however, that it is our lack of experience supporting the existence of Satan, which makes it implausible that Satan exists. Evils can be understood as caused by nature or humans, demon posses­ sions can be understood as psychological phenomena, and other instances of seemingly demonic activity like poltergeists can be under­ stood as unconscious psychokinesis by Griffin, or as some other phe­ nomenon yet not explained by physics, but still explainable in terms of physics. Griffin comments on those who think that God fights an evil power, stating that it does justice to our intuition that there is an evil power. But Griffin himself argues that what is considered as demonic should still be understood as a human power to do evil.10 Without hav­ ing investigated it on my own, I would still claim that it is at least true that there is little good evidence of demonic activity which is publicly known. One could try to make the case that poltergeist phenomena are caused by demons, but even the most famous Poltergeist phenomena11 are more neutral than evil, since they mostly have to do with moving ╇ Ibid., 21. ╇Griffin, Two Great Truths, 34. ╛╛╛╛9 ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 151–153. 10 ╇Griffin, Evil Revisited, 32, 191. 11 ╇Griffin mentions some famous alleged poltergeist phenomena known as the Rosenheim and the Miami case (Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality, 71–77). The Enfield case would also be a typical example, but it is not very good, since ╛╛╛╛7 ╛╛╛╛8

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pictures and chairs and boxes, which is more harmless than evil. Such cases are also rare, so they do not constitute good evidence. Hygen himself argues that parapsychological evidence should not be put forth as evidence of religious claims, since parapsychological evidence is so open to other interpretations.12 This means that Hygen would have a much stronger case if clearer empirical evidence could have been given in support of the existence of evil personal super-human powers. Within the material of this book, such evidence is not given. It might exist, but I have searched through quite much literature without finding any good evidence. If it exists, it would strengthen Hygen’s case considerably, and so this is a field where more research is required in order to make Hygen’s case convincing. By ‘good evidence’, I am thinking of events happening that were witnessed by several reliable persons (awake, sober, healthy, and educated), which could not easily be given a physical or psychological explanation, and which had bad effects in the world.13 Even if evidence could be pro­ duced in favour of such powers existing, one could still argue with Griffin that it is implausible that evil powers cause natural evils, so that their existence does not help in the question of theodicy. This is the next counterargument. It is implausible that evil powers cause natural evils How exactly is the idea of Satan supposed to help a theodicy like Hygen’s? Surely the idea of demons causing earthquakes or diseases is very implausible, since the natural sciences can so clearly show them to be effects of natural causes, and so Ockham’s Razor should be used

it seems likely that the girls cheated (see http://www.zurichmansion.org/ghosts/video2 .html. Accessed Oct 23, 2007). 12 ╇ Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien, 146. 13 ╇ It may seem unfair that I require such good evidence when I do not make the same requirement to the central miracles of the Bible, like the resurrection. I think of the resurrection and the general trustworthiness of the Gospels as part of the hypoth­ esis that God is decisively revealed through Jesus. Since I think it can be argued quite well for that hypothesis overall, I require less evidence for these miracles than for other alleged supernatural events supporting another ontology. But if this other ontology could be shown to be generally trustworthy, I would require less evidence for those supernatural events in order to believe in them, since it would then be more likely that they had occurred. There is no vicious circle in this reasoning. Within coherentistic thinking elements of a theory may well support each other as long as they are inte­ grated in a larger web, and not just two events supporting each other with no further support.



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against those who add Satan as an explanation. Plantinga once wrote that Satan could be argued to be the cause of natural evils, but Griffin and Ward find this very implausible.14 Hygen never says that evil pow­ ers cause natural evils, but he is also not very explicit on how to under­ stand natural evils; he just makes the more general point that God’s will does not always come through. I would suggest that Hygen would have the best case if he argues that the natural evils are understood as being effects of the best system that God could make out of the chaos out of which God created, and not as directly caused by evil powers. But then what role is there for the demonic powers in the theodicy of Hygen? Their main function is to explain why God does not prevent more evils, like the natural evils. Evil personal powers do not cause natural evils, but they stop God from preventing natural evils. This means that the case could be made that they prevent many of God’s good actions, whereby God gets blamed for allowing them. Many will have problems with this scenery of a big fight going on behind the scenes without us being able to find any direct support for it, other than that it helps explain that sometimes miracles happen, and sometimes evils are not prevented by God. If someone invented it as a theory, I would say that there are equally many theories that could be invented which were equally good. Hygen’s main defence, however, is that this is what has been revealed in the Bible. We can only know what happens in God’s world if it is revealed to us, and according to Hygen this dualistic fight has been revealed to us. This means that Hygen could make the case that God’s fight has been revealed, it is coherent with what happens in the world, and it is so evident in the Bible that a rejection of it could not be called authentically Christian. But is it so evident in the Bible? It is time to discuss the authenticity of Hygen’s theodicy. God’s fight is not genuine God does not fight evil powers in the Bible This argument can be divided into two parts. First one can ask whether the Bible at all portrays God as fighting against evil powers, which I will

14 ╇ Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 58–59; Ward, Divine Action, 67; and Griffin, Evil Revisited, 21.

