Encounter (Point/Counterpoint, Vol. 1, No. 6, 1998)Encounter (Point/Counterpoint, Vol. 1, No. 6, 1998)The web journal of Godsearch, Inc. (journal formerly entitled Point/Counterpoint).
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Debate with Famed Atheist and Philosopher
"Divine Justice? Is Belief in an Eternal Hell the Death-blow to Christianity?
The following is the entirety of a 1994 dialogue/debate carried on by written correspondence between Antony Flew and Dennis Jensen of Point/Counterpoint. The debate originally focused on the problem of the Christian belief in an eternal hell. In discussing this the debate spread to several other topics such as Professor Flew's argument that divine omnipotence precludes human responsibility; moral nihilism and the possibility of finding meaning in existence; freewill, responsibility, and the problem of evil; and lastly, whether we have a responsibility to value or worship God if God does exist. We have covered two of these topics individually in each of the last issues of Point/Counterpoint and they may be reached through the above links.
Because both participants make reference to each other's statements by citing page numbers using the pagination of their original manuscripts, we will here indicate the beginning of those respective pages by using numbers within braces and all in bold print, e.g., {p5}. Footnotes will be indicated simply by numbers in bold print.
Antony Flew holds an M.A. from St. John's College, University of Oxford, and a D.Lit. from the University of Keele. He has taught for many years, written and edited numerous books, and written dozens of articles. Dennis Jensen holds an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has written for journals such as Point/Counterpoint.
Jensen's first argument
{1} Antony Flew is likely the leading contemporary atheistic critic of theism, and Christianity in particular. If this isn't enough of a handicap, our discussion with Professor Flew focuses on what I believe we agree to be the one belief in biblical Christianity most destructive to belief in that system: the belief in an eternal conscious hell. To indicate the problems with this doctrine we will first quote some of Flew's comments in a debate he held with Christian scholar Thomas Warren.1
[The problem of hell is] the difficulty of reconciling the official account of God's goodness and justice with what is then said about how he planned to create a lot of conscious creatures. He did this in the full awareness that while some of them were going to enjoy eternal bliss and were going to be kept in this condition by his sustaining causality, the others of them—perhaps the majority—were destined for unlimited and eternal torment and were to be sustained in that condition by his power.
I must confess that this subject of the doctrine of hell is one about which I find it very difficult to maintain my supposed national British calm and reserve. But let me, with what restraint I can muster, say that if anything can be known to be monstrously, inordinately wrong and unjust, it is the condition of which this God is said to assume. If anything can be known to be just quite monstrously, inordinately, unquestionably unjust and evil, it is the conduct of a being creating conscious creatures, whether human or animal, in the full knowledge, and with the intention, that these creatures should be maintained by his sustaining power eternally in infinite and unlimited torment. I speak of this with what little restraint I can muster because, if anything seems clear to me about good and evil, just and unjust, it is clear that this is monstrous.
But of course, to say this is not to show that there is not a being with the power attributed to the Christian God who will in fact do these things. It is only to say that the conduct attributed to this God, the arrangements which it said that he maintains are totally inconsistent with the flattering descriptions it is proposed to apply to that being. . . . It is rather extraordinary to try to recruit such a nightmare monster as the God so described to serve as some sort of guarantor of decent standards, of compassion and so on. After all, all the sufferings that have been so rightly described by Dr. Warren as outrageous and so on, and the deliberate production of those sufferings which he has quite rightly described as absolutely outrageous and monstrous; these are supposed to be as nothing compared with the sufferings of hell, going on forever. So, it does seem to me to be really rather incongruous to try to recruit a being that you describe in this way whose conduct and plans and intentions are described as involving all this as some sort of guarantor of good moral standards of notions of justice. [84-86]
Flew later goes on to answer Warren's defense of an eternal hell.
[Warren says that] if one says that some punishment might be justified, there is really no stopping point between a minute and eternity. Well, if the difference between a minute and infinity is as unimportant as all that, why are people so mad keen that the hated sinners should be punished for all eternity? . . .
So, what, with a—perhaps uncharacteristic degree of vehemence, I am trying to bring out here is that differences of degree can be enormously important. . . .
By allowing that some modest punishment, some punishment commensurate with the offense, might be appropriate, you are not thereby conceding: "Oh, well, then everything might be alright; it is just a difference of degree." This really will not do at all. [162.]
Warren's point was that once you admit that some punishments might be deserved and just and quite appropriate for God to mete out, how do you know that an eternity of punishment is not what we deserve? By what standard does Flew claim to know that it is wrong for someone to be eternally punished?
I think the best answer for that is: "By the sort of everyday standards of human decency and compassion and concern which I am sure that all the members of the Church of Christ cherish; by reference to the sort of good neighborliness and concern for people which they try to show in their ordinary lives." It is by those standards that I judge the conduct ascribed to their God by Dr. Warren and I fear by many of those Church of Christ members. . . . [202.]
Perhaps this would be a good occasion to say that I have seen a lot of members of the Church of {2} Christ in the last few days. The disparity between their goodness and forthcomingness as people concerned with other people, and the alleged conduct of the God whom they admire as supremely just is perfectly extraordinary. I am very glad indeed that they in fact live as they do and do not model themselves upon the being whom they describe as perfectly just. [201-02.]
So Professor Flew, it seems you don't really object to the prospect of our facing punishment after death appropriate or proportionate to our deeds. You simply claim that eternal torture is obviously not appropriate. This seems to be your most essential argument.
Christianity's Credibility Assuming a Temporary Hell
The first question we would pose might be considered in some ways a more personal one. If in the next life (if there is one) we find ourselves facing 'appropriate' (not eternal) punishment for our deeds, it is not inconceivable that what we really do deserve will be far worse than what we now think we deserve. Jesus spoke of extremely horrible punishment for those who commit evils we might think very little of: a millstone placed around the neck of one who offends a child and being cast into the sea; a place of fire and thirst for a rich man who failed to aid a poor man. These appear to be examples of excessive punishment only if we miss the point of Jesus' words. The poor, the oppressed, the innocent abused child; they have far more value in God's sight than we think and what we do to hurt them is an enormous evil.
So if someday we face the justice we deserve, might we not find that we will have very much to fear? But suppose God offered a means by which that punishment might be removed. How God removes that punishment is another issue. Christians argue that because of God's great love for us, God bore our punishment in our place. Only by this means, they claim, can our present choice of regret for past evils and our intent not to do evil (repentance) work backwards into the past to remove those past sins. If we happen to believe this to be true or if we believe God has by some other means provided us a way out, shouldn't we turn to God and accept this gift in deepest gratitude?
I doubt that this question will be quickly answered because I think you have other problems with this hypothetical God. God is not only evil for allowing evil in the world, you would say, but God is also at least something of an accomplice in our actions because God sustains our continuing existence. I think there are good answers to your arguments on these points but I had hoped to avoid them entirely in order to focus on the major question at hand, the problem of hell. So if, for the sake of the argument, we could leave aside your other arguments against God's goodness or existence and if you were able to say you believed that God exists and offers a way out of our deserved (but limited) punishment, would you admit that we should gratefully accept it?
Perhaps there is an even more important question we might raise. One point I'll get to shortly is the claim that one aspect of hell is simply separation from God. If this is so and if God offers us a means by which we can be reconciled, having peace with God and relationship with God, shouldn't we accept that as well?
Existential Despair
What we need to see now is something of the implications of separation from God. All that our normal secular existence gives us does not provide us with any substantial reason to continue existing rather than not. Under a purely secular view, our desires and goals are nothing more than feelings programed into us through our evolutionary history. I happen to feel love for another person but I know that that person does not possess any true intrinsic worth or value. He or she is, like me, simply a physical body possessing consciousness and mechanical intelligence. I may create for myself a purpose or goals and live for the sake of attaining those goals, but it's really just a meaningless game. It doesn't really matter whether I attain them or not.
{3} If my attained goals make life easier for someone else, what does that accomplish? They, like myself, are equally meaningless. I cannot find significance from another person. Mere physical existence, which is all that secularism can offer, is not its own justification. If a truly justified reason for existence can be found, it must come from something other than anything experienced in the phenomenal world. If there is someone who possesses significance, it might be that we likewise can have significance in relation to this being. Jews and Christians claim that the universe was created by this same being they call God. If it's true, then the deadly absurdity of existence that the honest secularist knows too well can be overcome. Despair is removed by relationship with God. It is hardly the case that belief in God makes no difference to our life in the world.
So back to my question. If there is such a God, if it is conceivable that your accusations of evil against this God are mistaken, and if we can find relationship with God such that our existential despair can be removed, then would you seek such a relationship? A simpler related question would be, "If there is a God who simply deserves your commitment, would you give it?"
I see these as being very related to the issue of punishment in an afterlife, but whether or not you wish to answer these questions we do need to get into the issues you have raised.
Eternal Torment and the Problem of Love
I have to admit that the doctrine that some will endure eternal torment (indeed, that anyone will endure it!) is not one I can easily defend. One of the greatest problems is that the closer we are to God's heart, to the mind set God desires us to have (in the Hebrew and Christian view of God), the greater becomes our anguish at the idea of hell. The more one loves, the greater the problem. And if we become more like God as our love becomes stronger, then how can God, whose love is infinite, allow this?
This is a problem the Christian needs to seriously consider. Suppose your son or daughter dies rejecting all that they knew of God's offer of eternal life. This is the one you raised from infancy. This is the one who used to fall to sleep in your arms, the baby who would stare up at you with such innocent eyes. This one you can never cease to love no matter how you might try. Think of a beloved parent, a husband or wife, a very close friend, a special relative, a fiance who has died rejecting God's love. Not only are you to be forever separated from them but they are to dwell in eternal torment. It's hardly a wonder that so many through history have rejected their Christian beliefs because of this doctrine. (One might look with sympathy and sadness at Charles Darwin's account of his own movement away from his own religious background very largely because of this doctrine.)
And yet, it is a wonder. Once we have tasted of this immeasurable love, it is a wonder that anyone could reject God. The tension consists in discovering such wonderful things about God while at the same time believing God must allow such terrible [torture]. For some it's just a matter of rejecting or modifying this particular belief in hell, so far as the evidence allows them. What else can you do? Once you've met him, how can you leave him?
There is nothing dishonest about this posture. Unless or until one could come up with a case against God which is closed and irrefutable, we wouldn't have the right to judge God as guilty of evil. Wouldn't we do the same for any close friend? We would cling to their innocence until the evidence against them is conclusive. C. S. Lewis points out that this is how scientific and simple factual knowledge differ from personal knowledge and religious knowledge. Our belief in God's existence, say, is based on good evidence just as is scientific knowledge. But after that point we come to encounter more than lifeless facts, we encounter a person.2
Conditional Immortality and the Problem of Love
In the light of [this] problem of eternal . . . separation, even some now popular alterations of {4}this doctrine hardly appear to help. For example, conditionalism (or conditional immortality), the belief that the damned will eventually cease conscious existence, is gaining ground among evangelicals. [I will sometimes call this view simply annihilationism. When I use the word in this context the differences between this view and normal secular annihilationism must be kept in mind. Extinction of consciousness does not occur immediately at death in this view.] John R. W. Stott, Clark Pinnock and others, contemporary scholars who are highly esteemed in the evangelical world, have presented impressive arguments that this is the more biblical view. The horror of conscious unending torment is removed, but the horror of annihilation and the eternal loss of those we love is not. With this annihilationist view God cannot be accused of evil or injustice. Whether we deserve punishment or not is not even at issue at this point. Even if we have lived morally perfect lives, if God gave us existence, God has every right to take it back. Just because we happen to exist does not mean that we have the right to exist.
Conditionalism still presents the one enormous problem we have already alluded to however. How can God allow this eternal separation? If God loves the lost so much more than we ever could, the problem is much more acute for God. How can God's love bear such a loss?
I'm sure Flew will not mind my bringing up arguments against the doctrine of hell which he himself would be less apt to [put forward]. One who assumes our lives will be unending will find problems in eternal separation from loved ones which one who does not assume an afterlife would not as likely mention.
