Isaac Qatraya and the Logical Problem of Evil
Abstract
:1. Sterba’s Argument from Evil
- There are no circumstances whatsoever under which it would be permissible for a morally perfect and omnipotent being to allow X.
- If there are no circumstances whatsoever under which it would be permissible for a morally perfect and omnipotent being to allow X then, if X took place, no morally perfect and omnipotent being existed when X took place.
- If X took place, no morally perfect and omnipotent being existed when X took place. (1, 2, MP)
- X took place.
- No morally perfect and omnipotent being existed when X took place. (3, 4, MP)
Moral Evil Prevention Requirement IPrevent, rather than permit, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions without violating anyone’s rights (a good to which we have a right) when that can easily be done.1
Moral Evil Prevention Requirement IIDo not permit, rather than prevent, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions simply to provide other rational beings with goods they would morally prefer not to have.
With these in hand, Sterba formulates a logical argument from evil:Moral Evil Prevention Requirement IIIDo not permit, rather than prevent, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions (which would violate someone’s rights) in order to provide such goods when there are countless morally unobjectionable ways of providing those goods.
- If there is a God (understood as all-good and all-powerful) then necessarily God would be adhering to MEPRI-MEPRIII.
- If God were adhering to MEPRI-MEPRIII, then necessarily significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions would not obtain.
- Significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions do obtain.
- Therefore, it is not the case that there is a God. (modified from Sterba (2019, chp. 9))
2. Moral Principles and Cosmic Outlooks
3. Isaac Qatraya
Given these axiological views, it is no surprise that being subject to evil or suffering should be considered an opportunity to grow in virtue. To be laid low, in any way, is to be given a chance to advance in humility. To be maltreated is to have an opportunity to respond in a way constitutive of a character of ‘luminous love of humanity’—the character that Isaac sees as the highest peak of human goodness. So there are, for Isaac, salutary effects of trials and suffering, at least when one responds to those trials in such a way as to develop humility, or to act lovingly, even (in fact especially) to those who have wronged or harmed one. This is the path to moral perfection:such a person’s soul gladly draws near to a luminous love of humanity, without distinguishing [between sinners and righteous]; he is never overcome by the weakness to be found in people, nor is he perturbed. He is just as the blessed Apostles were as well: people who in the midst of all the bad things they endured from the others were nonetheless utterly incapable of hating them or of being fed up with showing love for them. This was manifested in actual deed, for after all the other things they accepted even death so that these people might be retrieved. These were men who only a little bit earlier had begged Christ that fire might descend from heaven upon the Samaritans just because they had not received them into their village! But once they had received the gift and tasted the love of God, they were made perfect in love even for wicked men: enduring all kinds of evils in order to retrieve them, they could not possibly hate them.(II 10 (36))
Though we do not seek these out, if one falls into adversity, even torment, this should be seized as the means by which one can grow in goodness. With regards to trials of the body, one should:The mind indeed with a little study of the Scriptures and a little labor in fasting and stillness forgets its formal musing and is made pure, in that it becomes free from alien habits. It is also easily defiled. The heart, however, is purified with great sufferings and by being deprived of all mingling with the world, together with complete mortification in everything. When it has been purified, however, its purity is not defiled by contact with inconsequential things.9(OAL 3/11 (50))
By growing in virtue, we ready ourselves for communion with God. This is to the good, for in the afterlife, we will experience God in a far fuller, more direct and unmediated way than is available in this life:make ready with all your strength and swim in them with every limb and muscle. Indeed apart from them it is not possible for you to draw near to God, for within them lies divine rest.(OAL 3/47 (56))
How one experiences the unveiled glory of God depends on her own character. One’s measure of the beatitudes of the afterlife—the extent to which the afterlife is an experience of exaltation, bliss, joyfulness—depends on the measure of one’s virtue:In the life beyond, indeed, we will receive the whole truth concerning God the creator – not about His Nature but about the order of His majesty, and of His divine glory and His great love for us. There, all the veils and titles and forms of the Economy, will be taken away from before the minds there, we will no longer receive His gifts in the name of our petition, nor the grace of knowledge in a measured way.(III 3/35 (309))