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discuss now. If a case can be made that it does, one might still ask whether this should be understood as a genuine fight – understood as a fight where God has to struggle, as opposed to God being in absolute control. That will be the next argument I discuss, but first: is God por­ trayed as fighting evil powers in the Bible? It is common to argue like Swinburne that it does not help theodicy to bring in the idea of Satan, because it only pushes the problem one step back: why does God allow Satan to do evil?15 This claim presup­ poses that God is sovereign, has unlimited power, and only fights evil to the degree that he allows evil to occur, while he easily at any time could erase all evil. To think that God genuinely fights evil powers is to think that God want to erase all evil, but cannot, and that the reason he cannot is not a self-chosen limitation. But as seen in the discussions above, it is common to think that the God of the Bible has more power than that. Hygen’s view is that there are both monistic and dualistic traits in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. He finds it obvi­ ous that there is no clear monism in the New Testament. Jesus faces demons in the synoptic gospels; the anti-theses in the Gospel of John are dualistic; Eph 6:12 speaks of the fight against spiritual forces of evil; and there is an abundance of such forces in the Apocalypse. Hygen refers to Ragnar Leivestads book Christ the Conqueror, which notes that Jesus’ healings of diseases are also understood as a victory over evil powers. Even salvation implies dualism, according to Hygen, because a strict monism would mean that evil has its root in God and that he had to let Jesus suffer for something that had its ultimate cause in God.16 Hygen is well aware that he gives this subject a superficial treatment, which does not discuss the topic thoroughly. But for him it is enough that there is an opening for dualism in the Bible, because this way of understanding the problem makes the problem of evil much less diffi­ cult than when God alone is the source of everything.17 Another kind of dualism is even clearer in the Bible, according to Hygen, and that is the dualism between the present and the future. Christians pray ‘thy will be done’ because they believe it is not yet fully done. Jesus pro­ claimed that the kingdom of God had come near, but according to the Bible this is not yet fully realised. Hygen finds this to be so obviously

╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 41. ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 161–165. 17 ╇ Ibid., 161, 174. 15 16



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clear from the Bible that it is not necessary to argue that it is the case. From this Hygen concludes that the omnipotence of God is to be understood eschatologically.18 Since the focus now is on authenticity, Hygen could make the fol­ lowing argument: The Bible does not remain trustworthy as a witness of revelation if you argue that Satan and the demons do not exist as personal evil powers, whose actions have bad effects in the world. If we take into account how many times Jesus talks about Satan and demons, if they do not exist, then we cannot trust what Jesus says about God and salvation, for then he is equally likely to be wrong about the existence of these as well.19 On the other hand, we have also seen that it is difficult to argue that the existence of Satan is true. And so if there was a good€ interpretation of the Bible which did not include the existence of€ Satan, this would make many people consider the Bible as more trustworthy than if it is claimed that Satan exists. The best interpreta­ tion of the Bible which understood Satan not to exist as a personal power, would in my opinion be something like God using the resources available speaking in a language that the relevant culture could under­ stand.20 The picture of Satan is very different in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and so it might be an idea in development not ready to be dismissed before the time of natural science. Summing up, it seems that the existence of evil supernatural powers has strong bibli­ cal support, but that it could also be interpreted otherwise. When it comes to coherence, it has the advantage of explaining why God does not always prevent evils, but it has the disadvantage of not having the wholeness and completeness that belongs to the theory of God as source of all things. God does not genuinely fight evil powers in the Bible Swinburne believes in the existence of evil supernatural powers, but he does not find this idea helpful for a theodicy, since God is superior in power.21 In the subchapter above, the discussion was whether or not the Bible supported the interpretation that God is fighting. But even if ╇ Ibid., 165–170. ╇ Swinburne and Ward seem to believe that Satan and demons exist, see Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 41, 108; and Ward, Divine Action, 189. 20 ╇ Arguments in favour of why God would let revelation happen this way can be found in Swinburne, Revelation, 98–106. 21 ╇ Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 41, 108. 18 19

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one concludes that the Bible describes God as fighting, one could still ask if this fight is understood as a genuine fight, where God is under­ stood as not having control, as opposed to a non-genuine fight, which is a kind of fight against evil that God sovereignly allows to happen for a while. The question now is whether the Bible supports the idea of God genuinely fighting evil powers. Hygen has spent much energy on refuting arguments from the Bible that God is omnipotent. He has shown that the terms sebaot, shaddai and pantokrator do not have to be interpreted as omnipotence, and that Bible verses stating that God can do anything can plausibly be inter­ preted as non-literal statements. But as mentioned, there is a difference between not saying that God is omnipotent, and saying that God is not omnipotent. Hygen’s arguments so far have only criticized the argu­ ments in favour of omnipotence. Can positive arguments from the Bible also be given to support that God is not omnipotent, and that he genuinely has to fight against evil powers? According to Hygen, the New Testament clearly insists that efficient powers against God exist. By adding ‘efficient’, he means that it is more than just God allowing them to do evil, which would make the problem of evil very difficult.22 Rather, it is a genuine fight, and ‘fight’ would be the wrong word if God allowed evil to happen but could easily prevent it. Regarding the question of whether the Bible portrays God as weak or there being things God cannot do, Hygen says that the Bible clearly wants us to think largely about God’s power.23 This has to do with the category of praise; it has to do with hope and belief in a final vic­ tory.€ And so the Bible speaks both of God’s great power and of all the€evil powers God has to fight. Since the power of Satan is also por­ trayed as great, Hygen believes that the most realistic way to read the Bible is to see God as very powerful, Satan as very powerful, and God as finally all-powerful at the end of time.24 This means that it is not clear from the Bible that God is not omnipotent. It is rather a possible inter­ pretation, which can be favoured if it gives the best answer to the prob­ lem of evil. To conclude the discussion of Hygen’s theodicy: God fighting supernatural evil powers is an understanding of God which is a possible interpretation of the Bible, and which gives a quite coherent ╇ Hygen, Guds allmakt og det ondes problem, 167. ╇ Ibid., 131. 24 ╇ Ibid., 130–132. 22 23