Some, like the great church father Origen, have substantially grasped this problem and have claimed that God's love necessitates the eventual salvation of everyone. Others, like C. S. Lewis, have found one intractable problem with this view however. If salvation is necessary then salvation is forced. We must have the ability to reject love. God does not force his love upon anyone; God isn't a divine rapist.
A television talk show once hosted a discussion between some religious and antireligious panelists. Somehow the conversation got to the issue of hell and one of the religious speakers was quick to assure the audience that everyone will go to heaven. The atheist (I believe) retorted something like, "But what if I don't want to go to your heaven? Do you think I want to spend eternity with you? And I certainly don't want to spend eternity with your God." Will we force them into heaven? The child I have loved since birth, the one I can never cease to love; if . . . she rejects my love, I cannot force it. I must accept our separation, even our eternal separation, if she so chooses.
But isn't this separation from God the essence of hell? When Faustus asks Mephistopheles why he isn't in hell, the demon replies that ever since he had been cast from God's presence there has never been a time he has not been in hell. When the apostle Paul talks about the lot of the lost he sometimes speaks simply of exclusion from God's presence. The concept of existential despair we've touched on shows us that this anguish of separation from God we now experience might be just a foretaste of our future condition once this state of separation is fully experienced, once our condition is fully understood and grasped. And yet, as Lewis argued, it is still conceivable that hell is locked from the inside out.
Simply because someone is in pain or misery does not mean that he or she will choose to remove that pain. It's not at all uncommon for people to cling to self-destructive practices or attitudes for the sake of some insignificant desire. Lewis points this out and masterfully explores the psychology of God rejection in his The Great Divorce.3 For example:
"Milton was right," said my Teacher. "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality. Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends." (69-70.)
{5} Consider the human response to pain as a fundamental factor in the [answer to the] problem of pain for theism. It suggests one very obvious condition by which some might choose to never leave hell. The basic and likely earliest biblical explanation for God's allowing evil is found in the first chapters of the book of Job. Now all undeserved pain is recompensed or redeemed, that's not in question. But the initial pain is allowed for a reason: the testing of our choice to reject or to accept the God who yet deserves our commitment. It's a much greater good that that choice be made, whether for or against God, than that it not be faced at all.
How does this suggest that some might never choose to leave hell? If we will not forgive God and give to God our love and commitment, we commit the evil of keeping from God that which God deserves. If we stand against God in our hatred for allowing us pain, we will never be able to leave the hell of separation from God. Hell is thus eternal but only potentially so. Because of God's love, those in hell are . . . offered a way out. They are given freedom on the possibility that they might choose to leave. But because God will not, cannot, force their love, we can accurately speak of the possibility of an unending conscious hell.
Let me suggest why I think that it is very conceivable that God could not have made us so that we could have fulfillment unless we are in relationship with God. Before anything was made[, the Christian would say], God was. God was love and was infinitely valuable, infinitely deserving of love. If we were created from God's hand, we had to have part in that essential nature of all that was; we had to have part in [that nature that was from] God, yet without being God ourselves. We had to reflect the reality, the essence of the source of the universe. How could God have made us any other way? All that comes from God must relate to this Source as it truly is; it must adore that which deserves all adoration. It is incomplete until it acknowledges and dwells in focused adoration [upon] its infinitely valuable source, at least so far as it can be conscious of God.
So if God created us, we couldn't have been made so that we could live without God. And if God found it necessary that we be free, it also follows that we can consign ourselves to this hell of separation if we so choose.
Here I'm sure you'll object that the doctrine of God's omnipotence precludes any talk about God not being able to do something and it precludes hell entirely. You've taken that approach with the basic problem of evil (e.g., in the now famous 'University Discussion' in your response to Basil Mitchell). I tend to think that in the final analysis the problem of evil ultimately comes down to this issue.
Why can't God make any desired greater good occur without allowing any of these claimed necessities like justice, pain, freedom, the testing of our choice, a need for God, etc.? Doesn't omnipotence mean just that ability? Well no, in fact it doesn't. It might be simply logically impossible for one goal to be obtained without following certain conditions. As Lewis points out, it's like creating square circles: what we are really talking about is simply nonsense. So unless you can show that there is no logical impossibility involved for God to follow a particular course to attain the desired goal, any argument following this approach fails against God allowing the kind of hell we've discussed.
But surely we have some idea of the limits of what this greatest possible good must include or exclude. Wouldn't God at least have known that some would have chosen (or even might have chosen) this state of separation? Wouldn't God have never created rather than to have allowed this?
Potential Restorationism and the Biblical View of the Fate of the Lost
In order to look at this objection adequately we need to understand a little better the view of hell here presented. Specifically, does this potential restorationism at all fit the biblical view of the afterlife? For example, Jesus portrayed hell as a place it's inhabitants would like very desperately to leave (see his parable of the rich {6} man and Lazarus, Luke 16:19-31). How can it be considered a biblical view to believe that those in hell may choose to leave?
Two other features of the biblical hell are that it is a place of punishment and that the degree of punishment will vary according to one's deeds (Luke 10:12; 12:47-48). So it will not be a single uniform state for all. Certainly the all too common image of everyone being thrown into a lake of fire to endure the same torment is hardly accurate to scripture.
Hebrew and Christian scripture also establishes as the basic principle of justice the one you seem to admit to: A person should receive "a punishment commensurate to the crime." It speaks of one person losing one's own eye for taking another person's eye. If I take someone's life, I deserve to lose mine. Throughout the entire Hebrew scripture the wicked are threatened with nothing worse than that, other than an afterlife of shame (Daniel 12:2). The prophets foretold death and destruction, famine and slavery to the wicked, but punishment beyond the grave is not mentioned. From Jesus we are taught that there will be punishment in the next life but we are never told that the basic standards of justice we have learned from Moses and the prophets are negated. Some offenses will deserve greater punishment than they might seem (e.g., Luke 17:2) but that's only because of our tendency to diminish the value of persons or to ignore how very horrible and harmful some offenses might be. Nevertheless, such punishments would also be completely in keeping with the basic principles of the ancient Hebrew law.
With this in mind one possible Christian view might begin with a state of punishment after death which is of a limited duration since all sins deserve varying degrees of punishment. While this period lasts, the lost will desire to leave but will not be able to do so.
Well what of hell being eternal? Doesn't it say that in the Christian scripture too? Perhaps after this period of punishment is ended one is offered release. For those who remain, hell is as eternal as they choose it to be. Hell may now be nothing more than the pure state of separation from God. And God will constantly offer reconciliation; God's love requires that. Those who have loved ones who have [in essence] chosen [this] hell know that they cannot force their love, but they should also know that they are not without hope.
Some passages in the New Testament do seem to speak of hell as being eternal with no possibility of release. But these might [in fact] be speaking of only the first aspect of hell we have discussed, the temporary aspect. The variations of the words usually taken to indicate unendingness, aiónios and aión, cannot be shown to indicate anything more than 'of the age to come' or (at best) 'ages of the ages.'4 There is simply no good linguistic evidence that hell is necessarily unending. And there is some evidence that Jesus did imply that at least one portion of hell would have an end.
In one of his parables Jesus told of a servant who was forgiven much that he owed but who wouldn't forgive another who owed him little (Matthew 18:21-35). The unforgiving servant would be tortured until he paid all that he owed, the king decreed. Jesus said this could happen to his listeners (v. 25) who would in that case be the lost, the damned. (He says that if we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven; thus Jesus must here be speaking of the lost.) Jesus says that all that is owed must be paid and that once paid, release is possible.5 This notion does make more sense when applied to the lost since the debt of sin is paid by enduring punishment, and sin deserves only a limited punishment. As Jesus said, some will be given few stripes, some many, according to what they deserve (Luke 12:47-48).
Though it is admittedly speculative to suggest two phases of hell of differing natures, etc., it is not outside of the Christian's domain to speculate. According to the Torah, Moses said that there is much that God has not revealed (Deuteronomy 29:29). God has revealed all that we need, perhaps far more, but not everything. The very meaning of the usual Hebrew word for 'ages' or 'forever' carries the intimation that there is much that has not yet been disclosed, and that there may be following ages is not {7} precluded.6 I believe it was the great Origen who first presented one of the most important principles of theology and biblical exegesis: Where the scripture is clear we may not deviate, where it is not clear we are free to speculate. If our speculation brings us to a viewpoint that best answers the moral problem and it doesn't face inconsistencies with other scriptures, as does the idea of an actually eternal hell, then we can feel assured that we most probably have the truth.
A well known evangelical Christian had a son who rejected his parent's faith and who later committed suicide. After much agonizing prayer [the parents] felt that God was telling them something. They felt that God was giving them a passage of scripture: that in the face of all their fears, "perfect love casts out fear." But unless their love could make an actual effect on the situation, perfect love could only make their fear perfectly overwhelming. The more one loves, the greater the loss. It cannot be claimed that it is a necessary feature of the Christian view that death ultimately seals the fate of the lost. Yes, "it is appointed unto a man once to die and after that the judgment," says the writer of Hebrews, but the judgment itself may offer hope when its decreed punishment is expended.
Should God Not Have Created?
With this more complete understanding of this view of the afterlife [we call potential restorationism] we can now return to your questions. Would it have been better for God to never have created at all than for some to be lost? First of all, [one might ask about the first aspect of hell], "If I do evil and endure the appropriate, limited punishment for that evil, would it have been better that I had never been born than to endure this pain?" This we certainly cannot claim.
What of the second aspect of hell as we have presented it? Self-chosen separation from God might be near nonexistence. Certainly the secularist cannot . . . offer any substantial reason to exist rather than not to exist even in this life. But can't we say that it would be better never to have existed at all than to be separated from God? I'm almost tempted to deny that: to say, for the sake of defending God's goodness, that it is better to endure the hell of alienation from God than not to exist at all. In some ways sheer nonexistence and the hell of despair might be equal: It might be just as well not to exist as to exist in this state. If this were the case, at least the one reason we have offered against conditionalism, or annihilationism, the possibility of hope, suggests one reason it would be better that the lost continue to exist.
But I don't think that to defend God's goodness we really need to claim that [this second aspect of] hell is better than nonexistence. In itself, the despair of separation from God could be worse than nonexistence. So should we complain to God for allowing such a state rather than snuffing us out? Can we seriously complain that God isn't perfectly good because we are allowed to choose to wallow in our own misery? No, there is something about the dignity of human freedom that tells us that it is better to be able to choose . . . hell than not to exist at all. It's not that freedom gives us our 'essence' or makes us something of significance; there is nothing in freedom that we can cling to in this way. Rather, freedom allows us the dignity of losing significance and dwelling in the pain of separation from God. This is the pain of eternal hell; it's the despair which persons alone could be self-doomed to know which a lesser consciousness would not be aware of.
Well, I haven't defended an eternal hell, at least not an inevitably eternal hell. I think your critique is too strong. (And because I am a Christian theist you would be right in surmising that it is not very often that I would say that; there are not very many of your arguments that I think do work.) I do think the potentially eternal hell we've presented does meet your objections, at least the ones covered so far. And I think I've defended this view as a legitimate biblical view. I do not say the biblical view because; given the nature of the biblical statements involved, my arguments cannot conclusively show that this is the only possible view.
Is There Hope After Death?
{8} But I wonder if this isn't the greatest problem with potential restorationism. This view offers hope for eternity, but what if there is no hope after death? Scripture itself certainly is not clear that there is hope after death for the lost. Suppose the annihilationists are correct, for example. [In fact this is the only view of hell that we can consider that denies hope after death. The traditional eternalist view we have already rejected.] We've noted earlier that we cannot bring up an accusation against God's goodness with [the annihilationist] view. If we had been nonexistent and God gave us existence, it is fully within God's right to give us nonexistence again, regardless of how morally good our lives [have been]. God's special gift of life that includes immortality is reserved only for those who accept it. [But of course, under annihilationism God should not be considered obligated to offer immortality to anyone.]