The heavenly afterlife then is not received in a uniform way. There is not some threshold of goodness beyond which persons are deemed worthy—or not too unworthy—to be uniformly gifted the goods of heaven. God, in fact, gives everyone the best they are capable of receiving. (For Isaac, to regard God as doing anything less is to underestimate the perfect goodness and mercy of God.) Instead, one’s own goodness is what makes one so much as capable of receiving the beatitudes of the closer presence of God. The same sunlight both melts ice and hardens clay. What differs in the two cases is not the sunlight, but the ice and the clay. Their different outcomes—their different reactions to the sun—is to be explained by their different physical substructures. Analogously, how we will receive God in the afterlife, how we will experience the closer presence of God, has not to do with God’s differential treatment of us as such, but by our differential reception of the same ‘treatment’. Harmonious union with God requires sharing the perfect will of God, and so willing to bring about God’s perfectly loving and merciful ends. Only to the extent that one’s character is conformed to the perfect goodness of God, can one experience as bliss the close presence of God:In the future age … this order of things will be abolished. For then one will not receive from another the revelation of God’s glory to the gladness and joy of his soul; but to each by himself the Master will give according to the measure of his excellence and his worthiness.(I 28 (140))
Moreover, what of hell? Those whose character is contorted by vice will experience the close presence of God as a torment:The Saviour calls the ‘many mansions’ of his Father’s house the noetic levels of those who dwell in that land, that is, the distinctions of the gifts and the spiritual degrees which they noetically take delight in, as well as the diversity of the ranks of the gifts. But by this he did not mean that each person yonder will be confined in his existence by a separate spatial dwelling and by the manifest, distinguishing mark of the diverse placement of each man’s abode. Rather, it resembles how each one of us derives a unique benefit from this visible sun though a single enjoyment of it common to all, each according to the clarity of his eyesight and the ability of his pupils to contain the sun’s constant effusion of light. … In the same manner, those who at the appointed time will be deemed worthy of that realm will dwell in one abode which will not be divided into a multitude of separate parts. And according to the rank of his discipline each man draws delight for himself from the one noetic Sun in one air, one place, one dwelling, one vision, and one outward appearance.(I 6 (56))
However, this is not—at least not merely—retributive punishment; the ultimate purpose, and endpoint, of ‘being chastened by the goading of [God’s] love’ (III 6/62 (342)) is redemptive:I also maintain that those who are punished in gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is more poignant than any torment. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love … is given to all. But the power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of heaven by its delectability.(I 28 (141))
Because the close presence of God is both corrective and experienced by all, all will, ultimately, be morally transformed so that they will experience God as a joy rather than a torment. Isaac endorses Apocatastasis: the view that there is, for all, (eventual) universal salvation, both from moral corruption and from suffering:God chastises with love, not for the sake of revenge—far be it!—but in seeking to make whole his image. And he does not harbour wrath until such time as correction is no longer possible, for he does not seek vengeance for himself. This is the aim of love. Love’s chastisement is for correction, but does not aim at retribution. … The man who chooses to consider God as avenger, presuming that in this manner he bears witness to His justice, the same accuses Him of being bereft of goodness. Far be it that vengeance could ever be found in that Fountain of love and Ocean brimming with goodness!10(I 48 (230))
Isaac also endorses deification or theosis—the idea that one can, in some ways and in some senses, participate in God’s divinity:“The union of Christ in the divinity has indicated to us the mystery of the unity of all in Christ.” This is the mystery: that all creation by means of one, has been brought near to God in a mystery. Then it is transmitted to all. Thus all is united in Him as the members of a body; He however is the head of all. This action was performed for all of creation. There will, indeed, be a time when no part will fall short of the whole. For it is not just a matter of this great spiritual intelligence being transmitted only partially, but He will do something greater, once He has made <this> manifest and has indicated it here below.11(III 5/10 (322-3))
This kind of union, both with God and with other persons, is in fact the purpose of every human life. It is also the apotheosis of human flourishing: the ultimate source of value, the greatest good available to human beings, involving not only moral excellence and nobility, but also eternal beatitude or happiness, and freedom from anxiety, disappointment, pain—indeed all forms of mental or physical suffering. It is in theosis, and only in theosis, that moral excellence and unsurpassable happiness are ultimately united.O immeasurable love of God for His work <of creation>! Let us look at this mystery with wordless insight so as to know that He has united creation to His Essence, not because He needed to but to draw creation to Him that it might share in His riches, so as to give it what is His and to make known to it the eternal goodness of His Nature. He has conferred on it the magnificence and the glory of His divinity in order that instead of the invisible God, visible creation might be called “God” and in place of what is uncreated and above time, God crowned with the name of the Trinity the creature and what is subject to a beginning. On the work of His creation, in honor of its sacred character, He has set the glorious name which even the mouths of the angels are not pure enough to utter.(III 5/14 (324))
4. Saint-Making Environments