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understanding of how God sometimes does miracles and other times is not able to prevent evils. This way of understanding the Bible and the world does not lead to a contradiction between evil on the one hand and a powerful and good God on the other hand, and so it is a possible solution to the problem of evil. On the other hand, it has little support from both empirical evidence and biblical material concerning God’s power. It is also contrary to the common monistic understanding of God throughout church history, and so its success depends on there not being a good monistic alternative.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Conclusion Constructive proposals Hygen Before the final conclusion, I want to contribute to the discussion myself with some constructive proposals. Some have already been given in the discussion, and I will repeat these briefly here in addition to making some new suggestions before I make the final conclusion. I start with Hygen’s theodicy, before moving on to Ward’s theodicy. Hygen’s theodicy is special in that it is short, but with much potential. It presents a non-traditional understanding of God, but it very much uses the Bible to argue this understanding. There is much critique that could be made against Hygen which he does not discuss. But in the discussion we have seen that there are many answers that could be given in support of Hygen. Much of the critique from positions like Swinburne and Ward has been answered by Griffin with answers that also apply to Hygen. And much of the critique from positions like Griffin’s has been answered by Swinburne and Ward with answers that also apply for Hygen. In addition, I have supplied some answers of my own. In order to have a thorough discussion of Hygen in part three, I included my constructive proposals there. In this subchapter I will briefly point out what has been added to Hygen’s original theodicy, and from whom, so that it becomes clear which new arguments this book adds to the discussion that has gone before it. The main contribution from Hygen lies in showing how the Bible can be interpreted so that God is not omnipotent. This is important, since the Bible is a main reason for the belief that God is omnipotent.1 Hygen’s good points here are that the terms translated with omnipotence need not necessarily be interpreted as omnipotence, and in addition he argues well that the Bible verses describing God’s power need 1 ╇ Griffin says that John Hick and Bruce Reichenbach believe in God’s omnipotence because of the Bible (Griffin, Evil Revisited, 50). Gijsbert van den Brink is another example (Brink, Almighty God, 5).



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not be read literally. This allows for an understanding of God as fighting, and it is this metaphor which gives a solution to the very difficult question of why God sometimes does miracles, while at other times he is not able to prevent evils. When it comes to critique of Hygen, he mainly discusses biblical material. This means that there are serious objections to Hygen’s theodicy which he does not answer. But this critique has been answered for him during the discussion. The arguments against dualism were answered by Griffin. And the counterargument from Griffin, that special divine action against the laws of nature is unscientific, was given a good answer by Ward, although it should be mentioned that Hygen makes a similar (but less developed) point in another book than his book on theodicy.2 Then there were a number of arguments against Hygen which he did not answer himself, but where I suggested answers that Hygen could have given to strengthen the coherence of his theory. Concerning God being too weak and hence not trustworthy, I suggested that Hygen could claim that God is winning more and more, and that he is Â�winning the important fights. Concerning God acting arbitrarily, I suggested that Hygen could use the war metaphor to point out that in war one wins some fights and lose others. I also suggested how the metaphor of fighting could be made more intelligible by defining it based on its implications for the world. Concerning the argument that it is implausible that Satan creates natural evils, I suggested that Hygen, within his model, could claim that while natural evils are fundamentally caused by chaos, Satan can be understood as preventing God from preventing natural evils, and this would then be the explanation of why God does not prevent natural evils. By using arguments from Swinburne, Ward, and Griffin, Hygen can refute the main arguments against him. Hygen himself is very careful in suggesting that he does not provide a theodicy; he simply shows possible openings to be considered at a personal level. He does not want to say straight out that God is not omnipotent. Based on the argumentation Hygen himself gives, such careful claims are appropriate. However, I hope to have showed during the discussions that Hygen’s thoughts on God fighting evil may be presented more boldly, since it is possible to defend it as a coherent theodicy. If one accepts the data, Hygen’s theodicy is quite coherent. A theodicy like Hygen’s is very unique. I believe 2

╇ Hygen, Trekk av religionsfilosofien, 134–138.

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the reason is that generally those who are open to belief in the existence of Satan also believe that God is omnipotent, while those who are open to believe that God is not omnipotent, are not open to believe that Satan exists.3 What Hygen does for the first group is to show that a biblical understanding of God’s power may well be that he is not omnipotent, and I know of no one else who has demonstrated this. To sum up, I believe that Hygen’s theodicy has much more potential than what Hygen himself has developed. It does not need to be presented as modestly as Hygen does, since it does show how God, being powerful and good, does not need to be understood in contradiction to the existence of evil. However, it would be strengthened a great deal if more evidential support could be given in favour of the existence of supernatural evil human powers. I will not conclude that Hygen gives the best answer to the problem of evil, and the reason is that I find greater potential in Ward’s theodicy. I believe Ward has more evidential support for his theodicy, and that it is more in alignment with a traditional Christian understanding of God, God’s power, and the Bible. I find Hygen’s alternative to be second best, and Ward’s alternative to be best. It is always good to argue in favour of a theory by comparing it to the best alternative. But the best way of showing that Hygen was second best was to base it on a discussion of Griffin, and the best way of showing that Ward was best was to base it on a discussion of Swinburne. This is my main reason for selecting these four theodicies and set up the discussion as I did. I will now argue that Ward’s theodicy can be made more coherent than how Ward himself presents it. Ward During the discussion of Ward’s theodicy, I pointed out some problems and suggested some improvements. I will now first point out the contriÂ� butions that have already been made, and then I will make a new€suggesÂ� tion to solve the final big problem that still remains in Ward’s theodicy, namely the question of why God did not create a better world. There is one contribution to Ward’s theodicy which I only indicated briefly, but I am working with a further development of it in a coming ╇ For example, Gregory Boyd uses Satan to answer the problem of evil, but in my opinion his solution fails since he also believes that God is omnipotent (Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001)â•›). Griffin is an example of someone who accepts that God is not omnipotent, but who does not believe that Satan exists. 3