So let us suppose that there is no hope for the lost after death [as the annihilationists say]. This is a problem that cuts two ways. On the one hand I have argued for potential restorationism because it does offer hope. The saved do not face the anguish of knowing that their lost loved ones have no hope of life. The lost do not face absolute hopelessness. This also better fits the biblical view of a God who loves the world far more than we ever could. If our love requires that we would forever seek a way of escape for the lost, how much more would God's love?
On the other hand the prospect of having hope in the next life might cause some to think that they can neglect their obligations to God. If there is a God who deserves our commitment and adoration and we fail to give it, we do deserve God's judgment, even if it consists of nothing more than giving us what we ask for. At this point it is important to see that this obligation applies to everyone, even those who think that they disbelieve in God's existence with complete intellectual honesty. The question is, Would you give your commitment to God if you believed God exists and deserves your highest commitment and love? The biblical view is that people are judged on the basis of their choices, not their knowledge (e.g., Deuteronomy 13:1-14). Knowledge or delusion follows from our choices according to passages such as Romans 1 and 2, 2 Thessalonians 2, and John 7:17. These choices may be based upon our initial knowledge or even upon mere hypotheticals, as I have suggested above. Should we gain further knowledge as a result of our choices, we will be judged [according to] our new choices concerning that knowledge. [Thus we may progress to greater knowledge or to less according to our choices concerning our moral obligations.]
If there is no hope of reprieve after death, then the issue is much more serious and costly. Those who might think that as long as they have hope of eventual release would be willing to endure a limited period of punishment should consider the possibility that God gives them the responsibility of choice only in this life. It may be that we are given only a certain period of time to make our choices and that after that we must accept the unalterable consequences of those choices. The possibility that there is no hope after death frightens me. How can we bear the thought that those we love will be truly gone forever? And yet as we have seen, there would certainly be no injustice on God's part for giving us the punishment we are due and then simply putting us out of existence. Perhaps God has determined (or God's nature is such) that God's love must be allowed to be overridden in this way by one final human choice. Might God have determined that we be given the power to put ourselves outside of God's love, even to the extent of our choosing nonexistence? Does this contradict God's infinite love? I have argued for potential restorationism because it seems to me that [annihilationism does contradict God's love]. But the issues are subtle. It is at least conceivable that with fuller understanding and/or information (perhaps more than we can possess in this life) we will someday say, "Why didn't I see it before? Of course God's infinite love allows our nonexistence, if that's what we {9}choose." Though I have conjectured that there is a way out after the punishment of the first 'age to come' is finished, such a possibility is hardly something those who reject God should put their hope in.
Having said all this, I still wonder if potential restorationism, if fully understood, is an easy way out for those who would do evil. Justice requires exact punishment. And as we've said already, our tendency to neglect the worth of others often causes us to underestimate the degree of punishment we would actually deserve. Scripture is very clear that whatever the results, it is to be avoided at all costs.
Arguments for Conditionalism and Universalism
1. Dennis Jensen's paper, to which he has asked me to respond here, begins by quoting three passages from my contributions to The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God.1 In all of these I was concerned primarily if not quite exclusively with the eternity of the threatened punishments of Hell. For me there—as I put it in the first of passages quoted—the difficulty was "reconciling the official account of God's goodness and justice" with the contention that many human beings"—perhaps the majority—were destined for unlimited and eternal torment, and were to be sustained in that condition by his power."
In considering this difficulty Jensen's first move is to note that "conditionalism (or conditional immortality), the belief that the damned will eventually cease conscious existence, is gaining ground among evangelicals." Since to adopt conditionalism or universalism (like Origen's inevitable restorationism) is to abandon any doctrine of eternal punishment, the best hope of reaching agreement upon what is at present the immediate issue in dispute is for me to try to remove his apparent hesitation about accepting any form of conditionalism or universalism unreservedly.
The first of the hesitations arises about the variety for which Origen argued. The objection, urged by C. S. Lewis and others, is that "If salvation is necessary then salvation is forced" (4). This argument is fallacious, depending as it does upon confounding logical with physical necessity.7 From the proposition 'She will choose to do that' it follows necessarily as a matter of logic that she will in fact so choose. But that proposition neither presupposes nor entails that she will have been forced to do so. My electoral behavior, for instance, like that of my political associates, is entirely predictable. But from that and similar facts about other equally committed partisans it cannot validly be inferred, nor of course is it true, that electors in the UK are normally subject to intimidation.
For Jensen a second reason for hesitation arises out of the particular variety of conditionalism espoused by "John R. W. Stott, Clark Pinnock and others." In this, as Jensen puts it, "The horror of conscious unending torment is removed, but the horror of annihilation and the eternal loss of those we love is not." I confess, as my sometime Supervisor Gilbert Ryle used to say, "not very shamefacedly" that I am at a loss to explain how anyone can feel the prospect "annihilation and the eternal loss of those we love" to be comparable in horror with the prospect "of conscious unending torment" save by suggesting that the former is being thought of as a prospect for oneself and the latter a prospect for other people.
A third reason for hesitation is found in the insistence that, even if the possibility of leaving Hell remained eternally open, some might choose not to leave:
If we stand against God in our hatred . . . , we will never be able to leave the hell of separation from God. Hell is thus eternal but only potentially so. Because of God's love, those in hell are constantly offered a way out. They are given freedom on the possibility that they might choose to leave. But because God will not, cannot, force their love, we can accurately speak of an unending conscious hell (emphasis original).
{10} But this is, surely, a paradigm case of a torturer trying to force someone to make the choice which that torturer wants them to make? Suppose that we were considering the possible behavior of an actual human rather than an hypothetical Divine torturer, would Jensen, would anyone, want to maintain that that torturer was not trying to force his victim to choose whatever was the sole alternative to the indefinite continuation of the torture? If it is to be maintained that God insists that human choices to do what he wants us to do should be free choices, then the Divine torturer—unlike human torturers—must at the very least permit his victims to suicide.8
Can God Do the Logically Impossible?
2. Next, a little but not entirely by the way, I want to take issue with Jensen's statement that:
Here I'm sure you'll object that the doctrine of God's omnipotence precludes any talk about God not being able to do something and it precludes hell entirely. You've taken that approach with the basic problem of evil (e.g. in the now famous 'University Discussion' in your response to Basil Mitchell (5).
It looks as if Jensen's source for that 'University Discussion' must have been not its first reprinting in New Essays in Philosophical Theology (1955); 9 but one of its thirty or more later full or partial reprintings. For if he had read my two short pieces on 'Theology and Falsification' in that first reprinting, then he surely would have gone on to read my much longer and more substantial essay on 'Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom', which reappears there as Chapter VIII.10 That considered what was there christened 'The Free-will Defense', of which
The first move is to point out: "Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God" (Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q. XXV, Art. 4); that is, even God cannot do what is logically impossible; that is, if you make up a self-contradictory, a nonsense, sentence it won't miraculously become sense just because you have put the word 'God' as its subject. The third formalism is greatly superior to the other two, because it brings out the nature of logical impossibility. It should appeal to theologians, as being free of the unwanted and of course entirely incorrect suggestion that 'being unable to do the logically impossible' is some sort of limitation on or weakness in Omnipotence, whereas the only limitation lies in men who contradict themselves and talk nonsense about God (145).
Since even the physically impossible must be possible for God, any attempt at a rational theodicy has to argue that all the perceived evils requiring justification are logically necessary preconditions of goods sufficient to compensate for the occurrence of those evils. That was of course the line which Leibniz took.11 Believing that it had been revealed that the great majority of human beings are destined to spend eternity in hell, and arguing that if God created a world it could not but be the best of all (logically) possible worlds, Leibniz had to conclude that the actual Universe is itself the best of all possible worlds. That unbelievable conclusion famously provoked, among other things, Voltaire's satirical novel Candide.
Existential Despair
3. At one point Jensen asks me the question: "If there is such a God, if it is conceivable that your accusations against this God are mistaken, and if we can find relationship with God such that our existential despair can be removed, then would you seek such a relationship?"
Certainly it is conceivable that my "accusations against this God are mistaken," just as it is conceivable that my atheist and indeed all my other beliefs are mistaken. No problem there. Certainly too if I believed in the existence of an omnipotent Being wanting me to perform various actions and proposing to penalize me if I did not, then any response other that the most immediate total and servile obedience would be absolutely crazy. No intellectual difficulty there either. For me, therefore, the only problem arises from the idea of being attracted into a "relationship with God" in order to relieve "our existential despair." For "existential despair" is something {11} with which I am not aware of being myself afflicted. Should I be; and, if so, why?
Jensen asserts that, although "I may create for myself a purpose, or goals and live for the sake of attaining those goals . . . it's really just a meaningless game. It doesn't matter whether I attain them or not." Well yes, I have created a purpose and goals and, up to a point, I do live for the sake of attaining those goals. But why is this supposed to be "just a meaningless game" and why doesn't it really "matter whether I attain" these goals or not? They are my goals and my purposes and they do matter to me and to some others; though not to as many as I could wish.
Part of the explanation may be that for Jensen nothing "really matters" or is truly meaningful unless it either is or is associated with something which will go on for ever. But, surely, it is at least equally if not more reasonable to hold that the very brevity of human life makes everything more important; and that today urgently offers us the only chance there will ever be of doing what can only be done today? But the main point of the explanation would seem to be that "existential despair" is a supposedly pathological syndrome custom built (anglice, 'made to measure') to be cured only by belief in God. That must be the reason why Jensen is so sure that "the deadly absurdity of existence" is something which "the honest secularist knows too well."
Creator/Sustainer God Responsible for Human Evil
4. During the debate in Denton, Texas—now nearly twenty years ago [this statement was written in 1994/95]—I concentrated my fire upon the doctrine of hell, and especially upon the inordinacy of eternal punishment of temporal offenses. I did so because I believed that was the kind of critique most likely to be appreciated by the large and very diverse audience there assembled. But Jensen is quite right in his conjecture that on other occasions I go on to supplement it by contending that "this hypothetical God . . . is not only evil for allowing evil in the world . . . but . . . is also at least something of an accomplice in our actions . . .". This is indeed both a more comprehensive and a more fundamental contention. For it challenges not just the justice of eternal punishments but the justice of a Creator's inflicting any punishment at all upon his creatures. Einstein put this challenge with a characteristically gentle firmness. For if this hypothetical God:
is omnipotent then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration, is also his work. How is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishments and rewards he would be to a certain extent passing judgment on himself?12
Jensen believes that "there are good answers" to my "arguments on these points" (p. 2). Presumably he would, if required, deploy some version of what I christened 'the Free-will Defense.'13 This involves urging that, given that God gave us humans free will, therefore we and not God must bear the ultimate responsibility for what we choose to do. The premise of this argument is both true and of the last importance. But the conclusion here is not validly drawn. Certainly it is one of the most remarkably and fundamental peculiarities of human beings that we are members of a kind of organism which can and cannot but make choices.14 And provided that we are not, as the Judeo-Christian or Islamic theist believes, the creatures of an omnipotent Creator we must all individually bear the ultimate responsibility for the choices which we individually make. In the words of the notice which President Truman (1945-52) famously kept on his desk in the White House: "The buck stops here!"
But where that crucial proviso is not satisfied the implications are very different. Consider first two statements by the Angelic Doctor:
. . . Just as God not only gave being to things when they first began, but is also—as the conserving cause of being—the cause of their being as long as they last . . . so he also not only gave things their operative powers when they were first created, but is also {12} always the cause of these in things. Hence, if this divine influence stopped every operation would stop. Every operation, therefore, of anything is traced back to him as its cause.15
The implications are spelled out more fully in two later chapters:
God alone can move the will, as an agent, without doing violence to it. . . . Some people . . . not understanding how God can cause a movement of our will in us without prejudicing the freedom of the will, have tried to explain . . . authoritative texts wrongly: that is, they would say that God 'Works in us, to wish and to accomplish' means that he causes in us the power of willing, but not in such a way that he makes us will this of that. . . . These people are, of course, opposed quite plainly by authoritative texts of Holy Writ. For it says in Isaiah (xxvi, 12), "Lord, you have worked all our work in us." Hence we receive from God not only the power of willing but its employment also.16
It has been and is widely believed that the horrific harshness of predestination—with its inescapable implication that God makes people do what he proposes later to damn them for having done—is some sort of eccentricity peculiar and confined to Calvinist ultras. This is quite wrong. In fact, among the intellectually first class the differences are in the force and frankness of expression rather than in substantial doctrine. How could it be otherwise, once the theist doctrine of creation as constant and total dependence is taken seriously?
