Pantheists are bound to find the fact of evil (and especially moral evil) an enormous embarrassment. It is difficult enough to square this fact with belief in an omnipotent and infinitely loving Creator. It is much more difficult to square it with the view that an evil world is an actual expression of God's perfect nature. H.P. Owen (1971)
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Notes
H.P. Owen,Concepts of Deity (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 72.
The idea that pantheism cannot account for evil, or that it cannot resolve the problem of evil has been a major criticism of pantheism at least since Spinoza. It was one of Bayle's principle objections. Pierre Bayle,Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, trans. Richard Popkin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). Cf. Kierkegaard: ‘So-called pantheistic systems have often been characterised and challenged in the assertion that they abrogate the distinction between good and evil, and destroy freedom. Perhaps one would express oneself quite as definitely, if one said that every such system fantastically dissipates the concept ofexistence.’ Søren Kierkegaard,Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D.F. Swenson and W. Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), p. 111.
For what is still a good overview of the problem of evil and proposed solutions see H.J. McCloskey, ‘God and Evil’,Philosophical Quarterly 10 (1960), pp. 97–114. Also see, Nelson Pike,God and Evil: Readings on the Theological Problem of Evil (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964); Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert M. Adams, eds.,The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Alvin Plantinga, ‘God, Evil and the Metaphysics of Freedom’, inThe Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert M. Adams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 83–109, 108.
He is by no means the only example. See, for example, Peter Van Inwagen, ‘The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence’, inPhilosophical Perspectives, Vol. 5, ed. James Tomberlin (California: Ridgeview Publishing, 1991), pp. 135–165. Van Inwagen claims that the existence of evil does not constitute any evidencewhatsoever against the existence of God. Also see, R.M. Adams, ‘Must God Create the Best?’, inThe Concept of God, ed. T.V. Morris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 91–106. My present concern is not to argue for the sheer implausibility of their theses, but merely to register the fact that their essays, in a sense, constitute a refusal to address the problem of evil.
Cf. William Rowe, ‘The Empirical Argument From Evil’; ‘Evil and Theodicy’,Philosophical Topics 16 (1988), pp. 119–132. Also see the exchange beteen Rowe and Stephen Wykstra inThe Problem of Evil, eds. Adams and Adams. Although most versions of the argument from evil against the existence of God have been of the ‘logical’ rather than the ‘empirical’ (or ‘probabilistic’) type, Rowe's empirical argument is more successful than any logical argument can hope to be. This is because it is unlikely to suppose that one can ever ‘prove’ that there is an incompatibility between some alleged essential property of God and the existence of some evil. It is alwayspossible to claim the evil is necessary for a greater good. The empirical argument is more straightforward in this regard. It denies the plausibility, not the possibility, of assuming that at least some evils are necessary for a greater good. Some of these apparently ‘useless’ evils may not result from human free will, and so it cannot be claimed that free will is a value that far exceeds the evil that results from it — especially given that more good than evil is done overall. Of course it is always possible to posit the devil and to suppose that God limiting the devil's choices is a greater evil than allowing the devil to do what he will. Cf. Alvin Plantinga, ‘God, Evil, and the Metaphysics of Freedom’, pp. 107–109.
For a defence of the ‘value of soul-making’ theodicy see John Hick, ‘Soul-Making and Suffering’, in Adams and Adams, eds.The Problem of Evil, pp. 168–188. Reprinted from John Hick,Evil and The God of Love, rev. edn. (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 255–265, 318–336.
Cf. Anthony Flew, ‘Are Ninian Smart's Temptations Irresistible?’,Philosophy 37 (1962), pp. 57–60; J.L. Mackie, ‘Theism and Utopia’,Philosophy 37 (1962), pp. 153–158; Ninian Smart, ‘Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen’,Philosophy 36 (1961), pp. 188–195; Ninian Smart, ‘Probably’,Philosophy 37 (1962), p. 60; Alvin Plantinga, ‘God, Evil and the Metaphysics of Freedom’, pp. 83–109.
For a recent defence of ‘compatibilism’, see Fred Dretske, ‘The Metaphysics of Freedom’,Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992), pp. 1–14.
Cf. Clifford Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, Chapter 4, inThe Interpretationof Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 87–125; ‘Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols’, Chapter 5, pp. 126–141.