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book. This contribution was that I pointed out a weak link between indeterminism and the suffering it is meant to explain, and suggested an understanding which not only answers problems in alternative understandings of free will, but which also explains why indeterminism in the world is necessary for free will. That way, free will could be used as an explanation of natural evils, something which has always been a problem for free-will theodicies. The goal of independence cannot only be used to explain natural evils, but also divine hiddenness, as was showed with a reference to Swinburne and Pannenberg who make that claim.4 A problem then arose, since there appeared to be an inconsistency with God both wanting to interact with people and not interact with people. I then suggested that a claim made by Swinburne and Ward could be used to explain this problem. Ward says that it is the relationship with humans in the afterlife which is God’s main goal of creating us. Given this, it is understandable why God will prioritize letting us become quite independent in this life, while he still wants to interact with us, but this interaction will be prioritized in the afterlife. In addition to suffering in general and divine hiddenness, independence was also used by Ward to explain that death is necessary for life. Here I pointed out that Ward should specify that death is necessary for life if life is to be very independent. This is an important addition lacking in many theological accounts of death.5 Further, I suggested that Ward’s theodicy could explain why some kinds of diseases are healed more often than others, like for example amputations. The reason was that some healings probably require more intervention than others. I also suggested a better interpretation of Isa 45:7 than Ward provides, by using the distinction between causal and moral responsibility. Even if God is the fundamental cause of evil, that does not have to imply that he is morally to blame for it – he can be causally responsible without being morally blameworthy. Finally, I added another reason that the goal of independence is a good goal. The reason was that the more self-created we are, the more it is right to say that God loves us for who we are, as opposed to loving us for what he has made us into. And as shown in the discussion of Swinburne, being loved for who we are is an important part of what love is about. 4 ╇ In the next sub-chapter, I repeat even more arguments made by Pannenberg with regard to independence that strengthen Ward’s theodicy. 5 ╇See for example Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age, 63.

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These suggestions have already been made, but I want to make a new suggestion now, which is a constructive proposal to the question ‘Why did God not create a better world than ours – with less independence’? This question raised the most important objection to Ward’s theodicy, and it is a major one. Even if we can demonstrate that independence requires the possibility for suffering, this still does not give a good argument as to why God should choose to create this independent world, instead of a less independent world with less suffering. Ward thinks that God could have created beings that were free but less independent. But why did he not? Ward’s answer is that we should not complain, because we would not have been born if God had not created our world. But the question is still a good question: Why did he create us sufferers, as opposed to someone else who would have suffered less? If parents could choose their child, they would choose a healthy child and not a dysfunctional child. Swinburne’s answer, that responsibility and independence is of a higher value, is not convincing. So why did God create this risky independent world where many evils are possible? Why did he not rather create a safe and less independent world, since this most likely would have been a better world? There are some resources in Ward’s theodicy that he could have used to create coherence also at this point. The thought experiment now to be carried out is the following: What if the answer to the question of why God did not make a better world is that God did? As mentioned in the discussion, Ward makes some speculations about other worlds than ours, namely other universes which are good, an angel world, and heaven. As opposed to our risky world, all of these would be safe worlds. Ward never argues that God has created these, he just writes that perhaps God did, without claiming that God either did or did not. Is there any reason to believe that God has created or will create any of these worlds? Concerning other universes, we have no reason to believe that they exist, other than to argue that God could have created other universes for the sake of the unique goods that those universes would contain. More people accept the idea of an angel world, where there are beings with some freedom, but where there are no natural evils, since this is a common idea in Christian tradition. For such a world one could point to the Bible as an argument for its existence. But almost all Christians will consider as crucial in their faith some sort of idea of heaven or a good afterlife. Other universes or an angel world are things about which we can hardly say anything. But the belief in heaven is a basic part of



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Christian theology. Even if nothing can be known about the details, the belief is that it will be a good life for people who have lived in our universe. I understand that as including not only those who have made themselves into independent human beings, but also including all those persons who died as babies, or who died at any time before their own birth. Griffin argues that if the world is to be overall good, those who died young must continue to exist after their death.6 Swinburne argues that individual lives are overall good, but does not give a coherent justification of the claim.7 The claim is more coherent if even those who die very young have an afterlife, such as Ward believes.8 It is a part of Ward’s theodicy that those who live a short and painful life get compensation for their pain in the afterlife, animals and humans alike. Hopefully, God has created those who die young into conscious beings fit directly for heaven, so that even the sorrow of losing a child will be healed in the end. If Ward had argued for the existence of a safe world (like another universe, the angel world, or heaven including those who die young and the un-born), his theodicy would have been very coherent. Why? Because if God only created our risky world, it is a good question why he did not create a safe world instead. But if God has created a safe world, then it was good for him to create our risky world in addition (as long as it is good on total) – otherwise we, as in you and me, would not have existed. Why is this a solution to the problem of evil? An answer can be given with the example of the parents choosing a child: if the choice is between a healthy and a dysfunctional child, you choose the healthy child. But imagine that you wanted and could have infinitely many children, and that you already had numerous healthy children of the same kind. What if you then knew that you could have another kind of child which was not as healthy, but which would end up getting a good life, and with whom you could have a good, but different kind of relationship than with your other children? Then it would be good€– both for the parents, but especially for the sake of that other kind of children – to also have these children, as opposed to just more of the healthy children, since this dysfunctional child could also have a good life and enjoy unique goods. ╇ Griffin, Evil Revisited, 37. ╇Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil, 239–242. I argued in chapter nine that Swinburne’s account is not coherent. 8 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 72. 6 7

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The point is that our kind of world is good, and a different kind of good than a safe world. Our world consists of unique beings that can instantiate a unique kind of good relationship with God, and we could only live in this kind of world. Love between humans is very likely not like love between other kinds of beings, but love between humans is good. And there is so much in the existence of humans that is good and unique. Ward makes the point that our world is unique, but that raises the question of why God did not make another world which is both unique and better than ours. But if God did, then two kinds of unique goods are better than one, and that gives a reason why God should choose to create the independent human beings that we are.9 Some might object to this that I glorify the unique goodness of this world without having experienced excruciating pain myself, and hence I do not have the relevant experience to judge this as a solution to the problem of evil. It is true that I have not experienced excruciating pain, and that I might have judged things differently if I had. On the other hand, those among us who have experienced excruciating pain have not experienced the afterlife, and so they too lack relevant experience for judging this theodicy. The theory is coherent as it is, but the future might make it incoherent if God never makes all things good. But the same goes for any theory; all theories can be falsified by the future. In the beginning of this book I mentioned how the theoretical problem of evil has existential relevance, and one example of this should be ╇ Does that mean we should argue that God has created any world where good outweighs evil, which Ward mentions as a possibility one place (Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God, 91–92)? The argument would then have to be that God wants to share his goodness maximally, and an advantage would be that the evils in this world could be explained by saying that we happen to live in the one world which has exactly this amount of evils. However, since heaven outweighs all evils, this would have to€mean that God would create all sorts of extremely horrible worlds. But then I guess it would be better rather to create more individuals in better worlds. It is only when there is a qualitative difference in goods that God has a decisive reason to create another€kind of world. I believe that there is such a qualitative difference between independent and non-independent beings, and so I suggest that Ward should argue in favour of those two. Maybe there are more worlds, but only these two are needed to get a good solution to the problem of evil. Since the possibility of multiple worlds is mentioned by Ward, and I here give my reason for rejecting it, I have not included a discussion of other ‘multiple-worlds-theodicies’, like for instance those found in Donald A. Turner’s article ‘The Many-Universes Solution to the Problem of Evil’, in Richard M. Gale and€Alexander R. Pruss, The Existence of God (Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Dartmouth, 2003); or in Hud Hudson, The Metaphysics of Hyperspace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 9