Calvin was, of course, as almost everyone knows, uninhibited in insisting that God must be the ultimate author of human sin, as of everything else:
The ears of some are offended when one says that God willed it. But I ask you, what else is the permission of him who is entitled to forbid, or rather who has the thing in his own hands, but an act of will?17
Substantially the same contention can be found in many other and surely more surprising sources. Perhaps most surprising, at any rate to those aware of the present condition of that organization,18 is the 1922 Commission report on Doctrine in the Church of England. This admitted "that the whole course of events is under the control of God . . . logically this involves the affirmation that there is no event, and no aspect of any event, even those due to sin and so contrary to the Divine will, which falls outside the scope of his purposive activity" (47).
Noticing that Luther wrote de servo arbitrio (concerning The Bondage of the Will) and St. Augustine de libero arbitrio (concerning The Freedom of the Will), but then forgetting that Luther was an Augustinian Friar, many have falsely assumed that their teachings were as contrary as the titles of these two books. We should begin to suspect the truth—their substantial agreement—when we find the Reformer saying:
Now, by 'necessarily' I do not mean 'compulsorily'. . . . a man without the Spirit of God does not do evil against his will, under pressure, as though he were taken by the scruff of his neck and dragged into it, like a thief or footpad being dragged off against his will to punishment; but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily.19
Certainly not compulsorily; for the necessity which Luther meant was that imposed by the Creator's total and constantly and continuously exercised manipulative power, a necessity which is as he so clearly saw entirely consistent with, to all this-worldly appearances, our choosing and acting freely. Yet this does not begin to make us ultimately and justly accountable for doing whatever God makes us thus, to all this-worldly appearance, freely choose to do. To his enormous credit Luther not only saw this but, unlike Aquinas20 and so many others, was obviously appalled:
The highest degree of faith is to believe He is just, though of His own will he makes us . . . proper subjects for damnation, and seems (in the words of Erasmus) "to delight in the torments of poor wretches and to be a fitter object for hate than for love." If I could by any means understand how this same God . . . can yet be merciful and just, there would be no need for faith.21
Erasmus had asked: "Why then does He not alter those evil wills which He moves?" To {13} which question Luther's response was substantially that of the Epistle of Romans (ix: 18-23). It was that:
It is not for us to inquire into these mysteries, but to adore them. If flesh and blood take offense and grumble, well, let them grumble; they will achieve nothing; grumbling will not change God! And however many of the ungodly stumble and depart, the elect will remain.22
Salvation Via Prudence, Not Intellectual Honesty
5. By now it should have become obvious what sort of answer I shall have to give to such questions as: ". . . if you were able to say that you believed that God exists and offers a way out of our deserved (but limited) punishment, would you admit that we should gratefully accept it?"
If I came to believe in the existence of the God described by Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and the author of the Epistle to the Romans, then I would of course become eager to say and do whatever was required to escape threatened punishment. But, given those freshly acquired beliefs, I could not in consistency hold that I deserved any punishment or for that matter any reward for any of what I had previously regarded as my actions. For these were all, without my knowing it, caused not by me—with the buck stopping here—but by God.
No doubt it is or would be part of God's requirements that I should persuade myself that I really did deserve those punishments. But before succeeding in the thence prudent process of self-persuasion I should be bound to be dangerously tempted to construe all praise of God's goodness and justice in the manner suggested by Thomas Hobbes in Chapter XXXI of his Leviathan:
. . . in the attributes which we give to God, we are not to consider the signification of philosophical truth; but the signification of pious intention to do him the greatest honor we are able.
If God Determines All
Jensen's first response
Before critiquing your response I think you should be aware of just how very much I do agree with you on some very significant issues. You ended your comments imagining yourself believing in the existence of and perhaps even standing face to face (so to speak) with one you claim to be the stern God of "Aquinas, Luther, Calvin" and others. In this strange new world intellectual honesty is a thing of the past and prudence requires you to say and even to force yourself to think any way this frightening God wants you to. But for the present you aren't in that fearful world and we can imagine you posing for us your question: "How can you deserve any punishment or praise for evil or good you have done if God has determined it all? And how can any praise be due God for justice or goodness?"
Now if I faced the same situation and if prudence hasn't forced me to the same abandonment of the intellect, I must admit that I would have to ask some very similar questions. For if God has determined all my thoughts and actions, and if I sin not out of my free choice but because God has made me to do so, then I wouldn't deserve punishment for my sins and God's unrecompensed punishment of the wicked would be reason to say that such a God is evil. As Wesley said to the Calvinist Toplady, "The one you call God, we call the devil."
At least that is the only honest conclusion I can come to at this time. But as I had asked you to do, to consider the possibility that you might be wrong, so I would feel constrained to do myself. Unlike yourself, I would be face to face with one I had worshipped for years. I would ask questions. I would ask how this could be that we could deserve punishment for evil we had done when we had no choice in the matter. I would admit, like I asked you to admit, that perhaps I had missed something in the logic and the analysis of the situation. But if I could come to no other conclusion than that this God does not deserve my adoration, I would have to say, "I'm sorry, I have the wrong God. I've made a mistake, {14} it is not you that I have worshipped all these years. Excuse me, I'll have to go now. I need to see if I can find the God who does deserve my honor and love and worship. I need to see if there is such a God." The only way I could justify worship of such a deterministic God would be if there were no punishment in the afterlife.
If God Deserves Your Commitment, Would You Give It?
At this point I'd like to focus on what I consider to be the most important issue in our discussion. I think that I made a mistake when I proposed several questions to you for your response. By doing so you were able to select features of one or two but you were able to evade, I think, the most important questions. (And I do appreciate your answering those questions which you did. This will help us to reach more deeply into some very interesting and important issues.)
What is the most important question? Very simply, "If there is a God who deserves to be most highly valued, to receive our worship and highest adoration, would you give it?" If you admit for the sake of the argument that your accusations concerning the problem of evil, the problem of God sustaining all of creation, and whatever other problems you would bring up could be mistaken, then the existence of such a God is not inconceivable. Of course we aren't talking about whether you or I feel attracted to such a God, whether we want to love God; we're just talking about whether or not we would give to God all that this God deserves from us. And whether we can determine what it is about such a God that provides this unique characteristic, being deserving of our highest adoration, is not really in question either. I have some ideas but they are very speculative and might be completely mistaken. I simply begin with the question, "If there is such a God, would we do it?"
Does God Deserve Our Obedience?
One thing should be said about a particular image—perhaps not a fully stated criticism—I sense in your comments. It's the picture of your standing before God (or at least simply discovering that there is such a God) and being fully willing to obey any command in order to avoid God's wrath. But I would maintain that God must not be seen as an absolute Other threatening us with undeserved punishment if we fail to obey some arbitrary commands. Certainly some of God's commands might be completely arbitrary, but even these should be obeyed simply because we're talking about One who deserves to be obeyed. But the usual commands, at least from Jewish and Christian scriptures, are hardly arbitrary; they involve fulfilling our responsibilities to God and others, doing good to others and not harming them.23
No Freedom or Responsibility if All Causally Determined
Your first argument (countering the claim that if salvation is necessary then it's forced) draws us into several related issues which probably would best be considered together. After dealing with these I will return to your other specific responses.
You say that your electoral behavior is predictable but that that doesn't mean that it's forced. If your behavior is completely predictable, it could be (1) simply because you have in the past chosen to act solely upon a then current decision for all future decisions of that kind and you do not later exercise the choice to choose otherwise. Or it may be (2) that you always act solely upon [and by] the motives present to your consciousness.
So can one's present electoral behavior be forced? For (1) it's self-forced; that is, one forces it upon oneself. Of course this is hardly a problem. If this can be called a loss of freedom, it's not a significant loss. If I make a choice and decide never to change my mind on the issue and if I am thereby able to remove all future decision making powers from myself on this issue then I have still made that initial free choice. Because I {15}am the same person through time, my past free choice might be considered my present free choice in that it takes its place.
Suppose (2) that it is our nature to act solely upon motives present to us in any choice we make. Suppose we simply look to the greater motive automatically and consider that our decision. In that case our behavior would be predictable in principle. But furthermore, we would be forced to our 'chosen act' by our nature and we cannot choose otherwise. It's the motives which happen to be present to us that determine our decisions.
Suppose one looks at the various motives present to oneself and instead of choosing by the greater motive (choice A) opts for the lesser (choice B). If I understand your thought in 'Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom'9 you would say that one could do so, that such an act is an act of free choice, and that this act has yet been causally determined. A future scientist would (in principle) be able to trace back the causal factors, since all of our choices and actions are causally determined (you would say), and would know that this person would choose (B) instead of (A). Our scientist so understands the nexus or chain of cause and effect that he or she can foresee any future event.
So we act and feel as though we 'freely' choose (B). We even test our abilities by choosing the option (B) which we're aware we have less or weaker motives for choosing. And yet this new motive—wanting to test our ability to freely choose—is actually added to our previous motives for (B) making it stronger than (A). And our hypothetical scientist would say, "See, I told you you would choose (B). The causal factors all indicated that (B) would be chosen. Even the causes for your motivation to test your 'free choices' I have traced to earlier causes in the interwoven and inalterable matrix of cause and effect." (Or perhaps, in order not to add more causal factors to the situation, our scientist [made no such statement but] wrote the prediction on a paper and hid it until now [for the chooser, the agent, to read.)
And yet you still call this free choice? All choices you make are determined by causal factors outside of your power to control and yet you think you aren't forced to such acts? You think you can choose between (A) and (B) but even the movement of your thoughts from one choice to the other or from one motive on your mental list to another is caused by forces, causes, outside of your control. Whatever you call it, you cannot be held responsible for your actions any more than you could be responsible if you were created and sustained by the deterministic God you critique.
A world of strict causal determinism destroys any possibility of responsibility. The court may tell a criminal that he did something for which it will place strong motives upon him never to do again but it cannot tell him that he is responsible or that he deserves his given punishment.
Introducing chance into the question won't solve anything either. (By this I mean true ontological chance—an uncaused event—not merely an event which we cannot predict because we don't know enough of the causes which produced it.) Can we be held responsible for an act we chose by chance?
The Nature of Freedom
As Wittgenstein said that ethics is transcendental, so also must freedom be. It must be other than causal determinism or chance, which is all that this world alone (without a creator transcendent of this world) can produce. Freedom, the ability of a person to choose without prior causal factors determining one's choice [and without the choice being mere chance] (our meaning for this term hereafter), must come from something transcendent of the world. Either that or there is no freedom and responsibility.
In their free choices persons are uncaused causes. We are the causes of choice (A) or (B) without prior causes determining our actions. Our choice God does not interfere with, does not determine. God, the uncaused cause of all existence, not all events, causes creatures to come {16} into being who posses the ability to also be uncaused causes of events. And yes, God also sustains our existence as well as that of everything else such that we would cease to exist if God's power were withheld. But in doing this God sustains our ability to be uncaused causes.
Creator/Sustainer God Not Responsible for Our Free Choices
You're so sure that there is an intrinsic contradiction in this notion of a creating/sustaining God producing such 'free' creatures. But where is it? Where is the inconsistency?
An omnipotent creating/sustaining God need not be the deterministic God you conclude with. Because God can create us with libertarian freedom we would be responsible for our actions and deserving of punishment if we do evil. Because God has determined that our choices be our own, that here God will not interfere, omnipotence is not in principle diminished but simply excluded from a particular area in order that the greater good occur. It is not that God cannot do something but rather has chosen not to.
