Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/22/2005 5:30:08 PM (GMT-5)

Wisdom, Knowledge and Benevolence

Jeff,

I am not sure how being wise or knowledgeable would preclude him from being evil or ever doing evil.  Satan’s problem doesn’t seem to be one of ignorance for example. Moreover, if foreknowledge is incompatible with freedom and the consequences of free acts as such, then presumably God doesn’t know how what he will choose to do in every or all situations, otherwise he wouldn’t be free.

To say that God is benevolent and that is why he cannot do evil seems to me to be question begging since bene is the latin for Good. To say that God is Benevolent and that is why he cannot do evil is just to say that God is Good and that is why he cannot do evil. In which case it is hard for me to understand how on the OV he can be free.

If God doesn’t know infallibly the choices of free agents then this presumably includes his own since he too is a free agent. In which case, it would seem to follow that he doesn’t know if his greatest pleasure is never actualized by doing evil. Also, the idea that God knows which means will accomplish or bring about his pleasure seems to commit us to a couple of problematic ideas.

First, if being good is the route or means to being moral, then it seems as if goodness has only instrumental or extrinsic and not intrinsic value. Goodness is valuable for the sake of something else, specifically pleasure. This seems problematic since it seems to have the relationship between goodness and pleasure backwards. You pursue pleasure because it’s a good and not goodness because it is pleasurable.

What is worse, pleasure doesn’t seem like an appropriate end or telos for God and here is why. Not all pleasure is good. Some pleasures are inappropriate or bad. A person who takes pleasure in molesting children is obviously having pleasure in something he ought not to.

Second, since God pursues the good as a means to pleasure, then this seems to commit us to the idea that God is a hedonist and a type of utilitarian.  I don’t think most OV advocates would subscribe to utilitarianism as an acceptable moral theory. I think they would be surprised to find out that their position implies utilitarianism and hedonism.

Third, if God pursues the good as a means to pleasure, then how does this help secure the goodness of God? If God merely uses the good to get pleasure, that doesn’t seem to make God himself good. What is worse, what if God just uses the good to attain the wrong kind of pleasures? Then we are back to the Ogre God of Calvinism who creates the world just to screw with it like a toy.

Power and Goodness

I am not clear on how power or the amount of it would preclude him from being or doing evil. Certainly power and goodness seem like different things and hence can conceptually come apart. Just because God is powerful I fail to see how this secures that he is good. Power seems like, roughly speaking the ability to bring states of affairs about. But that doesn’t seem to say anything about limiting the kinds of states of affairs that can come about.

My worry is this.  Often OT advocates reject Calvinism, of which I am no great fan, because the God there seems like a manipulator and doesn’t seem to be genuinely good and innocent. But if the OT can’t secure God’s goodness, then how is this any real advance over Calvinism? Just baldly repeating that God is good by OT advocates seems no different than the fist pounding that God is good done by Calvinists. It seems to me that here is a point where the Open Theism runs out of explanatory gas, not unlike Calvinism in attempting to explain how, say Adam fell if he was perfectly good.

On Comatibilist Heavens

If you agree that compatibilist freedom is a coherent idea and legitimate in heaven, why balk at it now? If compatibilist freedom takes away our moral responsibility and praiseworthiness on earth, why doesn’t it do so there also? Certainly if its not up to us to be what we are, then how can we be responsible or praiseworthy?

More importantly, if LFW is a necessary condition on personhood, then when it is eliminated then personhood is also eliminated. In order then to secure personhood on your view we would need to maintain the possibility, at the least of continual falls and then we are right back to Origen. 

Third, it doesn’t seem as if compatibilist views of freedom can distinguish free acts from cases of manipulation. If we have compatibilist freedom in heaven, how is this not end in a type of divine manipulation?

Fourth, if compatibilist freedom is acceptable in heaven so that no one would ever sin, why not just create the world with compatibilist freedom in the first place? If we admit a compatibilist freedom in heaven, it seems then that we cannot legitimately appeal to a Free Will Defense to explain why God is not to blame for evil. Because then it will be possible for God to create a world in which people are free and yet never do and cannot sin. And certainly such a world looks a lot better than the world in which we have freedom and there is lots of evil. Certainly if a compatibilist view of freedom in heaven is acceptable, God could have done better in which case, God’s goodness is again attenuated or eliminated.