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mentioned here. The focus on the uniqueness of our world means that in one sense one could say for short that the solution to the problem of evil is: you. You are unique and can only come into existence in this world. If God had to choose between creating you and some other close-to-perfect being, he should probably have chosen to create that close-to-perfect being. But if he has created many close-to-perfect beings, it is also good if he created you and those other people around you that you already love or may come to love. This is an example of how a theoretical theodicy can open up a new way of thinking about the conditions of one’s own life. If one agrees that this unique world of ours has a very high value, then the amount of God’s power may coherently be understood as infinite (unlimited omnipotence). If one has problems with that, one may rather choose to emphasize the finiteness of God’s power, as Ward does in explaining why God does not interfere more often (limited omnipotence). Did God make a poor system when he created our world? I am biased, because I know that if this system was the only one in which my wife and my son would exist, I think that the love I feel for them makes it all worth it. Not all have such strong experiences of love, but those who do, can add it as a reason for why God created this world. The point is not that this world is the only world where love is possible, but that it is the only world where you and I, my love and your love, is possible. Let me emphasize that the point is not that my happiness outweighs your suffering. The point is that our independent universe, where God cannot interact all the time without ruining the system, is the only universe in which the actual individuals who live here can come into existence. Coming into existence in another universe is not an alternative for us. God could have created another universe where he could interact often, but you and I could not exist in that universe. So the alternative for those who suffer in our universe is not existence in a better Â�universe, but no existence at all. And the hope is that life after death will make existence in this universe worthwhile, also for those who have suffered. So I do not claim like Leibniz that our universe is the best possible world. It is a part of Christian belief in the afterlife that God can create a better universe than ours. What I do claim is that if our universe is followed by a good after-life, and if God has also created a better universe than ours, then it was good that he created ours in addition.

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Final evaluation of the theodicies Swinburne’s theodicy makes the case that there are no genuine evils. This was found to be implausible, both because of animal pain in the history of evolution and because it seemed inconsistent to claim that good outweighs evil in all cases. For these reasons, no good answer was found in Swinburne’s theodicy to why God did not create a better world with limited freedom and less suffering, and so his theodicy gets a low score on the criterion of coherence. Ward’s theodicy was found quite coherent, but with some important unanswered questions, namely why God must allow suffering in the independent world, and why God did not create a better world. My suggestion to how the first of these questions could be answered was to indicate a theory which explains why free will requires indeterminism in the world. My suggestion to how the second question could be answered was to suggest that God has created a better world. Since God has created a better world, it is also good that God in addition created our world, because it is overall good and contains unique goods, so that the whole world (all worlds included) becomes better when there is also a human world in addition to the other safe world. Griffin’s theodicy argues the case that God created the world out of chaos, and that there is a metaphysical principle which makes it impossible for God to coerce. This was found to get a low score on the criterion of coherence, because no good answer is given in process theism to the question of why God cannot persuade efficiently enough to prevent many more evils than he does. It was also found to get a low score on the criterion of authenticity, because he must reject most of the miracles reported in the New Testament, including the crucial miracle of the resurrection, in order for the theodicy to work. But then the Bible cannot be considered a trustworthy witness of revelation, and then it gets a low score on the criterion of authenticity because it fails to make it plausible that God has revealed himself through Jesus. Hygen’s theodicy argues the case that God fights evil super-natural powers. This is a theodicy that can answer quite many questions and go quite far, especially since the war metaphor allows divine action that seems arbitrary. If there had not been a monistic alternative that was better (namely the revised version of Ward’s theodicy), Hygen’s theodicy would have been quite good compared with the others. Its biggest



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weakness would have been the poor support for the existence of supernatural evil powers. In the current versions, Swinburne’s and Griffin’s theodicies are inadequate. To the degree that Swinburne and Griffin would be willing to adjust their theodicies to be more similar to Ward’s theodicy, their theodicies would have become much better. In its current version, Hygen is quite good, and still has more potential. Some of his insights may well be used by process theologians or open theists. However, in its current version, Ward’s theodicy is the best of the investigated theodicies – and it has the greatest potential. I have suggested how a few changes and additions can make it into a very good theodicy. In the next sub-chapter, I will consider how well it fits into the framework of Pannenberg’s theology, and then we will see that Pannenberg adds some aspects that make Ward’s theodicy even more coherent. The larger framework for the solution Ward’s position is already very close to Pannenberg’s on many issues. Ward has a similar understanding of revelation and a similar desire to be coherent. They both agree that ethical language has truth value, that theological language can be tested by use of the criterion of coherence, and they want a configuration ontology as opposed to a substance€ontology. In matters of truth and ontology, this is also very close to Puntel. Concerning ontology, we saw that Ward’s important point, that we only exist in this world, makes better sense within a configuration ontology than a substance ontology. Concerning the way that Pannenberg lets this ontology influence his understanding of theological language, it has the advantage that determining God as omnipotent is anticipatorily understood, so that God’s anticipated action in the end of world history should be included when the concept of omnipotence is considered. Concerning the understanding of God, they have a similar understanding of God’s infinity, where God is outside of time, but also in time, acting in history. Pannenberg has a much more developed account€ of infinity, Trinity, time, and divine action than Ward, and Pannenberg could supply Ward’s theodicy with a much more detailed, and thereby more coherent, theological framework. They share an understanding of the goodness and power of God, who is the source of everything and creator ex nihilo. But Ward has some reflections on metaphysical necessities which are relevant for his theodicy, and which

