Keywords

There are two challenges to finding an example in the Scriptures of God’s intending that we sin. One particularly focuses on our suggestion that we should look for cases in which God chooses that a sin occur in order that a state of affairs might obtain. One might think that if the occurrence of a sin were a necessary precondition of the obtaining of a state of affairs, then, if God intended that the state of affairs obtain, he’d be rationally compelled to intend that the sin occur too. Indeed, this is stated by Elizabeth Anscombe, widely known for her writing on intention (e.g. Anscombe 1963):

It is nonsense to pretend that you do not intend to do what is the means you take to your chosen end. Otherwise there is absolutely no substance to the Pauline teaching that we may not do evil that good may come. (Anscombe 1961: 59)

Anscombe uses the term ‘means’ in this extract, but the philosophical principle to be discussed here is more general, concerning any known-to-be-necessary precondition that one brings about. We quote from the formulation of the principle given by F. M. Kamm (1948–) in her critical discussion of it:

(M) If a rational agent intends an end and believes that [their] doing something is a means necessary to that end, then insofar as [they are] rational and [do] not abandon the end, it follows that [they intend] that means to [their] end. (Kamm 2007: 104)Footnote 1

3.1 Kamm Against the Requirement to Intend Known Means

Kamm goes on to provide a number of counterexamples to (M). Here is a version of one of them, which she calls ‘Party Case II’ (Kamm 2007: 95–96). Suppose I want to host a party in order that my friends and I might enjoy ourselves. I know, however, that the party will produce a mess, and the mess will ruin the party so that none of us will enjoy ourselves for long. This is a defeater for my plan; it is sufficient to dissuade me from hosting the party. Then I realize that the friends I invite would surely, on account of their own good-naturedness, feel indebted to me (which, Kamm notes, is a bad feeling) and, consequently, feel obliged to help me tidy up afterwards. This is a defeater for my defeater; so, I plan to host the party after all. In such a case, I intend to host an enjoyable party, and the bad effect of my friends’ feeling indebted to me is necessary for me to accomplish this. When I invite my friends to attend, however, it does not have to be my intention in doing so that they feel indebted; my intention can merely be that they attend the event. I simply foresee that, by inviting them, I shall also bring about their feeling indebted to me such that they will help tidy up. We might say that, even if I do not invite my friends intending that they feel indebted and so help clean up, I invite them because they will, out of their feeling of indebtedness, help clean up. As Kamm puts it, it is important to ‘distinguish between doing something in order (or intending) to bring about something else and doing something because of something else that will thus be brought about’ (Kamm 2007: 92, italics original): she calls the relation of doing something because it will have an effect rather than in order that it might have that effect, the relation of ‘triple effect‘ (Kamm 2007: 23). (The name ‘triple effect’ is an allusion to its status as a revision of the ‘doctrine of double effect’.) Note carefully the causal structure of the example: the invitation to the party causes the attendance, which causes both the enjoyment and the mess, which latter causes the indebtedness, which causes the clearing-up, which removes the mess, enabling the enjoyment to continue. Kamm herself analyses it like this:

In the Party Case, though [enjoyment on the part of me and my guests] is not sufficient, it is my primary reason for acting, in the sense that it is the goal […] that originally motivates me to think of giving a party, and this reason would be sufficient for action if no problems, such as a mess, arose. The secondary reason for giving the party is that the undesirable effect of giving the party that would ordinarily be an objection to giving it (despite the primary reason for acting) can be taken care of by the foreseen […] guilt in my friends that I produce. The bad effect, we might say, defeats the defeaters of my primary reason, and so maintains the sufficiency of my primary (goal) reason. It is not, however, my goal in action to produce what will defeat the defeaters of my goal. (Kamm 2007: 102, italics original)

It is important to note that this is not a case in which Kamm intends to give a party knowing that afterwards there will be a problem (the mess) that will be overcome by a foreseen bad thing (the feeling of indebtedness). No, the goal is not just having a party, but having a long-lasting enjoyable party, and the problem of the mess will prevent this goal from being achieved, since the mess will prevent Kamm from enjoying the party, unless it itself is overcome. Thus, the mess is not an after-effect that spoils the memory of an enjoyable party. Rather, the mess prevents there being a long-lasting enjoyable party. The absence of a long-lasting mess is a precondition, not a postcondition, of there being a long-lasting enjoyable party.

