The Free will Defense: New and Old

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD ORIGINATING WITH Augustine (See On the Free Chmce of the Will, particularly Book III) , the Free Will Defense (hereafter FWD) is the strategy most Christian apologists have relied upon to meet the atheologian's challenge that the existence of evil, acy evil, but particularly the amount and quality of actual evil, is incompatible with the existence of God.1 In its most general or widely accepted form this defense amounts to the following argument: (1) A universe containing moral free agents who can choose or reject God as their ultimate good (and i.n which there is also, presumably , a greater balance of moral good over moral evil 2) is a universe that surpasses in value any universe lacking such creatures; (~) While God, in creating free agents, makes moral evil possible, the free agent is itself, by its own act of choice, directly responsible for this evil of action which He, God, nonetheless permits for the sake of certain goods to which it is logically presupposed; and, finally, (3) Aside from moral evil, 1 For some recent discuussions of this subject see Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1974), Chapter 9 and God, Freedom and Evil (New York): Harper Torchbooks, 1974). For the atheologian's side see II. J. McCloskey, God and Evil (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). Also see J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, LXIV (1955), pp. 200-!?12 and "Theism and Utopia," Philosophy, XXXVII (1962), pp. 153-158; and Antony Flew, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom," New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. Macintyre (Nfilw York: The Macmillan Company, 1964). 2 In his FWD, at least as he presents it in On the Free Choice of the Will, Augustine neglects to include this proviso as an essential part of such a defense. Aquinas, 011 the other hand, seems to have been a little more sensitive to this point since he, at least, contends that given the existence of angela and their existence in great multitude the amount of moral good in the universe resulting from the exercise of free will exceeds the amount of moral evil. On this point see Summa Theologiae, I. Q. 63, a. 9, c. and ad I. 1 THEODORE J. KONDOLEON other evils befalling man in this life (as well as in the next) come under the heading of evil of punishment.3 At first glance the FWD would appear to reconcile God's existence with what, from the human standpoint, are the major forms of evil in the world, and even one contemporary atheologian has felt compelled to remark how "it is a powerful defense , which has satisfied many believers and routed or at least rattled many sceptics." 4 Nonetheless, the more undaunted of their number (Flew included) , rather than withdraw from the attack, have scanned it for possible weaknesses and claim to have found it vulnerable, even fatally so, in the following two areas. (I) Granted a universe containing moral free agents (and in which moral good outweighs moral evil) is superior in goodness to any universe which would lack such creatures, still God could have created a universe which would include free agents but one in which all these agents would always choose rightly. God could have done this because it is evidently something logically possible and, therefore, God as all-powerful could have brought it about.5 Clearly, or so it would seem, 3 According to traditional Christian teaching evil of punishment includes not only the punishment inflicted because of one's own personal sins but also the punishment inflicted on all men because of original sin. However, in Plantinga's FWD (as we shall see) one possible explanation of natural evil, considered evil because it causes human suffering, is that it is due to the evil actions of Satan and his cohorts. Plantinga claims to find this explanation of natural evil in Augustine (I do not, but more on this later). Yet to be consistent with Augustine if not nlso with traditional Christian belief, he would have to allow that such evils that " natural evil " c>auses would not have befallen man if...