Comparing Marx And Nietzsche's Analysis
Introduction
A young child cries, for her mother has just been brutally murdered. An orphan weeps, as he despairs of living another day alone. A beautiful woman lies down to die, for there is no food to be had. A mother shakes her fist towards the sky, as she has just lost her only child in an earthquake. The skeptic shakes his head, unable to understand all the pain in the world. This is the 21st century, and yet the problem of evil and suffering is nearly as old as time itself. While the atheist is “wasting his breath to complain, because in his view there is no-one to complain to,”[1] the Christian is faced with a much more difficult conundrum. The age-old question is this, “How can there be an all-loving and all-powerful God …show more content…
when evil is so evident and uncontained?”[2] A deeper question is this, “Even if God exists, how can He be called good while allowing death and destruction to happen, when we ourselves would be considered wicked if we did the same thing?”[3] It is a question that buffets the hearts and minds those who give serious thought to the nature of the world. Though stated in a thousand ways through a multitude of personal experiences, the foundation of the debate calls into question the attributes of God. Is God truly all powerful? Does God’s definition of good differ from man’s perspective? Is evil only an illusion? This paper will seek to clarify what is meant by the omnipotence and the goodness of God by first providing historical insight into the debate, and by providing definitions for keys terms relevant to the discussion. Subsequently, philosophical reasoning coupled with biblical theology will be used argue for the Free Will Defense and the Argument from Determinism. Finally, this paper will seek to prove that the Free Will Defense is a more logical solution to the Problem of Evil than the Argument from Determinism in light of philosophical and biblical reasoning.
Historical Background
Wright points out that “The problem of evil in its present metaphysical form has been around for at least two-and-a-half centuries…from 1755 on…the history of European philosophy can best be told as the history of people trying to come to terms with evil.”[4] Great minds such as Voltaire and Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, have all spent time trying to solve this mystery.[5] In fact, throughout all of these thinkers “we find a continuous thread of philosophical attempts to say what has to be said about the world as a whole and about evil within it.”[6] However, the problem of evil is much older than these Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers.
Augustine records over a thousand years earlier that evil is “nothing else than corruption, either of the measure, or the form, or the order, that belong to nature.”[7] He also writes that “God did not cause the first evil will.”[8] Even further back, the Old Testament has much to say about evil in the world. The Israelites were intimately familiar with pain and suffering, and this is reflected in their writings. “The concept of evil in the OT has both qualitative (natural) and moral categories…evil is misfortune, particularly injury or threat to life or standing in society…it is also used in a moral and spiritual sense as the designation for immorality and unfaithfulness to the covenant.”[9] It was through many years of hardship and oppression …show more content…
that Israel grappled with explaining the relationship of evil to its conception of God. It did not develop a metaphysical dualism in which evil could be explained as the work of demonic powers. Neither did it develop the concept of a capricious God to whom both good and evil could be described. Rather, it developed an ethical monotheism. Within this conception a major solution was to look for the justice of God in the eschatological future, i.e., to accept the mystery of evil by conceptualizing a creator God with greater freedom to work in ways and for purposes that transcend human understanding.[10]
Likewise, in the New Testament evil is used both in a qualitative and a moral sense. While examples of qualitative evil occur in such places as disease (Rev 16:2) and misfortune (Matt 6:34), the moral idea of evil predominates the New Testament (Matt 5:45, Phil 3:2, Heb 3:12).[11]
Definition of Key Terms
In this study, several terms must first be clarified. Without a proper understanding of the terms under question, there can be no clear answer.
