The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Five)

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Five)

Chapter five is the first of the two chapters in which Davies explains various ways which are dead ends when it comes to defending God. At the outset he considers whether God, like we often can be (in smaller measure), exonerated for evil in the world because they are used or permitted by him “in order to bring about goods which cannot exist without them” (p. 112). This presents us with two questions. First, is God so ‘limited’? Second, does this morally exonerate God for utilizing evils in this fashion? 

Davies believes that God must utilize certain means if he intends to bring about certain ends, though, to show why this is so we need to understand what omnipotence is (p. 112). Omnipotence does not mean that God can to anything that can be done full stop. “For there are obviously things that can be done which God cannot do,” such as things which require being corporeal (p. 113). Nor should we suppose that God can do the logically impossible as if the logically impossible were things that could be done in the first place. Rather, Davies says that we should follow Aquinas, who says, “Since power is relative to what is possible, divine power can do everything that is possible, and that is why we call God omnipotent” (p. 113). Aquinas explicitly says that possible refers to states of affairs that are not in some way contradictory, since if they are so, they simultaneously imply existing and not-existing, which is logically contradictory (p. 114). 

What is important for Davies is that “this account of omnipotence . . . does not entail that God can bring every X about without also bringing about some Y.” He gives an example of God making someone a hero without having faced danger – can God do this? No, he says, since there is a conceptual connection between being a hero and having faced danger (p. 115). This is a relevant conclusion, because if God wants there to be people who repent, he will have to make a world in which there are people who sin. Given certain outcomes, God must utilize certain means (p. 116). 

But can we utilize this to exonerate God from the problem of evil? Those who make the free will defense think so: God must put up with sin for a good cause, namely, creaturely freedom (p. 116). While it may be hard to say just why human freedom is good, it seems reasonable that it is (p. 117). In any event, Davies rejects the notion that God can be morally exonerated by the free will defense and its appeal to means and ends (p. 118). 

He rejects the claim that God must put up with human evil if he intends human freedom, since he rejects the reasoning that leads to this claim. Specifically, he claims that it is false to suppose that if humans have freedom, then what they choose to do is solely up to them (p. 118). 

First, he describes what human freedom consists in. In doing so, he makes a distinction between behavior and action (p. 119), the former being something done by mere reflex or a bodily process we go through (as opposed to undertake); actions, on the other hand, are engaged by us for a purpose, we have reasons in mind for which we do the thing (pp. 119, 120). Think of having a spasm in your arm versus shaking someone’s hand. Then he goes on to note “that being able to act for reasons of one’s own, to be able to act intentionally, is to be able to act freely.” When this happens, we act without being caused to do what we do by anything else in the world” (p. 120). He proceeds to give a brief argument for attributing such freedom to human beings, the operate premise being that we are free because we can understand the alternatives open to us. 

However, Davies says, this doesn’t get us to the crucial premise lurking behind the free will defense, namely that free actions of humans are outside of God’s causality (p. 121). Rather, he writes, “If God [is the Creator of everything other than himself], however, then my making a choice has to be something that God is making to be” (p. 122). God is not a cause within the universe, but the Cause of the universe (p. 123). 

Now, it may seem that this conception of God’s causality ends up denying human freedom. However, Davies rejects this idea. Aquinas, too, rejects this idea. The objection to Davies is this: If God causes my supposedly free choice, then he is interfering with my will. However, Davies notes that it is incorrect to say that God interferers with his creation or acts on them so as to change them, since God is not within the universe nor does creation preexist God’s creative action so as to be changed by it (p. 124). It is true that God’s will (his consequent will, specifically) cannot fail to be realized, but his willing and creating is not like our willing and creating. God is not an existent in the world but the Cause of all being outside of himself. “Now,” Aquinas writes, “what can be and what must be are variants of being, so that it is from God’s will itself that things derive whether they must be or may or may not be and the distinction between the two according to the nature of their immediate causes” (pp. 124, 125). Aquinas explains that God prepares causes which must cause for effects that he wills must be; likewise, he gives causes which, while causing things that God wills, need not have done so. This is to say that God “transcends the distinction between must and might not.” Human beings are not like that, since humans and the things which populate the environment in which they act as causes (in virtue of having will) belong to the realm of must and might not (p. 125). 

A human being, while acted upon by things in the environment, is not (always) restricted to just this outcome, unlike a stone which falls to the ground. For Aquinas this makes us free, since we are not causally necessitated by any creature. Nor does God coerce us into acting as we do, rather we are free because of him, given the kind of thing he makes us to be (p. 125).[1] 

The important thing to keep in mind is that while we speak God, necessary and contingent creaturely causes as (efficient) causes, they are not causes of the exact same kind. Given that God is the Cause of the world, “God’s causation clearly has to differ in certain ways from the causation of things in the world” (p. 126). Moreover, Davies notes, given that there is no distinction between God’s nature, being, and individuality, God’s choice is not different from God himself (pp. 126, 127). Moreover, God undergoes no change in causing other things (p. 127). So, God’s causality is quite different from that of things within the universe. 

Davies quotes an excellent passage from James F. Ross, which is to lengthy to reproduce, so I will note the main points. He compares God’s creation of the universe to a singer singing a song. Now, the song is really there, but it is dependent on the singer as long as it is; the same goes for the universe with respect to God. The song has features, structures, and properties which are not attributes of the singer; likewise, the universe contains necessary and contingent causes and effects, but this does not mean that God’s causality can be classified as one or the other (p. 128). Moreover, God’s causation of the world is a precondition of our being free, and so cannot impede it. “God does not make the person act; he makes the so acting person be . . . God does not make Adam sin. But God makes the sinning Adam, the person who, able to not sin, does sin,” says Ross. It is not as if there is first Adam, whom God then interferes with so as to produce the state of affairs of sinning. Rather, “It is the whole being, doing as it does, whether a free being or not, that is entirely produced and sustained for its time by God,” Ross notes (p. 128). 

Since this is so, God could have made persons such that they never sin even though they can (or could have been able to) sin. Since this is so, the free will defense fails (pp. 128, 129). 

However, this doesn’t by itself mean that we cannot exonerate God by other means and ends considerations. “Might there be other (non-moral) evil which God does need in order for there to be certain goods,” asks Davies (p. 129). Various writers believe that things like famines and other natural evils can be occasions for particular people to develop morally, gain or display certain virtues. So they would answer this question in the affirmative. 