There is then a profound downside to God preventing all evil and suffering: it would lead to a bizarro Hick world, which—worst of all—would make impossible the development of a saintly character. Sterba is alive to this point. He holds, however, that there is another option open to God, an option, in fact, that God is morally obliged to select. God, Sterba holds, should prevent all the significant (including, of course, terrible) evil consequences of our actions, while allowing the less significant evil consequences of our actions to take place: a policy of ‘limited intervention’ (Sterba 2019, p. 60).One can at least begin to imagine such a world. It is evident that our present ethical concepts would have no meaning in it. If, for example, the notion of harming someone is an essential element in the concept of a wrong action, in our hedonistic paradise there could be no wrong actions—nor any right action in distinction from wrong. Courage and fortitude would have no point in an environment in which there is, by definition no danger or difficulty. Generosity, kindness and the agape aspect of love, prudence, unselfishness, and all other ethical notions which presuppose life in an objective environment could not even be formed. Consequently such a world, however well it might promote pleasure, would be very ill adapted for the development of the moral qualities of human personality. In relation to this purpose it might be the worst of all possible worlds!
In the quoted passage, Sterba mentions freely refraining from inflicting significantly evil consequences on others as an example of supervirtuousness, but there are many more examples of supervirtuousness, arising from the risk or actual occurrence of terrible evils. There are those who risk or sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of others, those who forgive others who have inflicted dreadful evils on them, those who sacrifice significant goods and freedoms in order to care for dependants with debilitating illnesses, those who are tortured or martyred for their faith, and many other forms of supervirtuousness besides these. In a world in which God invariably intervenes to prevent all terrible suffering the highest, most admirable, most exceptional forms of generosity, forgiveness, compassion, self-control, humility, integrity, courage, enemy-love, self-transcending and self-sacrificial love would not be possible. Sterba argues that this is a trade-off God should make:[W]ouldn’t such a policy of limited intervention by God constrain good people from being supervirtuous at the same time that it constrains bad people from being the supervicious? If God is going to prevent the significantly evil consequences of our actions, then both good people and bad people are going to be restricted from inflicting significantly evil con- sequences on others. That means that good people will not be able to be as virtuous as they could otherwise be if they could freely refrain from inflicting significantly evil consequences on others.
On the kind of theistic views Sterba is targeting, the heavenly afterlife involves the provision of what Sterba calls ‘consumer goods’—‘experiences and activities that are intensely pleasurable, completely fulfilling, and all encompassing’ (Sterba 2019, p. 36)—to those who have used soul-making opportunities ‘to do what we could be reasonably expected to do to make ourselves less unworthy of a heavenly afterlife’ (Sterba 2019, p. 53). In this kind of cosmic outlook, there is some threshold beyond which our actions become good enough to be counted as manifesting what one could be reasonably expected to do, and for God to grant us the consumer goods of a heavenly afterlife. It may well be reasonable, given this kind of cosmic outlook, to regard the most exceptional kinds of virtuousness—the luminous love of Isaac—as too demanding to mark this threshold. However, this is all quite alien to the cosmic outlook of Isaac Qatraya. There, ultimate union with God requires harmony with the perfect will of God. Theosis—our ultimate end and the apotheosis of human flourishing—requires moral perfection,14 and one can only approximate this beatific state to the extent that one’s moral character has been perfected. This requires the highest, most saintlike virtues. The tradeoff in which we sacrifice supervirtuousness for insulation from temporary significant suffering is, within this outlook, a tradeoff in which we also sacrifice the greatest possible eternal good for all human beings for insulation from temporary significant suffering. Given the cosmic outlook of Isaac, it is, at the very least, less obvious that God should make this tradeoff.But is this a problem? Who would object to God’s following such a policy? Of course, bad people might object because such a policy limits them in the exercise of their superviciousness. But there is no reason God or anyone else should listen to their objection in this regard. What about the good people? Would they object to such a policy? How could they? True, the policy does limit good people in the exercise of their supervirtuousness, but that is just what it takes to protect would-be victims from the significantly evil consequences of the actions of bad people. Surely, good people would find the prevention of the infliction of significantly evil consequences on would-be victims by the supervicious worth the constraint imposed on how supervirtuous they themselves could be. In fact, they should find such tradeoffs not only morally acceptable but also morally required.(cf. Sterba 2019, pp. 62, 174)
