Abstract
To most of us – believers and non-believers alike – the possibility of a perfect God co-existing with the kinds of evil that we see calls out for explanation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the belief that God must have justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see has been a perennial feature of theistic thought. Recently, however, a growing number of authors have argued that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the existence of gratuitous evil. Given powerful, millenia-long sensibilities about power and love and justice, it isn’t hard to find that suggestion simply incredible. Nonetheless, in this paper I will argue that the most prominent theistic alternatives to what has seemed incredible to most of us throughout most of history are themselves patently unacceptable for the theist as well. On any of the most widely accepted accounts of how God could have justifying reasons for permitting some evils, God’s existence means that we have justifying reasons for perpetrating and allowing every evil that we see. That’s hard to swallow too. If I’m right about all of this, then two competing outcomes seem to present themselves as a possible result. On the one hand, for the theist, the apparently outrageous suggestion that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with gratuitous evil no longer looks like it faces a formidable, hard-to-resist alternative. On the other hand, some like me might think that my arguments go no distance at all towards dispelling the incredibility of the gratuitous evil nouvelle vague. On this line, theism may seem now to be between the rock and the hard place: it seems hard to make sense of the existence of a perfect God whether or not He has justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This is what Flint (2010, 329 − 30) calls “the traditional notion of providence” and ascribes to various Biblical passages and theologians such as “Philo, Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Francisco Suarez, and Gottfried Leibniz.” This notion will be reconsidered in Sect. 5 below.
I assume here that moral reasons are minimally objective: whether someone has a certain moral reason depends merely on whether a certain relation obtains, and not on whether that someone is aware of that relation obtaining or has a belief specifically about that matter. This is the sense of reasons we need in hand when we translate traditional moral theories into reasons talk. This kind of minimal moral objectivity, notice, is also compatible with perspectival theories, where the reasons that someone has depend on the information that is available from their perspective. Traditional expected utilitarianism, for example, is a minimally objective perspectival moral theory: what you have reason to do depends on a relation between your information state and possible actions, a relation captured formally by the utility calculus, and which obtains whether or not you have true or false beliefs about it.
“But that’s the point,” some might may say, “God is good precisely in ways that are unintelligibly different from our own understanding of goodness!” Alright. I then reply: “Perhaps. But now, by your own admission, the content of your claim that God is perfectly good is unintelligible to you and me. Neither of us can infer anything from that.”
I am using ‘allowing’ here in a broad sense, one that includes both actions and omissions: if you choose not to prevent some foreseen and easily preventable evil, you’ve allowed some evil to occur; if you choose to perform an evil-causing action, you’ve allowed some evil to occur as well. I assume here that the kind of justification that is needed for both actions and omissions is the same.
Some complain that consequentialist considerations could never justify particularly horrendous evils (cf., e.g., Dougherty, 2008; Gellman, 2017; Mooney, 2017). In Sects. 4 and 6 below, I will examine explanations that highlight the role of non-consequentialist considerations in constraining the requirement to pursue of the greater good.
Hill (2022) for the suggestion that the relevant worthwhile good behind God’s permission of evil is the existence of creatures with an infinitely good afterlife.
What if, as Open Theism claims, God does not have omniscient foreknowledge and, for many human-related events, merely has knowledge of the chances of these events occurring (cf. Hasker, 1989, 2004)? That would make no difference to the substance of my arguments, but I postpone my discussion of this issue until Sect. 5 below.
My claim here is not that we would never have a reason to refrain from or prevent evil, if (NE) is true; my claim is rather that we would never have an obligation to do it, such that doing or allowing evil would always be permissible. This is because we have built into the explanation of God’s permission of it that the actual consequences are truly justifying.
This seems to be what Stump (1985, 412-3) has in mind when she says: “God can see into the minds and hearts of human beings and determine what sort and amount of suffering is likely to produce the best results; we cannot…. Therefore, since all human suffering is prima facie evil, and since we do not know with any high degree of probability how much (if any) of it is likely to result in good for any particular sufferer on any particular occasion, it is reasonable for us to eliminate the suffering as much as we can.”
Of course, a theist may not have a justified belief in (NE). Indeed, a theist may have no belief at all about such matters. This is true but irrelevant. We are here identifying a problem for those endorsing (NE) – namely, that they are then committed to something unacceptable. My argument is that if you accept (NE) in response to the problem of evil, then you face this result whether objectivism or perspectivalism is true. The fact that many theists have never thought of (NE) can’t be a defense of (NE) from these charges.