Divine Omnipotence
“Literally, omnipotence means that God has unlimited power…Theologically, ‘omnipotence’ means that God can do whatever is possible to do. Or, God can do what is not impossible to do. His power is unlimited and uninhibited by anything else…it does not mean God must do all that he can do: It simply means He has the power to do whatever is possible.”[12] Oden defines it as “the perfect ability of God to do all things that are consistent with the divine character…it does not diminish the most perfect doer that God does not do what is intrinsically undoable.”[13]
Divine Omnibenevolence
“Literally, the word omnibenevolent means ‘all-good.’ Biblically, the basic Hebrew term for ‘love’ (chesed) used of God means ‘goodness,’ ‘affection,’ ‘loving-kindness…’ Theologically, God’s omnibenevolence refers to His infinite or unlimited goodness.”[14] “God’s dealings with His people are good because they are the revelation and expression of His goodness…Scripture clearly confers the attribute of goodness on God (e.g., 1 Ch. 16:34, 2 Ch. 5:13, Ps. 136:1).”[15]
Evil
There are two types of evil of evil that need to be differentiated. Natural evil is the “group of miseries and unhappiness what apparently arises outside man.”[16] This includes such things are hurricanes, earthquakes, lightning strikes, and the like. The other type of evil to consider is that of moral evil, “the evil which comes from man himself.”[17] It encompasses “The rebellion against God and the ill-treatment of man by man.”[18] The majority of pain and suffering is a result of this second type of evil, but both natural and moral evil create different dilemmas in regard to the character of God.
The Free Will Argument
There are many attempts to explain why there is so much evil in the world at the same time that there is a loving God. One such attempt is coined the Free Will Defense. The nature of the Free Will Defense (FWD) is firmed grounded in the omnibenevolence of God. God is love, and he created mankind to share in His love. Man was given free will, so that he could choose to love his maker. Without the freedom to choose otherwise, man truly cannot love God.[19] However, man in his freedom chose something else. At this point in history time mankind did not even have knowledge of evil, for they have not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet mankind was faced with a choice in the Garden of Eden; choose God, the greatest good, or choose themselves, a lesser good.[20] Without even fully realizing what evil was, man fell into it. This is where the problem is found. God created a world that was declared “good,” and yet man was able to turn away from God and unleash evil on the world. If God is all powerful, would not it be plausible that God could have created a world where man was free and yet not at risk of falling into evil? While a theodicy seeks to explain the reason why God permits evil, the FWD seeks to show “what God’s reason might possibly be.”[21] “The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to show that there may be a very different type of good that God can’t bring about without permitting evil. These are good states of affairs that don’t include evil; they do not entail the existence of any evil whatever; nonetheless God Himself can’t bring them about without permitting evil.”[22] “The heart of the Free Will Defense is the claim that it is possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good without creating one that also contained moral evil.”[23] In short, “The freewill defense has become a standard response to the charge that God is the author of sin. Accordingly, it is not God that causes sin, but rather it is human freedom, which is a good but distortable creation of God, that elicits sin.”[24] The primary source of debate in the FWD is based on differing views of the free will of man. It ascribes to man the free ability to choose between differing options. “It is important to note that nothing in this conception of free will makes it necessary for human beings to choose evil. Free will in this sense just means an authentic possibility…only the possibility of sin is intrinsic to this idea of human free will.”[25] Here an important distinction emerges in the FWD; man is not coerced or deterministically forced to make a choice. “That God permits us freedom to fall does not imply that God directly causes the fall, or that God creates freedom already as fallen. God, rather, permits freedom to work its own blessedness or self-condemnation, to spell itself out in glory or disaster.”[26] Silvester comments that when faced with a choice, there are many factors involved in the process, many different variables all seemingly pushing us to a certain choice. But, “Who decides which factors are important? Who decides which advice is better than another? If he had to choose between two motives…who is to tell him which is the most important? In the last analysis all we can say is, he decided. In the words of G.E. Moore in another context, choice is ‘simple and unanalyzable.’”[27] Free will is important, for “Were God to compel us to make only good choices, then we would not be making choices at all, but merely following God’s directions as a computer executes a program. Were God to…constantly intervene to prevent any bad from resulting from those choices…it is difficult to see how those choices would have integrity and significance.”[28] Yet contrary to the some critics, the focus of the FWD is not on freedom. “It is crucial to underline that love is the highest good that God seeks in this enterprise, not freedom per se. In this case, freedom is simply a requirement of the higher good of love—and that might indeed be worth it all.”[29]
Argument from Determinism[30]
A different argument used to explain the problem of evil is uses as its foundation the sovereignty of God. “Technically, sovereignty is not an attribute of God, but rather an activity of God in relation to His universe. Sovereignty is God’s control over His creation, dealing with His governance over it: Sovereignty is God’s rule over all reality.”[31] The Westminster Confession of Faith states, “God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass.”[32] This definition of sovereignty has strong biblical support. Passages such as Proverbs 16:9, Isaiah 45:6, John 15:5, 16, and Romans 9-11 point to this sovereignty of God in all things. Based off these verses, God is the sole factor in plotting the course of man’s life. God is the one who causes all things to happen. However, there is much debate as to the specifics of God causing all things to happen. Is God the active agent in all things, or is He removed to some degree? Is man absolutely free, or guided in part or whole by God? Gordon H. Clark argues strongly for this latter thought.