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seem to be implicitly present in Pannenberg’s theology as well, but not explicitly articulated. Ward’s understanding of the problem of evil overlaps with a part of how Pannenberg understands what he calls the problem of theodicy. They use similar terminology to spell out the problem. They share the same opinion on God’s goal with creation, namely independent beings, which is the main claim of Ward’s theodicy. When it comes to the question of why God created independent beings who could suffer, Pannenberg and Ward gives different answers, but they fit well together, and so both strengthen each other’s account. Pannenberg makes the point that some independence is required in order to live alongside the eternal being of God.10 He also argues that independence requires becoming and perishing in time and space, in order that a being may manifest itself as the centre of its own activity and thus become an individual. We need to become the individuals we are in this world first, before we can unite with God in the afterlife. Our independence is also the reason Pannenberg gives for why God seems so hidden.11 Ward focuses on the uniqueness of independent beings and the unique relation God can have with them.12 And he makes the point that independence requires both laws and indeterminism, which results in a world where God cannot interrupt too much.13 So, Pannenberg has a very well developed theology but not a very good theodicy. Ward has a good theodicy, which fits well into Pannenberg’s theology. Both of them believe that God wanted to create independent human beings, but neither of them gave a very good reason why God wanted to create independent human beings as opposed to less independent beings who suffered less. I added one argument in favour of the goal of independence, namely that it has the result that God in a significant sense loves us for who we are. But the most important argument that I added to explain the goal of independence is that it is a unique good that God wanted to create in addition to less independent beings, since two different goods are better than one. What is the best solution to the problem of evil? I have discussed four theodicies in this book. Within the frames of this discussion, the main conclusion is that the best solution to the ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 3, 690, ET: 642. ╇ Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie 2, 117, 200, ET: 195–196, 173. 12 ╇ Ward, Divine Action, 217. 13 ╇ Ward, God, Faith & the New Millennium, 94–95, 103–104. 10 11



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problem of evil is Ward’s theodicy with the changes and additions I have suggested in this final chapter. This theodicy can then be placed into the theological framework of Pannenberg and the philosophical framework of Puntel, and can become a comprehensive and coherent Christian ontology. I cannot repeat the content of all this, and so I will end merely by giving a very brief summary. In short, the best solution to the problem of evil is the revised version of Ward’s theodicy, which is the following: God is understood as perfectly good and omnipotent. That God is omnipotent is not understood by Ward as God having an infinite amount of power, although such belief is coherent if the unique goods of this world are considered to have a very high value. Instead, Ward understands God’s omnipotence as limited. By metaphysical necessity, God has a finite amount of power which is rooted in God’s own nature. But that God has limited omnipotence nevertheless means that his power is great enough to create the world out of nothing, raise Jesus from the dead, and give humans an eternally good life. How does Ward answer the question of why there is evil when God is so good and so powerful? According to Ward, God wanted to create an independent world where independent beings like humans could evolve. In order for such human beings to evolve, lawlikeness is required (so that we may act intentionally), and indeterminism is required (so that we may act freely). The indeterminism makes natural evils physically possible. The independence makes moral evils physically possible. To this one could ask why God does not prevent these evils. Ward’s answer is that God treasures the unique goods of this kind of world so highly that he does not want to disturb this value-creating system too much. Concerning the question of why God sometimes helps and heals people and other times does not, Ward answers that God can intervene sometimes without disturbing the independent system too much, but not at other times. Since the world is so complex, we can never know when God can intervene. But why did God create such an independent world? Ward argues that this is the only world in which the unique beings that we are could become who we are. The relationship and love that we humans can participate in is of another kind than the love and relationships that other kinds of beings can participate in. A remaining unanswered question in Ward’s theodicy was the question of why God did not create a better world. To this I suggested that Ward could answer that God did. This answers the problem because if God did, then it is good for God to create our world in addition, as long

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as the evils of this world are outweighed, and Ward holds that they will be in the afterlife for those who want such an afterlife. From this theodicy, it follows that it was good for God to create our risky and independent world, and so there is no contradiction between the existence of evil and the existence of a good and omnipotent God. That does not mean that any of the concrete evils in our world are good, and so God works to eliminate these when he can, and so should we.

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INDEX agnosticism╇ 27, 31 almightiness, concept of╇ 66–68 Alston, W.P.╇ 9n16 Andersen, S.╇ 228n33 animal pain╇ 165–72 anthropic principle╇ 42, 200, 203 anthropomorphism╇ 71 Aquinas, Thomas╇ 91, 122 atheism╇ 5 atonement╇ 31 Augustine╇ 72–73, 122–23 authenticity╇ 18, 95–111 passim as ideal in the theodicies╇ 112–13 testing of╇ 102–5 bad state of affairs╇ 1, 24, 116 Balz, H.╇ 61n1 Basinger, D.╇ 223–25, 227, 229–230, 237, 240 Beilby, J.K.╇ 130n52 Berger, P.╇ 3, 3n2 Bergmann, M.╇ 9n16 Bible, the╇ See authenticity Boyd, G.A.╇ 130n52 Brink, G.v.d.╇ 232n43, 252n1 Brümmer, V.╇ 181n62–63, 182n65 Bryson, B.╇ 168–169n28–29 Carotta, F.╇ 96n4 Carruthers, P.╇ 12n26 Christianity╇ See authenticity Clarke, R.╇ 211n44 Clayton, P.╇ 122n26, 132n60, 233, 233n47 Cobb Jr., J.╇ 47 coercion╇ 49, 55–56, 154, 223–24 See also non-coercion coherence╇ 17–18, 81–94 passim cohesiveness╇ 17, 84 consistency╇ 17, 83–84 comprehensiveness╇ 17, 84 as ideal in the theodicies╇ 112 compensation╇ 44 Craig, W.L.╇ 7n10 creation goals for╇ 38–39 in the Bible╇ 233–237 out of nothing or chaos╇ 35–36, 57, 72, 150–52, 233–37