3.2 Further Counterexamples from Kamm

Here is another example that Frances Kamm gives, which she dubs ‘House Case’:

Suppose that I want to build a private home and I must create a hole in plot A in order to do this. However, creating the hole is too expensive just to build my house, so I must not aim to do it. However, I receive a contract to build an apartment complex on plot B, which is next to A. In order to clear the land for the apartment complex, I must use explosives that unavoidably make a hole in plot B but, as an unintended side effect, they also create a hole in plot A. The hole in plot A is an undesirable side effect from the point of view of building on B, since it makes it harder for me to move materials to B, but it is a tolerable cost relative to the goal of building on B. Given that I will produce the hole in plot A as a side effect, I can still pursue my goal of building my home. I do everything else (e.g., buying bricks) that I must do to build my house in order to build it. (Kamm 2007: 109)

In this case, Kamm has a goal, the building of a private home. There is a precondition that she knows is necessary to achieve this goal, that is, making a hole in plot A. But intending this is ruled out. Does this mean that the goal can no longer be intended, if she is not allowed to intend the means? No, because she is allowed to intend something else, building an apartment complex on plot B, that has as an unintended side effect the hole in plot A. Since Kamm knows that it will have this side effect, she can do the other things necessary to build her private home, secure in the knowledge that, without her intending it, the other precondition for the home, the hole in plot A, will be realized.

Kamm gives yet one more case, in a footnote:

suppose I believe that I will, as a side effect of bringing in a tray of dessert, bring in a corkscrew that you have placed on it. Then I need not intend to bring in the corkscrew—indeed, I might refuse to make any even minimal extra effort necessary to get a corkscrew, believing it wrong to aim to get a corkscrew—consistent with my intending to open the wine and my belief that having the corkscrew is necessary for this. (Kamm 2007: 127, fn 38)

Here Kamm’s goal is to open the wine, and she knows that it is necessary to bring through a corkscrew to achieve this goal. Must she then intend that she bring through a corkscrew? No, because she knows that she will bring through the corkscrew anyway, as an unintended by-product of her bringing through the dessert. So, she knows that, unintended by her, the necessary precondition of a corkscrew’s being brought through will be fulfilled, so that she may rationally intend to open the wine.

3.3 Kamm-inspired Interpretative Strategies

How is all this relevant to our purposes? It is relevant because a Kamm-inspired objector might say that a Scriptural text showing that God has a goal for which the occurrence of sin is a necessary precondition does not show that God intends that the precondition obtain, even though he knows that the precondition is indeed necessary for the goal. To put this in terms of the distinction between acting ‘in order that’ and acting ‘because’, while we want to assert that God acts in order that sin obtain (as a means to his ultimate goal), our opponent might reply that all that is the case is that God acts because sin will obtain (as a means to his ultimate goal). In other words, if we derive from the Scriptures a proposition apparently satisfying (Q), an opponent might suppose that all the Scriptures mean here is a proposition satisfying the following weaker schema:

  • (Q′) God chooses to bring it about that a [state of affairs] obtain because a [sin] will occur.

The rendering in (Q′), in consequence of the absence of ‘in order that’ or ‘so that’, doesn’t imply that God intended that the sin occur, merely that the fact that it would contribute in some way to the desired state of affairs influenced God’s decision-making. An opponent might suppose that this strategy can be deployed against every proof text that can be brought from the Scriptures apparently falling under (Q), and in this way suggest that the Scriptures never need to be read as implying that God intends that sin occur.

Similarly, where we have in (P) ‘God chooses to bring it about that a [sin] occur’, an opponent may say that ‘God chooses to bring it about that’ is adding in an intentional attitude not there in the original text, and that the original text might be satisfied by the weaker ‘God does something because a sin will occur’. This latter does not imply that God intends that the sin occur.

3.4 Historical Antecedents

There are few explicit examples of the Kammian strategy in use, partly because the principle (M) was uncontroversial until recently. But Karl Barth (1886–1968) in the course of his discussion of the Reformed position of infralapsarianism, writes:

The permitting of evil was not thought of as a means which God willed and posited in execution of His electing and rejecting, but rather as a means of which He actually made use in this activity. (Barth 1957: 138)

It could well be that the distinction at which Barth is gesturing here is Kamm’s distinction between performing an action in order to bring about an end on the one hand and, on the other hand, performing an action because it will bring about that end.

There is in addition another strategy an opponent might employ, one that has a substantial historical pedigree. To this we turn next.