Davies, however, does not think that this point, true as it might be, provides the kind of moral exoneration thinkers like Swinburne thinks it does (pp. 129, 130). First, the idea of appraising God morally is incoherent. Second, even if we can judge God in moral terms, how does the logical connection between these evils and their consequent goods exonerate God? If I give you cancer, it may produce virtues in you, but I’m not for that reason justified in giving you cancer. Moreover, what about where the good gained by someone’s suffering is had by someone else (p. 130)? His reasoning can be summed up in this remark. “It is, of course, true that we cannot choose to help people unless they are in need. It seems odd, however, to suggest that one is morally justified to put people in need so that others can help them” (p. 131). Nor can the problem of evil be resisted by arguing that we simply don’t know enough to say that good won’t come out of all evils. True as that is, it doesn’t provide a moral exoneration of God. “Are there not certain means which cannot be morally justified even though they might lead to various goods arising,” asks Davies: where among such impermissible means include many of the evils we actually see in the world. What these kind of arguments do is ask us to morally exonerate God for reasons which we would not exonerate our fellow humans, so they fail (p. 134). 

You cannot morally exonerate God by utilizing means and ends reasoning, concludes Davies (p. 136).                        

[1] At least this is to say, if we are unfree, it is not because God causes us, but because of our nature. For God causes us to have the nature that we do; if this nature is free, God causes us to be free. If this nature is not free, then it is not possible for God to make free humans, since this would be a contradiction. Edward Feser has more to say about this here. 

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Four)

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Four)

Many modern theists, such as Richard Swinburne, claim that God is a moral agent and good if he does what he ought to do (p. 84). For God to be morally good, means God can do what is morally evil and yet does not (p. 85). It is this idea that God is a moral agent who is supposed to be good that is thought to generate the problem of evil; if God were not supposed to be a moral agent, or at least good, the evil we see in the world would not pose a problem to his existence (pp. 84, 85). Critics argue that God is, in fact, morally evil, if real at all, since he does what he ought not or fails to do what he ought to do. So, God is either accused of acting in unjustified ways or defended as doing actions which are morally justifiable. Davies rejects this entire paradigm of assessing God in moral terms which subject him to a law higher than himself (p. 86). 

Davies askes, “Why should we suppose that God’s goodness is moral goodness”? (p. 87). He believes that the primary reason many do is because it is thought that this is part of the traditional understanding of God (p. 87). Davies believes it is not part of this traditional understanding of God. 

He acknowledges that we can say God does what morally good people would do, but does not equate this with saying God is therefore to be judged morally (pp. 87, 88). Nor is he saying that we cannot say that God is good because he helps the needy. Again, he does not deny that God commands what is morally good or is somehow the ground of moral goodness, even as he is of creaturely goodness in general without being an instance of any creaturely goodness (p. 88). 

Positively, Davies has two lines of arguments as to why God is not subject to moral evaluation, positive or negative. First, he bases this conclusion on considerations of what it means for God to be Creator; second, he examines what primary theist sources (the Bible) say about God (p. 88). 

Davies writes, “The claim that God is the source of the universe implies that ‘God is to be thought of as existing outside the realm of existents, as a cause from which pours forth everything that exists in all its variant forms’.” (p. 91). This means that God is the source of things which can be classified by the kind of thing they are. Therefore, God cannot be such a thing (classifiable by a kind). He cannot be therefore judged as succeeding or failing to be the kind of thing he is, as cats can be (albeit non-morally) (p. 92). Moreover, he cannot make moral progress as the moral agents we are familiar with can, since God does not exist in time (p. 93). Persons may be subject to moral laws, but God is not a person (p. 93). 

While the Bible emphasizes God’s holiness, this is not a moral category as such, but rather is used to distinguish God’s awesomeness from creation. Davies adds, “It seems to me that, taken as a whole, the Bible stresses the incomparability of God [to created things] more than it does the similarity between God and any creature” (p. 94). This is evidence, he takes it, that we shouldn’t judge God through a moral lens, as we would judge certain creatures (like humans). 

What of the claim, made in Scripture, that God is righteous? Davies answers that Scripture “never conceives of God’s righteousness along moral lines – by which I mean that it never takes God to be righteous because he does what is (morally) the right thing for him to do” (p. 95; emphasis mine.). Rather, “In the Old Testament,” writes Davies, “God’s righteousness seems to consist in his acting in accordance with his covenant with the people of Israel (all the terms of which are drawn up by him).” Therefore, Davies concludes, “Righteousness, in this context, clearly does not mean ‘moral goodness which accords with the standards of goodness binding on all who seek to be morally good’” (p. 95; emphasis mine.). 

He finds this sort conception of God’s righteousness or justice to continue in the New Testament as well; God does not conform to some, say, Aristotelian standards for how a good person should act, but by doing what he decides to be just (p. 96). Davies says, “St. Paul is not here conceiving of God as an individual who needs to justify himself in the light of moral canons to which he is bound or obliged” (p. 96). 

He also notes that the concern of the Old Testament writers when it comes to evil is to find why God allows some evils to befall some people (those whom he has made a covenant with), given he has made that covenant. God is not asked to morally defend why he shows favor to some but wreaks havoc on others; they don’t poses the problem of evil as such, which is universal, even if what they say is relevant to it (p. 97). 

Moreover, while Aquinas asks questions as whether God causes evil and the like, he never frames it in moral terms: is God morally justified in such and such. And Aquinas is an important figure in the Christian theistic tradition, and typical in this respect. We can pose the problem of evil, not as asking whether God is morally justified, but by asking whether a good God can both exist and cause the world as it exists with its many evils (p. 97). 

God is not unrelated to morality. The exemplar of human virtue must preexist in God in some way, since he is the cause of human beings who have virtues (which is the perfection of a being that is rational);[1] this just follows from the principle of proportionate causality. However, this no more implies that God himself has virtues in the way moral agents can (is morally good) than it does that God is a stone, even though the form of a stone must preexist in God in some way (pp. 98, 99). 