However, are God and Superman similar enough for the thought experiment to be convincing? In some contexts, there is a tendency to conceive of God as something of a Superman figure. However, there is a huge gulf between this conception of God and God as understood by Isaac Qatraya (and, for that matter, any thinker who could be understood as endorsing ‘classical theism’ of some kind). Here is one salient difference. If God (so understood) adopted the policy of preventing all terrible suffering, then no terrible suffering would take place. Superman (his superpowers notwithstanding) could not do anything comparable to this. He could not, for instance, prevent acts leading to terrible suffering simultaneously taking place both at the Daily Planet and LexCorp offices, let alone prevent acts leading to terrible suffering simultaneously taking place in Metropolis, Cape Town, Sanaa, Melbourne, San Francisco, John O’Groats, or wherever else such acts may be taking place. In this respect then, there is also a huge gulf between Kryptonian and Divine policies of limited intervention. Worlds in which God aims to enact this policy and worlds in which Superman aims to enact this policy are very different.Think of the fictional city of Metropolis in which Superman/ Clark Kent was imagined to live. Surely regularities did hold in that imaginary city. They were just different from the regularities that hold in our world because of the “to be expected” interventions of Superman that occurred in Metropolis. So if all the world were like Metropolis, we would still discover natural laws. We would just learn that the operation of those laws was subject to moral constraints because of the additional regular interventions of superheroes or God. The same would be true in an ideally just and powerful political state, where all murders, serious assaults, and so on would be prevented. There too natural law regularities governing human behavior would be constrained, so to speak, by the to-be-expected regular moral interventions of such a state. Of course, soul-making would still exist in Metropolis or in an ideally just and powerful state, as it does in our world. It is just that the opportunities for soul-making that would exist there would be limited to just those opportunities that morally good people would prefer to have. But clearly no one should be objecting to living under those regularities.
5. Divine and Human Permission of Evil
The argument here is by modus tollens. If it is permissible for God to permit significant or terrible evil consequences of immoral actions, then it is permissible for human agents to permit significant or terrible evil consequences of immoral actions. However, it is not permissible for human agents to permit significant or terrible evil consequences of immoral actions. So it is not permissible for God to permit significant or terrible evil consequences of immoral actions. What would make us warranted in accepting the first conditional here? We would be warranted in accepting the first conditional if we were warranted in accepting the following parity principle:Suppose parents you know were to permit their children to be brutally assaulted to make possible the soul-making of the person who would attempt to comfort their children after they have been assaulted or to make possible the soul-making that their children themselves could experience by coming to forgive their assailants. Would you think the parents were morally justified in so acting? Hardly. Here you surely would agree with [MEPRI-MEPRIII’s] prohibition of such actions. Permitting one’s children to be brutally assaulted is an action that is wrong in itself, and not something that could be permitted for the sake of whatever good consequences it might happen to have. That is why [MEPRI-MEPRIII] prohibits any appeal to good consequences to justify such actions in such cases.16
The first conditional is an instance of the contrapositive of the parity principle. So, are we warranted in accepting the parity principle? I have my doubts. It seems to me that a number of different factors should undermine our confidence in the parity principle. In the first place, the consequences of not permitting certain classes of events are very different in the Divine and human cases. For one thing, for God to adopt the policy Where possible, prevent all significant or terrible suffering would lead to, or at least risk, a bizarro Hick world in which saint-making was impossible. However, on the view countenanced here, this would amount to the prevention of the ultimate eternal flourishing of all human beings. This is a truly dreadful consequence: a worse consequence, in fact, than any human agent is so much as capable of bringing about. In contrast, for a human agent to adopt the policy Where possible prevent all significant or terrible suffering would not lead to a bizarro Hick world. The consequences of an act have a bearing on whether that act is permissible or obligatory, and here the consequences of God acting to prevent significant or terrible suffering are immeasurably worse than the consequences of a human agent acting to prevent significant or terrible suffering. As such, God’s moral relationship to permitting significant or terrible suffering is very different from a human agent’s moral relationship to permitting significant or terrible suffering. Moreover, in fact, this disparity itself appears to underwrite a counterexample to the parity principle. It is morally permissible (even morally obligatory) for God to permit some instances of significant or terrible suffering, when it is in God’s power to prevent them, because the alternative would be far worse (including, ultimately, for those whose suffering has been temporarily permitted). In contrast, it is not morally permissible for a human agent to permit the same instances of significant or terrible suffering, because the alternative would not be far worse. Human agents frequently have reasons to intervene to prevent significant or terrible suffering, but lack God’s weightier countervailing reasons to permit it.For all acts of type , if it is not morally permissible for a human agent to , then it is not morally permissible for God to .
