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THE PROBLEM OF EVIL & SUFFERING

THE FREEWILL DEFENSE

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The Ultimate Good: Love

  • Deut. 6:5 / Matt. 22:34-38 / Mk. 12:28-30
  • Deut. 28:47
  • Ps. 40:6-8 / Heb. 10:5-10
  • Ps. 51:16-17
  • Prov. 8:17
  • Mic. 6:6-8
  • “You are my God” (Jer. 7:22-26; 9:23-24)
  • Lk. 15:11-32
  • Jn. 21:15-19
  • 1 Jn. 4:19

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Genuine Love DEMANDS Free Will

“If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”

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ALVIN PLANTINGA'S FREEWILL DEFENSE

  • God desires morally significant relationships (i.e. genuine love).
  • Genuine love demands freewill.
  • God, being all-powerful, does not mean that God can do logically impossible things (e.g. a square circle).
  • It is logically impossible that God can MAKE someone do something FREELY.
  • Therefore, God cannot create a genuinely free creature who is simultaneously guaranteed to always choose good.

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“A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.”

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Free Will in the Bible

  • Gen. 2:15-17
  • Deut. 30:19
  • Josh. 24:15
  • Prov. 1:24-25
  • Matt. 23:37
  • Mk. 8:34
  • Acts 7:51
  • Rev. 3:20