While Aquinas does say that justice is in God, what Aquinas means by this does not mean he considers God to be a moral agent. First, God cannot be in debt to anyone else, and so is not subject to what Aristotelians call commutative justice. And while God can be said to engage in distributive justice insofar as he gives that is owed to various things, this also does not make God to be a moral agent; for God doesn’t owe this to anyone. God does not provide for things in this way because some moral law obliges him to (and is therefore good). Rather, what it means for him to engage in distributive justice is that he makes things properly (so that, for example, humans have hands and feet, which they need as animals, the good get rewarded, etc.), but again, he is not obliged to create at all, so how can he be obliged to create a world in which this happens. So his governing the world in this way is not him acting in order to be deemed morally good (p. 99).[2] 

Like Davies, I’ll quote Aquinas here. “Since the object of will is an understood good, God can only will what falls under his wisdom. For his wisdom is, as it were, the law of justice by which his will is right and just. So he does justly what he does according to his will (as we do justly when we do according to law). But we, of course, do things according to the law of someone superior to us, while God is a law unto himself. (p. 100). This isn’t to say that God is arbitrary, given that goodness in general and God’s Goodness in particular is tied to a feature of reality, namely, actuality, which God is totally, but it is to say that God is not good by meeting some standards external to him, which is the gist of moral goodness (p. 100). 

Moreover, while God is good insofar as he is actual (that is Good, since he is purely actual) it doesn’t follow that he is morally good. The moral goodness of rational creatures, like the goodness of creatures in general, derive from God (how they participate in God’s goodness), but that does not mean they provide the model according to which God’s perfection and goodness is to be assessed; so, while God is Good and the source of morally good creatures, God is not a moral agent (p. 100). 

Aquinas connects whether we can say God is good to the fact that he is the Creator of all things, which shows it is not conceive to be moral goodness (me: if only because God is free not to create). Aquinas’ reasoning is that to be good is to be desirable (to be the end to which a thing is directed, whether or not it is conscious of it or not). All things desire their own perfection, which (given the principle of proportionate causality) consists in resembling its cause (for they and their end must exist in God in some way). God is the cause of all things, therefore, is the most desirable thing, and hence perfectly good (pp. 101, 102).[3] 

God will not command evil, but not because he has first checked to see whether what he commands accords to an independent standard of goodness. Nor can God produce evil, which has no nature or substance. But this doesn’t give us the claim that God is morally good (p. 102). God wills what is good (say commands such and such) because he is good and has made creature to be this way (and to have the standard of goodness they do). Again, not because he is responding to moral norms outside of him (pp. 102, 103). 

Davies concludes: since we cannot evaluate God as morally good or bad, we must say that God is not a moral agent; his goodness is not moral goodness. God is not a thing in the universe nor a member of a class. In this sense he is not a being among beings but is the absolute being who is the Creator of all things, to note what he quotes R. F. Holland as saying (p. 104). Given this, the problem of evil commits a category mistake if formulated in moral terms. This isn’t to say that he doesn’t think there is no possible problem of evil that can be cogently formulated (and then answered) – otherwise he would end the book here! – but it doesn’t lie here (p. 105). 

[1] But isn’t God rational? I believe that Davies says something about this in a future chapter, so I will address this question when I review that chapter. In case he doesn’t say something about this, I will note that what it means to say that creatures are rational implies finitude. In humans this is manifested in our need to reason discursively, the fluidity of our will’s disposition, and so forth. Thomists claim that angels aren’t like this, but they still would be finite and only have being in this or that way; hence they are either good or bad according to the kind of intellect-and-will-possessing being they are. They are defined by something. But if God is the source of all definite being, his intellect-and-will cannot have (or fail to have) goodness, as beings who are (good or bad) moral agents can; rather, his intellect and will are just his goodness. His intellect and will cannot be good or bad, but just are goodness. God can no more be a moral agent than he can be a student or learner. He has (more properly, is his) knowledge, but that doesn’t mean he is a learner. God always does good things and cannot be imperfect, but that doesn’t mean he is a moral agent. 

[2] I have a thought. God might ordain a world in which I give you, say, fifty dollars because someone else owes you fifty dollars for work that you’ve done. God doesn’t owe it to you and neither do I, but say I give it as a gift. In this way, God has brought about it so that you have what is owed to you, without owing it to you. I think this is like what Davies is saying happens. Of course, in that case, we can collapse the roles of me and God in my little story to just be God. 

It's sort of like if I bore what is (or would be your punishment). That doesn’t, by itself, mean I am being punished for you, let alone deserve to be. 

[3] I think God is desirable for humans in a richer way, but again, not in a way that makes him a moral agent.

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Three)

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Three)

In Identifying God, Davies’ third chapter of the book, he makes clear the importance of attending to the basics about God. He writes, “If you think that evil renders God’s existence impossible or unlikely, you must presumably take yourself to have a fairly good understanding of what God is.” However, Davies intends to show that “there is a serious sense in which none of us can” understand what God is, even if theists “have plenty to say about him” (p. 58). The result being that we will not be able to conclude that evil shows God’s existence is unlikely. 

Davies criticizes understanding God as an explanation (of the existence of the universe, the reality of moral truths, etc.), since “an explanation is always something which we understand better than what we invoke it to explain” (p. 59). While God may be perfectly intelligible per se, it doesn’t follow that he is more intelligible to us than the already difficult to fathom world we inhabit. Nor does he find the description of God as a person a suitable answer to what God is. This is so not only because as a Christian he affirms that God is three persons within one divine substance, but also because the creedal term ‘person’ does not mean what philosophers like Richard Swinburne think it does (i.e., a center of consciousness) (pp. 59, 60). The aim of such creedal language was to accommodate two claims: God is undivided and yet there are distinctions within the Divine Substance (p. 60). 

Swinburne may think that God is something like what Descartes imagined himself to be (a mind that thinks and can change (adopt new beliefs as time changes; e.g., it is now 5 o’clock, and the tree’s leaves are now red) (p. 60). Davies main problem with this view of God as a person makes God “an inhabitant of the universe . . ., one of a kind of which there are many members,” and thus no more suitable to explain the existence of the universe than you or I are (p. 61). 

Perhaps we try asking what God is not (indeed cannot be given that he is Creator). Davies finds this a better question (p. 62). God cannot be bodily or material, since any “material object is always something of which there could, in principle, be more than one,” and hence something whose essence and existence are distinct; which is to say, it requires a cause outside of itself to be (pp. 62, 63). Therefore, neither can God be anything whose individuality can be distinguished from its nature. You instantiate (or have) human nature, and so are identical to that manifestation of human nature, but you are not identical to human nature as universal; however, this sort of real distinction cannot be applied to God (p. 63). 