There are different ways in which one might develop a saint-making response to the problem of evil, and, depending on which kind one endorses, one will have a different response to objections of this sort. According to some advocates of saint-making theodicies, a saint-making environment requires the risk or possibility of significant or even horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions. As we saw earlier, this is necessary in order for us not to inhabit a bizarro Hick world, in which developing the highest, most admirable, most exceptional forms of generosity, forgiveness, compassion, self-control, humility, integrity, courage, enemy-love, self- transcending and self-sacrificial love would be impossible. In this picture then, God is incentivised to create a world in which there is the risk or possibility of these consequences. However, that is not at all the same thing as being incentivised to actualise those terrible possibilities. One can be incentivised to build roads and railways, knowing that, in doing so, there is a risk that the cars and trains running on that infrastructure will crash, resulting in significant or even terrible suffering. But that does not entail that one is thereby also incentivised to have those cars and trains crash.[I]t would be morally inappropriate for our receiving a Godly opportunity for soul-making to be conditional on God’s permitting significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions. This is because it would give us the incentive to commit, and want others to commit, significant and even horrendous evil actions, virtually without limit, so that God would permit their consequences and thereby make possible our receiving a Godly opportunity for soul-making.18
6. The Moral Evil Prevention Requirements
Moral Evil Prevention Requirement IPrevent, rather than permit, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions without violating anyone’s rights (a good to which we have a right) when that can easily be conducted.
Whether God adheres to MEPRI, in the picture countenanced here, depends on whether we should regard a person’s ultimate theosis as her right. According to Sterba, if something ‘is absolutely required for our fundamental well-being, then we … have a right to it analogous to the way we have a right to liberty or a right to welfare.’ (Sterba 2019, p. 87) Is theosis absolutely required for one’s fundamental well-being? In at least one understanding of that phrase, it is. Theosis is required for the continuance of a flourishing life; without it one’s life either ceases, or persists but in the torments of Gehenna. It is also constitutive of ultimate well-being, both in the sense of the greatest well-being available to humans, and in the sense of being the end for which humans are created. If this is what is meant by fundamental well-being—and anything that is required for fundamental well-being is a right—then theosis is a right. However, suffering, even terrible suffering (or the risk of these), is required to forge a saintly moral character, and a saintly moral character is required for theosis. Thus, preventing suffering (or removing the risk of suffering) would violate our right to theosis. If this is the case, God is morally required to provide everyone an opportunity for theosis, and so to create an environment where this is possible. If theosis is a good to which we have a right, then God does adhere to MEPRI.Moral Evil Prevention Requirement IIDo not permit, rather than prevent, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions simply to provide other rational beings with goods they would morally prefer not to have.
On the picture sketched here, there are not other ways of providing the good of theosis. Theosis, for creatures like us, requires growth into saintly virtues, growth into saintly virtues requires an environment in which there is the risk of significant suffering, and an environment in which there is the risk of significant suffering requires that God does not act to prevent all instances of significant suffering. MEPRIII is not violated. Moreover, because warrant for both the claim that MEPRI-MEPRIII are true and the claim that God violates MEPRI-MEPRIII could only be gained via warrant for the claim that Isaac’s outlook is false, one cannot gain warrant for the claim that MEPRI-MEPRIII are true and the claim that God violates MEPRI-MEPRIII without first being warranted in rejecting Isaac’s outlook. It is then a thestic cosmic outlook that is immune to this kind of argument from evil.Moral Evil Prevention Requirement IIIDo not permit, rather than prevent, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions (which would violate someone’s rights) in order to provide such goods when there are countless morally unobjectionable ways of providing those goods.
7. A Note on Sceptical Theism
to (something in the ballpark of):No reasons I know of are such that they would justify God permitting some actual evil E.