It may be true that we did suffer in the process of attaining such a state of moral impeccability, but I don’t see how it follows from that, that we had to suffer to reach such a state. Why think that suffering and evil are necessary pre-requisites for us to be Good? If they are, then it seems like either freedom is an evil, or God is complicit in fostering evil. What is more, it just seems wrong to me to think that evil is an acceptable means to bring about good. God doesn’t seem to need evil to bring about goodness.

As to what you mean by a true final cause, I don’t understand what you mean. Maybe you can clear this up for me. Do you mean final cause as in Aristotle’s final or teleological end or goal?

Hey Acolyte, I was REALLY rushed to do this response, so it may be pretty incoherent.  Hope not for your sake!!

Acolyte:  I am not sure how being wise or knowledgeable would preclude him from being evil or ever doing evil. 

Jeff:  That's why power and goodness are important, too.  God IS benevolent, so He DESIRES the good, and He's POWERFUL and SMART enough to actuate it.

Acolyte:  Moreover, if foreknowledge is incompatible with freedom and the consequences of free acts as such, then presumably God doesn’t know how what he will choose to do in every or all situations, otherwise he wouldn’t be free.

Jeff:  He doesn't foreknow what He will do in a situation if doesn't foreknow the situation, itself.  If He foreknows the situation, He can foreknow what He would do in it.

Acolyte:  To say that God is benevolent and that is why he cannot do evil seems to me to be question begging since bene is the latin for Good. To say that God is Benevolent and that is why he cannot do evil is just to say that God is Good and that is why he cannot do evil. In which case it is hard for me to understand how on the OV he can be free.

Jeff:  That's why the other factors HAVE to be true also to make my explanation work.

Acolyte:  If God doesn’t know infallibly the choices of free agents then this presumably includes his own since he too is a free agent. In which case, it would seem to follow that he doesn’t know if his greatest pleasure is never actualized by doing evil.

Jeff:  By benevolent being, I mean a being whose sensibilities are such that evil is repulsive to it.  That is not true for humans, obviously.

Acolyte:  First, if being good is the route or means to being moral, then it seems as if goodness has only instrumental or extrinsic and not intrinsic value. Goodness is valuable for the sake of something else, specifically pleasure. This seems problematic since it seems to have the relationship between goodness and pleasure backwards. You pursue pleasure because it’s a good and not goodness because it is pleasurable.

Jeff:  I don't hold that God ONLY does good because He self-conciously calculates the pleasure it will bring Him.  But to even be tempted to do maliciousness (i.e., act contrary to His own sensibilities) He would have to believe that it would lead to a greater good.  But it can not do so for a perfectly benevolent being, and God it is utterly aware of that fact.

Acolyte:  What is worse, pleasure doesn’t seem like an appropriate end or telos for God and here is why. Not all pleasure is good. Some pleasures are inappropriate or bad. A person who takes pleasure in molesting children is obviously having pleasure in something he ought not to.

Jeff:  God hates evil.  It doesn't bring Him pleasure.

Acolyte:  Second, since God pursues the good as a means to pleasure, then this seems to commit us to the idea that God is a hedonist and a type of utilitarian.  I don’t think most OV advocates would subscribe to utilitarianism as an acceptable moral theory. I think they would be surprised to find out that their position implies utilitarianism and hedonism.

Jeff:  I addressed that objection above.

Acolyte:  I am not clear on how power or the amount of it would preclude him from being or doing evil. Certainly power and goodness seem like different things and hence can conceptually come apart. Just because God is powerful I fail to see how this secures that he is good. Power seems like, roughly speaking the ability to bring states of affairs about. But that doesn’t seem to say anything about limiting the kinds of states of affairs that can come about.

Jeff:  I addressed this above.

