God Reforms Hearts

Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil

Thaddeus Williams

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781683594970
• eBook ISBN: 9781683594987
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

"When responding to objections that both evil and God can exist, many resort to a "free will defense," where God is not the creator of evil but of human freedom, by which evil is possible. In God Reforms Hearts, Thaddeus J. Williams offers a friendly challenge to the central claim of the free will defense-that love is possible only with true (or libertarian) free will. Williams argues that much thinking on free will fails to carve out the necessary distinction between an autonomous will and an unforced will. With clarity, precision, and charity, he judges the merits and shortcomings of the relational free will defense while offering a philosophically and biblically robust alternative that draws from theologians of the past to point a way forward"--

PART 1

Evil and the Autonomous Heart

Rethinking Free Will as a Condition of Authentic Love

1.1

The Relational Free Will Defense

Don’t let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.

—Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man

THE PROBLEMS OF EVIL

A survey conducted by the Barna Research Group revealed that the number one question posed about God by a cross section of American adults is, “Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?”1 In my years of teaching philosophy and theology, students have raised no other question with more frequency and urgency. As Proclus stated the question in the fifth century AD, “Si Deus est, unde malum?” (“If God exists, whence comes evil?”).2

We need neither modern surveys nor ancient sayings to inform us that reconciling the existence of evil with that of a supremely good and powerful Being constitutes an excruciatingly troublesome problem. Evidencing the magnitude of the problem of evil is Barry Whitney’s published bibliography entitled Theodicy, which cites over 4,200 philosophical and theological works on the topic in the three-decade span between 1960 and 1990.3 That factors to a new scholarly publication on the problem of evil every 62.4 hours (in English alone), and the trend shows no signs of abating in the new millennium.

Solving the enduring problem of evil in its multiple and mind-bending forms is well beyond the scope of both this work and author. Rather than arriving at definitive answers to the problem(s), God Reforms Hearts enters the mass sojourn to encourage progress, however small, in the right direction toward answers.

This work seeks progress by focusing on one of today’s dominant strategies for answering evil—the “Relational Free Will Defense.” The defining premise of this Defense is the claim that authentic love requires free will. Many scholars, including Gregory Boyd and Vincent Brümmer, champion this claim.4 Best-selling books, such as Rob Bell’s Love Wins, echo that love “can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide.”5 The claim that love requires free will has even found expression in mainstream Hollywood films, including Frailty (David Kirschner Productions, 2002), Bruce Almighty (Universal, 2003), and The Adjustment Bureau (Universal, 2011).

Is this pervasive claim of the Relational Free Will Defense philosophically credible? Does it stray from biblical insights into the nature of love, freedom, and evil? Does the claim that love requires free will clash with a robust relational response to evil in its concrete (rather than abstract) forms? These questions, often unasked in the contemporary literature, form the cornerstone around which I have built this work.

Before clarifying the Relational Free Will Defense and developing the questions above, we must first debunk the idea that there is a problem of evil. In reality, the theist faces a plurality of problems with evil. First, we may discern diverse problems in the abstract realm.

(1) Abstract Problems of Evil in Logical Form. J. L. Mackie has famously argued that the claims “evil exists” and “an all-good, all-powerful God exists” are logically incompatible.6 In the famous words of David Hume, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing and able? Whence then is evil?”7 Here the theist faces what is known as the “deductive problem of evil.” How should the theist respond to the philosophical claim that it is logically impossible for both God and evil to exist?

(2) Abstract Problems of Evil in Evidential Form. William Rowe argues that evil’s existence in the world, along with its heinousness and apparent senselessness, render God’s existence not logically impossible but highly improbable.8 This is known as the “inductive problem of evil,” which takes diverse shapes and forms.9 How should the theist respond to philosophical claims that God’s existence is improbable, given evil as we encounter it in the world?

(3) Abstract Problems of Evil in Natural Form. A philosopher could draw a distinction between what Hitler has done and what a hurricane has done, evils caused by persons in contrast to those caused by impersonal forces of nature. There are not only problems of moral evil but also problems of what philosophers often call “natural evil” (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Natural evil arguments can also take either deductive or inductive forms.

Moreover, the abstract philosophical problems outlined above are not identical to the personal problems faced in the wake of a bleak medical diagnosis, a broken relationship, an extended season of God’s hiddenness, or any other personal encounter with the effects of the fall in a post-Genesis 3 world. Here is “the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart,”10 to quote novelist Peter De Vries. Such problems are not a matter of neat logical syllogisms arranged in black and white in a philosopher’s text. They are messier, often logic-defying problems that persist in a dizzying array of dark shades in a sufferer’s heart. We may add to the abstract problems the following concrete problems of evil.