Suppose the purpose of some particular instance of evil e is precisely creating the opportunity for me, in particular, to prevent it. This seems to be what Howard-Snyder (2009, 43 − 4) has in mind when he says: “suppose we are instructed theists, that is suppose we reasonably think God has instructed humankind to prevent suffering in general and that God permits a lot of it precisely because he intends for us to try to prevent it” (his emphasis). (See also Hill, 2022, 776.) This can certainly be the case. Nonetheless, given (NE), it is still never the case that I can succeed in allowing an evil whose justifying greater good – the reason God allowed it – was my preventing it. Here’s why: if (a) the greater good justifying that evil were my preventing it, and (b) I failed to prevent it, then that evil would have been pointless: though it was necessarily connected to a worthwhile greater good, the greater good never actually came about. Knowing in advance that this instance of evil would be pointless, however, God would never allow it in the first place. And since I myself can justifiably infer all of this, were I to be justified in believing (NE), I can also justifiably believe that no evil that I allow is ever pointless, and therefore that no evil that I allow is such that its point was my preventing it. A similar bit of reasoning applies to the suggestion that the greater good could be the opportunity itself (not my actual prevention of some evil, if given the opportunity). If the opportunity for prevention is the greater good that justifies God’s permission of some evil e – in the sense articulated by (NE) – then e’s occurrence is not pointless no matter what I do. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for comments leading to these clarifications.
Suppose that God is justified in permitting some evil e since two conditions hold: (a) e is necessary for a worthwhile greater good G that will occur if e occurs, and (b) if a human prevents e, then an even greater good than G occurs (e.g., a free prevention of evil). Isn’t this a case where God has a justifying moral reason to allow e, but humans do not? Not if (NE) is true. If (NE) is true, then this is a case where I am permitted to either permit or prevent the relevant evil. This is because, if (NE) is true, option (a) is one where G not only outweighs the relevant evil but truly justifies it. So it simply cannot be the case that allowing it, instead of preventing it, is unjustified (and mutatis mutandis for the perspectivalist move). It is certainly possible for there to be even greater goods than G, but this mere axiological fact cannot have an impact on the justifiedness of allowing the lesser good G in the cases where God has recognized G as by itself worthwhile. I am grateful to Scott Hill for comments leading to these clarifications.
I have substituted Rowe’s terms for evil (‘s1’) and God (‘OG’) for clarity.
Thus Alston (1996, 112): “This is why God permits such horrors as the rape, beating, and murder of Sue. He does it not because that particular wicked choice is itself necessary for the realization of some great good, but because the permission of such horrors is bound up with the decision to give human beings free choice in many areas.”
See Pittard (2018, 92) for the related suggestion that what justifies God’s permission of pointless evils is our having difference-making responsibility, where (e.g.) “for Lola to have difference-making responsibility for averting E, it must be the case that had she chosen B, E would have occurred” (my emphasis).
Cases of choosing not to perform an evil-causing free action seem importantly different from cases of interfering with someone else’s attempt at an evil-causing free action. This is because in the former case, but not in the latter, the refraining is itself a free choice. This suggests that things would be better, in fact, if I freely chose to refrain from evil instead of freely causing it, at least if the relevant greater good that would justify permitting my evil is the free action (qua free action) itself. But this is not enough to show that my freely performing a free action is wrong (impermissible). This is because these axiological facts are eclipsed by the normative fact which follows from (NP): the greater good of free-will is worthwhile in itself either way, if God allows my action, such that the evil consequences are outweighed and justified. This means that even if the world would be better if I didn’t, I’m still permitted to perform it. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for comments leading to these clarifications.
As I mentioned in fn. 9, some think that instrumental reasons, in principle, are not good explanations for God’s permission of evil. These arguments, however, are very different from mine as they appeal to the moral insufficiency of instrumental reasons in general. My argument has no qualms with the ends, at least sometimes, justifying the means. My argument merely points out that a bare appeal to instrumental reasons is in tension with (Asymmetry).
In other well-known work, of course, Swinburne (2016, 189) rejects “the strong Christian tradition that God is omniscient in the strong sense” that is behind the notion of providence I’ve been assuming so far. I am ignoring this incongruity for simplicity; see my discussion in the next section for why this makes no difference to my argument.