Acolyte:  If you agree that compatibilist freedom is a coherent idea and legitimate in heaven, why balk at it now? If compatibilist freedom takes away our moral responsibility and praiseworthiness on earth, why doesn’t it do so there also? Certainly if its not up to us to be what we are, then how can we be responsible or praiseworthy?

Jeff:  I said compatibilism is COHERENT with the idea of heaven, not necessary to it.  It is contradictory to moral responsibilty.  Thus, if heaven is compatibilistic, we will have no praiseworthiness for what we do in heaven.  The verses I'm aware of talk about being rewarded for what is done in this life, not what is done in heaven.

Acolyte:  More importantly, if LFW is a necessary condition on personhood, then when it is eliminated then personhood is also eliminated.  

Jeff:  Maybe we can be final causes without having LFW.  Give me your exact definition of LFW. 

Acolyte:  If we admit a compatibilist freedom in heaven, it seems then that we cannot legitimately appeal to a Free Will Defense to explain why God is not to blame for evil. Because then it will be possible for God to create a world in which people are free and yet never do and cannot sin.

Jeff:  There only IS a problem of evil if compatibilism is false.  For if God and all other sentient beings are compatibilistic, there is no problem of evil.  All is explicable.  For then, what is MUST be as it is.  Case closed.

Acolyte:  And certainly such a world looks a lot better than the world in which we have freedom and there is lots of evil. Certainly if a compatibilist view of freedom in heaven is acceptable, God could have done better in which case, God’s goodness is again attenuated or eliminated.

Jeff:  Unfortunately, virtually all people know that compatibilism is false.  So we're stuck with that.

Acolyte:  What is more, it just seems wrong to me to think that evil is an acceptable means to bring about good. God doesn’t seem to need evil to bring about goodness.

Jeff:  I absolutely agree and don't see how that contradicts the OV. 

Acolyte:  As to what you mean by a true final cause, I don’t understand what you mean. Maybe you can clear this up for me. Do you mean final cause as in Aristotle’s final or teleological end or goal?

Jeff:  A sentient, conscious being is a final cause if it can INITIATE a chain of subsequent events by it's own volition.  That is, the BEING is THE explanation of the initiated sequence, not merely laws and antecedent conditions.  As I understand it, a blind efficient cause does what is inevitable, GIVEN the law of it's activity and the antecedent conditions.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/22/2005 7:29:11 PM (GMT-5)

Jeff,

If you think that God is good, does his goodness prevent or preclude him from doing evil? If so, how then do  you maintain that he is free?  I can grant that God currently desires the good, but why think that he will do so without the possibility of failure?

If God foreknows the situation and he foreknows what he will do, how is that any different than God foreknowing the situations in which human agents act and foreknowing what? If God’s knowledge rules out LFW in the latter case I have no reason to think that it doesn’t also rule it out in the former case. I thought that the OTV turned on the idea that foreknowledge and LFW were incompatible. If they are incompatible, then if God foreknows at time T1 what he will do X at T10, then he is not free at T10 because it is true at T1 that he will do X at T10. If foreknowledge is incompatible with freedom, then God is no exception.

I do not see how other properties that God has render him incapable of doing evil. If God can make mistakes in knowledge then his knowledge or wisdom simply won’t preclude him from doing evil.  And neither will any of the other properties you have ascribed to God.

I do not question whether evil is currently repulsive to God but if it will always and without the possibility of failure be repulsive to God. Is it up to God that he is repulsed by evil or is that something natural and beyond his control? If the latter then how can he said to be free? If the former, how can you secure his goodness?

You say that it is impossible for a perfectly benevolent being to ever believe that evil acts will lead to a greater good. But given that God can make mistakes and have false beliefs on your view, and he can have false beliefs specifically about the actions of free agents which includes himself, why think that God won’t goof in the future? You can say all day long that God currently hates evil, but that is not what I am asking. I am asking why think that God will continue to do so? As I noted to Laika on another thread inductive reasoning isn’t going to help here.

