J. L. Mackie's Problem Of Evil

The problem of evil, as articulated by J.L. Mackie, is directed at theism and concerns the consistency of the following claims: God is omniscient; God is omnipotent; God is omnibenevolent; evil exists. If God is indeed omniscient, then he should be completely knowledgeable about all evil that exists. If God is omnipotent, then it should be within his power to prevent all evil from occurring. Finally, if God is omnibenevolent, or morally perfect, then it should be the case that he would not allow the evil that he is capable of preventing to occur. Consequently, the fact that evil does exist seems to indicate that there must be an inconsistency in the set of claims. In other words, the existence of evil threatens the status of at least one of
Plantinga agrees that there could be such possible worlds, but asserts that there is no reason to think that these are among the worlds that God could have actualized. To argue this point, he appeals to essense. Agents, he claims, have some properties which are essential, meaning they are possessed in all possible worlds in which they exist. Other properties of are non-essential, and may vary among the possible worlds that the agents exist in (49). According to Plantinga, if an agent suffers from transworld depravity, then transworld depravity is contained within their essence. Given that an agent is an “instantiation” of a particular essence, the following would be true: God could not have actualized any possible world in which that agent is both significantly free and never acts morally wrong if transworld depravity is part of their essence (52). Plantinga further claims that it is possible that “every creaturely essence” is such that it suffers from transworld depravity. More specifically, it is possible that any agent which has an essence in which the property of being one of God's creations is contained also has the property of transworld depravity. If the existence of moral good demands the existence of free agents, and all agents are instantiations of essences (all
Luckily for Plantinga, his argument is not dependent on the actuality of transworld depravity, or even a high likelihood that transworld depravity obtains. As he states, all that is necessary for the free will defense is that transworld depravity is a possibility. It is unclear that Plantinga's opponent can convincingly argue that it is in fact logically impossible that all agents suffer from transworld depravity. Certainly, it is true that the agents which have been actualized suffer from some kind of depravity, as in the actual world evil indeed exists and there is no actual agent which has never acted wrongly. The discomfort with the notion of transworld depravity seems to stem from the idea that there are no possible world in which the agents do not suffer from transworld depravity. But it would be a mistake to interpret Plantinga as making this claim. Instead, he should be understood as arguing that, if transworld depravity was a real condition, it would limit the logical possibility of worlds which can be actualized. It does not exclude the possibility of worlds in which there are agents who do not suffer from transworld depravity and who freely always perform right actions. It is just that none of these worlds could be