Evil, God, and Logically Dependent Goods
In response to the problem of evil Thomists (and other theists) have suggested that God “aims” at goods that logically depend upon suffering — for example, compassion — to answer the question of why God didn’t make us “all good, all the time.”
In other words, to make some goods actual — mercy, the atonement, etc — entails (at least the permission) of evil. However, this invites the challenge that God is willing immoral means to some good end. Essentially, God is a cosmic utilitarian. Yikes.
There are different ways of trying to get God “off the hook” at this point. Brian Davies argues, straightforwardly enough, that there is no hook to get God off, because the problem of evil is a category mistake based upon the false assumption that God is a moral agent, like us. While Davies response may be true, it is far from satisfying so far as moral intuitions are concerned, because we still think — in fact, cannot help but think — there is something obscene about this approach, even for God.
I have claimed before that traditional “hardline” Thomistic responses to the PoE impugn our intuitions of God’s goodness, and that is a serious cost.
Here, I think, is a better approach.
God is not aiming (primarily) for goods that are logically dependent upon evil or suffering. God is aiming for something more fundamental, which is friendships love and communion. This requires the uniting of two independent free wills. This is risky business, however, because only God is impeccable by nature (since only God is subsistent goodness itself) which means any other FREE creature God brings into existence is, by nature, fallible.1 And, obviously, any fallible being could fail.
(Question: Could God give special graces to prevent failure? Sure. That is what Catholics believe he offered to Our Lady. But exceptions are not rules, and God, in keeping with perfect wisdom, governs things IN THE GENERAL RUN according to their mode of existence, and ours is inevitably fallible.)
Importantly, we do not think allowing FOR THE POSSIBILITY of badness to enable the conditions for something good — especially for something extremely good — is immoral. Example: By allowing my children to drive (experience greater autonomy, help grandma with groceries, etc.) they MAY injure or even kill others or themselves. Obviously, I do not wish for that to happen, and prepare them to be attentive drivers. Nevertheless, I permit the possibility of failure because of the various concomitant goods, and nobody (so far as I know) accuses me of being a crude utilitarian in doing so.
What I suggest is that friendships love and communion — the highest and most wonderful good of all — is LOGICALLY DEPENDENT upon fallible, free creatures, and therefore upon — not the actuality, but the possibility — of sin, and there is nothing immoral about God willing that possibility for the sake of uniting with us.
Again, what could be greater than union with God? The answer: nothing. However, with that aim — which Jacques Maritain contends is God’s primary motive to create — failure is possible. And that possibility has been actualized. THEN, God draws goods from the evils we have introduced — compassion, mercy, the atonement, etc. Still, that was not God’s “original intention,” as it were. Love was.
Does this not have “the ring of truth” (whether or not we accept the account of Davies)?
If you agree that it does, then Jacques Maritain is the guy to read on this.
As Aquinas reminds us, “The reason of this is, because sinning is nothing else than a deviation from that rectitude which an act ought to have; whether we speak of sin in nature, art, or morals. That act alone, the rule of which is the very virtue of the agent, can never fall short of rectitude. Were the craftsman’s hand the rule itself engraving, he could not engrave the wood otherwise than rightly; but if the rightness of engraving be judged by another rule, then the engraving may be right or faulty. Now the Divine will is the sole rule of God’s act, because it is not referred to any higher end. But every created will has rectitude of act so far only as it is regulated according to the Divine will, to which the last end is to be referred: as every desire of a subordinate ought to be regulated by the will of his superior; for instance, the soldier’s will, according to the will of his commanding officer. Thus only in the Divine will can there be no sin; whereas there can be sin in the will of every creature; considering the condition of its nature.”