So Einstein was wrong to assume that omnipotence requires that God control and determine every human thought, action, etc. and that God be responsible for each. It is not that I mean by the word 'omnipotence' something differently than Einstein means (although I would fall back on this claim if the reader finds my argument unconvincing), it is rather that this different definition is what the word must mean. Even omnipotence cannot achieve the greatest possible good without self-limitation because [this would be] logically impossible.
Proving Logical Impossibility
Must the theist be able to demonstrate logical impossibility? If we don't have logical impossibility, the most we might have is physical impossibility, which, you have argued, God must be able to do.
It seems to me that it should suffice to claim nothing more than that it could be logically impossible; it is not necessary to demonstrate it. When a critic wishes to claim that God must be able to do such and such—produce the greatest possible good without pain, foreknow future free choices without the choices actually eventually occurring, etc.,—the burden of proof is on the critic. In some cases, like those just mentioned, theists might be able to show plausibility or probability for their case but they may not, at least always, be able to demonstrate full logical impossibility for the critic's claims.
The issue of foreknowledge is a good example of how plausibility might be shown without demonstrating logical necessity. Lewis pointed out that God may only be able to foreknow a freely chosen act if it actually occurs.24 Thus God may foresee such acts in advance but cannot, once foreseen, refrain from creating the as of yet nonexistent actors. All that we can show to support this claim is plausibility. We might be able to even show that it is not conceivable that an event resulting from an uncaused cause could be foreknown unless it occurs. (Certainly our hypothetical onmicompetent scientist would be unable to foreknow such an event.) But we cannot give a logical demonstration that there cannot possibly be another kind of foreknowledge of an event resulting from an uncaused cause.
Alvin Plantinga's logical demonstrations are an excellent example of how some statements concerning what God can and cannot do might seem even plausible and yet be shown to be logically impossible.25 Most of us who lack such a logician's abilities might never have known that such a demonstration is even possible in any particular case. My point, again, is that we should have the right to claim that some things are logically impossible without needing to present a full logical demonstration.
Biblical Free Will Theodicy
It is so extremely important that we have this kind of libertarian freedom because only by this means can God know the most important {17} choice we could ever make: Will we choose to cling to or to reject the God who deserves our highest commitment and adoration? Indeed, will we do so in the face of pain and loss?
As we pointed out in the first presentation, this is the basic biblical reason for the existence of undeserved pain. The results God desires is this greatest possible good.26 It's people freely choosing God even in the face of the strong power pain has to draw us to reject God. So long as there is eventual recompense of any undeserved pain (and so long as God has this good reason for allowing this pain) God cannot be accused of evil. [God will compensate, redeem if you will, the pain endured. Christians understand that we will even have infinite time to make up for it.] Pain has a power over us on an existential level, on a level of our feelings or emotions. Will we let it draw us to reject God or will we stand above our feelings and affirm what reason tells us to affirm: that we [should] cling to the God who yet deserves our highest commitment? This is the trial of the faith, or the [trial of the] will, and it's a trial that applies to both theists and non-theists alike. But the biblical meaning of faith is to trust in that which the evidence gives us and in the face of emotional forces that draw us away from God. Contrary to what Luther says, we should not set up logically incompatible statements and say that faith means accepting them both.
For a more completely [intuitive and] satisfying theodicy for . . . specific problems, we should add to this the other free will based theodicies one finds in the Hebrew and Christian scripture.27 But I think the particular defense we've presented above is quite sufficient both intuitively and logically to answer the basic problem of pain and specifically that of undeserved pain. This ancient theodicy certainly answers the accusation you and Mill present: "To call such a being, ruthlessly paying an enormous price in evil means to attain his good ends, himself good is mere flattery: 'worthy only of those whose slavish fears make them offer the homage of lies to [this] Being. . . .' " (From your third counter to the usual free will defense in 'Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom' [p. 147]9. Notice also how directly this answers your second counter.) It is hardly [slavish] flattery if this is the only way the greatest good can be achieved.
It shouldn't be difficult to see why Leibniz' theodicy should incite such ridicule. If I understand him correctly, his compatiblism, his belief that (non-libertarian) free will is compatible with a form of causal determinism, left him open to the criticism that this is obviously not the best of all possible worlds and God could have made it far better. This conclusion is all the more undeniable if God has also ordained an eternal place of torment for persons who had no real choice in their actions. Some of your own writings provide an excellent example of how powerful a critique can be against this a view.
Necessity and Coercion
Let's return to the other responses you had mentioned, and specifically to your first claim that if salvation is necessary, it's not necessarily forced. In Lewis' claim to the contrary I don't see that he is speaking of either logical or physical necessity as you have. He is simply saying that if God chose to save everyone in spite of their choice to the contrary [or if they had no choice in the matter], then that would be forcing salvation on them. . . .
Your argument that causally predictable behavior is not forced has already been discussed. If you are saying that Lewis gave an argument that was along these lines then of course I would claim that it is his view that is correct. [Certainly this is a form of logical necessity. But unlike the example you gave, here coercion, of a type, does follow from the antecedent. For "salvation is necessary" means here that it is determined, whether causally or by whatever means God chooses. It does not mean that God happens to know that everyone will eventually choose salvation.]
Is Annihilation Better than Eternal Alienation from God?
{18} My hesitancy with conditionalism, that the thought of eternal annihilation is not something we can easily accept, does not mean I can compare it to the "horror of conscious unending torment" such as we find in the usual depiction of hell [that is, eternalism]. No, they cannot compare; but I would not want to say that these are even the alternatives. If I claim that hell is potentially eternal for anyone who would so choose it and so long as they choose it, that does not mean that I can say that this portion of hell should be called "conscious unending torment."
So long as we are by our choice separated from God, we are necessarily in some degree of anguish, at least so far as we are aware of our condition. Perhaps God could keep our consciousness level low enough that we are not aware of our need for God; maybe we should be reduced to an animalistic mentality. I wonder if this wouldn't be similar to an experiment carried out some years ago involving hallucinogenic drugs and . . . elderly subjects who were near death. The fear and concern with death was removed for many. The anticipation of their coming death, this one fact of our existence which is most powerful to drive us to consider the most important questions—the possibility of God's existence, an afterlife, our responsibility to God, etc.—is anesthetized, drugged out of existence before it can fulfill it's work.
Well, maybe God could so anesthetize us. But then, if we reject the God who deserves our commitment, wouldn't [rather an] existence fully aware of our condition be the punishment we deserve? . . .
Are you saying that such a prospect of being punished [in this way] forever seems to you to be obviously far worse than annihilation? If it really is worse then I think that God, out of mercy, would allow annihilation [or the anesthetized existence hypothesized above] rather than the prospect of such eternal punishment.
But is it really worse? I don't think it is. Perhaps there is some way to argue this a little more persuasively than I did in my first presentation.
Some eastern religions maintain a view of karma and reincarnation which says that we may live forever through successive lives and suffer through that time for evil we may continue to do. Except for the reincarnation part, this is essentially what I'm saying. Would you maintain that such a view of reincarnation is incomparably more horrible than annihilation? If you do, you're in the minority. Many, particularly in the western world, find this idea very appealing. Now I think they're being shortsighted for not seeing the problem those in the East would see here. (Most commonly in the East the goal is to get off the wheel of samsara because of the [pain and] futility of existence.) Nevertheless, most people will say that it is better to continue existing, even with such potentially eternal suffering, than to face annihilation.
I tend to think something akin to Lewis' 'grey city' (in The Great Divorce) would probably be closer to the nature of this second phase of hell. (And this isn't [much] different than the 'eternal punishment' of reincarnation.) . . .
One other factor we need to consider which I mentioned in my first presentation is hope. This is not a minor factor. Leaving open the possibility of release from hell leaves open the possibility that each person's greatest good, their ultimate joy, will yet occur. And this would be an immeasurably greater good for that person than nonexistence. So this is not merely, as you suggest, the suffering one person might quite selfishly want only for someone else.
I think this might help to answer your next accusation, that this is "a paradigm case of a torturer trying to force someone to make the choice which that torturer wants them to make." First of all, this is hardly torture as we would normally consider the term. I admit that I have used that or a similar term for this phase of hell thinking that the meaning would be understood to be broad enough to cover the state of 'eternal punishment' described above. But it wouldn't really be honest to build a case on images, to say that because the word 'torment' is used that of course one means everything we might conjure {19} up, say, from our memories of Dante's Inferno.
Secondly, in my first presentation we discussed how it is not at all uncommon to find people choosing to reject release from a particular pain for the sake of some insignificant desire. I think Lewis has argued very persuasively that hell can be locked from the inside out.
For your next major point (Section 2) I do have to apologize for not taking the time to look again at such a fundamental essay as 'Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom.' 9 I offer no excuse except negligence for I certainly should have been aware of this more thorough investigation of the subject. As to the particulars of this issue, these will be discussed later.
Existential Despair
Concerning your third section I have to admit that I do have a very hard time conceiving how anything "really matters" which does not last forever. (Although the fact that something is eternal doesn't in itself mean it has [significance].) It's just that the secular view of the limitation of our existence, our 'death' if you will, makes it so much more obvious that nothing does matter.
Think of those who had died in the holocaust for instance. Since the past is nonexistent and these people are now nonexistent (in the secularist view) all that happened to them does not matter. How can anything matter to nonexistent persons? Only the present exists, not the past.
In something of a strange way of speaking someone may say that these victims still 'exist' in his memory. But memories are nothing more than images in our minds. There are no real objects of these particular images anymore. Those having the memories can ascribe as much or as little importance to these images as is desired, just as they can ascribe as much value as they desire to anything else. Even a holocaust survivor, no matter how much she has endured, may, according to the strength of her will and mental abilities, allow those past events to be nonexistent in her mind.
You can ascribe as much importance to such past events as you desire just as you may ascribe as much value to the particular goals you have in your life. This may tell us something about your psychological state but it doesn't tell us anything else. It may 'really matter to me' never to step on a crack when I walk on a sidewalk, but this doesn't say anything about any reality outside of my own mind. Show me that something really matters outside of your own choice to have it matter to you.
We exist now in this particular moment which will soon no longer be and very soon we will have no more moments given us. Because the present is ultimately past and because soon there will be for us no more future to create the present out of, ultimately we are nothing. If we are nothing, how can we rationally justify our acts attempting to benefit anyone else (who is nothing) and how can we be concerned when someone harms someone else (who is nothing)?
We might cling to the moment and say that at least in the present moment we exist and others exist. But how can we honestly cling to that? Because soon it will not be, we must say that ultimately it is not. Imagine someone on his deathbed aware that he has precisely three minutes to live. Can he savor each moment? Can he cling to them as they vanish into nothingness?
As Dostoevsky said, "If there is no immortality then all things are lawful," and as Shakespeare said, life is indeed "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing."
Immortality alone does not solve the problem however; it is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for meaning. Why do those in the East desire to leave the wheel of reincarnation? Not simply to be rid of pain. If you build up enough good karma (in their view) you can expect some virtually painless future lives for yourself. One wants to leave the wheel because there is no point to it. We long for something more than mere existence, something to give meaning to existence more than that which we create in our own fantasy.
{20} Schopenhauer said that humankind is doomed to vacillate between the extremes of distress and boredom. Remove pain from existence, and especially an endless existence, and all you will have left is boredom. We are here but there is no reason that we're here. Sartre in Nausea demonstrates how whatever goals or diversions we embrace or create for ourselves, they all lead to an awareness of our futility if we are honest in our secularism. Boredom leads to nausea, perhaps not necessarily, but certainly for anyone who will not suppress their innate longing for significance, their longing to be something more than a pointless, purposeless blob of existence. Our longing for meaning can be fulfilled if there is a God who possesses transcendent . . . significance who can provide it for us, but it cannot be fulfilled in all intellectual honesty by the psychological delusion of self-created meaning.
As you say, the brevity of life does give us reason to urgently seek to accomplish something with our lives for others. But it does so only if there is an objective reason for our living and for their living; it does not if our reason is subjective and self-created. And if this is our only life then there can be no objective reason for living.
Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, the Church of England, and Paul
Your basic argument that a creator/sustainer God would be responsible for any evil we do was considered earlier. But you've also presented some supplemental arguments following the statements of some major Christian theologians and authorities that God does control and determine even our very choices.
