FAT E A N D FREE WILL A DEFENSE OF THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
H E AT H W H I T E
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu Copyright Š 2019 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK
∞This book is printed on acid-free paper.
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 ONE. TWO.
Divine Action 000
Why Believe Theological Determinism? 000
THREE.
Does Theological Determinism Undermine Human Justice? 000 FOUR.
FIVE.
Responsibility 000
Does Theological Determinism Undermine Responsibility? 000
SIX.
Theological Determinism and the Meaning of Life 000
SEVEN. E I G H T. NINE.
Theological Determinism and Freedom 000 The Problem of Evil I: Its Mere Existence 000
The Problem of Evil II: Beyond Mere Existence 000 TEN.
The Problem of Hell 000
ELEVEN.
The Last Word 000 Notes 000
Bibliography 000 Index 000
Introduction
Traditional theism posits a deity possessing all perfections—all possible power, all possible knowledge, perfect justice and love—one who is Creator and Lord of the universe. There are many puzzles about the coherence of this conception. One of the more obvious puzzles centers on human freedom. Can human beings have free will if they live in a universe governed by a god like this? We might sharpen this question in two different ways. One has to do with divine foreknowledge, in particular God’s knowledge of our future actions. How can humans be free if God knows what we will do? This question has received quite a lot of attention in the past few decades. While it is not an easy question to answer, I believe there are a number of feasible routes the traditional theist might take in trying to answer it.1 The second puzzle has to do with God’s providence—his wise and good ordering of the world. I view this puzzle as technically harder, philosophically more interesting, and theologically more pressing. Perhaps just because it is harder, it has received less attention in the literature than the first problem. On the one hand, the religious believer wishes to trust that God has arranged even the details of life in wise and good ways, and this requires that God have sovereignty, or control, over even the details. The more details the believer wishes to be able to trust God with, the more sovereignty over details she will need to believe that God possesses. On 1
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the other hand, she may wish to have some exercise of free will, and this requires that she have some control (sovereignty) over at least aspects of her own life. Yet, on the face of it, control is a zero-sum game: to say that I am free with respect to this or that means I have control over it, and insofar as I have control, God lacks it. And vice versa: whatever aspects of the universe God controls are, due to that fact alone, not under the control of my free will. So how can humans be free if God is sovereign over their actions? But if God is not sovereign over human actions, then how can we be confident that God has ordered the world wisely and well? And if we cannot be confident that God has ordered every aspect of the world wisely and well—because human beings have the power to mess up at least bits of it—doesn’t God lack a power that a maximally perfect being would have? This problem of divine providence, or sovereignty, and human freedom connects quite closely with another longstanding question for theism, the problem of evil. It is not ridiculous to observe the many and serious evils of this world and conclude that, in fact, it is not arranged wisely and well by a provident God. The horrors, tragedies, and disasters that regularly sweep through corners of this planet provide powerful evidence—so it has been argued—that no powerful, knowledgeable, just and loving God rules it. One longstanding move in this debate is the appeal to free will: God has not wrecked the joint; we have, through the misuse of our divinely granted free will. This appeal, however, raises further questions. If we humans have been given the power to wreak havoc around us (especially on other humans), doesn’t that mean that God is no longer in control of his creation? Whereas, if God is in control of the evils that we do, how has the appeal to free will done anything to solve the original problem of evil? Or, in other words, if we wish to preserve God’s moral uprightness, his love and justice, it seems we will have to curtail his sovereignty, perhaps by saying he has ceded some of it to human beings in the form of their free will. On the other hand, if we wish to preserve God’s sovereignty it seems we must temper our estimate of his goodness. Neither alternative is particularly attractive for theists of a traditional stripe. I think it is fair to say that theistic analytic philosophers of the last generation have thought human freedom very important to defend. Moreover, they have generally defended it in a particular version: namely, libertarian free will, according to which, if one performs a free action, it is pos-
Introduction
3