To clarify, Davies explains what this means by quoting Aquinas. Human beings are defined as having flesh and bones and such, but you have this flesh and these bones because the matter than makes up your body particularizes what is of itself universal. Hence while you have human nature, your being the human that you are (your individuality) is distinct from being human (p. 64). 

For Aquinas, this rules out material beings, for it is in virtue of matter’s acting as the principle of individuation that material kinds of things can be multiply instantiated. However, for immaterial things (like angels) they are individuated by their forms or natures. God is like this in not being distinct from his nature (p. 64); what does it mean for anything to be ontologically indistinguishable from its nature? Davies writes, “I don’t know.” We have a piece of negative theology. It is still useful, however, when applied to the problem of evil. Davies notes, “Confronted by evil, people . . . frequently work on the assumption that God belongs to some kind . . . and is to be evaluated accordingly,” as being a good or bad instance of that kind. But we can’t make that kind of judgment if God is not an instance of a kind to begin with (p. 65). 

God differs from angels, says Davies, in that not only is his individuality not distinct from his nature, neither is his existence! That is to say “we cannot think of God as something the existence of which is derived from anything”. If real distinction between essence and existence entails that something has derived being (which I think it does), then God must lack such distinction if he is to make “difference between there being something rather than nothing” (p. 65). This is not to say that God gets existence from himself, which is absurd as saying that something exists before it exists (p. 66). Nor even is this to provide, strictly speaking, a definition of what God is, namely, existence, even if it sounds like a definition. Rather, what Davies means is that at the end of the day “God is not something which can be intelligibly thought of as possibly not existing. (Remember we are engaging in negative theology.) He contrasts that with the fact that a true account of what he is does not entail that he is (p. 67). 

Nor is God capable of real change (intrinsic vs. relational or extrinsic change). God is the source of all coming to be (and thus change), and so cannot himself change. God can change extrinsically, or more accurately undergo ‘Cambridge change,’ which involves no modification to God himself (p. 68). You, too, can undergo this sort of change, for example, when your grandparents shrink but you remain the same height. Before you were not taller than them, but you became taller than them – because of a change in them. 

Does this imply that God is static and thus not alive? No. For while a thing within the world (and time) can be inert and (relatively speaking) changeless, as Mount Everest is, God is not within the world (or time) and so his lack of change is not a kind of inactivity. Rather, God still “creatively accounts for the world in all its variety” (pp. 70, 71). As far as life is concerned, that a thing is alive is not defined by its being able to be changed, even if most living things can be changed. What singles life out from nonlife, at least for Thomists, is the ability to operate of itself (having intrinsic power to produce change) as opposed the passive ability to function instrumentally for something else. Rocks can’t throw themselves, but you can, say, think on your own (p. 71). Now, God must be alive since God acts (efficient or agent causation) to bring about the world (p. 72). 

However, it may seem that we ignore the fact that to act a thing must itself undergo change. Since this implies an infinite regress, this idea must be false if preceding arguments are valid. Still, while this is normally true (of agents within the world), it doesn’t speak to the nature of being an agent or efficient cause. Davies writes, “We need not think of an action as a matter of what is going on (what changes occur) in the agent to whom the action is ascribed (p. 72). Rather it is something that takes place in something else (the affected or effected thing). While mundane agent-causes undergo processes of change, insofar as they act what interests us is that they bring about something in their effect – not them (p. 73). Davies uses the example of teaching, which requires that some agent-cause (the teacher) act on something else (the student). The act of teaching cannot take place “unless somebody actually learns something.” For finite beings to teach, they may have to undergo changes, such as moving their mouths or whatever, but this is not the same thing to teach. That even such finite agent-causes can teach requires some change in the student. “So teaching depends on and is constituted not by what the teacher undergoes but on what the learner undergoes.” While the idea that teaching or any other action must derive from something in the process of change may be a reasonable conclusion of induction from things of everyday experience, it is not a necessary truth; moreover, it ignores the fact that precisely as an action it is in the effect, not the cause. Given that we cannot have an infinite regress here, it is false to suppose that every action must proceed from something that is itself undergoing change (pp. 72, 73).[1] 

Still, God as agent-cause needs to be sharply distinguished from created agent-causes, with the important result that God cannot intervene in what he creates. Miracles seem to disprove this claim, for what else are miracles but divine interventions in the independent workings of nature (p. 74). However, since God is the cause of the being of all things other than Himself, nature is not independent of God, even if it is really distinct form him and receives from him real secondary causality. Hence, God cannot intervene, not because God lacks power, but because God is already in the universe as its ever-present sustaining (efficient) cause. Intervention implies prior absence, but God is already there, as it were, and so cannot intervene (p. 75). Miracles, I believe, happen, and they involve God causing the world in a different way than if he had not performed the miracle, but they are not interventions (p. 76). (Compare a musician who, for artistic reasons, omits playing some notes. He is still playing the piece, even if he had chosen to play it exactly as written.) 

Davies also notes the implication of God as creator and precisely the fact that God creates out of nothing. In doing this, God does not bring about a change in something, since nothing preexisted his act of creation. Nothing receives the action, even if things are made because of it. God makes created things to exist period, not at the outset, but always; however, this is not a change in them (p. 77). 

I like the way Davies concludes this chapter. He says, “At this point . . . I do think it worth drawing attention to what we might call God’s oddness, an oddness that we can hardly ignore or gloss over as we try to reflect on the topic of God and evil.” By this he means at least the various claims he has argued for so far, which is to say that God is not a thing in the universe and is, in fact, radically unlike them: incomprehensible, you might say (and as theists have long said) (p. 78). Which is not to say that we cannot know about God or make true claims about him, but a recognition that we cannot fully grasp God, nor know what God is (p. 79). 

We may wonder, still, if God can be evaluated morally. For all Davies has said here it may seem so. However, while Davies does not address just that question in this chapter, what he has said here supplies much of the rationale behind the negative answer he gives, defends, and clarifies in the next chapter (p. 80). 

