JimSpiegel.com : James S. Spiegel

Introduction

The evidential problem of evil presents the theist with the burden of explaining why an almighty and all-good God would permit evil. Many such reasons, known as theodicies, have been proposed as solutions to this problem. Two of the more promising among these are the free will theodicy and the soul-making theodicy. While each of these approaches has strong proponents, rare are those who advocate the use of bothin response to the problem of evil. In fact, it is often the case that defenders of one are strong critics of the other. Given that theists, and more specifically Christian apologists, share the conviction that the evidential objection from evil fails and that theism is quite reasonable despite the reality of evil, it is curious that there isn’t more interest in embracing both of these theodicies as helpful responses to the problem. In what follows I want to offer a comparative analysis of these two theodicies in hopes of both understanding the divide between their proponents and making the case that the two are best used in tandem when dealing with the problem of evil. Towards the latter end I hope to show that these theodicies have more in common than has been traditionally thought and that their differences have more to do with their divergent aims than their relative merits as potential solutions to the problem of evil.

The Free Will and Soul-Making Theodicies

Perhaps the most popular response to the problem of evil appeals to human freedom. In short, the Fall occurred because human beings abused their freedom, and evil continues to this day for the same reason. People make evil choices, and God is not at fault for this. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Alvin Plantinga explains this theodicy as follows:

“A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil.” ¹

Clark Pinnock puts it this way:

“We can say that God did not ordain moral evil but that it arose from the misuse of freedom… God may be responsible for creating a world with moral agents capable of rebelling, but God is not to blame for what human beings do with their freedom. The gift of freedom is costly and carries precariousness with it. But to make a world with free beings is surely a worthwhile thing to do.” ²

These expositions well represent the free will theodicy. Some features of this approach are worth highlighting. First, this theodicy places the blame for moral evil entirely on human beings. God did nothing wrong in creating us with the capacity to sin, however much he might have anticipated our rebellion. Second, notice the high premium that is placed on self-determination. Proponents of the free will theodicy typically assume that personal autonomy is so valuable that it makes the risk of moral evil worthwhile. But it is not really self-determination itself that is of ultimate value. The ultimate good for which such autonomy is a critical means is genuine loving relationships between persons, whether between humans or between God and humans.

Turning to the soul-making theodicy, its most well-known contemporary advocate is John Hick. ³ He maintains that we can look at God’s creative activity in two stages. First there was the initial creation, where God made humans in his image, endowed with ultimate capacities for reason, will, and imagination. This is followed by the second stage in which we are currently living, as humans struggle and suffer, all the while developing character traits that bring us into a closer conformity to God’s likeness. This process, Hick maintains, makes for a better world overall. He writes,

“One who has attained to goodness by meeting and eventually mastering temptations, and thus by rightly making responsible choices in concrete situations, is good in a richer and more valuable sense than would be one created ab initioin a state either of innocence or of virtue. In the former case, which is that of the actual moral achievements of mankind, the individual’s goodness has within it the strength of temptations overcome, a stability based upon an accumulation of right choices, and a positive and responsible character that comes from the investment of costly personal effort.” ⁴

Thus, argues Hick, “human goodness slowly built up through personal histories of moral effort has a value in the eyes of the Creator which justifies even the long travail of the soul-making process.” ⁵ There are greater moral goods to be achieved in this way than could ever be achieved by God’s simply giving them to us at creation. Our trials and afflictions do serve a good purpose, the betterment of our souls.

Defenders of the soul-making theodicy point out that there are numerous moral virtues that cannot be achieved except by struggling against or in the midst of evil. These “second order” goods include patience, courage, sympathy, forgiveness, mercy, perseverance, overcoming temptation, and much greater versions of faith, hope, love, and friendship. What sense could be made of the trait of courage in a world in which there was no danger and nothing to fear? How could one show sympathy if there were no sorrow or affliction with which to sympathize? How might one forgive where there has been no offense? And how can one be said to “persevere” through perfectly pleasant circumstances? These characteristics-courage, sympathy, forgiveness, perseverance-are not just good traits. They are, among the greatest of all character traits. And, according to Hick and other proponents of the soul-making theodicy, it is worth God’s permitting evil in order to realize these goods.

Note that both the free will and soul-making theodicies are essentially means-end approaches to the problem of evil. According to each, God is justified in permitting evil because of some greater good. In the case of the soul-making theodicy the end in view is character development. But the free will theodicy, too, features a sort of means-end reasoning, as human freedom, along with its potential for tragic abuse, is a necessary means to the end of a “more valuable” world, as Plantinga puts it. This point corrects a common misunderstanding of these theodicies, which sees only the former as using means-end reasoning. This is perhaps because the nature of the means and end in each case are very different. In the soul-making theodicy it is evil phenomena-sin and suffering-which are the means to second-order goods of human character. Disease and tragic accidents are the occasions for displaying courage and perseverance, and unjust or cruel actions are the occasions for showing grace and forgiveness. By contrast, on the free will theodicy the greater good is moral agency (along with the concomitant good of genuine relationships) and the means to this end is human freedom, a means which entails the risk of the occurrence of evil. Such risk, on an orthodox view of divine omniscience (which includes God’s knowledge of all human choices), is not really risk at all, since God knew that human beings would sin and all of the pain and sorrow that would ensue. So for all practical-or metaphysical-purposes (again, given an orthodox view of divine omniscience), God’s endowing human beings with free will was itself a tacit permission of evil. Such a price was worth the end of the more valuable world for which human freedom is a necessary condition.