Pierre Bayle,Dictionnaire historique and critique, 2nd edn. (Rotterdam, 1702). Bayle argues against Spinoza in several ways. For example he claims that the supposition that ‘men are modalities of God’ leads to a contradiction. ‘If it were true then, as Spinoza claims, that men are modalities of God, one would speak falsely when one said, “Peter denies this, he wants that, he affirms such and such a thing”; for actually ⋯ it is God who denies, wants ⋯ from which it follows that God hates and loves, denies and affirms the same things at the same time ⋯ for it cannot be denied that, taking all these terms with all possible rigor, some men love and affirm what other men hate and deny ⋯’ (pp. 309–310, in Popkin, edition of Bayle'sDictionary). Bayle would deny that he is committing the fallacy of composition, since he thinks that only substances, not modalities, can act or be acted upon (p. 311). But Spinoza would deny that God (or substance), as he understands the term, denies and affirms the same thing at the same time. Any attempt to resolve a substantive issue relating to pantheism by resorting to the kind of ontological consideration that Bayle does will be unsatisfactory. Indeed, I am inclined to generalise and say that fundamental ontological considerations (e.g. what exists) are for the most part not relevant to determining either what pantheism is, or to resolving conceptual issues related to it — e.g., if pantheism should account for evil — and if so, why?
Frederick M. Barnard, ‘Spinozism’, in Paul Edwards, ed.The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), Vol. 5, p. 541. Cf. Pierre BayleHistorical and Critical Dictionary, trans. Richard Popkin, p. 296 for the ‘monstrous hypothesis’ quotation. Bayle uses the term ‘monstrous’ many times in the article on Spinoza and not always about Spinoza. He also calls theTractatus theologico-politicus ‘a pernicious and detestable book’ (p. 293). Hume also referred to Spinoza's philosophy as that ‘hideous hypothesis’. Unlike Bayle, it is difficult to imagine that Hume was not being sarcastic.
Pierre Bayle,Historical and Critical Dictionary, trans. Richard Popkin, p. 311.
See my article, ‘Monism and Pantheism’,Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (1992), pp. 95–110. I claim that monism and pantheism are distinct positions. Not all monists are pantheists and most pantheists are not (and should not be) monists. Instead, like most people, they are pluralists.
Cf. Grace Jantzen,God's World, God's Body (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), Chapter 7; Keith Ward, ‘God as Creator’, in Godfrey Vesey, ed.,The Philosophy in Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 99–118.
Paul Siwek, ‘How Pantheism Resolves the Enigma of Evil’,Laval Théologique et Philosophique 11–12 (1955–5), pp. 213–221, 213–214. For Spinoza, evil is a kind of illusion, an ‘inadequate idea’ resulting from inadequate knowledge. Siwek goes on to claim that ‘evil loses any intelligible meaning in Spinoza's doctrine, that it is metaphysically impossible’ (p. 214).
Spinoza,Epistolae, LXXVII. Quoted in Thomas McFarland,Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition, p. 88. Spinoza claims that people are nevertheless morally responsible for their actions. Cf. Paul Siwek, ‘How Pantheism Resolves the Enigma of Evil’, p. 220. Kant objected to Spinoza on various grounds — including his notion of freedom. Given Spinoza's account ‘Freedom could not be saved ⋯ man would be a marionette, or an automaton, carpentered together and put on strings by the highest master of all crafts, and though self-consciousness would make it a thinking automaton, the consciousness of its spontaneity, if this spontaneity were equated with freedom, would be a mere illusion’ (Kant,Werke, III, pp. 567–568). Quoted in McFarland, p. 90. Kant may be right in claiming that Spinoza's determinism undermines freedom in various ways, including the sense of freedom necessary for morality and meaningful moral discourse. But note too that in this quotation Kant is attributing to Spinoza the concept of something like a theistic God, even though Spinoza's God was nothing at all like the theistic God.
For a discussion of how the problem of evil is ‘dissolved’ in the context of an ‘immanentist’ non-anthropomorphic metaphysical framework (e.g. Spinoza and Nietzsche), see Chin-Tai Kim ‘Transcendence and Immanence’,Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 (1987), pp. 537–549.
Marcus P. Ford, ‘Pluralistic Pantheism?’,Southern Journal of Philosophy 17 (1979), pp. 155–161, 159–160.
Note too that this distinction suffices for dualism, but not for theism. For issues relating to this article see myPantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
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Levine, M.P. Pantheism, theism and the problem of evil. Int J Philos Relig 35, 129–151 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01538955
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01538955