[1] Aquinas makes a distinction between action and passion; not as two different events, but as two sides of the same event. Action insofar as it is caused by the agent, passion insofar as it takes place in the patient or effected / affected thing.

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Two)

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter Two)

In Chapter two, Davies begins his task of bringing us back to the basics. Specifically he concerns himself with what philosophical reasons are there to believe in God as Creator. 

He questions the assumption of those who, like Anthony Flew, argue that we ought to begin on a presupposition of atheism and need arguments to believe that God exists. Davies responses, “Flew’s position is too extreme. For it is often perfectly in order (i.e. reasonable) to believe statements that one cannot, in fact, defend by appeal to arguments or evidence”. He gives an example of believing a stranger when he says his name is so-and-so; we are justified in believing that merely on his say so. All the same, he does believe that a philosophical case can be made, and to that he sets his sights (pp. 31, 32). 

He sets the stage for asking about God’s existence by noting what it means to ask questions in general. Specifically, he gets at the fact that humans are able to share understanding, which then becomes a public not private affair, unlike our own sensations which remain uniquely ours (p. 33). From this he proceeds to distinguish between things that couldn’t but be true: such as that 9 is greater than 6. Once you understand the things in question, it follows that 9 must be greater than 6, given the nature of things such propositions refer to. However, when we come to claims like “it is snowing today in New York” are contingently true. Such claims “raise causal questions. They invite us to ask what brings it about that what they report is true.” Now, appeals to the natures of the things in question might be relevant to such kind of statements, but we keep finding ourselves concerned with “agent-causation” (p. 34). We might know that, given what glass is, it is fragile and so that helps explain why a statement like “The glass broke when it fell from the desk” is true. But we also ask, “Did someone or something push it?” Why did the glass come into being” (p. 35)? 

Against this line of reasoning, Davies brings up the Humean notion that “possibly, not everything that comes to pass in the world, or not everything that exists in it, needs to be accounted for in terms of agent-causation.” Hume’s argument concerns the ability to imagine some putative effect without imagining its putative cause. Hume’s argument concludes, reports Davies, that this shows there is no contradiction in the notion of an ‘effect’ lacking a cause, and so it is possible in reality (p. 35). 

Davies is critical of Hume’s argument. You can imagine (picture in your head) any number of things, “yet nothing follows from this when it comes to reality.” Further, he presses the question against Hume’s imagination of something coming into being without a cause, “How do you know that the thing in question has come into existence at the time and place you picture it as beginning to exist?” All you imagined was a thing being visible where it was not before; you didn’t imagine it coming into being as opposed to being transported there. The only way to distinguish your mental images of a thing appearing where it hadn’t previously as being an image of something coming into being versus being transported (whether by a cause or not) is by reference to a cause: “to know that something began to exist seems already to know that it has been caused” (p. 36). In short, what distinguishes an event as a coming to exist versus a coming to be at a new location is the cause each event (or thing involved in the event) has. 

He also deals a blow against the Humean suggestion that any event or thing could happen sans cause by asking, “What is the force of the ‘could’ here” (p. 36, 37)? Specifically, he wishes to inquire as to what “could” ought to mean and what force the Humean could give it in his claims about the uncasued. Using some everyday statements about possibilities, he brings out the meaning “could” usually has: “ ‘Could’, in ‘could happen’, normally means ‘is able to come about given the existence of what is able to bring about certain effects.’” On this sense, there is no meaning to the Humean suggestion that events or changes in things can happen uncasued. Even on the sense of could where it means “is not logically impossible” he brings to our attention that what this refers to is what is possible for a thing given its nature: and for the Humeans to say that it is possible for something to happen, come into being, or change without a cause presupposes they already know the nature of the thing in question. But what if, as we have every reason to believe, the nature of things we experience everyday require a cause given the kind of things they are (their natures) (p. 37)? 

Beyond this, he notes “we do, in fact, look for agent-causes when things begin to exist or get modified, not merely because of custom, since our experience of causation often affects our customs and actions and therefore our experiences and expectation of the casual is prior to custom (p. 37). Moreover, he stresses that the presumption should be given to the idea that everything that begins to exist or is modified has some agent-cause(s) (p. 38). 

On page 39, he informs us that his approach to natural theology is but a continuation of “our common practice of asking what it is that accounts for what does not, absolutely speaking, have to be there in our world, and there in the way that it is.” In everyday life we might ask of a cat, “Why is it here?” And referring back to its parents sheds light on that. But we still have not explained “how cats, as such, are there.” Moreover, for any particular cat that came into being, “what keeps them going?” These, Davies thinks, are reasonable questions, which can be applied to the universe as a whole (pp. 39, 40). 

He acknowledges that many people might feel such a question makes no sense when applied to the entire universe, but only when we ask it of things within the universe (p. 40). However, he believes that by noting that the properties or natures of all the things that make up the universe reveals why we must ask it of the entire universe. “Knowing that real objects in the universe have whatever properties they have is not to know that they, as the individual things that they are, actually exist” (p. 41). What he introduces is the insight behind the Thomistic argument from the real distinction between contingent thing’s essence and existence. Since our existence is distinct from our natures or any other property of ours, we cannot explain why we exist at any time by noting what we are or any properties we have. This holds universally, so the search for the explanations for why things that could be, but do not have exist (and therefore statements about them that could be, but do not have to be true) leads us to conclude that “the existence of the universe as a whole (and at any time) requires an external (agent-) cause,” indeed, whether or not it had a temporal beginning (pp. 40, 41). 

