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[Newbie]

If God has the power to act outside of human understanding and logic, couldn't he easily make the world perfect without us being mindless robots, as the Christian argument states?

I used to be a Christian until too many questions were raised. This was one of them. I've been told (and understand to a degree) that god lets evil exist and gave us free will so that we would legitimately love him and not be mindless robots. But it's also said that god has power to do literally anything. Wouldn't he be able to accomplish disallowing evil to exist AND have our legitimate love?

[jimwalton]

There are a couple of short replies to what you've said, but they all demand a much longer treatment.

First of all, it's true that God lets evil exist. For instance, doctors inject people with mild forms of diseases, because that's how to body produces resistance to them. Firemen start fires to burn towards the forest to stop other fires. Doctors cause great amounts of pain (surgery, cancer treatments) to bring healing. There are many examples that "evil" can actually be used for the good.

Secondly, for God to put a stop to all evil would make us all mindless robots. He'd have to control our bodies so we didn't walk in front of cars, accidentally slice our skin with knives, slip on the ice, etc. He'd have to control our minds so we didn't say offensive things, or interpret what others said as hurtful. But all that would make us automatons and not humans. There wouldn't be any such thing as love, peace, happiness. Certainly not human.

Thirdly, it's just not true that God has the power to do literally anything. He certainly can't act in contradiction to himself. He can't act in ways that are absurd (creating a square circle, for instance). He can't act contrary to his nature.

If you want legitimate love, you have to have legitimate choice. if you have legitimate choice (and not false choice), then there has to be just as much possibility (freedom) to choose the wrong as to choose the right. If the only way, then, to eliminate evil is also to eliminate love (as in the example of the doctor: the only way to eliminate the "evil" of surgery is to not operate, therefore allowing the problem to continue), then it makes sense to allow the "evil" because of the possibility of the greater good, and that's the only path to the greater good.

[Newbie]

I have a couple of questions because the theology of free will is something that is very interesting to me and our past discussions have been very fruitful and enlightening.

In your third point, you say that God can't act in contradiction to himself. I assume by this you also mean that God cannot commit evil, since this would in contradiction to his character. If God literally cannot commit evil, than he does not have free will with respect to this. I will come back to this in a second.

Now, in your second point you say that if we didn't have the ability to do evil that we would be mindless robots and that this would preclude the ability to give our love to him.

I think you can see what I'm driving at here. If God can't commit evil, doesn't this preclude him from giving his love to us freely? If not, than either (a) not having freedom to do evil does not preclude love or (b) God does not love freely and he is holding us to a higher standard than even himself since he can't do anything but love us.

This seems to get us to an odd conclusion. Why does God value freedom over love and/or happiness when he himself does not have this freedom?
I have more questions, but this is a good place to start.

[jimwalton]

Fascinating! Thank you for a great discussion. I would lead off with this: That a free being chooses to do what is right on every occasion is a logically possible state of affairs. But I think your comment is more to the point of "is he FREE to choose something wrong?" Theologically, I think the problem lies in that the Bible teaches that sin is within us, and we choose evil because we have evil desires (James 1.14-15). And since we're in James, let's go back to 1.13: "For God cannot be tempted by evil." The idea there is that he is untemptable rather than untempted. While evil may be all around him, and while it may (who knows, but it could) knock on his door continually, he is of such purity and holiness that he always freely chooses the good. He is untouched by evil; it doesn't succeed in him. He is free from it (Job 34.12). Instead of thinking of God as a most magnificent form of human, he is wholly other, and in his holy freedom he always chooses the good.

[Newbie]

I've heard this before, but I think it somewhat misconstrues the idea of potency. A wholly good being is one who always does good, which means he can't even have the potential to do evil otherwise he wouldn't be wholly good. If he CAN'T do evil, than he really doesn't have a choice in the matter. I think the quote from James, which I have used in other debates on this subject, illustrates my point. God, in Christian Theology, cannot be tempted, which means he does not have the potential for evil, which means he does not have the choice to do evil.

Thus god is not a moral agent, and is more akin to the automatons mentioned earlier in this thread. What's more, since you have said that in order for love to be legitimate, one has to choose it freely, and yet we can see that god, being wholly good and all loving, has no choice, than his love is not legitimate.
What's more, is this now begs the question why is our freedom more valuable than a perfect world with no suffering, especially if God is incapable of this kind of freedom?

[jimwalton]

Nothing in Scripture suggests that God's will is determined or bound by any external factors. He is both omnipotent (given our limited definitions of it) and free. The Bible teaches that God's decisions and actions are not determined by consideration of any factors outside of himself, but are simply a matter of his own free choice.

