Objections and Concerns

Abstract

This chapter responds to some objections and concerns. First, it discusses some Scriptural passages that might be adduced against the book’s thesis that God intends that sin occur: Habakkuk 1:13, Romans 3:7–8, Matthew 18:4–7; Luke 17:1–2; Mark 9:42, James 1:13–14. Then, it responds to some philosophical objections that have been adduced against the book’s thesis. It concludes with a discussion of whether the book’s thesis imperils the place occupied by the Doctrine of Double Effect in Christian teaching, concluding that it may still hold good on the human-to-human ethical plane.

In this final section, we discuss some remaining worries and objections. We divide the objections into two types: Scriptural and philosophical. We begin with the Scriptural.

8.1 Habakkuk 1:13—God Cannot Look at Wrong

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

Habakkuk 1:13 is adduced by Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) in Summa Contra Gentiles (1259–1265) as a proof text for the view that ‘God cannot will evil’ (Aquinas 1975: I.95). The complaint that Habakkuk makes in the verse is occasioned by God’s declaration (vv. 5–11) that he is raising up the Chaldeans as his instrument of judgment—a people described as ‘that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own’. Habakkuk appears to have difficulty accepting that God should raise up such a cruel people to do his will, and he expresses his confusion on this point in v. 13.

Aquinas and others seem to think that the verse refutes our thesis as follows. Habakkuk declares God to be such that he is too pure to see evil, that God cannot bring himself to look at wrongdoing. But our project appears to run counter to the spirit of this verse, for it appears that, far from God’s recoiling in horror at sin, our contention is that God decides for his own purposes to bring it about that sin occur.

We make three points in response.

First, it is unwise uncritically to accept as true everything that a prophet utters. Many commentators take issue, for instance, with some of Jeremiah’s utterances, holding him to speak impulsively and improperly at points.¹ It is possible to read Habakkuk’s remark as embodying a similar sort of failure. After all, God made it clear in vv. 5–11 that he was raising up a wicked people to accomplish his ends. It is not difficult to read Habakkuk’s complaint as expressing a refusal to accept and incorporate that revelation. And, indeed, when God replies to Habakkuk in Chap. 2, God doesn’t disavow the wicked violence of the Chaldeans. Instead, he promises more violence (2:17), albeit violence that functions as just retribution upon the Chaldeans. We do not rest anything on this point, however.

Secondly and chiefly, it is obvious that we cannot take Habakkuk’s expression as literally true. God can indeed see and look at sinfulness. God cannot function as a judge punishing sin unless he knows exactly what sins have taken place. Indeed, Habakkuk’s point is that God does look at evil people, the traitors he mentions, and their wrong actions, the swallowing up of those more righteous than they. The puzzlement embodied in Habakkuk’s question arises from the fact that God seems to be looking at their sins with approbation, since he does not prevent them from occurring. This is puzzling because Habakkuk knows, as he reminds the reader, that God is pure and therefore finds sin abhorrent. So much so that it is as if he must turn his face away from it, unable to behold it. That is the anthropomorphism we take to be in use here. But that God hates sin is not something we deny; on the contrary, it is something on which we insist. It is quite possible to abhor something, and yet intend that that thing come to be. One might find the prospect of amputating one’s child’s leg abhorrent, but nevertheless decide to do it if one were persuaded that it were the only way of stopping a gangrenous infection from taking the life of one’s child. What God’s hatred of sin implies is, we think, that God will intend that sin occur only if certain goods can be achieved thereby (his desire for those goods outweighing his horror at the evil). And, in many of the passages we have discussed, God appears to be describing those goods.

This view is not unique to us. Gill (1763) comments on this verse:

The Lord with his eyes of omniscience beholds all things good and evil, and all men good and bad, with all their actions; but then he does not look upon the sins of men with pleasure and approbation.

Thirdly, this passage could be used as an extra proof text for our case. God describes the Chaldeans, in addition to what has already been mentioned, as follows (1:10–11):

They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god!

This makes the wickedness of the Chaldeans clear. But, despite that, God has no qualms in affirming that he is raising them up (1:6) and that the ascension of the Chaldeans is his work (1:5).

8.2 Romans 3:8—The Ban on Doing Evil that Good May Come

Romans 3:7–8 says this:

But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just. (Rom. 3:7–8, ESV)

Here, Paul deals with a critic that supposes that it is a corollary of Paul’s doctrine that one might do evil so that good may come. Paul rejects the thought, and condemns those that impute the suggestion to the early Christian church.

But what could ‘doing evil’ so that ‘good may come’ amount to other than intending that sin (or a sin) occur for the sake of some good? Thus, an objection to our central contention appears: what Paul condemns here is intending that sin occur for the sake of a good end (and therefore a fortiori for a bad end). To do such a thing is wicked, affirms Paul. But such behaviour is precisely what we, the authors, say that God does. But God can perform no wicked act. Therefore, God cannot intend that sin occur.

We give two responses.

First, we don’t think that Paul’s ‘do evil’ (poiēsōmen ta kaka) must be rendered as ‘intend that sin occur’. It seems reasonable to us to suppose that Paul’s meaning can be captured by the following parsing:

• (A) And why not sin so that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

Thus, Paul can be read not as condemning intending that sin occur for the sake of a good end, but as condemning performing sinful acts for the sake of a good end. In that case, the verse makes no comment one way or the other on whether it is always wrong to intend that sin occur. If there are occasions where it is not sinful to intend that sin occur, then such occasions are not covered by the verse. Some might hold, of course, that intending that sin occur is always a sinful act, but that is the very point at issue. Such a person cannot simply appeal to Romans 3:8 to establish that, given the ambiguity we have identified here. We believe that whether an act of intending that sin occur counts as sinful depends on other considerations—it doesn’t follow from the nature of such acts that they are always sinful. We discuss whether or not it is permissible for human beings to intend that sin occur at the end of this chapter.