If compatibilism is not necessary to the idea of heaven how then can you secure the eternal goodness of the blessed in heaven without it? Second, if we are not morally responsible for what we do in heaven, then how can we ever be considered persons? Isn’t LFW a necessary condition on personhood? Third, why think that being morally praiseworthy in heaven requires a reward? It only requires being a moral agent. If then LFW is extinguished in heaven it becomes hard to see how we are moral agents. In which case it becomes ridiculous to appeal to the idea that God wanted free loving agents in creation as a reason for creating the world in the first place. If we all end up in a compatibilist heaven, why didn’t God create such a world in the first place? And if God could have done so then why create this world with all of the evil and suffering if God could have had just a good a world without any evil ever occurring at all? You see, if you put compatibilist freedom at the end, it undercuts the entire reason for having LFW throughout the whole system. As to scripture, scripture does speak of things forgiven and done in this world and the next.

My exact definition of LFW is generally following Robert Kane. UR + AP-Ultimate responsibility and alternative possibilities.  You can see a basic sketch of my views here http://www.energeticprocession.com/archives/2005/01/a_note_on_free.html

I don’t see how final causation is going to help out in preserving personhood without LFW if LFW is a necessary condition for personhood. If we give up the idea that LFW is necessary for personhood at that point we have just bought the compatibilist farm.

I think there is a problem of evil if compatibilism is true or if libertarianism by itself is true. On the former, it is hard to see how God could be good since he could have created  a world in which all of his objectives were achieved without evil but he didn’t. That is the suffering of millions of children was unnecessary to achieving God’s goals, but God created a world in which that would happen anyway. God hardly seems innocent. Hence the problem of evil raises its head here since for the compatibilist God becomes the author of evil. For the libertarian the problem is securing God’s goodness while at the same time putting it together with God’s freedom. If that can’t be done then either God is good but not free or free but not essentially good.

I wouldn’t say that all people know that compatibilism is false. I’d say that currently libertarianism, while making a comeback is still on the short end of the philosophical stick. Harry Frankfurt, John Martin Fischer, Mark Ravizza and a host of other philosophers think that compatibilism is a perfectly coherent idea. I think you are proclaiming victory far too soon.

On the OV it seems as if God could have created a world with compatibilist freedom from the get-go and here is why. Because on the OV people in heaven are free with compatibilist freedom and it is impossible for them to sin. If you grant that they are persons and have the relevant type of freedom in heaven, why even have LFW to begin with? The answer you usually get is that God needed LFW to being about “greater goods” from evil thereby showing that evil was necessaray for the full manifestation of goodness. In which case the OV is committed to a subtle form of dualism-the good can’t be what it is without evil. As a Christian I take this view to be false. If on the other hand the OV rejects the “greater good” line of reasoning, then it becomes inexplicable why God created the world with LFW in the first place. In people in heaven can cease to be the source of their moral standing and still be persons and free yet not have LFW, why not start out the world that way? As long as the OV retains a compatibilist heaven they will have this problem with theodicy as well as large the metaphysical problem of dualism.

As to final causation, I think you are confusing final causation with being a terminus or end. Certainly specific forms of LFW require teleology since acts are done for reasons, where intentions are teleological in nature-they aim for a goal-but this doesn’t make the agent a final cause. It makes the agent the terminus or end of the explanatory sequence of sufficient causes for a given act.

Efficient causation only implies that inevitability if and only if we identify efficient causation with determinism, which I think is false because there are plausibly coherent notions of indeterministic causation where causes bring about the effects they do but not necessarily. Libertarians don’t deny that free acts have a cause, they just deny sufficient antecedent causes. The agent causes the act and there can be antecedent contributing causes. In libertarianism there are no uncaused events. Law-like explanations aren’t incompatible with indeterministic causation either. Kane has a helpful discussion of these points. If you haven’t read his Significance of Free Will, I highly recommend it.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/26/2005 2:40:03 PM (GMT-5)

John,

You can make God as smart as you like, but if the OV maintains that foreknowledge and free will are incompatible, that is they both can’t be true, then it applies to God just as much as it applies to us. If God’s acts are foreknown infallibly, then he can’t will otherwise just as if he infallibly foreknew our acts we would lack free will. God’s knowing what is contingent doesn’t seem to touch this problem. Either it is the case that God has beliefs about his future acts any one of them might turn out to be false, because God doesn’t yet know what he will do until that moment arrives. God has to wait and find out.