Thus, on both the free will and soul-making theodicies, a greater good in view justifies God’s permission of evil. So the two are comparable on this score. But now let’s look at their respective ends in view. Which, if either, is the more valuable end? On the free will theodicy the ends in view include not the mere display of autonomous action but also the very possibility of moral goods, such as virtuous acts and genuine relationships. That is, free will is a prerequisite for moral agency, and this is an essential way in which we reflect the nature of God. Thus, one might say that free will is a necessary condition for an agent to be a divine-image bearer, which is a good of inestimable inherent value. For this reason, the end in view on the free will theodicy seems to trump that of the soul-making theodicy from the start. Moral agency and divine imaging are more fundamental than the attainment of the second-order goods of character development. Does this show, then, that the free-will theodicy aims at a higher end?

Well, not so fast. There is a problem here. Perhaps the use of free will in and of itself is distinct from the capacity to abusefree will. While we might grant that freedom is a prerequisite for divine imaging and moral agency, must that freedom include the capacity to sin? God, after all, is a moral agent and he is not capable of sinning. Nor, presumably, will humans be capable of sinning in heaven, but will we not be moral agents there? On most Christian theological accounts of the next world, God will hedge us away from sin, but that won’t preclude our freedom or our moral agency. And it is easy to see why. Scripture teaches that in heaven Christians experience the perfecting of their human nature, a condition known as glorification. That this state, the culmination of Christian hope, would also involve the removal of an essential capacity of our moral agency is counter-intuitive, if not absurd.

If the real display of human freedom, and its associate goods of moral agency and divine image bearing, do not require the possibility of evil, then this suggests that the free will theodicy is not on equal footing with the soul-making theodicy, which does require evil choices for some aspects of its end in view of character development. For example, the traits of being a forgiving and gracious person cannot be developed in isolation from contexts in which one is sinned against or intentionally harmed by others. Consider also the good of self-sacrifice, which in its highest form involves the laying down of one’s life for another person. This is not possible without the evil of death. Further illustrations could also be given involving forms of the virtues of humility, patience, compassion, and perseverance.

So we seem to have discovered an important contrast between the free will and soul-making theodicies-specifically regarding their ends-in-view. In order to realize the good of human freedom, God did not need to permit evil. But to realize some of the goods of soul-making, God didneed to permit evil. So is the soul-making theodicy superior on this score? Again, not so fast. Here another consideration may be raised. There are particular good free choices which are only possible given the presence of evil. For instance, a person must freely choose to forgive, to be compassionate, or to act courageously, as well as to resist temptation or to repent once one has one has sinned. So while freedom per se does not require the presence of evil, certain kinds of good free actions do presuppose evil.

While this might be a useful route of response, it comes at a price for the proponent of the free will theodicy. First, it commits her to embellishing the theodicy. In its standard formulation the free will theodicy does not specify among its aims particular virtues or kinds of free actions but only identifies the free exercise of the will as essential for the valuable ends in view of moral agency, none of which require the reality of sin. So to meet this objection one must expand the free will theodicy to include the aim of realizing a broad menu of free actions, in a way that is very much parallel to the end in view on the soul-making theodicy. Most notably, this response concedes the point that there are evil-contingent free choices the realization of which putatively justifies God’s permission of evil. But it is difficult to understand why such evil-contingent choices should be seen as worth permitting, unless we make further assumptions about the good of character development-viz., that choices to repent of sin, to resist temptation, and to extend forgiveness are morally good choices precisely because they reflect good character traits. So here the end-in-view of the soul-making theodicy seems conceptually prior to that of the free will theodicy. That is to say, with this modification the free-will theodicy subtly piggy-backs the soul-making theodicy.

Or is it the other way round? We might just as well say that virtuous character traits are good because they constitute the fixed result of good free choices. Clearly, one cannot be a moral agent without being significantly free. And one cannot make moral progress and develop virtuous character traits without making good choices. Therefore, whatever second-order moral goods one achieves are also attributable in part to free will. So at least in this sense the good of human freedom is logically and causally prior to the good of character development. ⁶

We have found, then, that the free will and soul-making theodicies are mutually dependent on one another. Let’s quickly review just how this is so. In order for human freedom to necessitate the possibility (or reality) of evil the free will theodicy must specify the desirability of certain evil-contingent free choices, the good of which can be adequately accounted for only relative to the end of good moral character. One the other hand, this end-in-view of the soul-making theodicy-character development-is only achievable given the possibility of free will, since this is a pre-condition for moral agency and the requisite choices involved in acquiring second-order virtues.