In fact, “Clark, [who] is a staunch Calvinist…does not hesitate to use the term determinism to describe God’s causing of all things, including human acts (417).” Clark rejects the idea of the permissive will of God (God allowing something to happen without directing causing it) outright. He sets forth the idea of the perceptive will of God, what ought to be done, and the decretive will of God, that which causes every event. Clark takes this idea out to its logical conclusion; God is the cause of sin. However, this does not mean that God is the author of evil. God is the “ultimate cause of sin, not the immediate cause of it. God does not commit sin; humans commit sin although God wills it decretively, determines that it shall happen, and is the ultimate cause of it. It was Judas, not God, who betrayed Christ. God neither sins nor is responsible for sin (418).” The implications of this argument raise several perplexing questions that must be answered in light of the biblical text and logical thought. How is God not sinning by causing man to sin? Clark offers several points to justify his view. He writes that “By definition, God cannot sin.”[33] He elaborates on this by saying that whatever God does is true and right, simply for the fact that He is God. Furthermore, the law that God has established for men to follow does not literally apply to Him. “He cannot steal, for example, for everything belongs to Him. There is no one to steal from (418).” Finally, Clark points out that “The Bible openly states that God has caused prophets to lie (e.g., 2 Chron. 18:20-22). Such statements are not in any sense incompatible with the biblical statements that God is free from sin (418).” “What Clark has done is to redefine the goodness of God. The problem is in effect solved by understanding that it is good and right that God (ultimately) causes such evil as a drunken man shooting his family, although God does not sin and is not responsible for the sinful act.”[34]
Conclusion
Both the Free Will Defense and the Argument from Determinism have the support from biblical passages. However, on what side does the weight of evidence (biblical and philosophical) fall? The strength of the FWD is found in the logic that only free men and women can love God in the truest sense. Evil is attributed to the fact that God will not stop evil because this means He infringes upon human freedom. Stackhouse asks the question, “Why then does God put up with evil wrought by generations of human beings through the ages? God does so, Plantinga and others argue, because on the whole it is for the best—or, at least, for the better. God, to put it bluntly, calculates the ‘cost-benefit ratio’ and deems the cost of evil to be worth the benefit of loving and enjoying the love of these human beings.”[35] There is so much evil in the world because God would not be able to remove it without also sacrificing the freedom of His people. However, “the Free Will Defense is just that: a defense. It is not a positive statement of what Alvin Plantinga or anyone else really thinks is the way God manages the world. Furthermore, it does not deal with the huge category of natural evil, except in a surprisingly offhand way…Plantinga simply wonders whether natural disasters are the…work of demons.”[36] The problem of natural evil is a significant problem for the FWD (human freedom is the result of evil), especially in light of such texts as Isaiah 45:6. On the other hand, the Argument from Determinism does not face this problem, as it attributes everything as ultimately coming from God.