(4) Concrete Problems of Evil in Intra-Fide Emotional Form. The sufferer may be a believer suffering from inside the pale of faith (intra-fide). In this case, the concrete problem is a distinct problem of continuing to trust the God in whom one has a positive belief and prior relational commitment. It is the form that C. S. Lewis articulated with such vulnerable honesty in A Grief Observed shortly after cancer claimed his beloved wife.11 Long before Lewis, David and the Hebrew prophets wrestled with the concrete problems of evil in their intra-fide emotional form (Pss 10; 13; 35; 88; Lam 3; Hab 1).

(5) Concrete Problems of Evil in Extra-Fide Emotional Form. Conversely, the sufferer may suffer from outside the pale of faith (extra-fide). In this case, the concrete problem forms more of a subjective blockade to initiating trust towards God in whom one lacks any positive belief or prior relational commitment. It is a rejection of God motivated by emotional encounters with evil, independent of abstract philosophical considerations. As Dostoyevsky’s tortured character, Ivan Karamazov, responds to a case for God’s existence, “I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I am wrong.”12

Here we are confronted with the emotional problems of evil, which multiply with virtually every experience of human heartache and may vary significantly in their intensity, effects, and implicit conclusions from heart to heart.13 The failure to distinguish these concrete problems from the less personal and more abstract philosophical problems of evil can lead to a wearying assault of misguided and irrelevant counsel. Imagine, for example, expounding Augustinian privationism (the notion that evil is not a real thing but lacks positive ontological status) in an effort to console parents who have lost a child at the hands of a drunk driver. For them, evil is a very real, concrete thing.

We may add to the domain of concrete problems the following existential problems of how to answer the evils in our own lives, cultural contexts, and the invisible world at large.

(6) Concrete Problems of Evil in Personal Existential Form. How do we make moral progress against the lingering, potent, self-destructive, internal bent toward moral evil, or in the Pauline ethical vocabulary, “the old man” (Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9–10) or “the flesh” (Rom 8:12–13; Gal 5:16–24)?14 Without ongoing engagement with this question, we ourselves become part of the problems rather than part of the solutions.

(7) Concrete Problems of Evil in Cultural Existential Form. Within cultural contexts, how do we confront the forceful and multifronted blitzkrieg of social injustices across the contemporary world? This includes large-scale problems like human trafficking, genocide, environmental exploitation, terrorism, the dehumanizing effects of consumerism, governmental and religious corruption, and any other problems we can all too easily enumerate.15

(8) Concrete Problems of Evil in Spiritual Existential Form. Add to all the above the problem of the invisible world within a biblical view of reality. Paul says in Ephesians 6:12:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

To borrow Paul’s vivid competitive combat term, how should believers “wrestle” (palē) against spiritual evil?16

A portrait emerges in which evil represents not a singular problem but a complex web of problems that entangles the heart and the hands as well as the head. For the head, how do we understand God’s supreme goodness and power in the many faces of evil? For the heart, how do we foster relational trust in God’s supreme goodness and power in the many faces of evil? For the hands, how do we engage in actions that align with God’s supreme goodness and power in the many faces of evil? What kind of thinking, feeling, and acting can match the combined force of abstract and concrete problems of evil?

THREE CRITERIA OF THEODICY

Given the sheer magnitude of the God whom the problems of evil involve, there is no room for simplistic or cavalier answers. These problems revolve around a Being perceived “in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12), a Mind whose judgments are “unsearchable” (Rom 11:33), and whose “foolishness … is wiser than men” (1 Cor 1:25). God is too vast to fit into neatly wrapped philosophical boxes. It ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part 1: Evil and the Autonomous Heart: Rethinking Free Will as a Condition of Authentic Love
• Chapter 1.1: The Relational Free Will Defense
• Chapter 1.2: The Axiom of Libertarian Love
• Chapter 1.3: True Love: Is Freedom from the Heart Indubitable or Dubious?
• Summary and Conclusions
• Part 2: Freedom and the Enslaved Heart: Depth Capacity and the Case for Libertarian Free Will
• Chapter 2.1: The Moral Imperative Argument: Does “Ought” Imply “Can”?
• Chapter 2.2: The Grievous Resistance Argument: Does Divine Grief Imply Human Autonomy?
• Chapter 2.3: The Relational Vision Argument: Can One Guarantee Another’s Love?
• Summary and Conclusions
• Part 3: Love and the Reformed Heart: The Scope of Divine Action in Human Love
• Chapter 3.1: Five Models of Divine Action in Human Love
• Chapter 3.2: Heart Reformation and the Bible
• Chapter 3.3: The Problems of Evil Revisited
• Summary and Conclusions
• Epilogue: What a Difference One Word Makes
• Appendix A: Taqdir and Trinitas: Divine Power and Human Responsibility in Sunni Islam and Reformed Theology
• Appendix B: Is God Vulnerable?: Evaluating Vincent Brümmer’s Notion of Autonomy
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Index