Starkeman,

The hybrid account of libertarian freedom in this world and compatibilist freedom in the next won’t work and let me try to explain why. First because our LFW is rooted in being created in God’s image and likeness. An extinguishing of LFW would imply the extinguishing of the image of God in man. Given that God irresistibly wills that man be in his image, the only way for the extinguishing to take place would be if man ceased to exist or if God willed contradictory things. The first is impossible now given the Incarnation and the second is also impossible. Second, the God retains his LFW in heaven so there is no good reason to think that being in the eschaton would eliminate our LFW anymore than his.  Third, the blessed become partakers of the divine nature in the eschaton so there is every reason to believe that such a partaking would accentuate and increase their LFW rather than diminish or extinguish it. I think your intuitions will tell you that perfected persons should have more freedom and not less than the wicked. If freedom is a gift from God, you should have of it with God rather than it being eliminated.  Fourth, I don’t think your account of love will work since God is love and he doesn’t require a temporary libertarian freedom and then its extinguishing for his love to be full or fully manifested. Since we are made in his image this is good reason to think that the same is true of us. Fifth, your view seems to imply that that in order for our love to be full we had to have the opportunity to do evil. In which case the possibility of evil is a necessary condition for the good to be fully what it is, namely good. But this makes goodness dependent on evil, which I take to be false since it implies a kind of dualism. Sixth, per the 3^rd Council of Constantinople, Christ on earth has libertarian freedom in the operation of both of his wills and yet it is impossible for him to sin. To secure the impossibility of sinning you don’t need compatibilist freedom at all. You just need to make the appropriate distinctions between person and nature. Seventh, given that humans are made in such a way to desire the Good, to desire God and also to be active, it seems that since there is only one God to be enjoyed in the eschaton if all we have is compatibilist freedom in the eschaton we cease to be active and hence cease to be creatures.

If we end in compatibilist freedom we flush the free will defense down the toilet since the atheist can always ask why God didn’t create the world with individuals who have compatibilist freedom from the beginning. Given my argments listed above, I don't think that your appeal to love acquired through LFW as opposed to love acquired through Comaptibilist freedom will hold up. Most people would take compatibilist love any day of the week if it meant the exclusion of child molesters, the holocaust and cancer. If you admit the need for compatibilist freedom you admit the basic Calvinist assumption that goodness and freedom are not ultimately compatible and then your system becomes just as deterministic as theirs, it is just that the determinism is delayed till the end.

The answer to this problem is not to be found in thinking about abctract categories of humanity but in concrete examples and the best example you have is that of Christ. All of these questions then need to be investigated under the lens of Christology and not the other way around in order to discover the solution. And there is a solution.

Jeff,

Christianity has historically held that God possesses libertarian free will. If he doesn’t then the ideas that God freely creates the world and freely offers salvation go out the window.   I dare say that Thomists all the way to Open Theists affirm that God has libertarian free will.

I also think that you need to refine your notion of final causation since it doesn’t seem to map on to the usual usage of that term.

Starkman,

I didn’t say that there is a hybrid of LFW in this world. What I meant to communicate was that the view you adhere to is a hybrid view regarding freedom in this life and the next-libertarian freedom here and compatibilist freedom there. I don’t know what you mean by exhaustive LFW and I am not sure it is relevant anyhow.

I do not see how the mere inability on God’s part to choose evil renders his freedom compatibilistic. If LFW doesn’t require options of differing moral value but only a plurality of options, just so long as God has a plurality of option he can fulfilled the alternative possibilities requirement on LFW.  Surely God has LFW since he can choose between options with respect to creation and redemption-to create or not, to redeem or not and neither option adds or subtracts anything from God’s goodness. Both options are fully good for God. I agree that in the eschaton there will be no evil options and sin will be impossible but I don’t see how it follows from that that we will lack LFW.