The first thing that should be said in response is that if a Christian is anything, he or she must not be an authoritarian. By that I specifically mean that one cannot accept the word of any arbitrary authority to determine truth. Jesus and the New Testament writers always assumed that one should accept something to be true only on the basis of good evidence.
Certainly one reason we accept the truth of Jesus' statements is on the basis of an argument from authority, but not arbitrary authority. That particular argument says that because Jesus was evidenced to be the Messiah by prophecy and by the resurrection evidence, we have good reason to believe what he said. His statements concerning the essential truth of the Hebrew scripture and that his immediate followers would be given further spiritual truth gives us reason to accept those sources. Paul's teachings, in turn, would be accepted because Jesus' immediate followers, the apostles, accepted him as being specially sent of God.
Getting back to my first point, we do not have reason to accept something to be true just because an otherwise accepted authority said it. So it doesn't really matter who said what unless they have evidence to back up their claims. (And Isaiah 26:12 certainly does not support Aquinas' claims.) [I suspect that you could also add the latter Augustine to your list of advocates of this horrible doctrine.]
I might mention that one of your sources, the report from the Church of England, does not support your claim. To say that God controls "the whole course of events" could means that God allows free acts which will not change the final desired outcome of history. And yes, it is in God's "purposive activity" to allow the true possibility of sin. God can will to allow us free choice and thus the possibility of sin, and yet desire and [in this new sense] will that we not sin.
You make a passing reference to Romans 9 claiming that Paul also claimed that God controls the wills of the lost that they should be damned. This I would consider a more serious argument than any appeal to arbitrary authority because I think there is good reason to accept Paul's authority. But I would also maintain that Romans 9 says no such thing.
In verses 10-21 Paul is talking about God choosing individuals for particular purposes in history, not to their salvation or damnation. In verse 22 he does go on to talk about some who are "vessels of wrath, having been fitted for destruction." He does not say that [God had {21} fitted them or that] they had not fitted themselves for destruction but he does say that God "patiently bore with them," certainly a strange and inexplicable behavior if God completely and irrevocably determined their destruction. But more importantly, earlier Paul clearly said that the purpose of God's "patient" calling is to lead [people] to repentance (2:4). So God does desire and enable these, like all other people, to choose to be saved. [Again, in Ephesians (2:3-5), Paul told these followers that they were once by nature children of God's wrath but now they were brought to life by God's mercy. The similarity in terms, "vessels of wrath" and "children of wrath," show us that the objects of God's wrath are not inalterably so. Indeed, the NIV translates both phrased as "objects of wrath"]
Multiple Infinite Gods
1. Dennis Jensen's first response does much to advance discussion, with the result that we now begin to move into territory some of which is to me less familiar. But consider first his account of how he believes that he would respond if he came to realize that the Being whom "I had worshipped for years" did not, after all, deserve to be worshipped. He says that:
. . .if I could come to no other conclusion than that this God does not deserve my adoration, I would have to say, "I'm sorry, I have the wrong God. I've made a mistake, it is not you that I have worshipped all these years. Excuse me, I'll have to go now; I need to see if I can find the God who does deserve my honor and love and worship. I need to see if there is such a God."
But the discovery that this Being does not possess those characteristics which make it worthy to be worshipped does not constitute any good much less sufficient reason for abandoning belief in the existence of a Being possessed of all the other defining characteristics of God. Jensen should in the circumstances hypothesized, therefore, be led to conclude: not that he had been mistakenly worshiping the wrong one of two or more existent Beings possessed of all the defining characteristics of God other than those supposedly making their possessor worthy to be worshipped; but that he had been mistaken in believing that there exists a Being both possessed of all those other defining characteristics and also worthy to be worshipped.
If and in so far as anyone has sufficient reason for believing in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, uncreated and indestructible Being who is not worthy of worship, then at the same time they have sufficient reason to know that there cannot be another omnipotent, omniscient, uncreated and indestructible Being who—unlike the one whom Jensen was formerly in error of worshiping—is worthy of worship.
Should One Value God?
2. Jensen says that the most important question which he wants me to answer is: "If there is a God who deserves to be most highly valued, to receive our worship and our highest adoration, would you give it?"
Here we enter what is for me less familiar territory. For even all those years ago when I still regularly went to chapel as a believer I never saw much point in worship. It did not help that I was as I remain too unmusical to participate more than reluctantly and spasmodically in the singing of even Wesley's hymns. For me the only interest of services was in the sermons, the Bible readings, and the petitionary prayers rather than in the worshipful singing of hymns of praise. So if tomorrow I were to discover that there is an omnipotent Being requiring that everybody should worship Him, then so be it. It would be madly imprudent to disobey. Yet at least in the first instance I myself should be inclined to be—to employ one of my favorite eighteenth century phrases—religious but without enthusiasm. If that was not acceptable, then I should of course strive to generate the required excitement.
None of this, however, answers Jensen's {22} question. That requested my reaction to the hypothesized discovery that there is "a God who deserves to be most highly valued, to receive our worship and our adoration" (emphasis added). Since all our standards of appropriateness for praise and blame, desert and entitlement, have been evolved to apply to the activities and inactivities of finite creatures having needs and being capable of failure in their chosen enterprises, it seems incongruous either to speak of what Omnipotence does or does not deserve from us or to as it were congratulate Him upon putting up magnificent performances. And how can what is by the hypothesis both indestructible and inescapable provide purchase for either valuing most highly or for not valuing at all? For surely, we can value highly or not at all only things of which we might possibly be deprived?
So I think that the nearest which I can get to agreeing with Jensen here is to allow the appropriateness both of abject abasement before irresistible power and of striving to obey whatever orders that power may choose to issue. I am encouraged to hope that Jensen may have some sympathy with this reaction since he himself seems to see some difficulty in determining "what it is about . . . God that provides this unique characteristic, being deserving of our highest adoration" (emphasis added).
What Matters?
3. Jensen confesses "that I do have a very hard time conceiving how anything 'really matters' which does not last forever." To this I respond as at one point in his 'First Response' he responded to me: "This may tell us something about your psychological state but it doesn't tell us anything else." But I intend this response not as an objection but as a perhaps illuminating observation. For I do not pretend to be able to meet the challenge with which he concludes the present paragraph: "Show me that something really matters outside of your own choice to have it matter to you" (emphasis original).
The felt need for something to really matter outside of any human choice seems to be—as I said earlier of the supposed pathological syndrome of existential despair—something "custom built (anglice, 'made to measure') to be cured only by belief in God." What more is there to be said other than that feeling a need or a desire for something constitutes no good reason for believing that it is possible to fulfill that need or to satisfy that desire?
Necessity and Influencing Causes
4. Much, indeed most, of Jensen's argument depends upon the basic contention that we are endowed with "libertarian free will." This is conceived as being such that God as the sustaining cause of our existence nevertheless cannot properly be accounted responsible for our making whatever choices we do make in the particular senses in which we do choose to make them. Although a first version of the article with which Jensen was taking issue was first published over forty years ago I still hold to substantially the same conclusions. But I now argue for them in a rather different and hopefully better way. So perhaps now the best way to advance discussion is to introduce some of those new moves. For a start, Jensen asserts:
A world of strict causal determinism destroys any possibility of responsibility. The court may tell a criminal that he did something for which it will place strong motives upon him never to do again but it cannot tell him the he is responsible or that he deserves his given punishment.
The first need here is the crucial but rarely made distinction between two fundamentally different senses of the word 'cause' and of its several semantic associates. When we are talking about the causes of some purely physical event—say an eclipse of the sun—then we employ the word 'cause' in the sense implying both physical necessity and physical impossibility: what happened was physically necessary and anything else was, in the circumstances, physically impossible.
Yet this is precisely not the case with the {23} other sense of 'cause'; the sense in which we speak of the causes (or reasons or motives) of human actions. If, for instance, by bringing welcome news my action is what my hearers—if they choose to respond by celebrating—will quite properly describe as the cause of their celebration, then I do not thereby make their celebration necessary and their abstention therefrom impossible. To adapt a famous phrase of Gottfried Leibniz, causes of this second, motivating sort incline but do not necessitate.
To mark this fundamental distinction we can best borrow terms from Hume. Since he denied the legitimacy of the concept of physical necessity, he himself was unable to make the distinction in the way in which it has just now been made. Nevertheless, his choice of labels does point towards a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and, on the other, the social and psychological or—as Hume and his contemporaries would have said—the moral.28 In his Essay 'Of National Characters' Hume wrote: "By moral causes, I mean all circumstances, which are fitted to work on the mind as motives or reasons. . . . By physical causes I mean those qualities of the air and climate, which are supposed to work insensibly on the temper, by tone and habit of the body. . . ."29
Given these two fundamentally different senses of the word 'cause' it becomes clear that, at least while we are discussing the behavior of human beings, we now need to distinguish the correspondingly different senses of 'determinism': determinism by physical causes; and determinism by moral causes. Certainly if a piece of behavior (what Behaviorists call behavior) is fully determined by physical causes, then the behaver did not choose to behave in that way. Nor could he, at least at the time when that behavior occurred, have prevented it from occurring. But determination by moral causes is quite another matter. For to explain someone's conduct by reference to their reasons or motives for—that is to say the moral causes of—their acting as they did is to presuppose that they could have acted differently. Desires and wants are certainly not as such irresistible compulsions: most of us are sufficiently disciplined often to refrain from doing things we should very much like to do.
Agency and Choice
5. So far so good. But it is not enough to show that we are all endowed with "libertarian free will," in Jensen's understanding of that expression. For, while it should by now be clear that the reality of choice and the consequent permanent possibility of alternate courses of action is not threatened by the determinism of moral causes, there remain the problems generated by physical causation—the problems which Hume escaped by denying the legitimacy of the concepts of physical necessity and physical impossibility.30
The first step is to elucidate the three intimately associated notions of being an agent, of having a choice, and of being able to do other than we do do. Perhaps the most promising approach lies by way of the great chapter 'Of Power' in Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding. Consider the following passages:
This at least I think evident, that we find in ourselves a Power to begin to forbear, continue or end several . . . motions of our bodies. . . . This Power . . . to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice versa in any particular instance, is what which we call the Will.
and
Everyone, I think, finds in himself a Power to begin to forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself. From the considerations of the extent of this power of the mind over the actions of the Man, which everyone finds in himself, arise the Ideas of Liberty and Necessity.31
In a third passage Locke believes himself to be elucidating the meaning of a 'free agent' rather than of 'an agent' simply. In this he is, like many others both before and since, mistaken. For the truth is that both those who act of their own free will and those who act under some {24} sort of constraint or compulsion are equally agents choosing to act as they do rather than in any of the alternative ways actually open to them:
We have instances enough, and often more than enough in our own bodies. A Man's Heart beats, and the Blood circulates, which 'tis not in his Power . . . to stop; and therefore in respect of these Motions, where rest depends not on his choice . . . he is not a free agent. Convulsive motions agitate his legs, so that though he will it ever so much, he cannot . . . stop their motion (as in that odd disease called Chorea Sancti Viti) but he is perpetually dancing; He is . . . under as much necessity of moving, as a Stone that falls or a Tennis-ball struck with a Racket.32
With the reminders of these passages before us we are in a position to develop ostensive definitions of two contrasting kinds of bodily movements. Ostensive definition possesses two relevant merits. First, if any word or expression is ostensively definable then it is out of the question to maintain that there are no such things as its referents. Second, it is also out of the question to maintain that these referents necessarily possess characteristics which cannot be deduced from the fact of their existence.
Going deliberately with rather than against the grain of modern English usage, let those bodily movements which can be either initiated or quashed at will be labeled 'movings', and those which cannot 'motions'. Certainly it is obvious that there are plenty of marginal cases. Nevertheless, so long as there are—as there are—far, far more which fall unequivocally upon one side or the other, we must resolutely and stubbornly refuse to be prevented from laboring this absolutely fundamental and decisive distinction by any such diversionary appeals to the existence of marginal cases.