Its strength is found in the plethora of biblical texts that support the idea of God’s absolute control over the universe. It holds that God is beyond man’s understanding in many regards, and God’s control over the universe is one of these areas. However, it too is fraught with problems. The idea of hard determinism means men and women are not truly free; they are more akin to robots than to anything else. With no free will, the love that people have towards God is not genuine; it is a forced love. Furthermore, the advocate of determinism must work through all the passages of Scripture where man is told that he ought to do something, commanded by God to live a certain way, and then punished for not obeying.[37] To entirely throw out man’s freedom is a difficult task
indeed. After examining both sides of the argument, the Free Will Defense, for all its difficulties, emerges are the more viable of these two options. While the intention of this paper is not a discussion of the free will of man (or lack thereof), much of the problem of evil inevitably comes down to this debate. If man is free, the great majority of the evil in the world is thus his responsibility. If man is determined, the responsibility ultimately belongs to God, and this creates more problems than it solves. To say that God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and that all the evil in the world is ultimately caused by God, is a greater difficulty than the problem of evil. Church fathers such as Augustine wrote of the idea that God is incorruptible, and as such He cannot cause corruption.[38] Regardless of how a believer seeks to address the problem of evil, it is important to understand that all the learning in the world does not fully prepare one for personal tragedy or loss as a result of this fallen world. Knowledge is not simply a formidable tool to counter the depths of emotional pain that arise from such situations. C.S. Lewis has the “conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”[39] N.T. Wright powerfully observes that the disasters of Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami in India, September 11th, and so forth are “a reminder that ‘the problem of evil’ is not something we will ‘solve’ in the present world, and that our primary task is not so much to give answers to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God’s new world to birth on the basis of Jesus’ death and in the power of the Spirit, even in the midst of ‘the present evil age.’”[40] It is important for believers to prepare “to face the reality of life, which includes the reality of evil, with as many intellectual tools in the cupboard as they can get.”[41] Yet only a strong faith and trust in God will allow an individual who is in the throes of life’s evils to maintain a hopeful demeanor and a bright countenance.
-----------------------
[1]Hugh Silvester, Arguing with God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1971), 7.
[2]Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart (Nashville, TN: W. Publishing Group, 1998), 209.
[3]Ibid.
[4]N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 19-20.
[5]Ibid., 20.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Augustine, On the Nature of Good, first series, vols. 1-7 of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, first series, vols. 1-7 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1979), 4; quoted in Norman L. Geisler, ed., What Augustine Says (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982), 189.
[8]Geisler, 191.
[9]Duane F. Watson, “Evil,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, gen. ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 2:678.
[10]Ibid., 678.
[11]Ibid.
[12]Norman Geisler, God, Creation, vol. 2 of Systematic Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2003), 158-159.
[13]Thomas C. Oden, The Living God, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1987), 75; 79.
[14]Geisler, God, Creation, 367.
[15]Raymond C. Togtman and Ralph W. Vunderink, “Good,” vol. 2 of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, fully revised, gen. ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1982), 2:526.
[16]Silvester, 29.
[17]Silvester, 29.
[18]Ibid.
[19]Ibid., 59-60.
[20]Geisler, What Augustine Says, 193-194.
[21]Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1977), 28.
[22]Ibid., 29.
[23]Ibid., 31.
[24]Oden, 284.
[25]John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Can God be Trusted? (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 71.
[26]Oden, 285.
[27]Silvester, 67.
[28]Stackhouse,72.
[29]Ibid., 74-75.
[30]All information in this section, unless otherwise noted, is taken from Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), 417ff.
[31]Geisler, God, Creation, 536.
[32]Ibid.
[33]Geisler, God, Creation, 536.
[34]Erickson, 418-419.
[35]Stackhouse, 74.
[36]Ibid., 75.
[37]The Fall is a prime example of this. According to a strict Calvinist, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit, sovereignly made them eat the fruit, and then punished them for it. To argue that God
commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit so that he could make them break this command is bad logic. As Romans 3:8 says, “Why not say — as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say — ‘Let us do evil that good may result’?” Shall God cause evil, so that good may result? By no means. Can God use evil, so that good may result? Yes, he can. As Romans 8:28 states, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him...”
[38]Geisler, What Augustine Says, 191.
[39]C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London, Great Britain: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1940), viii.
[40]Wright, 11.
[41]Stackhouse, 2.
