God, Natural Evil and the Best Possible World Peter Vardy The debate about whether or not this is the Best Possible World (BPW) is usually centred on the question of evil - in other words how can this be the best possible world when the whole of nature is 'red in tooth and claw' and when there is so much animal and human suffering? The debate started with Leibniz and his assertion that: ' this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best... If there were not the best among all possible worlds, God would not have produced any. I call "world" the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existing things... There is an infinitude of possible worlds along which God must needs have chosen the best'. 1 Leibniz maintains that God has no choice but to create the best. For Aquinas, God is perfectly free to create and to choose what to create whereas Leibinz sees God as wholly constrained in God's choice. Aquinas puts the position as follows: 'This world could not be better arranged, but there could be a better world, different from this one'. 2 Voltaire satirized Leibniz' claim in Candide for all the misfortunes that happen to people which are not within human control can surely not be attributable to a wholly good and all powerful creator. God must clearly do God's best, 3 but surely this world cannot be the best world possible when it would seem so easy to have less natural evil, less pain and suffering. St. Thomas Aquinas considers that for any possible universe there is always the possibility of another one which is better. Leibniz considers that this must be the best possible universe. On Aquinas' view, the notion of a BPW is meaningless because there can always be a better one. Aquinas assumes a scale of possible worlds ranging from non-being to God (who John Hick presents as the final member of a series although Aquinas himself, of course, would not see God as being part of any series - certainly not one that included the Universe!) and a better world in this series is always possible since the series is infinite. Aquinas considered that this universe could not be better than it is, because. then it would no longer be this universe. However God could have created another universe which was better than this in that it was further up the hierarchy of universes than this one. As Brian Davies puts it: 'God makes the best possible this-world, but not the best possible world.' 4 In other words this is the best possible 'this world' - this may be true, but the content of this claim is very limited indeed and, some may argue, it comes close to being a tautology. Adams, Plantinga and Swinburne reject the very idea that there is such a thing as a best of all possible worlds. Swinburne claims that if there was a world, there is no reason - to suppose that a world with one more or less individuals would be a less good world. However Swinburne warns against two false conclusions which might be drawn from the above claim: 1. That God would not create any world. Leibniz argues this when he maintains that if there were not a BPW God would not create any world. God, Swinburne says, would have reason to create a world but no overriding reason to create one. Fred has reason to buy a house within commuting distance of London, that is close to where Judy works and that does not cost too much. This does not mean that there is one such house that he must buy - there may be many alternatives which fit these descriptions. 2. It is false to say that God might make any world. God might well have reason not to create worlds in which there is excessive innocent suffering. 1 Leibniz Theodicy 1,8 2 2 Aquinas Summa Theoligica 1a, 25, 6 reply 3 3 Peterson terms this 'the principle of meticulous providence' and he frames this as follows: An omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God would prevent or eliminate the existence of gratuitous or pointless evils. (peters on 'Evil and the Christian God' p. 81) 4 The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. p. 148
Swinburne goes on to suggest four WORLD GROUPS - within each world group there may be any different possible worlds: WORLD GROUP ONE contains a limited number of immortal free, beings who can improve the world to a limited extent before it is perfect WORLD GROUP TWO contains an unlimited number of immortal free beings who can improve the world to an unlimited extent WORLD GROUP THREE is as two but these beings can produce more through birth WORLD GROUP FOUR is as three but the beings are mortal - in other words death is introduced. Swinburne claims that God would have reason to create a world falling into world group FOUR, but NOT a world in world Groups one to three. A world with death in it is better than one without because death has advantages: 1. The old will die - this gives young people a chance as otherwise the old will always dominate. 2. It limits the amount of suffering humans have to undergo, 3. It allows for the possibility of the ultimate self-sacrifice 4. It means that God trusts human beings to inflict the ultimate harm on each other 5. By limiting life, it concentrates our attention on three score years and ten 6. We learn from the presence of death. Swinburne rejects a world where there is less suffering as a demand for a 'toy' world where nothing matters very much. He sees this world as a do-it-yourself kit world' which humans can perfect over a long period of time and where we can learn from our mistakes. What appears to us as evil (death and suffering) can be occasions for us human beings to learn and to develop the higher level virtues. Peter Atkins (Professor of Chemistry) and Peter Vardy has attacked Swinburne saying that this is an 'obscene' position but they may not be taking into account that this is the best way to develop what John Hick has called a 'value of soul making' - in other words a world where human beings can develop into knowledge and love of God. Vincent Cosculluela 5 criticises Swinburne's arguments regarding the advantages of death. He says that Swinburne appeals to free choice as one justification of death but there are many free choices that we do not have. If God values freedom so much, why does God not make us immortal so we could have the free choice whether or not to surrender our immortality by laying down our life for someone. Surely, he maintains, this would be a greater sacrifice than if death