sible not to have done it, and possible in the strongest sense. The libertarian claims that nothing and no one, including God, can determine whether we do or don’t perform a particular action, if we perform it (or refrain from doing so) freely. Because of the absolutely untrammeled nature of libertarian free actions, libertarian free will lends itself most readily to the zerosum conception of control: what control we have, God lacks, and what control God has, we lack. To the extent that I am exercising my free will, God does not decide what happens; to the extent that God is exercising his free will, I do not freely decide what happens.2 So the general tendency to emphasize libertarian free will in analytic philosophy of religion has a reciprocal effect, namely, a general tendency to conceive of God as exercising somewhat less providential control than the majestic sovereign of the universe that traditional theism posits. This book will break the other way. In it I wish to make the best case I can for theological determinism. Theological determinism (TD from here on) is, roughly—more precision will be forthcoming presently—the view that God’s power should not be viewed as at all limited by anything contingent, including exercises of human freedom. God’s sovereignty is maximal, and his will determines everything that happens down to the smallest detail. One consequence of TD is that, whatever kind of free will we have, it is not libertarian. More generally, whatever kind of freedom or responsibility we have, it must be compatible with complete and absolute determinism by the divine will. Rejecting libertarian free will has a number of consequences that, to be brief, have been thought to be so devastating that the position cannot be sustained by an intellectually responsible and morally sensitive theist. Nevertheless, I have become convinced that the objections to TD are less powerful than they have been made out to be. Furthermore, TD of some species or other is a hardy perennial in the tradition of theistic reflection, and it has the weight behind it of some powerful arguments that have not been widely appreciated. It is these arguments and replies to objections that I aim to set forth in the following chapters. In recent decades, TD has been discussed (when discussed at all) most often under the rubric of the problem of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, divine foreknowledge is not the primary focus of TD. Philosophers who worry about the paradox of human freedom and
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divine foreknowledge often have little to say about the paradox of human freedom and divine providence or sovereignty. TD, however, yields clear answers to both puzzles. It also makes contributions to answers to questions about divine and human freedom and responsibility, doctrines of heaven and hell, divine justice and love, and other topics. It involves a wide-ranging and well-integrated set of commitments, which is the first positive thing one might want to say about it.
TH E TH E SIS AN D SOM E C ON SE QUE NCE S OF IT
I characterized TD before in terms of divine power and sovereignty, but here, being precise, I present a more specific view about how that power and sovereignty are exercised. TD is of course a form of determinism. Determinism is a form of conditional necessity: it must be the case that, given these facts or events over here, some other fact obtains or event occurs over there. There are various kinds of determinisms, and we can slice them along three different dimensions: (1) what does the determining, (2) what is determined, and (3) what the modality of the “must” is. So, for example, Laplacean physical determinism holds that, given a physical state of the universe, other subsequent states of the universe must occur, and the “must” here has the strength of natural law. This form of determinism had a lot going for it when Newtonian physics was state of the art, and it influenced a great deal of subsequent philosophy. Psychological determinism might come in various flavors, but one common idea is that, given certain mental states in an agent, certain actions will subsequently follow, with a modality that includes a “ceteris paribus” clause in order to account for various kinds of external interference with the agent. The Enlightenment determinist Baron d’Holbach believed we always and necessarily follow our strongest desire, but the necessity he envisioned did not cover events like having a piano dropped on one’s head.3 It is a further requirement of determinism that the determining facts be explanatorily prior to the determined facts. For example, suppose there is a one-to-one correspondence between possible past and possible future states of affairs. In that case, it is just as true to say that, given a particular future, a particular past must have occurred as it is to say the reverse. Still,
Introduction
5