A young child cries, for her mother has just been brutally murdered. An orphan weeps, as he despairs of living another day alone. A beautiful woman lies down to die, for there is no food to be had. A mother shakes her fist towards the sky, as she has just lost her only child in an earthquake. The skeptic shakes his head, unable to understand all the pain in the world. This is the 21st century, and yet the problem of evil and suffering is nearly as old as time itself. While the atheist is “wasting his breath to complain, because in his view there is no-one to complain to,”[1] the Christian is faced with a much more difficult conundrum. The age-old question is this, “How can there be an all-loving and all-powerful God …show more content…
when evil is so evident and uncontained?”[2] A deeper question is this, “Even if God exists, how can He be called good while allowing death and destruction to happen, when we ourselves would be considered wicked if we did the same thing?”[3] It is a question that buffets the hearts and minds those who give serious thought to the nature of the world. Though stated in a thousand ways through a multitude of personal experiences, the foundation of the debate calls into question the attributes of God. Is God truly all powerful? Does God’s definition of good differ from man’s perspective? Is evil only an illusion? This paper will seek to clarify what is meant by the omnipotence and the goodness of God by first providing historical insight into the debate, and by providing definitions for keys terms relevant to the discussion. Subsequently, philosophical reasoning coupled with biblical theology will be used argue for the Free Will Defense and the Argument from Determinism. Finally, this paper will seek to prove that the Free Will Defense is a more logical solution to the Problem of Evil than the Argument from Determinism in light of philosophical and biblical reasoning.
Historical Background
Wright points out that “The problem of evil in its present metaphysical form has been around for at least two-and-a-half centuries…from 1755 on…the history of European philosophy can best be told as the history of people trying to come to terms with evil.”[4] Great minds such as Voltaire and Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, have all spent time trying to solve this mystery.[5] In fact, throughout all of these thinkers “we find a continuous thread of philosophical attempts to say what has to be said about the world as a whole and about evil within it.”[6] However, the problem of evil is much older than these Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers.
Augustine records over a thousand years earlier that evil is “nothing else than corruption, either of the measure, or the form, or the order, that belong to nature.”[7] He also writes that “God did not cause the first evil will.”[8] Even further back, the Old Testament has much to say about evil in the world. The Israelites were intimately familiar with pain and suffering, and this is reflected in their writings. “The concept of evil in the OT has both qualitative (natural) and moral categories…evil is misfortune, particularly injury or threat to life or standing in society…it is also used in a moral and spiritual sense as the designation for immorality and unfaithfulness to the covenant.”[9] It was through many years of hardship and oppression …show more content…
that Israel grappled with explaining the relationship of evil to its conception of God. It did not develop a metaphysical dualism in which evil could be explained as the work of demonic powers. Neither did it develop the concept of a capricious God to whom both good and evil could be described. Rather, it developed an ethical monotheism. Within this conception a major solution was to look for the justice of God in the eschatological future, i.e., to accept the mystery of evil by conceptualizing a creator God with greater freedom to work in ways and for purposes that transcend human understanding.[10]
Likewise, in the New Testament evil is used both in a qualitative and a moral sense. While examples of qualitative evil occur in such places as disease (Rev 16:2) and misfortune (Matt 6:34), the moral idea of evil predominates the New Testament (Matt 5:45, Phil 3:2, Heb 3:12).[11]
Definition of Key Terms
In this study, several terms must first be clarified. Without a proper understanding of the terms under question, there can be no clear answer.
