Abstract
Marilyn McCord Adams agrees with D. Z. Phillips that instrumental theodicy is a moral failure, and that sceptical theists and others are guilty of ignoring what we know now (in this life) about the moral reality of horrendous evils to speculate about unknown ways these evils might be made sense of. In place of theodicy, Adams advocates ‘the logic of compensation’ for the victims of evil, a postmortem healing of divine intimacy with God. This goes so deep, she believes, that eventually victims will see the horrors they suffered as points of contact with the incarnate, suffering God and cease wishing they had never suffered them. I argue Adams’s position falls foul of the very criticisms she and Phillips make against instrumental theodicy.
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Notes
Though the means-end connotation of ‘instrumental’ makes it misleading for the incidental consequences case, for convenience I follow Adams in using it for both cases. They share the idea that in creating this world God (given he had the options of not creating a world at all, or creating one with no life more sophisticated than insensate vegetation, and assuming he foresees the free acts of his creatures) has exchanged the lives of horrendous evil’s victims for the greater goods: he sacrifices those lives for the greater goods.
Mainly in Adams 1999, 2006, 2008. For convenience, I shall use ‘theodicy’ to mean all the instrumentalist views Adams attacks, including ‘defences’. A defence is normally distinguished from a theodicy in that the former merely speculates about God’s logically possible reasons for creation (to meet the so-called logical problem of evil) while the latter offers a positive case for the plausibility of some specific reason. The distinction is irrelevant here.
It is worth pointing out that theodicists do not typically think that God’s creating the world with horrors is justified by his having faced a hard choice. They think that achieving a greater good—as opposed to avoiding a worse evil—is justification enough. I believe Phillips is right in thinking that avoiding a worse evil is the only way God could be justified in creating a world with horrors. But of course God did not face a hard choice: there is nothing evil at all, let alone more evil than the horrors of the actual world, in his not creating at all, or creating a world with no more life than insensate vegetation.
In the case of a defence, as opposed to a theodicy, the conclusion would be that it is logically possible God has an MSR. But as I have said, the theodicy/defence distinction is irrelevant here. If it is true that it is logically possible God has an MSR for creating the world, Phillips can still advance the ‘bearing the consequences’ argument.
At least that seems to be the assumption structuring Adams’s argument. I doubt that theodicists generally confine themselves to the quasi-judicial moral notions. But it will be helpful for exposition, while doing no harm, to follow Adams in this.
For a more detailed presentation of this point see Gleeson 2012: 6–14.
Ironically Adams makes a very similar point against Plantinga’s ‘O Felix Culpa’ theodicy: Adams 2008 pp. 135–136.
As does her assertion on 19 that “[c]ontrary to skeptical theism, no appeal to ignorance is necessary [for us to understand how suffering horrendous evils is compatible with a life being a great good] because natural theology and revelation acquaint us with the currency of horror compensation” (emphasis added).
References
Adams, M. M. (1999). Horrendous evils and the goodness of God. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Adams, M. M. (2006). Christ and horrors: the coherence of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Adams, M. M. (2008). Plantinga on “Felix Culpa”: analysis and critique. Faith and Philosophy, 25(2), 123–140.
Adams, M. M. (2013). Ignorance, instrumentality, compensation and the problem of evil. Sophia, 52(1), 7–26.
Bishop, J., & Perszyk, K. (2011). The normatively relativised logical argument from evil. International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 70(2), 109–126.
Gleeson, A. (2012). A frightening love: recasting the problem of evil. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Phillips, D. Z. (2005). The problem of evil and the problem of God (p. 2005). Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Trakakis, N. (2008). Theodicy: the solution to the problem of evil or part of the problem? Sophia, 47(2), 161–191.
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Gleeson, A. On Letting Go of Theodicy: Marilyn McCord Adams on God and Evil. SOPHIA 54, 1–12 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0431-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0431-3