Contemplation of these and similar passages in Locke should be sufficient to show, first, that we all of us have the most direct, and the most inexpugnably certain experience: not only both of physical (as opposed to logical) necessity and of physical (as opposed to logical) impossibility; but also both, on some occasions, of being able to do other than we do do and, on other occasions, of being unable to behave in any other way than that in which we are behaving.33
So it is in terms of this fundamental distinction between movings and motions that we can go on to establish and explicate the even more fundamental concept of action. An agent is a creature which, precisely and only in so far as it is an agent, can and cannot but make choices; choices between alternative courses of action both or all of which are open; real choices, notwithstanding that sometimes by choosing one or even any of these open alternatives the agent would incur formidable costs. Agents, too, qua agents—it is the price of privilege—inescapably must choose, and can in no way avoid choosing,34 one of the two or usually many more options which on particular occasions are open and available. For the nerve of the distinction between the movements involved in an action and those which constitute no more than items of partial components of necessitated behavior just is that such behavior is necessitated, whereas the senses of the actions not merely are not but as such necessarily cannot be.
No Responsibility under Creator/Sustainer God
6. At this point it might seem that I have yielded game, set and match to Jensen. For I allow that I have shown that it must be impossible to maintain the doctrine of universal, physically necessitating determinism, the doctrine, that is to say, that every movement in the Universe—including every human bodily movement, the movings as well as the motions—is determined by physically necessitating physical causes. So the most, it would seem, which can be allowed is that we are necessitatingly determined to be people who will in fact choose to act in whatever senses we do in fact severally choose to act. And to this it has at once to be added that it is the previous choices of every individual which must play a large part in physically causing those individuals to be the people who will in fact make their choices several in whatever always physically unnecessitated senses they individually choose.
{25} All this should, surely, be sufficient to justify our holding at least some—and why not most?—individuals fully responsible for at least some—and why not most?—of their actions? Certainly that is so. Far be it from me to deny that we are members of a very special sort of creatures which can and therefore cannot but make choices. But there is one absolutely crucial proviso to be added. Certainly we can be held ultimately responsible for our actions providing that the buck really stops with us, and that there is no other person or quasi-personal Being, physically necessitating us to be the individual people who do choose in whatever senses we do in fact choose.
It is this crucial proviso which for the theist in the mainstream Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions cannot be satisfied. Typically such theists think of the relations between the Creator and the Creator's human creatures on the model of those between a human father and his children. And, of course, it is only in certain scandalous and extremely exceptional cases that parents can properly be held responsible for the misdeeds of their grown up children; and then, even in those rare cases, only partially and rather remotely. But in this aspect, which is here crucial, that preferred model is totally inapplicable. For if we were indeed creatures of a Creator in any Judeo-Christian or Islamic understanding, then, as the ultimate sustaining cause of everything which exists or happens within the supposedly created Universe, God must necessarily make us the various individual people who, confronted inescapably with choices to be made, do in fact choose as we do choose.
Such a God must therefore, by the hypothesis, be the ultimately responsible necessitating cause of everything; and everything means everything, including all those sins for which, again by the hypothesis, that Creator intends to punish His human creatures—creatures whom He Himself has made to be such as do freely choose so to sin. Nor can this conclusion be escaped by maintaining that the Creator has endowed creatures with "libertarian free will," in Jensen's understanding of that expression. For it is in a quite different understanding that 'choice' and 'being able to do otherwise than we do do' can be and have to be ostensively defined.
Multiple Infinite God's
To address your first numbered response let me define an "omnipotent, omniscient, uncreated and indestructible" Being as an 'infinite' Being. This is not a completely accurate definition but I think it will help for the readers to follow our conversation.
First of all, I don't see why you think that discovering there is an 'infinite' Being who doesn't deserve our worship means that there cannot be one who does. One or more of these 'infinite' characteristics (not necessarily all) might be necessary for one to deserve the adoration of all sentient beings. So not only might there be more than one 'infinite' being,35 the one I'm looking for might not be 'infinite' in all of these ways. It's just that these 'infinite' characteristics, among others, as well as the characteristic of being deserving of our adoration, are characteristics that we have been shown that God does possess. At least I would argue that the evidence is very good that God has shown us this.
Now my hypothetical encounter with this being does not constitute 'eschatological falsification' of the existence of a worthy God (as my determination to go on looking for a such a God indicates). Certainly such an encounter might falsify some of my beliefs just as it might verify these or others. But this possibility of even partial falsification does not negate my present justification for belief on the basis of the evidence now available. One could be justified in believing something and thus obligated to believe it though in fact the belief is false. Discovery of the falsity may come later or it may never come at all.
Should We Value God?
{26} Concerning your second numbered response, one might certainly be "religious without enthusiasm." Whether one ever feels a sense of closeness to God or senses adoration toward God is entirely up to God. Our only obligation is to admit on an intellectual level that if there is such a God, we would give or at least will to give our obedience and highest adoration and worship and that we would act to do so insofar as God enables us.
You claim that praise only rightly applies to those who can fail. But don't we sometimes think that something of exceptional beauty, say an unusually sublime sunset or perhaps the enchanting dance of the northern lights—don't we sometimes believe such beauty deserves to be admired? There is simply something in the nature of the entity which is such that we feel that we ought to respond to it in a certain way—indeed, that it deserves this response.
Following Rudolph Otto's discussion of Numinous Awe, C. S. Lewis illustrates this phenomenon with a quote from The Wind in the Willows where Mole and Rat are drawn to Pan's call and approach him on the island.
" 'Rat,' he found breath to whisper, shaking, 'Are you afraid?' 'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid? of Him? O, never, never. And yet—and yet—O Mole, I am afraid.' "36
Just because we usually only apply the notion of praise to those who could fail does not mean that no one else might be so deserving. Might it not be that God deserves to be most highly valued simply because God has infinite value? As countless saints and sages claim, and as Mole and Rat illustrate, perhaps there is an intrinsic characteristic of being deserving of our adoration, to be made obvious only once the Numinous Object is perceived.
Furthermore, I see no good reason to think we should only value something we can lose. And even if this were true, can we not be deprived of God? Isn't that what hell is, a place where we are allowed our choice of freedom from God?
Don't we, or at least shouldn't we, value people simply because they are human and not because of something they might or might not be able to do? If we value people because we recognize within them a worth just because of what they are, it shouldn't be difficult to conceive of a Being who deserves our highest adoration because of an intrinsic but far greater worth. (Might we say an 'infinite' worth?)
The fact that we might not be able to understand completely what it is about God's nature that makes God deserving of our adoration and commitment does not mean that we have no reason to believe that there is such a Being or that we cannot consider how we might respond to such a Being if this God does exist. I'm sorry that I cannot be sympathetic to your reaction after all, your claim that an admission of adoration to this hypothetical Being would not be appropriate. We can certainly understand the concept of a Being who deserves our ultimate commitment whether or not we think there is or can be such a Being, and we can make decisions on the basis of such hypotheticals.
Now so far I've been talking about nothing more than God's nature as any simple theism might consider it. But Christianity makes some additional claims concerning God's nature and acts. Now a simple theism would tell us that God deserves our highest adoration simply because God possesses infinite worth. Christianity shows us divine characteristics as displayed by God's actions that would draw us to adoration. For the former we might admit on a purely intellectual and very dispassionate level that God deserves our highest adoration. For the latter, it would be much more difficult to deny that God deserves our commitment or to remain dispassionate.
Christian scripture claims that Jesus chose to endure one of the most excruciatingly painful deaths imaginable since this was the only way we could be reconciled to God. Only thus would our greatest good occur and the judgment we deserve be averted. But furthermore, it might be argued that God the Father endured the same suffering. All that Jesus endured was fully experienced in the very depth of the Godhead. (I {27} cannot make sense of passages like John 3:16 as having any essential meaning at all unless this is so.)
Now most Christian theologies will say that God freely decided that the death of Jesus must occur. Even some of the most Calvinistic theologies will say that at least God is free. Furthermore, it is usually believed that Jesus was free to choose to give his life or to refuse.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that it is necessary that God be free. It might be that God's nature of absolute goodness implies infinite love for that which God has created. It might be argued that because God is love, God had to act in this way. And Jesus, being one with the Father in will and in his love for us, likewise had to so act. (I tend more toward this latter view myself.)
Notice that in either case, if either view is true, we have an act of God that shows how very deserving God is of our adoration. If you insist that someone must be free, that one must be able to fail to achieve a given action in order to be deserving of praise, then (in the first view) God has acted in exactly this way. But even if God is not free, it seems to me that if God loved us so much as to endure such pain to save us, for this God certainly deserves our adoration.
Free Will, Responsibility, Determinism, and God
Concerning your discussion of free will, I think that there is really very little more that I can add in response that has not been said already and I must leave it to the reader to carefully evaluate both of our contributions and to reach one's own conclusion.
Perhaps by way of summary I might present some of our differences as I understand them. You believe you have demonstrated that with your view of freedom individuals are responsible and I believe that I have shown that only a transcendent Source of our being can provide for us the ability to perform free and responsible acts with, indeed, the 'buck stopping here' with us. You believe you have demonstrated that the creator/sustainer God of Judeo-Christian understanding must be the cause of everything and ultimately responsible for everything, including every evil we commit, and I believe I have shown that this has not been demonstrated. You still believe that the problem of evil remains unanswered and I that it has been answered considering our respective arguments concerning the nature of human freedom. You believe you can avoid necessitating determinism without admitting 'in principle' unpredictable uncaused causes (libertarian free will) and I think you cannot.
In his second response Jensen says: "Concerning your discussion of free will, I think that there is really very little more that I can add in response that has not been said already and I must leave it to the reader to carefully evaluate both of our contributions and to reach one's own conclusion." Fair enough; and I suggest that our whole discussion is now very close indeed to the point at which we ought to call it a day and to leave it to our public to make up their own minds.
One thing, and just about the only thing which I want to say at this stage, is that I am intrigued by Jensen's suggestion in Note 35 that "two omnipotent Beings could have the power to do anything not opposed by the other or otherwise disqualified by the definition." If we were, on some other occasion, to pursue this suggestion then we should presumably find that we were developing either some sort of neo-Zoroastrianism or a system in which a Mosaic God is confronted by a Devil who is much more than a fallen angel and hence much less unequally matched with his opponent God. Certainly it would involve a very substantial defection from strict monotheism.
Jensen made the intriguing suggestion in the course of our discussion of how he might respond if he came to realize that the Being whom "I had worshipped for years did not, after {28} all, deserve to be worshipped." He said that "if I could come to no other conclusion than that this God does not deserve my adoration, I would have to say, 'I'm sorry, I have the wrong God. I've made a mistake, it is not you that I have worshipped all these years.' "
Presumably this God, who is conceived of as existing while not being worthy of worship, is also conceived of as omnipotent (albeit subject to the logically necessary limitations indicated in Note 35). We are, therefore, entitled to infer that it is such normative attributes as infinite love or infinite goodness rather than omnipotence or omniscience which are conceived to be the grounds of worthiness to be worshipped.
Perhaps this observation will enable me to conclude on a note of agreement. For I shall be surprised if—despite our other numerous and fundamental disagreements—Jensen does not agree that, whether or not a natural theology can provide a sufficient reason for believing in the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient originating and sustaining Cause of the Universe, nevertheless it is thanks only to Divine self-Revelation that we could hope to know that that Cause is infinitely loving and infinitely good.37
I have myself in recent years been much concerned to argue for this conclusion, and to suggest reasons why it has so often been denied.38 Joseph Butler, for instance, who held the senior see of Durham in days when a Christian commitment was still a precondition for securing such appointments, was certainly one of the two finest philosophical minds ever to adorn the Church of England's bench of bishops. Yet to Butler it seemed utterly and incontestably obvious that, if he could prove the existence of a Designer, then he had at the same time proved a beneficial governor and a righteous judge:
There is no need of abstruse reasoning and distinctions, to convince an unprejudiced understanding, that there is a God who made and governs the world, and will judge it in righteousness. . . . to an unprejudiced mind ten thousand instances of design cannot but prove a designer.39
Looking back at our discussion of a decade ago, I feel that some additional summary comments might be helpful. I would also like to indicate where I have changed my views since that time.