Divine Omnipotence
“Literally, omnipotence means that God has unlimited power…Theologically, ‘omnipotence’ means that God can do whatever is possible to do. Or, God can do what is not impossible to do. His power is unlimited and uninhibited by anything else…it does not mean God must do all that he can do: It simply means He has the power to do whatever is possible.”[12] Oden defines it as “the perfect ability of God to do all things that are consistent with the divine character…it does not diminish the most perfect doer that God does not do what is intrinsically undoable.”[13]
Divine Omnibenevolence
“Literally, the word omnibenevolent means ‘all-good.’ Biblically, the basic Hebrew term for ‘love’ (chesed) used of God means ‘goodness,’ ‘affection,’ ‘loving-kindness…’ Theologically, God’s omnibenevolence refers to His infinite or unlimited goodness.”[14] “God’s dealings with His people are good because they are the revelation and expression of His goodness…Scripture clearly confers the attribute of goodness on God (e.g., 1 Ch. 16:34, 2 Ch. 5:13, Ps. 136:1).”[15]
Evil
There are two types of evil of evil that need to be differentiated. Natural evil is the “group of miseries and unhappiness what apparently arises outside man.”[16] This includes such things are hurricanes, earthquakes, lightning strikes, and the like. The other type of evil to consider is that of moral evil, “the evil which comes from man himself.”[17] It encompasses “The rebellion against God and the ill-treatment of man by man.”[18] The majority of pain and suffering is a result of this second type of evil, but both natural and moral evil create different dilemmas in regard to the character of God.
The Free Will Argument
There are many attempts to explain why there is so much evil in the world at the same time that there is a loving God. One such attempt is coined the Free Will Defense. The nature of the Free Will Defense (FWD) is firmed grounded in the omnibenevolence of God. God is love, and he created mankind to share in His love. Man was given free will, so that he could choose to love his maker. Without the freedom to choose otherwise, man truly cannot love God.[19] However, man in his freedom chose something else. At this point in history time mankind did not even have knowledge of evil, for they have not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet mankind was faced with a choice in the Garden of Eden; choose God, the greatest good, or choose themselves, a lesser good.[20] Without even fully realizing what evil was, man fell into it. This is where the problem is found. God created a world that was declared “good,” and yet man was able to turn away from God and unleash evil on the world. If God is all powerful, would not it be plausible that God could have created a world where man was free and yet not at risk of falling into evil? While a theodicy seeks to explain the reason why God permits evil, the FWD seeks to show “what God’s reason might possibly be.”[21] “The Free Will Defense can be looked upon as an effort to show that there may be a very different type of good that God can’t bring about without permitting evil. These are good states of affairs that don’t include evil; they do not entail the existence of any evil whatever; nonetheless God Himself can’t bring them about without permitting evil.”[22] “The heart of the Free Will Defense is the claim that it is possible that God could not have created a universe containing moral good without creating one that also contained moral evil.”[23] In short, “The freewill defense has become a standard response to the charge that God is the author of sin. Accordingly, it is not God that causes sin, but rather it is human freedom, which is a good but distortable creation of God, that elicits sin.”[24] The primary source of debate in the FWD is based on differing views of the free will of man. It ascribes to man the free ability to choose between differing options. “It is important to note that nothing in this conception of free will makes it necessary for human beings to choose evil. Free will in this sense just means an authentic possibility…only the possibility of sin is intrinsic to this idea of human free will.”[25] Here an important distinction emerges in the FWD; man is not coerced or deterministically forced to make a choice. “That God permits us freedom to fall does not imply that God directly causes the fall, or that God creates freedom already as fallen. God, rather, permits freedom to work its own blessedness or self-condemnation, to spell itself out in glory or disaster.”[26] Silvester comments that when faced with a choice, there are many factors involved in the process, many different variables all seemingly pushing us to a certain choice. But, “Who decides which factors are important? Who decides which advice is better than another? If he had to choose between two motives…who is to tell him which is the most important? In the last analysis all we can say is, he decided. In the words of G.E. Moore in another context, choice is ‘simple and unanalyzable.’”[27] Free will is important, for “Were God to compel us to make only good choices, then we would not be making choices at all, but merely following God’s directions as a computer executes a program. Were God to…constantly intervene to prevent any bad from resulting from those choices…it is difficult to see how those choices would have integrity and significance.”[28] Yet contrary to the some critics, the focus of the FWD is not on freedom. “It is crucial to underline that love is the highest good that God seeks in this enterprise, not freedom per se. In this case, freedom is simply a requirement of the higher good of love—and that might indeed be worth it all.”[29]
Argument from Determinism[30]
A different argument used to explain the problem of evil is uses as its foundation the sovereignty of God. “Technically, sovereignty is not an attribute of God, but rather an activity of God in relation to His universe. Sovereignty is God’s control over His creation, dealing with His governance over it: Sovereignty is God’s rule over all reality.”[31] The Westminster Confession of Faith states, “God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatever comes to pass.”[32] This definition of sovereignty has strong biblical support. Passages such as Proverbs 16:9, Isaiah 45:6, John 15:5, 16, and Romans 9-11 point to this sovereignty of God in all things. Based off these verses, God is the sole factor in plotting the course of man’s life. God is the one who causes all things to happen. However, there is much debate as to the specifics of God causing all things to happen. Is God the active agent in all things, or is He removed to some degree? Is man absolutely free, or guided in part or whole by God? Gordon H. Clark argues strongly for this latter thought.