We must be careful, however, to distinguish between protected rights and mere permissions (or, in Thomson’s (1990) terminology, between “claims” and “privileges”). I have a right to sit on a certain public bench in front of my house, but this is a mere permission (privilege) and not a protected right (claim): you are not required to allow me to sit on that bench by not sitting on it yourself. The kind of right that we have to sacrifice some bit of our wellbeing for greater goods, however, is very much a protected right: you are required to not-interfere with my choices (provided, per assumption, that those choices are truly within my rights). I am grateful to Brendan de Kenessey for comments leading to these clarifications.
Suppose God is justified in permitting some evil e on account of the necessary connection between that permission and a very different kind of greater good which he has a right to pursue in this way: the creation of an opportunity for the morally valuable exercise of someone’s efficacious freedom in preventing e. Isn’t this a case where my prevention of e is not in violation of (Authority)? After all, whether or not I prevent e, God’s permission of it is not wrongful; and, if I do prevent it, I am not thereby interfering with God’s rightful decision to trade e for a justifying greater good – my preventing e is compatible with and, in fact, constitutive of, the trade-off being successful. But this is a misunderstanding of the constraints imposed by (DR), in particular of its consequentialist component. The key is to recall how God’s providential foreknowledge affects the case. God is not in our epistemically limited position, creating opportunities in the mere hope that we will take them up. For any opportunity for evil prevention that He creates, God knows whether or not I will in fact prevent it. So suppose I will not prevent evil e if given an opportunity O to prevent it. This is something that God knows in advance. In this case, the suggestion that O is a greater good that justifies God in permitting e seems outrageous. The plausibility of this suggestion comes from the ordinary sense in which, for us, creating such opportunities are cases where there is a “chance” that is worth the “risk”. But here there is no chance and no risk from God’s perspective. So there’s no sense in which O is a justifying good and no sense in which its permission is not wrongful. And all of this is something that follows from our perspective as well: there are never actual evils whose outweighing and justifying good was an opportunity to prevent it that I missed; for all actual evils, their outweighing and justifying good is something other than someone’s missed opportunity; so no actual evil is such that my having prevented it was compatible with and constitutive of the trade-off being successful. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for comments leading to these clarifications.
However causally undetermined one thinks our free actions are by prior states, they are nonetheless causally implemented through our physical embodiment, providing God with an opportunity to intervene in any of the links of this complex chain.
It is not enough, in other words, to simply say that “frequent and routine intervention by God to prevent the misuse of freedom by his creatures and/or to repair the harm done by this misuse would undermine the structure of human life and community intended in the plan of creation” (Hasker, 2017, 74).
My argument in this section is that the combination of Open Theism and (Reasons) does not help the theist defend (Assymetry). As mentioned earlier, however, Hasker (1992) is sympathetic to the compatibility of a perfect God and gratuitous evil, and so sympathetic to the denial of (Reasons) anyway. I have no problem with that. Part of my overall point in this paper, as mentioned above as well, is that the seemingly absurd denial of (Reasons) might not look so bad to the theist once the unwelcomed consequences of accepting (Reasons) are made plain.
Strictly speaking, Reitan (2014, 183) endorses a combined version of (DR) and (DD), each identifying sufficient conditions for justifying reasons which can act independently of one another. Given the problems already raised for (DR), I am treating (DD) separately.
Reitan offers his views as a deontological alternative to consequentialist thinking about the problem of evil. But Reitan (2014, 182) is mistaken in claiming that Swinburne’s view “is not going to be acceptable to deontologists about ethics.” Reitan’s views embody a particularly radical version of deontology, while Swinburne’s embody a perfectly acceptable modest version. One can resist consequentialist excesses without succumbing to deontological excesses as well.
Thus Reitan (2014, 195): “As soon as we start to imagine a dystopian police state in which the government has eliminated murder from society by making sure no one can carry it out, we begin to see why something like that [i.e. God’s constant surveillance] could reasonably by viewed as a violation of our humanity. Even for those not inclined to stray outside the established boundaries, the choice to stay within the boundaries is paternalistically taken out of their hands, such that it is no longer by their choice that they avoid such egregious crimes. That removal of choice may strike many of us as an affront to their dignity as persons.”
I recognize that some might be perfectly satisfied with (DD), these burdens notwithstanding. This is an opportunity for reasonable, perhaps merciful, disagreement.