Leibniz & Ross philosophically state omnipotence in what’s called a “result” theory: theories which analyze omnipotence in terms of the results an omnipotent being would be able to bring about. These results are usually thought of as states of affairs or possible worlds: a way the world could be. A possible world is a maximally consistent state of affairs, a complete way the world could be. The simplest way to state it may be, “for any comprehensive way the world could be, an omnipotent being could bring it about that the world was that way.” Ross formulated it as “Since every state of affairs must either obtain or not, and since two contradictory states of affairs cannot both obtain, an omnipotent being would have to will some maximal consistent set of contingent states of affairs, that is, some one possible world.” Hence he is a being of both free will, morality, and omnipotence.

[Newbie]

I don't think this really addresses the issue I brought up. I am not arguing that god's inability to commit evil violates his omnipotence (although I think that's a good argument in and of itself), but instead I am saying that if god is to be considered maximally good, than he can't even have the potential for evil since that would mean that in some possible world, god does evil (otherwise the concept of potential loses all its meaning). The dilemma then becomes, does god have the power to do evil, meaning he is not maximally or wholly good, or if not, than how can we consider god to be a moral agent?

If god is not free to do evil, than why is it so valuable for us to be free to commit evil, especially when considering the consequences of this (eternal damnation)?

[jimwalton]

Sure, thanks for the clarification. I think there are several problems with the proposition, so I try to address those, and then the conclusions. A standard of logic is the law of non-contradiction: A cannot equal non-A. Self-contradiction is irrational. Secondly, evil is not an entity of itself, but the absence of good. Now, since God is good, and cannot be self-contradictory, it's impossible that evil have any part of his being or that it's a possible choice for him.

On to the next piece. Free will encompasses the parameters of possible choices. It's not rational to say that if I don't have a choice to travel at the speed of light, or to live on Alpha Centauri, than my free will is just a sham and a ruse. No, free will is the legitimate exercise of legitimate choices within the parameters of what is rational within my context.

Now on to your questions (hopefully). God is considered to be maximally good, and cannot choose evil, because that would be self-contradictory. But nor does that mean he doesn't have legitimate free will, because he exercises free will within the parameters of what is rational and non-contradictory. That by no means leads to the conclusion that he is not maximally or wholly good.

By the same token, human beings, since we are not divine, have the choice of evil within our orbits, and therefore to have a legitimate choice, evil is included as a potentiality. Therefore it's valuable for us to be free to commit evil, and not disqualifying for God not to have that potentiality.

[Newbie]

That was a perfect breakdown of the issues I am trying to address and will be very helpful in moving this discussion forward so thank you for that.

We agree completely on the first three points, in so far as to say that I am willing to grant these characteristics to the Christian God and agree that he still could have freewill within these parameters.

The issue comes up when we get to point 4. Why is it necessary for humans to have the freedom to do evil? Could god have not created a world in which humans were free in all other respects, except to do evil, thus negating the need for hell? If you are going to say that one must have divinity in order for evil to be excluded, I am not sure how you are coming to this conclusion. If heaven is to be perfect, surely human souls must be incapable of evil while still being free in other respects, otherwise heaven is not perfect. If this set of affairs can be actualized in heaven, than why not on earth? The only answer I can think of is because it's what god wants, and that just begs the question why?

[jimwalton]

Great conversation. Thank you. I think the nature of love is the key player here. Love is a unique entity in our existence. It can only exist as an act of the will, and it can only exist as a moral and positive act of the will, otherwise, it isn't love. Therefore the only way love can truly exist is if there is a legitimate choice for non-love, since it is not self-contradictory for humans (as it is for God) to make the choice of non-love. Hence it is not possible for God to have created a world in which humans were free in all other respects, except to do evil. For love to truly exist, it is necessary to have world containing creatures free to decide between love and non-love, good or evil, and impossible that God would create a world of quasiautomata who are free in all other respects except to do evil because they are unable to do otherwise. God can create creatures with free will, but he cannot causally or otherwise determine them to do only what is right. If he did that, they are not doing right freely, or loving freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, those same creatures must necessarily be capable of moral evil. Nor is it possible for him to create the possibility of moral evil and at the same time prohibit its actuality.

And here we are. Some of the creatures have exercised their freedom to do what is wrong, and the result is moral evil. But that in no way speaks against God's omnipotence or his goodness. He could only remove the possibility of moral evil by also removing the possibility of moral good.