In fact, “Clark, [who] is a staunch Calvinist…does not hesitate to use the term determinism to describe God’s causing of all things, including human acts (417).” Clark rejects the idea of the permissive will of God (God allowing something to happen without directing causing it) outright. He sets forth the idea of the perceptive will of God, what ought to be done, and the decretive will of God, that which causes every event. Clark takes this idea out to its logical conclusion; God is the cause of sin. However, this does not mean that God is the author of evil. God is the “ultimate cause of sin, not the immediate cause of it. God does not commit sin; humans commit sin although God wills it decretively, determines that it shall happen, and is the ultimate cause of it. It was Judas, not God, who betrayed Christ. God neither sins nor is responsible for sin (418).” The implications of this argument raise several perplexing questions that must be answered in light of the biblical text and logical thought. How is God not sinning by causing man to sin? Clark offers several points to justify his view. He writes that “By definition, God cannot sin.”[33] He elaborates on this by saying that whatever God does is true and right, simply for the fact that He is God. Furthermore, the law that God has established for men to follow does not literally apply to Him. “He cannot steal, for example, for everything belongs to Him. There is no one to steal from (418).” Finally, Clark points out that “The Bible openly states that God has caused prophets to lie (e.g., 2 Chron. 18:20-22). Such statements are not in any sense incompatible with the biblical statements that God is free from sin (418).” “What Clark has done is to redefine the goodness of God. The problem is in effect solved by understanding that it is good and right that God (ultimately) causes such evil as a drunken man shooting his family, although God does not sin and is not responsible for the sinful act.”[34]
Conclusion
Both the Free Will Defense and the Argument from Determinism have the support from biblical passages. However, on what side does the weight of evidence (biblical and philosophical) fall? The strength of the FWD is found in the logic that only free men and women can love God in the truest sense. Evil is attributed to the fact that God will not stop evil because this means He infringes upon human freedom. Stackhouse asks the question, “Why then does God put up with evil wrought by generations of human beings through the ages? God does so, Plantinga and others argue, because on the whole it is for the best—or, at least, for the better. God, to put it bluntly, calculates the ‘cost-benefit ratio’ and deems the cost of evil to be worth the benefit of loving and enjoying the love of these human beings.”[35] There is so much evil in the world because God would not be able to remove it without also sacrificing the freedom of His people. However, “the Free Will Defense is just that: a defense. It is not a positive statement of what Alvin Plantinga or anyone else really thinks is the way God manages the world. Furthermore, it does not deal with the huge category of natural evil, except in a surprisingly offhand way…Plantinga simply wonders whether natural disasters are the…work of demons.”[36] The problem of natural evil is a significant problem for the FWD (human freedom is the result of evil), especially in light of such texts as Isaiah 45:6. On the other hand, the Argument from Determinism does not face this problem, as it attributes everything as ultimately coming from God.