we would want to say (regarding this scenario) that the past determines the future, but not vice versa, since we think the explanations provided by physical causes run from past to future but not vice versa. (If time travel is possible, things get more complex.) Obviously this could get complicated, but fortunately, TD is a rather simple kind of determinism. The determining factor is God’s will, and the determined facts are every other contingent state of affairs. The modality is metaphysical necessity. Before offering a definition of TD, however, let me make a few remarks about God’s will. Strictly speaking, one could hold to TD and also hold that God’s will determined both contingent and necessary facts. This is the position taken by McCann, for example.4 While interesting, this is not a position I will explore. Instead, I will just take logical-cum-metaphysical necessities as given. It makes no difference, though, to the main ideas at stake: if you are attracted to this view, just say that God’s will determines every state of affairs, necessary and contingent, and proceed accordingly. One might also hold to TD and claim that the divine will is not contingent, being determined by the perfection of the divine nature. This is Leibniz’s route, that God necessarily wills the best of all possible worlds, and in this view there are, properly speaking, no contingencies. This is another optional commitment for TD, and not one that I am terribly attracted to, but it, too, can be handled easily enough for those interested. Leibniz distinguished a particular type of necessity, “moral necessity,” which he claimed governed God’s choice of the best. Non–moral necessities would be what contemporary philosophers ordinarily think of as metaphysical necessities, things like “cats are mammals” or “2 + 2 = 4.” Moral necessities are determined by God’s will (itself determined by the perfection of God’s nature), while non–moral necessities are not. If you are attracted to this view, then instead of saying that God’s will determines all the (other) contingent facts, say that God’s will determines all the morally necessary facts. Where the positions or arguments in this book appeal to “contingency,” substitute “moral necessity.” The Leibnizian option will require a little more discussion later in the book, but for the purposes of defining TD, we can leave it there. Finally, one could hold, allegedly with Descartes, that God’s will can perform impossibilities. This has the well-known peculiar consequence
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that God can make a rock so big he cannot lift it, and then lift it anyway. This and similar nonsensicalities have convinced me and many others that this idea is not worth pursuing. My position will be the fairly standard one that God’s will is contingent, and I shall take no view on the determination of necessities, though closely related varieties of TD could modify either of these commitments with most of the rest of the argument coming out intact. So, for precision, Theological determinism: (1) the facts about God’s will entail every other contingent fact, and (2) the facts about God’s will are explanatorily prior to every other contingent fact. It follows immediately that the contents of God’s will, plus necessary truths, are a complete explanation of all other facts or events. By “complete explanation” I mean one in which the explanandum is entailed by the (complete) explanans, that is, one in which it is impossible for the explanans to hold and the explanandum not to hold. TD claims that any given contingent event can be completely explained—is entailed by—the contents of God’s will plus necessary truths.5 Such an explanation may be extremely circuitous but nevertheless obtains. Therefore, TD rules out the possibility that other contingent factors that are not caused, at however distant a remove, by the divine will could play a role in giving explanations of events. For instance, if disaster strikes, there are no human choices, demonic agencies, or random natural occurrences that explain it unless these, too, are completely explained by the contents of God’s will. Likewise, according to TD, the only contingent facts without complete explanations—the only ultimate or brute contingencies, one might say — are facts about God’s will.6 In particular, contingent facts about human wills, about what humans would freely choose in such-and-such circumstances, or about other events in the creation, like coin flips or gamma rays, are not ultimately or brutely contingent in that they can be explained, completely, as the results of what God willed. This, in turn, means that God’s will is maximally specific. He wills to create not a man (some man, any man) but a man with exactly these properties. He does not intend to bless an individual somehow, or to have him
Introduction
7
wind up blessed sometime, but he wills to bless an individual in some completely specific way and time. Nothing is left to chance; nothing lies outside his providence. TD’s commitment to the maximal specificity of the divine will rules out the view expressed by van Inwagen: “I prefer to think that God is capable of decreeing that a certain indefinite condition be satisfied without decreeing any of the indifferent alternative states of affairs that would satisfy it.”7 I will offer some arguments in favor of the maximally specific view, versus van Inwagen’s alternative, a little later. For now, however, I am simply trying to make TD’s commitments clear. TD does not say that God intends to happen all that happens. Just as we do in the case of human wills, in the case of God’s will we must distinguish between intended and merely foreseen consequences of the divine will. TD is