A ‘sceptical theist’20 claims this is a poor inference, because, roughly speaking, he doubts he is entitled to hold that the reasons he is aware of are representative of the reasons God is aware of, so that the inference involves something akin to base rate neglect.21 Above, I did not mention skeptical theism, and, on the face of it, Sterba’s argument from evil might appear insusceptible to sceptical theist responses. That is because Sterba argues that, for some actual evil, E, there are reasons we know of that entail that God is not justified in permitting E. If we were warranted in accepting that, then, because (classical) entailment is monotonic, the existence of other reasons of which we are not aware could do nothing to undermine that warrant. It would be too hasty though to conclude that there is no space for a sceptical theist treatment of the argument. Naturally enough, whether one can reasonably take oneself to hold that one knows of reasons that entail that God is not justified in permitting E, depends on both the moral claims one endorses and the moral epistemology one buys into. Moreover, both the moral claims one endorses and the moral epistemology one buys into will depend on the cosmic outlook one buys into. In fact then, the moral premises of Sterba’s argument depend on their own inductive step, something in the ballpark of:Probably: there are no reasons that would justify God permitting some actual evil E.
toNo axiological features of our cosmos I know of are such as to render MEPRI-MEPRIII false, or not violated by God.
Whether sceptical theism can itself be motivated is a large question. However, what we should observe here is that sceptical theist approaches are, perhaps contrary to first impressions, applicable mutatis mutandis to Sterba’s argument.Probably: there are no axiological features of our cosmos such as to render MEPRI-MEPRIII false, or not violated by God.
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Sterba elaborates: ‘For example, if you can easily prevent a small child from going hungry or aid someone who has been brutally assaulted without violating anyone’s rights then you should do so. This requirement is an exceptionless minimal component of the Pauline Principle discussed in previous chapters, which would be acceptable to consequentialists and nonconsequentialists, as well as theists and atheists alike.’ (Sterba 2019, p. 126). |
2 | Here I use warrant to pick out rational good standing in the disjunctive sense of involving either positive rational justification or the kind of default rational entitlement that does not require positive justification. |
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4 | McPherson (2020, p. 115) describes a cosmic outlook as ‘an understanding of the world and one’s place within it that forms the background to a person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, and, indeed, to his or her life as a whole.’ McPherson emphasises—rightly, to my mind—the close interrelationship between one’s cosmic outlook and one’s ethical views. |
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7 | References to ⌜I n⌝, ⌜II n⌝, and ⌜III m/n⌝ refer, respectively to sections n of the ‘First Part’, ‘Second Part’, and ‘Third Part’ of Isaac’s writings. Translations of the First Part are taken from Miller (1984), translations of the Second Part are taken from Brock (1995), and translations of the Third Part are taken from Hansbury (2021), which is part of the collection Kozah et al. (2021). |
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9 | References to ⌜AOL m/n⌝ refer to Isaac’s homilies On Ascetical Life, and are taken from (Hansbury 1989). |
10 | See also the following passage: ‘My Lord, You have not formed me like a clay vessel that when broken cannot be restored and when encrusted is not able to take on its former polish when new. But in Your wisdom, You have created my in the form of elements of gold and silver that when tarnished, in the refining sorrow of compunction, again imitates the color of the sun and shining is brought to its former condition by means of the crucible of repentance. You are the craftsman who polishing our nature makes it new. I have soiled the beauty of baptism and I am sullied, but in You I receive a more excellent beauty. In You is the beauty of creation: You have brought it back again to that beauty from which it was altered in paradise.’ (III 7/35 (352)). |
11 | See also the following passage: ‘It is clear that [God] does not abandon them the moment they fall, and that demons will not remain in their demonic state, and sinners will not remain in their sins; rather, he is going to bring them to a single equal state of perfection in relationship to his own Being—to a state in which the holy angels now are, in perfection of love and a passionless mind. He is going to bring them into that excellency of will where it will be not as though they were curbed and not free or having stirrings from the Opponent then; rather, they will be in a state of excelling knowledge, with a mind made mature in the stirrings which partake of the divine outpouring which the blessed Creator is preparing in his grace; they will be perfected in love for him, with a perfect mind which is above any aberration in all its stirrings.’ (II 40 (4)). |
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13 | Isaac does not himself develop a detailed theodicy, or explicitly anticipate the kinds of objections Sterba develops. The goal here is to interrogate whether a saint-making theodicy is susceptible to the kinds of objections Sterba develops—and, ultimately, the argument from evil Sterba develops—if one shares certain aspects of Isaac’s cosmic outlook. |