Its strength is found in the plethora of biblical texts that support the idea of God’s absolute control over the universe. It holds that God is beyond man’s understanding in many regards, and God’s control over the universe is one of these areas. However, it too is fraught with problems. The idea of hard determinism means men and women are not truly free; they are more akin to robots than to anything else. With no free will, the love that people have towards God is not genuine; it is a forced love. Furthermore, the advocate of determinism must work through all the passages of Scripture where man is told that he ought to do something, commanded by God to live a certain way, and then punished for not obeying.[37] To entirely throw out man’s freedom is a difficult task
indeed. After examining both sides of the argument, the Free Will Defense, for all its difficulties, emerges are the more viable of these two options. While the intention of this paper is not a discussion of the free will of man (or lack thereof), much of the problem of evil inevitably comes down to this debate. If man is free, the great majority of the evil in the world is thus his responsibility. If man is determined, the responsibility ultimately belongs to God, and this creates more problems than it solves. To say that God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and that all the evil in the world is ultimately caused by God, is a greater difficulty than the problem of evil. Church fathers such as Augustine wrote of the idea that God is incorruptible, and as such He cannot cause corruption.[38] Regardless of how a believer seeks to address the problem of evil, it is important to understand that all the learning in the world does not fully prepare one for personal tragedy or loss as a result of this fallen world. Knowledge is not simply a formidable tool to counter the depths of emotional pain that arise from such situations. C.S. Lewis has the “conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”[39] N.T. Wright powerfully observes that the disasters of Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami in India, September 11th, and so forth are “a reminder that ‘the problem of evil’ is not something we will ‘solve’ in the present world, and that our primary task is not so much to give answers to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God’s new world to birth on the basis of Jesus’ death and in the power of the Spirit, even in the midst of ‘the present evil age.’”[40] It is important for believers to prepare “to face the reality of life, which includes the reality of evil, with as many intellectual tools in the cupboard as they can get.”[41] Yet only a strong faith and trust in God will allow an individual who is in the throes of life’s evils to maintain a hopeful demeanor and a bright countenance.
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[1]Hugh Silvester, Arguing with God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1971), 7.
[2]Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart (Nashville, TN: W. Publishing Group, 1998), 209.
[3]Ibid.
[4]N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 19-20.
[5]Ibid., 20.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Augustine, On the Nature of Good, first series, vols. 1-7 of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, first series, vols. 1-7 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1979), 4; quoted in Norman L. Geisler, ed., What Augustine Says (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1982), 189.
[8]Geisler, 191.
[9]Duane F. Watson, “Evil,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, gen. ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 2:678.
[10]Ibid., 678.
[11]Ibid.
[12]Norman Geisler, God, Creation, vol. 2 of Systematic Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2003), 158-159.
[13]Thomas C. Oden, The Living God, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1987), 75; 79.
[14]Geisler, God, Creation, 367.
[15]Raymond C. Togtman and Ralph W. Vunderink, “Good,” vol. 2 of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, fully revised, gen. ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1982), 2:526.
[16]Silvester, 29.
[17]Silvester, 29.
[18]Ibid.
[19]Ibid., 59-60.
[20]Geisler, What Augustine Says, 193-194.
[21]Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1977), 28.
[22]Ibid., 29.
[23]Ibid., 31.
[24]Oden, 284.
[25]John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Can God be Trusted? (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), 71.
[26]Oden, 285.
[27]Silvester, 67.
[28]Stackhouse,72.
[29]Ibid., 74-75.
[30]All information in this section, unless otherwise noted, is taken from Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), 417ff.
[31]Geisler, God, Creation, 536.
[32]Ibid.
[33]Geisler, God, Creation, 536.
[34]Erickson, 418-419.
[35]Stackhouse, 74.
[36]Ibid., 75.
[37]The Fall is a prime example of this. According to a strict Calvinist, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit, sovereignly made them eat the fruit, and then punished them for it. To argue that God
commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit so that he could make them break this command is bad logic. As Romans 3:8 says, “Why not say — as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say — ‘Let us do evil that good may result’?” Shall God cause evil, so that good may result? By no means. Can God use evil, so that good may result? Yes, he can. As Romans 8:28 states, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him...”
[38]Geisler, What Augustine Says, 191.
[39]C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London, Great Britain: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1940), viii.
[40]Wright, 11.
[41]Stackhouse, 2.