Once again, I do not want to feign completeness or conclusiveness of any kind here. In general, there is much more to be said and much more to be explored. (Here are two excellent and challenging examples: Pittard’s (2018) decision-theoretic defense of responsibility theodicies and Mooney’s (2019) sophisticated development of the deontological approach.) Alas, this paper is already too long as it is. One broad lesson for future work, however, is that attempts to identify the kinds of things that could potentially be God’s justifying reasons for allowing evil must pay more careful attention to (a) what exactly is the particular evil in question, (b) what exactly is the fact that justifies God’s permission of that particular evil, (c) what are the exact logical, axiological, and normative relations that ground that fact’s justifying power, and (d) what view of God’s providential foreknowledge is being assumed. My arguments in this paper have exploited the fact that not enough attention has been paid to all of these details in traditional discussions of the problem of evil.
References
Adams, M. (1989). McCord “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 63: 297–323.
Adams, M. McCord (1999). Horrendous Evils and the goodness of God. Cornell University Press.
Almeida, M., & Oppy, G. (2003). Sceptical theism and evidential arguments from evil. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81, 496–516.
Alston, W. (1996). The inductive argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition. in Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil (pp. 97–125). Indiana University Press.
Augustine (1955). Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope, and Love. Translated and edited by Albert C. Outler. Westminster John Knox Press.
Bergmann, M., & Rea, M. (2005). In defense of skeptical theism: A reply to Almeida and Oppy. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 83, 241–251.
Chisholm, R. (1990). “The Defeat of Good and Evil,” in Marylyn McCord Adams and Robert McCord Adams (eds.), The Problem of Evil. Oxford University Press: 53–68.
Collins, R. (2013). “The Connection-Builing Theodicy,” in Justin McBrayer and Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil. Wiley-Blackwell: 222–235.
Dougherty, T. (2008). Epistemological considerations concerning skeptical theism. ” Faith and Philosophy, 25, 172–176.
Ekstrom, L. (2021). God, suffering, and the value of Free Will. Oxford University Press.
Flint, T. (2010). “Providence,” in Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper, and Phillip Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Wiley-Blackwell: 329–336.
Flint, T. (2013). Providence and Theodicy. In J. McBrayer, & D. Howard-Snyder (Eds.), The blackwell companion to the Problem of Evil (pp. 251–265). Wiley-Blackwell.
Geach, P. (1977). Providence and Evil. Cambridge University Press.
Gellman, J. (2017). A surviving version of the common sense problem of evil: A reply to Tweedt. ” Faith and Philosophy, 34(1), 82–92.
Hasker, W. (1989). God, Time, and knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hasker, W. (1992). The necessity of gratuitous evil. Faith and Philosophy, 9(1), 23–44.
Hasker, W. (2004). Providence, Evil, and openness of God. Routledge.
Hasker, W. (2017). An Open Theist View. In C. Meister, & J. K. Dew Jr. (Eds.), God and the Problem of Evil: Five views (pp. 57–76). InterVarsity Press.
Hick, J. (1966/2010). Evil and the God of Love. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hill, S. (2022). Why God allows undeserved horrendous evil. Religious Studies, 58, 772–786.
Himma, K. (2009). The Free-Will Defence: Evil and the Moral Value of Free Will. Religious Studies, 45(4), 395–415.
Howard-Snyder, D. (2009). Epistemic Humility, arguments from Evil, and Moral Skepticism. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, 2, 17–57.
Howard-Snyder, D. (2014). Agnosticism, the Moral Skepticism Objection, and commonsense morality. In J. P. McBrayer (Ed.), Skeptical theism: New Essays (pp. 293–306). Oxford University Press.
Jackson, F. (1991). Decision-theoretic consequentialism and the nearest and Dearest Objection. Ethics, 101, 461–482.
Jordan, J. (2006). Does skeptical theism lead to Moral Skepticism? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72(2), 403–417.
Kant, I. (1797/1996). Practical Philosophy, translated and edited by Mary Gregor. Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, D. (1993). Evil for Freedom’s sake? Philosophical Papers, 22(3), 149–172.
Maitzen, S. (2009). Ordinary morality entails atheism. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 1(2), 107–126.
Maitzen, S. (2014). Agnosticism, skeptical theism, and Moral Obligation. In T. Dougherty, & J. P. McBrayer (Eds.), Skeptical theism: New Essays (pp. 277–292). Oxford University Press.
McCann, H. (2012). Creation and the Sovereignty of God. Indiana University Press.
Mooney, J. (2017). Is the Problem of Evil a deontological. Problem?” Analysis, 77(1), 79–87.