I deny that God has compatibilistic freedom and affirm that God has LFW. Moreover, I don’t see why choices for an atemporal deity would require time. An atemporal deity’s choices only imply that the deity makes such choices atemporally, not successively. And I don’t think that all choice requires deliberation either. Moreover, if freedom is a perfection and God has all compossible perfections then I think he has LFW to the highest degree which is why we have LFW because we are made in his image and not even sin can annihilate that image. If God lacks LFW there is no reason to think that we have it, at least not on a theological basis.

If God can be love without LFW I don’t see why we need it to love God. If it did, then our love would be more meaningful than God’s, which seems to have things backwards.  I don’t see how always remembering what he has done for us implies that meaningfulness is not lost in the eschaton. If LFW is a necessary condition for persondhood and LFW is eliminated in the eschaton then so is personhood. How do we get from, we always remember what he did for us TO the idea that we are still persons? I don’t see how those two connect up.  Even persons with compatibilist freedom make choices, it is just that their choices are inevitable and they are not the ultimate source of their actions.

The choice to be in relationship with God or to choose not to be seems to be a choice between a good and an evil. So I do not see how this helps at all. It seems to me that you are still adhering to the idea that in order for love to be full we have to be able to choose between good and evil. And that depends on the assumption that free will is to be understood as a choice between options of differing moral worth, that the possibility of evil is a necessary part of LFW.

Christ most certainly didn’t operate with compatibilist freedom in both his wills but worked with libertarian freedom with both. John 6:38 and Matt 26:39 become inexplicable if Christ didn’t have LFW since Christ says that he wills something else other than the Father. I agree that it was impossible for Christ to sin, but that doesn’t rule out LFW. There is a problem here with respect to person and nature because all of the other participants here, including yourself, keep confusing the fixity of a good nature with fixity of a personal employment of the faculties of that nature. In other words, people are confusing the categories of person and nature.

To use the term “programmed” I think misconstrues compatibilist freedom. Compatibilist don’t think that they are “programmed” to do what they do. They do not believe that compatibilist freedom amounts to mechanism and I agree that it doesn’t. Even in a compatibilist world where God determines what agents are going to do this doesn’t imply that God does it by “programming” anyone. In fact, Frankfurt Counter-Examples show that God can determine the actions of agents without any direct causal interference at all. Most people would take a Frankfurt world without any evil or suffering over a world with those things and LFW any day of the week. Moreover, people still choose to love in a compatibilist world as well, so that clearly is not the issue. And I am at a loss as to how simply asserting that compatibilistic freedom being chosen somehow makes it all ok. This is akin to saying that someone who chose to be assimilated to the Borg for example and was assimilated was still free afterwards because, hey, they chose it. Clearly when they chose with LFW they were free moral agents, but when they lost LFW they ceased to be free moral agents and became conduits for another agent or impersonal process. As to risk, I don’t think God risked anything, though I think the devil actually risked everything. Christ loses nothing but raises everyone up on the last day. John 6:39

If freedom and goodness were fully compatible, you wouldn’t need compatibilist freedom in the eschaton or for Christ since then it would be possible to be fixed in goodness while also having LFW. The mere fact that you see a need to eliminate LFW in the eschaton and for Christ implies that goodness and freedom are not ultimately reconcilable. My point to Laika was concerning the necessity of the consequent, not the consequence of necessity. Compatibilism requires the latter and not the former. That is, there is a difference between saying, If P, then necessarily Q, and saying Necessarily P, then necessarily Q. Moreover, this won’t help even if you were correct since the LFW is part of the imago dei and hence part of human personhood. To eliminate LFW is to eliminate personhood for humans. In the end, you agree with Calvinism, that compatibilism is acceptable and a coherent notion of freedom and LFW really isn’t necessary. I can’t see how you are not then committed to the idea that since evil is necessarily tied to LFW God gave us something evil in giving us free will. In which case, God is complicit in the evil in the world.

Have a safe move.

Post Edited (Starkman) : 6/29/2005 8:56:26 PM (GMT-5)

PS I mean Greg also believes God is necessarily good--not that I believe God and Greg and necessariliy good! Ha ha ha ha.

Post Edited (jefscott) : 6/29/2005 8:25:32 PM (GMT-5)