criterion for evaluation╇ 17–19 authenticity as╇ 95–111 coherence as╇ 81–94 Damasio, A.╇ 170, 171n32 damnation╇ 31, 194 data, defined╇ 18n33 Davidsen, B.A.╇ 96n4 Davidson, D.╇ 210, 210n42 Davis, S.T.╇ 231 passim Dawkins, R.╇ 141n86 death╇ 31, 214 defence╇ 10–11 Plantinga’s╇ 11 Van Inwagen’s╇ 11–12 determination╇ 87 determinism╇ 208n26 divine action╇ 35, 40–41, 205–6, 243 doxology╇ 67, 71, 232 dualism╇ 73–74, 151 critique of╇ 221–23 Eddy, P.R.╇ 130n52 El Shaddai╇ 66–67, 250 Ellis, R.╇ 96n4 Eshleman, A.╇ 4n4 evil╇ 116–19 amount of╇ 32–33, 58–59 as necessary╇ 27–31, 45–46 defined╇ 1, 116–19 genuine╇ See genuine evil gratuitous╇ See genuine evil as leading to more evil╇ 172–73 moral╇ See moral evil natural See natural evil pain as╇ 1, 117 possible vs actual╇ 175, 198–99 prima facie vs genuine╇ 1, 49, 116 suffering as╇ 1, 117 used as means╇ 173–76 weighing of╇ 32–33, 44, 185–194, 215 evolution╇ 42, 167–70, 172, 214 existential questions╇ 2 and theoretical questions╇ 2 fall, story of the╇ 63–64 Fichte, J.G.╇ 132, 147 fine-tuning of the universe╇ 42

270

index

Fischer, J.M.╇ 211n43 free will╇ 207–13 and indeterminism╇ 207–13 and love╇ 180–85 and suffering╇ 202–219 as over-estimated╇ 50–51, 176–80 types of╇ 178, 209 Gale, R.╇ 179–80n60, 258n9 genuine evil╇ 48 defined╇ 1–2, 117–119, 162 Ginet, C.╇ 210n41 Gregersen, N.H.╇ 95n2 God all-causality of╇ 69 and divine action╇ 35, 40–41, 205–6, 243 and love╇ 37, 126–28, 149 and time╇ 129–34 as concept╇ 35–38, 106–8, 121–26 as creator╇ 150–52 See also creation as eternal╇ See God: as necessary as explanation╇ 36, 222–23 as fighting╇ 74–75, 243–44, 247–50, 253 as good╇ 6, 37, 48, 126–28, 149 as ground of being╇ 6–7 as hidden╇ 2, 13, 109–10, 206–7, 255, 262 as incomprehensible╇ 99–100 as infinite╇ 146–50 as immutable╇ 129–34 as impassible╇ 129–34 as moral actor╇ 126–28 as necessary╇ 36–37, 136–45, 201 as omnipotent╇ 23–24, 37, 49–50, 68, 152, 156–57, 233 passim as omniscient╇ 134 as perfect╇ 126–28 as personal╇ 6–7, 128–29 as praiseworthy╇ 227–28, 241–42 as self-existent╇ 221–22 See also God: as necessary as temporal╇ 129–34 as timeless╇ 129–34 as Trinitarian╇ 134–36 as trustworthy╇ 228–29 definitions of╇ 23, 48–49 dipolarity of╇ 37–38 foreknowledge of╇ 27–28 God’s power╇ 14, 74–75, 152–157, 201 amount of╇ 37, 147–50, 201 in the Bible╇ 66–68, 73–74, 230–33, 237–38 God’s rights╇ 32

greater goods╇ 25–26 Griffin, D.R.╇ 47–60, 220–239 passim hard-core commonsense notions╇ 48, 50 genuine evil as╇ 163–165 Hare, P.╇ 227 Hartshorne, C.╇ 47, 59 Hasker, W.╇ 130n52 Haught, J.╇ 217n56 healing╇ 203n14 Hefner, P.╇ 227, 231 Hegel, G.W.F╇ 132, 147–48 Hick, J.╇ 96n3, 221, 221n3, 221n5, 222–23, 227, 252n1 hiddenness of God╇ 2, 13, 109–10, 206–7, 255, 262 hope╇ 76 Howard-Snyder, D.╇ 9n16, 13n28 Hudson, H.╇ 258n9 Hume, D.╇ 39, 39n17, 144, 208 Hygen, J.B.╇ 61–77, 240–251 passim implication, defined╇ 100–101 incarnation╇ 31 independence╇ 38, 46, 109–110, 201, 262 and suffering╇ 202–219 critique of╇ 218–19 indeterminism, defined╇ 208n26 individuals, token and type╇ 45, 194, 216–17 Inwagen, P.v.╇ 10–12 Jahve Sebaot╇ 66–67, 250 Jesus╇ 101–7 passim Jones, A.M.╇ 96n4 Kane, R.╇ 208–11, 215 Kant, I.╇ 86, 173, 173n43 karma╇ 3–4, 6 Kolonko, P.╇ 4n3 Krause, G.╇ 61n1 language╇ 86, 102–3 religious╇ 70–71 religious vs theological╇ 8 theological╇ 102–3, 114 laws of nature╇ 205–6 lawfulness╇ See under world Leibniz, G.W.╇ 71, 123, 259 Leivestad, R.╇ 248 Levenson, J.╇ 57, 234, 234n49, 235 life after death╇ 44, 256–57 love╇ 181–185, 217, 255 Luther, M.╇ 63, 69, 73, 125 Lønning, P.╇ 228n33