14 | So we have Christ’s injunction, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt 5:48): no doubt a high bar to meet. |
15 | Of course, for those who are not sociopaths, or have not been acculturated into barbarism, it is psychologically much harder to deliberately harm a child, but we are imagining here, as Sterba does, a world in which we have come to realise that God will always intervene to prevent terrible suffering. (We also should not underestimate how frequently human beings have been acculturated into barbarism.) |
16 | Sterba continues: ‘Moreover, if there are no exceptions to [MEPRI-MEPRIII] for humans in such cases, then the same should also hold true for God. If it is always wrong for us to do actions of a certain sort, then it should always be wrong for God to do them as well. So for contexts where the issue is whether to permit a significant evil to achieve some additional good, God, like us, would never be justified in permitting evil in such cases.’ (Sterba 2019, p. 57). |
17 | Note that one does not have to buy into the idea that a rational or moral choice is always one that maximises expected utility (however that gets defined) to grasp the far more modest point I’m making here—i.e. that we sometimes are obliged not to act in certain ways because of the subjective probability that doing so will lead to dire consequences (and that infallable beings will have relevantly different subjective probabilities with respect to the obtention of those outcomes). This also has a direct bearing on the particular parity we’re scrutinizing. There is, for human beings, a non-zero subjective probability that there is no afterlife in which the harms incurred in this life will be undone, and where those who have advanced into saintliness by how they have reponded to those harms will benefit from their saintly character. This makes our moral relationship towards permitting those harms different from that of a being who infallably knows that there is an afterlife like this. |
18 | The objection has a second part: ‘It would also support perverse incentives for God as well. Assuming that God wanted to provide us with a Godly opportunity for soul-making, God would also have to perversely want us to commit significant and even horrendous morally evil actions, virtually without limit, so that God could then permit their consequences and thereby make possible our receiving a Godly opportunity for soul-making.’ (Sterba 2019, p. 84). But this part depends on a closure principle I don’t accept. Wanting, I say, is not closed under necessitation relations. One might want to be physically fit, but not want to exercise, even though it is necessarily the case that if one is physically fit one exercises. (The modality at play here concerns practical possibility and necessity.) And so for any number of good outcomes; one may want the good outcome, but not the means by which that outcome can be achieved. It is possible then to want saintliness, but not the trials required to achieve it. |
19 | Why doesn’t God act out of love to prevent the suffering of others? In Isaac’s cosmic outlook, that’s exactly what God does do. But it must be understood diachronically, as a process, where the prevention of suffering is (one aspect of) the culmination of that process. If God acts to prevent all significant suffering immediately, the process, as we saw, is undermined. |
20 | |
21 | Compare a chess novice playing against the chess engine Stockfish, who reasons from the premise No reasons I know of are such that Stockfish is justified in permitting the distribution of chess pieces we find on our board to the conclusion Probably: there are no reasons such that Stockfish is justified in permitting the distribution of chess pieces we find on our board. The badness of the inference can be explained, at least in part, by appealing to the many possible reasons for making a chess move that will not be cognitively available to a chess novice—there are an estimated legal moves in chess—and the relatively good grasp Stockfish has of the relevant class of possible reasons—running on the right hardware, Stockfish can evaluate thousands of millions of possible moves per second. The novice knows Stockfish’s end (to win the game), but, even given that knowledge, it would be a bad bet on the part of the novice to hold that, if he is unaware of why Stockfish’s move would advance that end, then it does not in fact advance that end. Say then we know that a perfect Being’s ultimate aims would include what is ultimately best for human agents. For analogous reasons it might seem like a bad bet to hold that, if one is unaware of why God permitting the kinds and distributions of evil we find in our world advances that end, then it does not in fact advance that end. |
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Collin, J.H. Isaac Qatraya and the Logical Problem of Evil. Religions 2022, 13, 1171. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13121171
Collin JH. Isaac Qatraya and the Logical Problem of Evil. Religions. 2022; 13(12):1171. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13121171
Chicago/Turabian StyleCollin, James Henry. 2022. "Isaac Qatraya and the Logical Problem of Evil" Religions 13, no. 12: 1171. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13121171