He clarifies what he means when he is talking about intrinsic properties a thing might have: they are things that describe it itself as the kind of thing it is (so ‘is identical with itself’ or ‘is bigger than another’ don’t matter here) (pp. 41, 42). And his whole point about these is that “understanding natures . . . does not involve understanding that any particular one of them exists,” from which it follows that the “things in the world cannot account for their own existence” (p. 44). He argues that this is true of the entire universe, and responds to several objections to the contrary. He maintains that his argument doesn’t commit an informal fallacy of composition (p. 45). He also argues that even if the world is past infinite, or that there could be an infinite series of causes acting simultaneously to produce a final effect, both of which he finds doubtful, the fact remains that each item in the world, whether infinitely many or not, still requires a cause to explain its existence. Therefore, so would the entire series, infinite or no (p. 46) Some think that Kant is correct in saying that “Being is obviously not a real predicate,” and this somehow shows that objects do not possess being as if something they have conjoined to their nature, as Davies argument needs it to be (p. 46). Such a notion is usually joined with a Fregan or thin conception of being as a property of concepts, namely, such that there is an instance(s) of said concept. However, Davies rebuffs these suggestions by showing that, while being doesn’t describe a thing (which is what he, and not he alone, I might add, takes Kant to be saying when he says that being is not a real predicate), it is still something that must belong to a thing (even if it is neither part of the essence of a thing or one of its properties) (p. 47). Finally, he responds to the suggestion that the universe simply is, either as a brute existent, or because nothing existing is not a serious alternative. He responds that each is arbitrary. For even if nothing existing is not a serious alternative, the universe failing to exist is. And to stop asking explanatory questions when concerned with the whole universe is ad hoc (p. 48). The question, Why the universe rather than none, is indeed a valid question, given that everything within the universe does not exist by its nature (p. 50). 

As he does so, he notes that the cause of the universe, in accounting for the existence of the universe, “cannot be making the kind of difference which agent-causes within the universe typically make,” since the causes within the universe change what is already there, but the universe is not metaphysically prior to God’s creative action towards it: so he does not change the universe in making it be (p. 48). And God would be the cause of the universe “for as long as it exists,” and not just at the first moment (p. 51). 

Now he begins by clarifying Classical Christian Theism from modern versions. To writers like Richard Swinburne, God is “one among many,” a person (one instance of the kind person) (p. 52). He is like us to the nth degree (pp. 52, 53). However, he argues that modern theists tend to imagine God in too anthropomorphic terms; rather, we need to keep in mind “the difference between God and anything created” (p. 53). And argues that Scripture, while using anthropomorphic language frequently enough, does not intend us to think such speech literally true. Rather, we have plenty of texts, such as Isaiah 40:18, 25-26, which he quotes, that shows “God’s creatures provide no serious model at all for what God is” (p. 54).

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter One)

The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (Chapter One)

His first chapter, The Problem of Evil, lays much of the groundwork for the rest of the book. He tips his hand, as it were, as he evaluates what three atheist critics, David Hume, J. L. Mackie, and William Row, have said on the problem of evil as well as what various theists have said in response. In this chapter he sides with the atheists insofar as if God is supposed to be morally good (like us but only more so) the problem of evil is damning; but that is precisely the supposition he wants to undermine: Davies says that God is not a moral agent. 

Davies regards Hume’s argument from evil, and those like it, to proceed from a view where “God is only different from people when it comes to degree” and that he is uncaused, immaterial, and so forth. He is like us only to the nth degree (pp. 10, 11). But if God was good in this way, then evil shows God’s existence to be unlikely. Specifically, he points to the harms that are inflicted in the world by natural predators, harms inflicted by humans on each other, and the various faults we are subject to given our constitution (pp. 8, 9).

J. L. Mackie, Davies reports, goes further than Hume in arguing that the existence of evil in the world “shows that there cannot be a God.” The reason according to Mackie is that there is an admittedly subtle contradiction between the claims that “are essential parts of most theological positions,” namely, “God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists” (p. 12). The cause of this contradiction is that “a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there is no limit to what an omnipotent thing can do” (p. 13). 

Mackie then examines four responses theists might make while maintaining the three claims common to most conceptions of God: (a) “Good cannot exist without evil;” (b) “Evil is necessary as a means to good.” (c) The universe is better with some evil in it than it would be with no evil.” (d) “Evil is due to human free will.” Mackie objects to the first claim by noting that an omnipotent God could make everything be wholly good. He objects that the second likewise undermines omnipotence, since, even if evils would follow given “the causal laws in the universe,” God “can hardly be constrained by causal laws which obtain in the universe,” since God made them (p. 13). The third claim, Mackie argues, doesn’t undermine God’s omnipotence, but his omnibenevolence: for in the terms of the objection “good can, in principle, exist without evil” but God wills some preventable evil to obtain some goods supposedly unobtainable otherwise.” Mackie argues that the fourth, the free will defense, fails since it fails to show why God couldn’t make free agents do good all of the time. Mackie writes, “If God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer good . . ., why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good” (p. 14)? That he did not do so, Mackie concludes, “is inconsistent with his being omnipotent and wholly good” (p. 15).

Davies then goes on to describe a modern version of Hume’s “evidentialist argument from evil” by William Rowe. As with Hume, Row does not allege that evil shows that God does not exist, but that “there is unjustifiable evil which is good evidence against God’s existence.” Evil that is unjustifiable to Row, Davies reports, is that which “could have been prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.” Row honestly acknowledges that, as far as he has shown, such evil might be nonexistent: some greater good or suppression of equal evil might always be obtained from any evil (p. 15). Still, he believes that even if we are wrong in supposing any particular example of putatively pointless evil is actually that, “the idea that none of this suffering could have been prevented by an omnipotent being without thereby losing a greater good or permitting an evil at least as bad seems an extraordinarily absurd idea.” From this Row concludes we are reasonable in concluding that God does not exist (p. 16). 

Davies then goes on to examine various theist response. The first of which he calls “The Unreality of Evil Argument.” There are two forms of this argument, Davies says, a patently false one, and one with a prestigious lineage. The first is found among Christian Scientists: “evil is an illusion of some kind.” The second is that “evil is unreal since it is no positive thing or quality. Rather, it is an absence or privation of goodness.” The latter is found in the writings of Augustine or Aquinas, neither of whom would ever “have denied the reality of suffering or sin” (p. 17). The first is obviously false, concludes Davies, but the latter is not so easily discounted, at least on the plausible belief that evil signifies “a gap between what is actually and what could be there (and should be there) but is not.” If evil is the absence of being, then it is not something which God be thought of causing: God causes the being of things, but evil is not being, something positive, but it “is always a case of something missing” (p. 18). 