is accepted by a mortal? Similarly if we were immortal, the old could freely choose to relinquish their positions to the young, but death deprives us of this freedom. Universal death therefore seems to undermine the idea of Divine trust. Cosculluela also maintains that death provides a means of escape from retribution or even a way of escaping one's own failure (e.g. through suicide) whilst in a world where humans are immortal there owuld be no escaping the consequences of one's actions. Overall he maintains that a world without death would actually be a better world, a world where God trusted human agents more, than a world with death. Swinburne's position is, therefore, flawed. Swinburne rejects the idea that this is the best possible world, but there is a separate question - namely does God have any moral obligation to create the best? Firstly this raises the Euthyphro dilemma and the issue as to whether there is any independent standard of morality against which God can be judged. If there is no such standard, then God is not a moral agent and cannot be subjected to moral praise or blame. Aquinas took this line and when Aquinas held that God was Perfectly Good he did not mean this in a moral sense but in a metaphysical sense - God was fully whatever it was to be God. It would not make sense for Aquinas to judge God as there is no standard of goodness independent of God against which God can be judged. Robert Adams takes a different approach as he does seem to consider that God could, in principle, be judged morally but he argues that God cannot wrong non-existents. ('Must God create the best' in Philosophical Review 1972, 81, pps 317-332). In other words, God cannot wrong beings who never existed by not actualising them. Adams draws parallels with a woman who takes a drug (before becoming pregnant) to have a handicapped baby and who would not have had a baby if the baby was not handicapped. He argues that the baby is not being 5 Vincent Cosculluela 'Death and God: The Case of Richard Swinburne' Religious Studies 33, 1997
wronged as the baby did not exist when the drug was taken and, what is more, would not have existed at all were it not for the woman's decision. Similarly, God does not wrong unicorns by not creating them - nor does God (or a woman) wrong fifteen children that a woman might have had by not actualising them. God may well have created beings less free from suffering than they might otherwise have been so as to maximise their need or and love for God - God does not wrong anyone by doing this. Ian Narveson in a discussion of the moral consequences of utilitarianism maintains that there are no moral duties to non-existent persons and hence no duty to increase the total happiness of the human race. There is no duty to increase the number of happy persons but only a duty to increase the happiness of such persons as do exist. Swinburne agrees with this and says that God would only wrong people if it were better for them not to exist at all than to exist as they do. Hence Swinburne maintains that God has no obligation to create the greatest number of happy beings nor does God wrong anyone by creating beings less perfect than they might have been. God is, therefore, under no obligation to create the Best Possible Universe. The above, however, can be challenged. It is now widely accepted that present generations have responsibility to generations yet unborn and, indeed, that humans may have moral obligations to species other than their own. If this is accepted, then it may well be held that we DO have moral obligations to potentially existent people. If I smoke knowing that if I get pregnant the baby would be damaged (even though I then give up smoking), I would be morally wrong to smoke. Similarly if God knew he was going to create human beings then he might well be held to be morally wrong IF he did not create these beings as free from suffering as was possible. This, of course, depends on accepting that God can be judged morally and this is a debatable issue. There is, however, a prior question which is not brought out in the literature and which Swinburne and Adams do not sufficiently address yet which is vital to this whole debate. Let us say we ask 'Is this the best possible orange?' How would we decide this question? Is the quality of the orange based on its size, it juiciness, it ability to last, its looks, the thickness of its skin or what? One cannot ask in abstract about the perfection of even an orange - let alone the universe. It seems, therefore, that the question about BPW needs to be framed more precisely for instance by asking: Is this the best possible world for X with respect to Y? Before we can answer this question we need to fill in 'X' and 'Y'. Many critics of this being the BPW (such as David Hume and John Stuart Mill) assume that X should be 'human beings' and Y should be 'elimination of pain and suffering'. Focussing in this way on the problem of evil is likely to result in a negative answer if these are the variables included in the equation - but these do not have to be the variables. John Hick's Irenean theodicy, for instance, maintains that this world is a vale of soul making and considers that this is the BPW if, effectively, X (in the above) is 'human beings' and 'Y' is 'to help them develop into people who can love God and each other and ready themselves for fellowship with God in heaven'. Essentially Norman Kretzmann's article 'A Particular Problem of creation' addresses one particular facet of the BPW problem - WHY would God create this world'? Kretzmann answers the question about this being the best possible world by defining the variables in a very similar way to Aquinas' effective definition namely: 'X' - God 'Y' - manifesting his nature. This is clearly going to give a very different answer to those set out above. In particular it denies that the main objective of the universe is to make things easy for human beings - indeed human beings are not the central part of creation. As Kretzmann says: '.. the degree of perfection in a world depends on the degree to which God's goodness is manifested in it, the degree to which it fully represents God... In creating, God undertakes to represent simple, eternal, perfect goodness in a composite, temporal, necessarily imperfect medium... ' (ps. 236/7)