compatible with some contingent facts or events being foreseen but unintended.8 Likewise, it is tempting to hold that, according to TD, every contingent event that occurs is made to occur by God and every contingent fact is made the case by God. There is an innocent, commonsensical sense in which I think this is unexceptionable, but for some purposes we need to be careful. Suppose I go to a café, notice that Pierre is not there, and then go home and mournfully draw a picture of the café sans Pierre. I noticed the absence of Pierre, but have I drawn the absence of Pierre? There is a case for a negative answer: drawing Pierre’s absence amounts to just not drawing Pierre, while noticing Pierre’s absence goes beyond not noticing Pierre. If we think of what God “does” or “makes the case” as, so to speak, drawing the creation as a whole, we may want to reserve this language for the positive realities of the creation, not the negative absences. Even if we want to say that God does everything, this does not mean that God is the sole agent in the universe or that other agents do not act. There are other agents, and they do act, which is to say that their wills are effective. But TD says that their willings, and the efficacy of those willings, are events that are entailed by, and explanatorily posterior to, God’s will. Theological Determinism contra Libertarianism
A final aspect of TD we should get clear about is that, according to it, while there may be events undetermined by mundane causes, there are no earthly events undetermined by any causes. In particular, there may be
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human actions that are not determined by any antecedent physical or psychological states, but there are no (contingent) human actions that are undetermined by anything whatsoever, because God’s will determines everything contingent. Libertarianism is usually defined as the conjunction of the claims that (a) human beings sometimes act freely and (b) free actions are incompatible with any kind of determinism. Thus, since TD is a form of determinism, it rules out libertarianism immediately.9 We can go a bit further, because there are different motivations for libertarianism, or rather for the incompatibilism that makes up its second clause. What is perhaps the more familiar strand of incompatibilism, leeway incompatibilism, is motivated by the idea that acting freely requires being able to do otherwise.10 This idea is often referred to as the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP). A large number of principles have been defended under this name, all of them sharing a family resemblance, and the following seems to be a fair candidate for inclusion in the family: PAP: S does A freely only if, given all the facts not in S’s control, it is possible for S to do otherwise than A. More recently, however, some incompatibilists have downplayed or entirely denied the importance of being able to do otherwise. They advocate a different motivation for their source incompatibilism, namely, that acting freely requires being, in some sense, the ultimate cause or source of one’s action. It is not easy to pin down what an “ultimate cause or source” is, and, as we shall see, there are, importantly, different ideas about what source incompatibilism amounts to among its advocates. However, it is fair to say that a necessary condition for being an ultimate cause or source requires that there not be any sufficient conditions for the occurrence of one’s action that are outside of one’s control. Call this condition SRC. SRC: S does A freely only if there are no sufficient conditions for S doing A such that S has no control over whether those conditions obtain. Both PAP and SRC include the idea of facts or conditions that S does not control. Control is a tricky concept, but if whether some fact obtains is explanatorily prior to any facts about one’s choices, desires, decisions,
Introduction
9
and so on, then pretty clearly that fact is not in one’s control. Since TD holds that the facts about God’s will are explanatorily prior to any other contingent facts, which presumably include facts about human beings’ choices, desires, decisions, and so on, TD also holds that the facts about God’s will are not in any human being’s control. It follows that TD is incompatible with either flavor of libertarian free action. It rules out leeway-incompatibilist free action because, given the facts about God’s will, over which S is not in control, it is not possible for S to do anything other than what she in fact does. And it rules out source-incompatibilist free action because there are sufficient conditions for S doing A, namely the facts about God’s will, over which S has no control. The same basic motivations—the leeway appeal versus the sourcehood appeal—motivate incompatibilism about moral responsibility as well as free action, and the same consequences of TD would apply. Thus TD is committed to either skepticism (hard determinism) about free will and moral responsibility or to compatibilism about them, or to some combination of the two (e.g., semi-compatibilism). Ultimately, my preferred version of TD will advocate compatibilism about both concepts, but those arguments lie ahead.