Two Pertinent Objections

So far in our discussion of the soul-making theodicy we have assumed that the existence of evil is necessary for the development of higher order virtues such as patience, courage, compassion, forgiveness, etc. But we might question this assumption. Why must we encounter real evil in order to better our souls? Wouldn’t a simulation of such things as poverty, disease, and immoral actions suffice for us to develop our character? If a virtual reality of a fallen world could serve to generate soul-making, then the real evil we experience in this world is superfluous. If so, then the soul-making theodicy fails.

While this objection appears to have some strength, it overlooks a rather important point. Daniel Howard-Snyder puts it like this:

“If God were to set up a world in which there was only illusory evil to which we could respond in the formation of our character, something of immense value would be missing. No one would in fact help anybody else; and no one would be helped. No one would in fact be compassionate and sympathetic to another; and no one would receive compassion and sympathy. No one would in fact forgive another; and no one would be forgiven…. In short, if every opportunity for a virtuous response were directed at illusory evils, each of us would live in our own little “world,” worlds devoid of any genuine interaction and personal relationships.” ⁷

Howard-Snyder’s point is simple but decisive. A simulated reality will not suffice in bringing about real character traits because, well, it’s not real.

Robert Nozick revealed this in a different way many years ago. Nozick posed a thought-experiment regarding what he called the “transformation machine” which “transforms us into whatever sort of person we’d like to be (compatible with our staying us).” ⁸ Suppose you could use the transformation machine and become a morally perfected person, complete with every virtuous character trait. Would you do it? Nozick rejects the notion out of hand, saying that “it seems like cheating.” This comports with the nearly universal negative response that this proposal elicits. Simply pose the question to any room full of people and observe the negative response.

It is worth noting that a simulation objection could also be brought against the free will theodicy. One might ask, why do we need to make real moral choices in order to be moral agents? Wouldn’t the illusion of free will suffice to bring about this desired outcome? If such a virtual reality of free will could serve to generate moral agency, then the freedom we experience in this world is superfluous. Here, as in the case of the simulation objection to the soul-making theodicy, we find the suggestion repugnant. Such illusory freedom would not generate genuine moral agency because, well, it’s not real. So the simulation objection fails to undermine both the free will and soul-making theodicies.

Now consider a standard objection to the free will theodicy, sometimes posed by soul-making proponents. While the free will theodicy may help to make sense of moral evils, it can’t account for natural evils, such as diseases and disasters, which no moral agent chose to bring about. On the other hand, it appears the soul-making theodicy is immune to this criticism as all evils, whether moral or natural, may be occasions for character development for those affected by them. Perhaps this gives the soul-making theodicy a leg up on the free will approach.

However, the free will theodicy canexplain the occurrence of natural evils. They are due to the Fall of humankind, which of course resulted from the sinful choices of the first humans. Adam and Eve misused their free will, and this brought a curse upon the world-albeit through divine decree-which explains every instance of natural evil that has since occurred. So, it appears, both theodicies can potentially account for both kinds of evils.

However, the way in which the free will theodicy accounts for natural evil is noteworthy. Earlier, we noted that both theodicies are means-end approaches, aiming to explain God’s permission of evil in light of a higher good. However, in the case of the free will theodicy this is only true of the category of moral evil. When it comes to natural evil, they diverge. The free will theodicy is concerned to account for the originsof natural evil in this world, while the soul-making theodicy is concerned with the purposesserved by God’s permission of natural evil (as well as moral evil). Thus, the soul-making theodicy is a more thoroughly teleological approach to the problem of evil than the free-will theodicy, which is only partly so. This shows that the free will and soul-making theodicies have somewhat different explanatory aims. Despite their logical interdependence, then, they are incommensurable in this regard. And since they do not seek the same sorts of explanations pertaining to the problem of evil, this is a reason to qualify any claim that one be preferred to the other. To insist that one of them fails because it does not accomplish what the other accomplishes is unfair.

Conclusion

We have seen several similarities and differences between the free will and soul-making theodicies. Both justify God’s permission of evil on the basis of some greater goods which can only be achieved given the presence or possibility of evil. And, as we have seen, the two theodicies are logically interdependent. The free will theodicy depends for its success on some soul-making concepts, and the soul-making theodicy relies upon a prior concept of human freedom in order to succeed. Moreover, the two theodicies do not share the same explanatory aims, as the soul-making theodicy is more thoroughly teleological than the free will theodicy. These facts seem to recommend that we see these two theodicies as complimentary rather than as competitors in the project of solving the problem of evil.

Footnotes

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