This world, says Kretzmann: '.. considered as a representation of God is as good as possible in the sense that any world better than this one in terms of improved precision of representation would be no better at all in its capacity to represent God to any possible created percipient' (p. 238) God does not manifest or represent his nature to himself but to God's creation. In this, Kretzmann is faithful to Aquinas. The major difference between Kretzmann and Aquinas, however, is that although they would agree regarding their 'X' and 'Y' they disagree when it comes to unpacking the consequences of this and, for Kretzmann, human beings - specifically the love relationship between human beings and God - is central in understanding why this is the BPW. Kretzmann quotes Peter Geach who is close to Aquinas' position, and Geach claims that Aquinas does not see God as having any need to create. God is self-sufficient - God chooses to create (although the idea of God choosing when God lacks all potential may be problematic - choice involves the potential to be other than what one is, thus I have the potential to stand which means I have the potential to change from sitting to standing. For Aquinas God is 'pure act' and thus has no potential and this may rule out choice) but need not have done so. Kretzmann however parts company from Geach and Aquinas and moves closer to a Bonaventurian understanding. There is, according to Kretzmann, effectively a necessity about God having to create because of the love inherent in his nature. Kretzmann quotes the Dionysian Principle: 'Goodness is essentially diffusive of itself... The Divine Love did not permit him to remain in himself... (p. 245) Kretzmann's argument is, therefore, that God creates to manifest himself and, in particular, to manifest his love - for this there is a need to create beings who can respond to love in a two way, free relationship and therefore there is a sense in which God needs to create human beings in order to fulfil his own potential to love. However this is an incorrect reading of Bonaventure as Paul Rout points out. Rout holds that Bonaventure does indeed maintain that goodness and love must be expressed (self-diffusive), but for Bonaventure, God's goodness and love are fully and perfectly expressed in the active relationships between the infinite Persons of the Trinity. God, therefore, does not need to create in order to express his love, as this is already perfectly expressed within the Trinity. Bonaventure sees God's creative action as a free decision on the part of God to allow others to share in the glory of loving and being loved - but God does not have to do this since God's potential to love is already fulfilled within the life of the Trinity. Given this, Bonaventure would argue for the incompleteness of this world since it is by definition created and therefore finite and limited. God's ultimate saving action is drawing the world to its completeness. Hence there is an eschatological overtone to the question of 'best possible world'. An omnipotent Creator who has love as part of God's central essence creates free creatures who can understand the glory of God that creation imperfectly mirrors and who have the possibility of responding in love to God. Essentially, therefore, Kretzmann weaves a version of the free will defence into his approach - God creates the best possible world to reflect his goodness and this includes creatures who love. The price, of course, is the possibility of evil. What the above argument does NOT address is the issue of natural evil and this is, possibly, the greater challenge to this being the best possible world. Why create a universe whose whole biology is based on the 'survival of the fittest'? Was this necessary in order to create free and loving human beings? Why was it impossible for an omnipotent God not to have created a world on some other basis? On these questions, Kretzmann is silent. Aquinas maintains that God creates a vast hierarchy of species since no single species can adequately represent God: "The distinctiveness and plurality of things is because the first agent, who is God, intended them. For he brought things into existence so that his goodness might be communicated to creatures and re-enacted through them. And because one single creature was not enough, he produced many and diverse, so that
what was wanting in one expression of the divine goodness might be supplied by another, for goodness, which in God is single and all together, is in creatures multiple and scattered.' 6 We have already seen (above) that Aquinas considered that God could have created a different and better world. Why, then, did God create this one? Aquinas does not answer this question but it is, nevertheless, a real issue. What we do not know, of course, is in what respects any alternative universe would be better or worse - it may be that, for all we know, a better universe would not include human beings. We simply have no idea what is and what is not causally possible for God so any criticism of God under this heading has to stem from ignorance. Hughes tackles this problem as follows: "Plainly all evils could have been avoided had God decided to create nothing at all. And all the evils of this world could have been avoided had God created a quite different world... But whether such a state of affairs, in which God alone existed, or in which no moral beings other than God existed, would be overall better than the present state of affairs is just the question I think cannot confidently be answered. 7 Certainly this world contains evil, whether a better world could have been created without these evils we simply cannot know. Hughes concludes his discussions of the problem of whether this is the best possible world with a dilemma: 1. Either we can imagine a better version of this world, but without much confidence that what we imagine would be causally possible, 2. Or we can suppose that a radically different creation might be causally possible, but we would then have no way of knowing whether it would be better or worse than the present one, since it would be beyond our power to describe it. 8 Hughes concludes that we lack any perspective from which we are able to judge whether this is, on the whole, a good universe - still less can we judge whether this is the best possible universe. 6 Aquinas S.T. 1a, 47, 1 (8/95) 7 G. Hughes The Nature of God p. 176 8 Hughes, The Nature of God. p 173 and ps.176-183