index

May, G.╇ 57, 234–36 Matilal, Bimal╇ 4n4 metaphysical principles╇ 55, 137, 152–53 metaphysics╇ See ontology miracles╇ 205–6, 237–39 Moltmann╇ 7n11, 130n49 Müller, G.╇ 61n1 Murray, M.╇ 10n21, 13n28, 171, 171n34, 171n36, 177n51, 204, 204n16, 217n56 moral evil, defined╇ 2, 116–117, 119 mysticism╇ 8 natural evil defined╇ 2, 116–117, 119 and greater goods╇ 109–10, 165–72 natural science╇ 40–41, 205–6 naturalism╇ 6 necessity, types of╇ 136–42, 145 negative theology╇ 8 non-coercion as inauthentic╇ 229–38 as incoherent╇ 223–26 as inconsistent with God’s attributes╇ 227–29 O’Connor, T.╇ 210n41 omnipotence╇ 23–24, 37, 49–50, 68, 152, 156–57, 233 passim ontology╇ 86–89, 115–16, 217, 261 ontology, configuration╇ 88 original sin╇ 63–64 pain╇ 1, 117 Pailin, D.╇ 228, 228n33 Pannenberg, W.╇ 97–111 passim pantokrator╇ 66–68, 75–76, 232, 250 parapsychology╇ 59–60, 226, 228, 237, 245–46 Peacocke, A.╇ 122n26, 214n47, 228n33, 255n5 Peterson, M.L.╇ 9n16 philosophical idea of God╇ 35–38, 106–8, 121–26 Phillips, D.Z.╇ 8n12 Pinnock, C.H.╇ 130n52 Pinnock, S.╇ 8–9 Plantinga, A.╇ 10–12, 27–28, 123, 140n83, 244n6, 247, 247n14 plausibility, defined╇ 11 possibility, types of╇ 140–42, 145 possible worlds safe╇ 203–206, 256–58 number of╇ 256–259 Principle of Credulity╇ 10

271

Principle of Honesty╇ 28–30, 166, 166n17 problem of evil╇ 2–4, 12–13, 24–25, 49, 119–21 as theoretical problem╇ 7 aspects of╇ 12–13 defined╇ 7, 12, 119–21 evidential version of╇ 12–13 in Pannenberg’s theology╇ 108–10 in religions╇ 3–5 logical version of╇ 12–13 process theism╇ 52–56 actual entities in╇ 52 aggregational societies in╇ 53, 56, 154 coercion in╇ See coercion compound individuals in╇ 53 creativity in╇ 54–55 enduring objects in╇ 52 law of variables in╇ 58 mental and physical poles in╇ 53–54 occasions of experience in╇ 52–53 panexperientialism in╇ 53, 59 persuasion in╇ 55–56, 154, 225–26, 228 prehension in╇ 53–54, 59 self-determination in╇ 54, 224 proposition, defined╇ 4n6, 86 Pruss, A.R.╇ 258n9 Puntel, L.B.╇ 81–94 passim Ramsey, I.╇ 71 realism vs anti-realism╇ 87n15 relationship╇ 38, 181–85, 206–7, 257–58, 263 relativism╇ 92 religious language╇ See language: religious religious motives╇ 70, 76 Rescher, N.╇ 83–85 responsibility╇ 179–80, 215–16, 255 resurrection of Jesus╇ 237–38 revelation╇ 99–105 as trustworthy╇ 101–5, 238 Riley, G.╇ 238, 238n64–66 Rowe, W.╇ 165, 165n14 Satan╇ 73, 248 as cause of natural evils╇ 11, 51, 246–47 as opponent of God╇ 241–42, 250 existence of╇ 245–46, 249, 249n19, 254 Saunders, N.╇ 40n21 Schmidt-Glintzer, H.╇ 4n3 Scott, M.╇ 9n16 self╇ 211–12

272 Shankara╇ 4n5 Simpson, R.╇ 8n14 sin╇ 27, 31 skeptical theism╇ 9–10 Strawson, G.╇ 215, 215n51 structures╇ 86–87 Surin, K.╇ 7–9 Swinburne, R.╇ 23–33, 161–195 passim vs Ward╇ 34 Swinton, J.╇ 9n17 suffering╇ 1, 117 systematic reconstruction╇ 100–101 Sölle, D.╇ 7n11, 173, 173n42 Søvik, A.O.╇ 1n1, 82n2, 8n14, 112n14, 183n68, 194n90 Taliaferro, C.╇ 14n29 Tarski, A.╇ 85, 85n12, 92–93 theodicy defined╇ 12, 120–21 moral critique of╇ 8–9, 25, 51 plausibility of╇ 11 practical╇ 7 successfulness of ╇ 12, 120–21 types of╇ 3–4, 63–64 theological language╇ See language: theological theology and philosophy╇ 107–8 theoretical framework╇ 18–19, 81, 92, 261–262 theoretical questions╇ 2 theism╇ 122–23 all-determining╇ 49–51 free-will╇ 49–51

index Tilley, T.╇ 8–9 Tooley, M.╇ 7n9 truth in ethics╇ 89–92 in theology╇ 101–5 theory of╇ 85–94 truth bearers╇ 85–86, 138n79 Tsumura, D.T.╇ 236, 236n58 Turner, D.A╇ 258n9 value judgments╇ 89–92 in the theodicies╇ 114 values, unique╇ 38, 201, 219, 256–60 VanArragon, R.╇ 9n16 Ward, K.╇ 34–46, 196–219 passim vs Swinburne╇ 34 Ware, B.A╇ 130n52 Weber, Max╇ 4 weighing of evil╇ 32–33, 44, 185–194, 215 Whitehead, A.N.╇ 15, 37, 47, 55, 59, 115, 137, 147 Wigen, T.╇ 15n32 will antecedent and consequent╇ 43, 198–99 Wittgenstein╇ 8n12, 86 world as indetermined╇ 40, 212–13 as regular system╇ 39–42, 204 lawfulness of╇ 40 possible╇ See possible worlds Wright, N.T.╇ 238, 238n66 Wykstra, S.J.╇ 9n16