Mooney, J. (2019). How to solve the Problem of Evil: A deontological strategy. Faith and Philosophy, 36(4), 442–462.
Mooney, J. (2022). The Nonconsequentialist Argument from Evil. Philosophical Studies, 179(12), 3599–3615.
Murphy, M. (2017). God’s own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the argument from Evil. Oxford University Press.
Parfit, D. (1988). “What We Together Do.” (Unpublished).
Pittard, J. (2018). Evil and God’s Toxin Puzzle. Noûs, 52(1), 88–108.
Pittard, J. (2021). The defeat of Evil and the norms of Hope. Analytic Philosophy, 62(4), 317–335.
Plantinga, A. (1974). God, Freedom, and evil. Harper and Row Publishers.
Plantinga, A. (1967/1990). God and other minds. Cornell University Press.
Pruss, A. (2017). Sceptical theism, the Butterfly Effect and bracketing the unknown. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 81, 71–86.
Rancourt, B. (2013). Egoism or the Problem of Evil: A dilemma for sceptical theism. Religious Studies, 49(3), 313–325.
Reitan, E. (2000). Does the argument from evil assume a Consequentialist Morality? Faith and Philosophy, 17(3), 306–319.
Reitan, E. (2014). A deontological theodicy? Swinburne’s Lapse and the Problem of Moral Evil. Faith and Philosophy, 31(2), 181–203.
Ross, W. D. (1930). The right and the good. Oxford University Press.
Rowe, W. (1979). The Problem of Evil and some varieties of atheism. American Philosophical Quarterly, 16(4), 335–341.
Rubio, D. (2019). God meets Satan’s Apple: The Paradox of Creation. Philosophical Studies, 175, 2987–3004.
Rubio, D. (forthcoming). “In Defense of No Best World,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
Russell, B. (1996). Defenseless. in Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil (pp. 193–205). Indiana University Press.
Russell, B., & Wykstra, S. (1988). The “Inductive” argument from evil: A dialogue. Philosophical Topics, 16(2), 133–160.
Rutledge, J. (2017). Skeptical theism, Moral Skepticism, and Epistemic Propriety. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 81, 263–272.
Schellenberg, J. (2004). The atheist’s free Will offence. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 56, 1–15.
Schlossberger, E. (2015). Bad Samaritans, Aftertastes, and the Problem of Evil. Philosophia, 43, 197–204.
Sterba, J. (2019). Is a good God logically possible? Palgrave MacMillan.
Street, S. (2014). If everything Happens for a reason, then we don’t know what reason are: Why the price of Theism is normative skepticism. In M. Bergmann, & P. kain (Eds.), Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and evolution (pp. 172–192). Oxford University Press.
Stump, E. (1985). The Problem of Evil. Faith and Philosophy, 2, 392–424.
Stump, E. (1990). Providence and the Problem of Evil. in Thomas Flint (ed.) Christian philosophy. University of Notre Dame Press.
Swinburne, R. (2004). The Existence of God (Second Edition). Clarendon Press.
Swinburne, R. (2016). The Coherence of Theism (Second Edition). Clarendon press.
Thomson, J. J. (1990). The Realm of Rights. Harvard University Press.
Tucker, C. (2016). Satisficing and motivated submaximization (in the philosophy of Religion). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 93(1), 127–143.
Van Inwagen, P. (2006). The Problem of Evil. Oxford University Press.
Wykstra, S. (1984). The Humean obstacle to evidential arguments from suffering: On avoiding the Evils of Appearance. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 16(2), 73–93.
Acknowledgements
For comments and discussion, I am grateful to Hilary Kornblith, Jeff Jordan, Klaas Kraay, Chris Tucker, Phillip Swenson, Liz Jackson, Justin Mooney, Timothy Perrine, Scott Hill, Justin Coates, David Phillips, Yael Lowenstein, Curtis Haag, Bredo Johnsen, Nathan Biebel, Dennis Kavlakoglu, Brendan de Kenessey, and audiences at Delaware University, Western Carolina University, Ryerson University, UNICENTRO (Brazil), FAJE (Brazil), and UFU (Brazil). I am especially grateful to my friend Alcino Bonella, whose presentation on this subject in early 2017 was the initial impetus for my own research.
Funding
There was no external funding associated with this work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
There are no competing interests behind its production.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Oliveira, L.R. God and gratuitous evil: Between the rock and the hard place. Int J Philos Relig 94, 317–345 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-023-09883-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-023-09883-0