I continue to maintain that if we have "motivating" or influencing causes then we have libertarian free will. Anything outside of causal determinism or any other kind of determinism will be either chance (what I have called ontological chance) or libertarian free will (uncaused causes from conscious agents). Ontological chance is rejected because it is, essentially, something coming out of nothing. Naturalism cannot account for an uncaused cause but without uncaused causes we have a strict determinism and cannot have human responsibility.
I have omitted one paragraph of my own from our original discussion because it is in part repeated in endnote 5 and because Dr. Flew had not responded to this particular statement. I have changed my views on that point and have indicated those changes in the endnote. I have added one endnote, 27, to allude to one other free will theodicy that might be considered.
Within the last few years Dr. Flew has come to accept theism (or, perhaps more accurately, deism).40 One of the major factors contributing to this change has been some of the recent work in the sciences.
I find these scientific findings compelling as he does. The "fine tuning" or "cosmic coincidence" argument was a major factor: this is the discovery that for any form of life to originate requires the laws and constants of nature to be very precisely what they happen to be now. For example, the space energy density term must not vary from its present value by any more than one part in 10120, some have conservatively estimated.
{29} He says he was also influenced by some of the arguments of the Intelligent Design movement. An example of the kind of argument often given—at least one I have found very compelling—involves the problem of the origin of life. The earliest life appears to have been far too complex to allow a naturalistic explanation given any conceivable environment. After so many years of scrutiny we are left with no seriously feasible naturalistic pathway from the nonliving to life. How life began is still, as one researcher stated, "beyond imagination."41
A major factor in Professor Flew's reluctance to embrace Christianity or an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent theism involves the old problem of evil. Here I cannot agree. As covered in this dialogue, I think that the biblical answer to the basic problem of evil, that of undeserved human suffering, is so clear and intuitively forceful that it is difficult for me to understand why so many people are not persuaded by it (see Biblical Free Will Theodicy under my first response; see also the added endnote 27).
For another discussion concerning the the problem of the Christian belief in an eternal hell see the portion of the Craig-Tooley debate dealing with the problem of hell and the discussion following.
Again, the problem of hell has been debated in Jensen's discussion with Paul Doland.
References
(Jensen)
1. Antony Flew and Thomas Warren, The Warren-Flew Debate on the Existence of God (Jonesboro, Ar.: National Christian Press, 1977).
2. C. S. Lewis, "On Obstinacy in Belief," The World's Last Night (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1960).
3. C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (MacMillan Company, 1946).
4. William Fudge gives an otherwise very objective survey of the evidence (The Fire That Consumes [Houston: Providential Press, 1982] 37-50) providing both secular and biblical usage of the terms which show that they do not necessarily indicate permanence. It's interesting, however, that in the middle of this survey he goes on to cite some very inadequate evidence to claim the contrary (43) and assumes permanence thereafter.
5. This does not mean that God will ever find us without sin outside of God's atonement. If after enduring this punishment one continues to reject God or refuses to repent of any other current sin of thought or word, that sin must receive appropriate punishment or redemption. And as this process is potentially eternal, so is hell. Furthermore, a sin one has endured punishment for, if that person does not regret or repent of that evil, then one continues in a state of sin. An attitude condoning an evil is itself evil. As God never finds us without sin in our present life, so God will inevitably find us in sin after the first stage of hell is ended. (In either situation, I would claim, we can only be accepted by God by the one ultimate demonstration of God's love: the Messiah's atoning sacrifice.)
[I had stated that I think that hell could be eternal since as long as people sin, their sin must be punished and it is possible that people could go on sinning forever. But this would require the first aspect of hell to continue forever. We would be stuck with our same old traditional eternalism with all its problems. My present view it that God, out of mercy, would take from the lost the ability to commit these sins. Only the power to commit the one sin that overrides and allows all others will remain: the power to reject God and God's will. This is the one eternal sin. Under potential restorationism, the lost would have the opportunity to continue to commit or to repent of this sin. The price of clinging to this sin is the second phase of hell so long as one does cling to it. Here as in the above paragraph I would still maintain that one can only be accepted by God by the one ultimate demonstration of God's love: the Messiah's atoning sacrifice.]
6. The word 'olam' is usually translated 'forever' although a better meaning would be 'age' or 'dispensation'. As one of many examples, we are told that the mountains will last 'forever'. (Emmanuel Pétavel's The Problem of Immortality, trans. Frederick Ash Freer [London: Elliot Stook, 1892] 574, gives further examples; cited in Fudge, p. 40.) But later revelation (as well as modern science) tells us that they won't (e.g., 2 Peter 3:10). As far as the original listeners or readers were concerned there simply wasn't any end in sight. God wasn't at that time concerned to reveal what was planned for the next phase after that aeon or age or, in this case, if there would be a next phase. Likewise God has left unstated the fate of the lost after the 'age to come'. [The term is also used to describe ancient boundary markers, something no one at the time would believe had been in place from eternity past.]
Scholars like Edward Beecher have argued that the New Testament usage of the equivalent 'aión' and 'aiónios' follows this meaning more than its Greek etymology (History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution [New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1878]). The Hebrew is certainly the more likely meaning intended by Jesus as well as the other Jewish sources of the New Testament writings. But even if a strictly Greek understanding of aión and aiónios had been the original speaker or writer's intention, they cannot be shown to indicate unendingness unless there is good contextual evidence in each particular passage considered. For the passages which have been used to {30} argue for eternal punishment (most importantly Matthew 25:46, and Revelation 14:10-11 and 20:10-11) this cannot be done. Common contemporary usage of these terms simply did not necessarily indicate true unendingness.
Even if it is conceded that the strongest terms used, 'ages of the ages' (aiónas ton aiónon), indicated unendingness, we should notice that this phrase is only applied to Satan (Revelation 20:10). (The beast and false prophet are most likely symbolic of political and religious systems.) Revelation 14 indicates that the lost will be punished but only the smoke or memory of their torment ascends forever. As for Satan's eternal torment, this might be the one place in scripture where God discloses what is foreseen of an infinite future of choices of God rejection by one of the lost. (I would argue that one is still free to choose x even if it is foreknown and disclosed that one will not. Only if the chooser believes this to be a true disclosure of foreknowledge is his or her freedom limited.)
(Flew)
7. I can myself testify to the fact that C. S. Lewis did employ this fallacious argument, since I several times heard him do so at meetings of the Socratic Club in Oxford during the nineteen forties. For a fuller refutation, see Antony Flew and Godfrey Vesey, Agency and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987) 76-83.
8. I deliberately do not write 'commit suicide' since I do not believe that suicide is always and necessarily immoral. Far from it. For there are circumstances in which I should consider it to be morally imperative.
9. Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, eds., New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955). Mill's quote is from Three Essays on Religion (Longman, 1874) 52.
10. Compare also 'The Free Will Defense', in my God, Freedom and Immortality: A Critical Analysis (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1984); also Sections 4-6 in Chapter 2 of my Atheistic Humanism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992).
11. See G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrer and trans. E. M. Huggard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951).
12. Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (London: Thames and Hudson, 1950) 26-7.
13. See Section 2, above.
14. For a demonstration of the neglected significance to the philosophy and practice of the social sciences of this truth, see my Thinking about Social Thinking (London: Harper-Collins, 1991 and Buffalo NY: Prometheus, 1993). For a polemical reiteration of the same truth against certain leaders of the Church of England substituting social democratic politics for the Christian religion, compare my contribution to Digby Anderson, ed., The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America (London, and New York: Social Affairs Unit, and National Review).
15. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. A. C. Pegis (New York: Doubleday, 1955), Book III, Ch. 67, §3.
16. Summa Contra, Book III, Ch. 88, §6 and Chapter 89, §§ 1 and 3.
17. I borrow this quotation from Leibniz, Theodicy, 222.
18. See, for instance, the reference given in Note 14, above.
19. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, in E.G. Rupp, A. N. Marlow, P. S. Watson and B. Drewry, eds. and trans., Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) 139.
20. After appreciating these implications Aquinas—ever the complacent apparatchik—proceeded to provide a cool summary of the official reasons why it is to be expected that "the blessed in glory will have no pity for the damned" (Summa Theologica, III Supp. xviv, 1-3). As we used to say in the unhallowed ranks of the Royal Air Force: "Damn you, Jack, I'm fireproof!"
21. Luther, Bondage, 138.
22. Luther, 137.
(Jensen)
23. Even the more arbitrary laws are usually not completely arbitrary. There's usually symbolic meaning portrayed in the ceremonies, and many of the dietary laws, for example, have definite health benefits. Notice also that in Jesus' teachings he distinguishes between the importance of God's commands and he reprimands those who neglect the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith for the sake of lesser commands (Matthew 23:23). Those involving human needs can sometimes even negate the observance of less important commands when there's a conflict (Matthew 12:1-13).
24. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: MacMillan Paperback: 1962) 101-2.
25. Two good examples of such works are Plantinga's God and Other Minds (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967) and God, Freedom and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
26. This is to say that the greatest possible good is that there might be a number of possible worlds of which God must not determine that one should occur over any of the others. Human free will determines which will occur. Of these numerous possible worlds some are better than others. So the greatest possible good involves allowing a world that has in fact turned out to be very bad. But it also involves only evils which can be redeemed, made good, such that even for each particular evil the greatest good may yet occur. If, by human choice, that good does not occur then it is still a {31} greater good to have allowed this possibility, this freedom, than not.
27. [To fully answer the problem of pain in an existentially satisfying manner other biblical theodicies are also needed. The New Testament emphasizes a free will theodicy oriented toward the observer of pain (the Jobean theodicy looks at the recipient of pain). The observer oriented theodicy asks, How will we respond to others when we see them suffering? Will we care for them, pray for them, fight the disease or oppressor that harms them? Will we feed the hungry and comfort the oppressed? Will we seek to have God's heart?
See also Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, Mi: Zondervan, 2000) 7-23, 33-76 for further discussion and other possible answers.]
(Flew)
28. For more, much more about this difference and about the peculiarities of the latter, see my Thinking about Social Thinking (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1994).
29. Essays Moral, Political and Literary, edited by E. F. Miller (Indianapolis, In: Liberty Classics, 1985) 198.
30. See, for instance, my David Hume: Philosopher of Moral Science (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) 126-139.
31. John Locke An Essay concerning Human Understanding, edited by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), II (xxi) 5, p. 236.
32. Locke, Essay, II (xxi) 7, p. 237. The Latin translates 'St. Vitus' Dance'.
33. For an application of these ideas to Hume's abortive search for an impression from which the idea of (physically) necessary connection might be derived, compare my 'What Impressions of Necessity?' in Hume Studies, XVII 2, pp. 169-77.
34. For even 'Not to choose is, in effect, to choose not to choose'. See J. P. Sartre Being and Nothingness, (London: Methuen, 1957), 481. Compare Locke, op cit., II (xxi) 23, pp. 245-6.
(Jensen)
35. In case you see a problem with there being more than one omnipotent Being, I think it should be remembered that omnipotence cannot do the logically impossible. As such, two 'omnipotent' Beings could have the power to do anything not opposed by the other or otherwise disqualified by the definition.
36. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), 127; cited in C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 18.
(Flew)
37. I am told that some Indian thinkers—being unaware of any Divine self-revelation—have been inclined to insist that a Creator must necessarily and in the nature of the case be "beyond good and evil".
38. See, for instance, Antony Flew, Atheistic Humanism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), Ch. 1-2.
39. Butler's Works, edited by W. E. Gladstone (Oxford: O.U.P., 1896), Vol. I, p. 371 (2 [10] 2 of The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed).
(Jensen)
40. See his latest edition of God and Philosophy (New York: Prometheus Books, 2005); also "My 'Conversion,' Think 11, Autumn 2005.
41. K. Doss said the difficulties of producing the RNA/DNA molecules are "beyond imagination" ("The Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers," Interdisciplinary Science Review 13, 1988, 348).