Davies then describes the Free Will Defense previously criticized by Mackie. Drawing on Alvin Plantinga, he describes it as follows. The existence of evil only shows that God doesn’t exist if we know “that an omnipotent God could have made a world in which free people always behave well.” Plantinga denies this (p. 18). Not, it should be noted, because he thinks there is some contradiction between someone always acting well, but because “whether someone freely behaves well in some actual situation cannot be determined by God” (p. 18, 19). So, while it is up to God to make free beings, he must depend on the free actions of the creatures he made “if he aims to produce moral good.” Contrary to the suggestion that this denies omnipotence, “Plantinga’s basic point is that it is logically impossible for God to create a creature whose actions are both free and determined by him,” and there is nothing about omnipotence that says God can do the logically possible (as if there were such things that could, in principle, be done). Davies concludes his discussion of the free will defense by noting something important. To theists like Plantinga, if something “other than the agent whose action it is” causes the action, then the agent is determined to act that way: that is, unfree. And the sort of causes Plantinga and likeminded theists wish to rule out are “causal laws and antecedent conditions” in the universe that might determine we take some action or not. (Maybe wait until Davies treats this later to add the last part.) Plantinga believes that God doesn’t cause our actions in this way, and concludes that God doesn’t cause our free actions period (p. 19). 

Davies then moves on to discuss “The Means and Ends Approach,” especially as expounded by Richard Swinburne. The claim of the argument is that where evil is an unavoidable route to some good, then the evil may be caused or permitted; and this position claims that “the evil we encounter is a necessary means to what is good” (p. 19). Swinburne believes that God’s creation of free will, which he says comes with the possibility of evil actions that be done, is an example of God permitting evil. To give creatures free will (which is good), God has to ‘stand back’ and let them cause their own actions. As for natural evils, these Swinburne regards as necessary evils to some good, since they proceed from the operation of natural laws and causal regularities in which (a) humans can learn of evil, (b) be afford opportunities to do good for each other, (c) understand that actions have consequences that can be predicted and worked toward (p. 20). 

Davies reports that Swinburne does not think we can say that there is “too much naturally occurring evil,” since the less evil there is the less possibility it provides for humans to learn about good and evil, and make responsible choices. Nor should God’s apparent hiddenness be seen as a pointless evil. Rather, it is needed “if people are to be genuine choosers” (p. 20). Davies then describes how John Hick makes the case for why God would permit such hiddenness in his book Evil and the God of Love. Davies summarizes Hick’s position as “No pain, no gain" (p. 21). 

He then summarizes “The We Can’t See All the Picture Argument.” Proponents of this view claim that our lack of “a God’s-eye view of things” precludes us from concluding that evil is ever gratuitous and therefore evidence against God’s existence. Davies notes the view of William P. Alston, a prominent contemporary proponent of the argument. “According to Alston,” Davies writes, “the magnitude or complexity of the question is such that our powers, access to data, and so on are radically insufficient to provide warrant” to deny that God exists. One is expected to think of chaos theory or the butterfly effect: an apparently pointless evil in one place far in the past has numerous effects on history, the sum total of which justify God in permitting the evil (p. 22). 

Davies then examines the argument which springs from the question “What kind of world can we expect from God?” Writers like C. J. F. Williams and George N. Schlesinger seek to undermine the assumption that we can know what sort of world God could and could not create, an assumption that many atheist critics rely on when making the argument from evil. One such assumption is that “relief from (or absence of) pain and suffering is an intrinsically good thing which God would always lay on for things like human beings.” But they argue that “suffering can perfect human beings.” Another such assumption that these theist writers want to undermine is that God could produce the best possible world. In response to this notion they say “that talk of a ‘best possible world’ is as incoherent as talk of a ‘greatest prime number.’ God could always do one better (p. 23). So why let the illusory perfect be the enemy of the good (p. 24)? 

Davies then discusses why theists like Aquinas or Herbert McCabe argue that “we can have no reasonable expectations one way or the other” about the sort of universe God would make; that is, “apart from recourse to divine revelation” (pp. 24, 25). Aquinas’ reasoning, which McCabe also follows, says Davies, is that it is not “characteristic of God that he should make things like this as opposed to things like that.” Rather, as far as the universe is concerned, that it exists – “the fact that there is something rather than nothing” – is God’s characteristic effect. As long as it is possible that something be, God can make it; so we ought not to try to limit what God would make. Instead ‘we have to start b noting what God has, in fact, made to be” (p. 24). 

Finally, Davies considers the suggestion that God qua God suffers (meaning that God is not immutable) (p. 25). How is this supposed to solve the problem of evil? They believe that God’s love is such that he must be “passive to the action of creatures” which would mean that he is not omnipotent. Following Mackie’s lead, we can say that the problem of evil therefore disappears (p. 26). 

Davies concludes the chapter by urging us to return to basics: can we know God to exist before consideration of evil? What is God? He will answer these questions before he resumes his discussion of God and evil (pp. 26, 27). 

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea (Chapter Six)

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea (Chapter Six)

In this chapter Reppert takes on the objection that dualistic or teleological explanations do not explain anything. He takes Keith Parsons as the initial formulator of this objection (p. 106). Parsons argues that to count as a genuine explanation something must do one of the following: (1) explain "why the topic of concern was to be expected" via a universal or statistical law, (2) explain what caused the thing being explained, (3) explain "why the topic of concern was to be favored instead of a contrasting state of affairs" (pp. 106, 107). Parson argues that appealing to things like the soul fail to explain things like human consciousness, since we don't know the mechanisms by which the soul is supposed to produce its effects and lack laws which explain the behavior of the soul (p. 107).

Reppert's reply is to note that explanations in terms of purpose and intention (as used in common sense) are genuinely explanatory. He gives the hypothetical example of Keith Parsons liking the Georgia Bulldogs and despising the Florida Gators. These states of mind explain his behavior (say, rejoicing when the Bulldogs win) given certain circumstances. We "may not be able to express these  claims in terms of strict laws," but they are far more insightful than explaining his behavior neurophysiologically (p. 107).

If this explanation admits of reduction to a non-teleological (i.e., mechanistic) description, then explanatory dualism is false. However, the fact that an intentional explanation as given (whether or not it can be reduced) gives us insight into why things happened and allows us to make predictions shows that we can have genuine explanation without appealing to strict laws, which undermines Parson's objection that explanatory dualism would fail to be truly explanatory (p. 108).

Reppert also notes that the materialist is also obliged, eventually, to give explanations for things in terms of their natures. This sort of basic explanation looks like: it is the nature of x to have such-and-such a characteristic. (p. 108) I'm not sure how this is genuinely different from explaining things in terms of laws, since the reason the law applies is either partly because a thing has a nature by which it can be, strictly speaking, governed to obey the law, or the law is just a description of how a thing acts given its nature.