T H E SC OP E OF T H E ARGU ME NT
This book defends TD from within the perspective of a fairly traditional, orthodox Christianity. The issues involved are central for Christians, but similar issues will arise for adherents of other branches of the Abrahamic family tree and maybe beyond that. Indeed, the framework within which the book works is not “Christian” in the sense of depending on special doctrines about Jesus of Nazareth. It is probably better to say that this is a “Christian” framework in the sense that it includes doctrines about God and related matters that have emerged over the long history of reflection on such matters in the Christian tradition. I make no claims, and have no interest in making claims, that such a framework is in any sense exclusive to Christianity. The traditional, orthodox Christianity will be assumed, not argued for. That is, my ambition does not include a proof for the existence of God,
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rebuttals to arguments against the coherence of the traditional conception of God (except as these arguments touch on TD), or clarifications of various other conceptual difficulties in Christianity or theism more generally. Also, TD comes in different varieties. I aim to defend the general position by defending what I view as its most attractive instantiation. So it is probably best to construe the large argument I am making as an argument for the (attractive) coherence of a particular version of TD within a Christian perspective, both supported and explained by aspects of that wider perspective and supporting and explaining other aspects of it. Alternatively, you can think of this work as a conditional argument for the rational acceptability of TD: if we grant all these other commitments, then at least one version of TD fits well wi th them and can meet its most important challenges. My “traditional, orthodox Christianity” has six main elements. Four of them comprise standard philosophical theism: • Omnipotence. God can do anything it is possible to do. • Omniscience. God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods. • Perfect goodness, or moral perfection. God’s will cannot be improved. Creation ex nihilo. God created the universe out of nothing. Take each of those characterizations as a rough cut at describing the associated concept—more precision will be forthcoming where necessary. The argument of this book will show that TD supports particularly strong, unqualified forms of omnipotence and omniscience; that it coheres well with a strong, unqualified form of creation ex nihilo; and that it will spend a great deal of time rebutting charges that TD is incompatible with God’s moral perfection. To make parts of the argument, I will supplement the four very standard elements just presented with two more. The first is • Eternity. God is not in time, and events in his life do not occur in temporal sequence. Rather, as Boethius has it, God’s existence is the complete, simultaneous, and perfect possession of everlasting life; his life is “all at once,” a complete present.
Introduction
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Divine eternity is more controversial than the other four characteristics, and there are conceptual puzzles about it (as there are about the other four).11 But, because I do not find the puzzles terribly puzzling, and because divine eternity is part of the mainstream tradition of Western theism, I feel comfortable relying on it for parts of my argument. Finally, I shall draw on • A robust Christian eschatology, particularly the doctrines of heaven and hell. A well-known article characterizes “true moral responsibility” as the sort of responsibility that would make sense of heaven and hell.12 In a Christian context, this is no mere metaphor or useful thought experiment; it is actually what TD has to make sense of. As a result, vague and naïve ideas about heaven and hell will not do. The versions of the doctrines that I will draw on are not universally accepted among Christians or theists more generally, but neither are they idiosyncratic. The argument will not be pushing the boundaries of tradition, orthodoxy, or theism with these conceptions of heaven and hell, though it may be pushing some narrower confessional boundaries. I said I was making an argument for the coherence of TD with a traditional orthodox Christianity. I did not say TD was more coherent with traditional orthodox Christianity than any of its competitors. I do believe it is more coherent, and it may be that my sympathetic readers will come to that conclusion by the end of the book, but I have not made it my ambition to show that. My own position vis-à-vis the argument being made is a peculiar one, and I wish to be clear about it. This book has taken several years to write, and when I began it, I would have classified myself as one of the traditional, orthodox Christians from whose perspective the argument was being made. Even at that point, I would not have said that I believed TD, properly speaking, though it was the theistic option that I found most attractive and credible. My long-held position has been that a certain diffidence in these deep matters is appropriate, and a straightforward avowal of TD is not and never has been exactly my own perspective. Fairly late in the composition process, I decided that (for reasons mostly remote from