Reppert notes that "Parsons also argues that accepting the existence of a nonphysical soul that interacts causally with a body will result in our having to accept the existence of something that violates the first law of thermodynamics."[1] Depending on the way the causation goes, energy either disappears or is introduced, contrary to the claim that it can neither be created nor destroyed (p. 109). However, this is only a threat, as Lewis points out, "if laws of Nature are necessary truths." However, if they simply "tell you what will happen apart from any outside interference," there is no problem to proposing that something outside of the causal system described by physics is at play here (p. 110).

Parsons also objects that substance dualism cannot explain how two distinct kinds of substances interact with each other. Reppert makes two moves here. First, contrary to Parson's claims that the causal explanations of science are exempt from similar objections, Reppert appeals to Hume's claim that "there is nothing we can find in physical causal relationships, such as necessary connection, which could dispel the mystery of how A causes B."[2] Hence, if substance dualism (a kind of explanatory dualism) is mysterious, it is not for that reason refuted (pp. 110, 111). Second, he argues that the premise of this objection - that we need to explain how the mind interacts with the body via efficient causation understood mechanistically - is not accepted by substance dualism. Why should the substance dualist play by the mechanistic rules (p. 111).

We have, then, returned to the question of whether intentional or purposive explanations are irreducible to the kind of explanations given by physics. If they are, we simply need to pin down the correct kind of explanatory dualsim. Reppert argues that this is the way to go, since otherwise we reduce all thinking, including the very enterprise of science itself, to absurdity (p. 112).

Reppert then moves on to examine further objections, such as those by Jaegwon Kim (p. 113). He argues that a non-spatial soul cannot interact with a body, since causation must be had between spatially related things. And if the soul is spatial, there will be other problems, namely ad hoc solutions to problems like "whether two spatial souls can occupy the same space," borne not out of a desire to find the truth but simply to save belief in the soul (p. 113).

Reppert argues that Kim is wrong to suppose these explanations are poorly motivated. If explanatory dualism is true, and one thinks that a spatial soul is the best answer to that, why not supply provisional answers to these questions, even if they look absurd severed from the underlying rationale of explanatory dualism. Moreover, he notes that "Hasker has suggested that even if the soul is not spatial, God could set up a connection between the soul and the body". He also notes that Hasker's idea that the soul emerges from the body, whose matter has a capacity to produce a soul, might be able to explain the close connection between the body and the soul (p. 114). With all of these possibilities, he concludes, the "objections based on causal interaction are quite simply overrated" (p. 115).

Some argue that the discoveries of neurophysiology, while consistent with property dualism, spell disaster for substance dualism. Specifically, things like the relation between cognitive functioning and damage to the brain. Reppert notes the example of visual agnosia, a condition where a person can still take in visual sense data but is unable to process it because of damage to a certain part of the brain. On substance dualism, we'd expect this activity - processing of visual sense data - to occur in the soul.[3] Whether or not this objection is a good one is immaterial, however, since substance dualism is not the only sort of explanatory dualism at play; and explanatory dualism isn't opposed to extensive dependence between mind and brain (pp. 115, 116).

Others argue that since evolution is a purely material process, human beings which are wholly a product of evolution, cannot have an immaterial mind; the mind is nothing but the brain (p. 116).[4] However, without needing to reject evolution (as understood as a process of species emergence through processes like mutation and natural selection), we can easily dismiss these claims about evolution, and hence keep forms of explanatory dualism supposedly disproven by evolution (substance dualism, property dualism) (pp. 116, 117).

Others object that arguments from reason only conclude that a materialist explanation of reason has not been provided, "not that an explanation could not be provided". Given the success of explaining things scientifically we are warranted in accepting the promissory note materialism provides; one day we will have such a materialist explanation of reason (p. 118). Reppert counters that, in fact, the arguments from reason show that materialism cannot provide such an explanation and that attempts to do so invariably sneak in "the very concepts they are trying to explain through the back door" (p. 119).

Reppert also notes that many attempts to explain consciousness or reason materialistically redefine what it is that is being explained. For example, if we define consciousness simply as an input-output system, well that isn't too hard to explain as a material system. However, that removes the subjective aspect of consciousness (p. 120).

"Daniel Dennett maintains that unless we analyze reason and intentionality in terms of that which is not rational and not intentional, then we are offering a question-begging account of these phenomena," Reppert writes (p. 121). For example, if we find the ultimate explanation of human rationality in God, we can ask why is God rational and we are back where we started. Reppert argues that this is faulty reasoning. It is God's very nature to be rational, and it is absurd to suggest that we cannot appeal to the nature of things as explanations, as was noted earlier (p. 121).

Reppert concludes his chapter by examining what might lie behind some resistance to the argument from reason, and he proposes scientific fideism and fear of religion as possible candidates. However, he doesn't mean to disqualify all objections by this method. Nor does he say that it explains the totality of resistance to such arguments.

[1] Something which J. P. Moreland discusses in Body and Soul. My guess is that we don't need to say that the soul removes or adds energy to the body, at least if we accept some sort of hylemorphic dualism.

[2] Hume's claim illustrates the problems inherent in a mechanistic view of reality. If you reject teleology as an intrinsic and irreducible feature of things, causation itself becomes a mystery. The materialist, then, is not in a position to accuse the substance dualist of mystery. What this show is that formal and final causes must be admitted, too. And in this world, the soul is not as alien as it might seem. I speak as a hylomorphist.

[3] I don't think this assumption is true, at least not on hylemorphic dualism. The soul contains powers, which considered as such are immaterial, but many of whose operation requires a corporeal organ. Sight would be an example of that. The soul is the source of the powers of the body, and since it is immaterial, the power, whether exercisable or not, is not a material thing, made of matter; but the equipment by which it can exercise this power may need to be corporeal, and its operation take place in a corporeal thing. (David Oderberg has something to say about this in his final chapter of Real Essentialism, but I do not have it before me.)

[4] Nice use of the principle of proportionate causality; an effect must exist in some way in its total cause. Of course, if part of human nature is immaterial, then either evolution is not a purely material process, or we did not come about (wholly) by evolution. In fact, Thomists, like Edward Feser or James Madden argue for the latter point.