Secondly, we note that, even if Paul is to be understood as condemning intending that sin occur for the sake of a good end, then it is possible that he has only human-to-human ethics in mind. God has the right to do many things to human beings that we human beings do not have the right to do to each other. God, for instance, has the right to end a human being’s life, if he wishes. But we do not have that right. Thus, one might well imagine Paul writing, in a different context where he faced a different sort of slander, ‘Should we kill other people so that good may come? As some slanderously report us as saying?’. Were Paul to write such a thing, it would be unreasonable, we suggest, to take Paul as stating killing others always to be sinful, even in the case of God.² It is simply taken as read that God is often a special case. Thus, even if it is always impermissible for human beings to intend that sin occur, it is consistent with that that it is permissible for God to intend that sin occur. There is, therefore, no clear threat to our central contention here.

8.3 Matthew 18:4–7; Luke 17:1–2; Mark 9:42—The Little Ones and the Millstone

This saying occurs in all the synoptic gospels, but the fullest discussion is in Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus says the following:

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! (Matthew 18:4–7)

Jesus speaks here of ‘little ones’, and it isn’t straightforward to determine the class of person Jesus has in mind. Believers? Young believers (either young in physical age or young as believer)? Young children (whether believing or unbelieving)? At any rate, the maximum extension of this expression appears to be the set of everyone that is either a child or a believer. Two things that Jesus says concerning them are pertinent to our case. He condemns those that would ‘cause one of those little ones who believe in me to sin’ and declares woe upon such people: ‘woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!’.

But what does Jesus mean by ‘cause … to sin’ (skandalisē)? It is surely not merely causing a little one to sin that earns Jesus’ ire here. After all, one may cause a believer to stumble in sin while being entirely and blamelessly unaware that one is doing so. Doing loud carpentry that causes the Christian in the apartment below to lose his temper, say. Thus, one might argue, it is better to understand Jesus’s condemnation as follows: ‘Woe to those that act with the intention that a little one should sin, or that bring about a little one’s sinning though negligence.’

But if that is a correct understanding, then it is true that

• (B) It is wrong to intend that a little one sin

And this might cause problems for our project in two ways. First, one might hold that the truth of (B) is best explained by a more general fact:

• (C) It is wrong to intend that sin occur.

And if (C) is true, then, so the argument goes, God does not intend that sin occur, because God does nothing wrong.

The second possible problem for our project is as follows. Even if one does not accept the inference from (B) to (C), one might nevertheless complain that the overall implication of our project is that God is frequently involved in planning that various sins occur, and that some of the sins that he intends should occur are the sins of little ones. Thus, (B) by itself is a problem for our project because, again, God does nothing wrong.

In response, we deny that the ground of the wrongness present in (B) is such that it carries over straightforwardly to the divine case. It does not follow from its being wrong for a human being to intend that a little one sin, that it is wrong for God to intend that a little one sin. We repeat what we said in discussion of Romans 3:8 above, that God is plausibly taken as a special case. We will return later in this chapter to the question what makes our situation relevantly different from God’s.

We also note that Jesus seems to have in mind here little ones’ being led astray through temptation (v. 7), and one might wonder whether our view implies that God is the one from whom temptation sometimes comes—a problem for our view because surely Jesus would not declare woe against God. But the ESV is misleading here. A more literal rendering of the relevant part of the verse is ‘woe to the human (anthrōpō) by whom the temptation comes!’. We therefore have explicit indication that Jesus’ focus is directed at human beings, with the divine position not in view.

However, the question of how God relates to instances of temptation forms an apt segue into the next text from the Scriptures with which we deal, James on God and temptation, where we offer fuller discussion of this point.

8.4 James 1:13–14—God Does not Tempt

In James’s epistle, he writes the following:

Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (James 1:13–14)

This passage’s assertion that God tempts no one, in conjunction with an account of what temptation consists in, can be pushed as an objection to the idea that God intends that sin occur. For what is it to tempt someone (to sin) if not to place them in a situation with the intention that they sin in that situation, it may be asked? Thus, from James’s insistence that God tempts no one, we can infer that God never places anyone in a situation with the intention that they sin in that situation. But that conclusion is at odds with the central thesis of this book.

This is how Samuel Fancourt (1678–1768) puts the objection:

If the divine being will’d the fall of Adam […] then God’s will was the cause of his fall […]. But to necessitate to sin is more than to tempt; and yet we are forbid to say, or think, When we are TEMPTED, we are tempted of God: For God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man. (Fancourt 1727: 90–91, punctuation original)

In response, we deny that temptation in the sense that James means can be adequately analysed as placing someone in a situation with the intention that they sin in it. To tempt someone involves, we believe, a communicative presentation of a sinful action as being one that the tempted person would be, in some sense, better off for doing. This may involve explicit persuasion, such as when the Devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would but worship him (Matthew 4:8–10); or it might be a purely non-verbal matter, such as decorating the entrance to a brothel with flashy and alluring neon lights. But each example is of a communicative act. Each, in some way, intentionally presents a wicked course of action as desirable, thereby signalling a measure of endorsement of that course of action.

It is this sort of communicative presentation, this endorsement, that we deny that God ever gives to a sinful course of action. God himself may intend on a particular occasion that someone fall when tempted, but he does not personally endorse the temptation. God, we believe, intended that Satan tempt Jesus in the precise way that he did, for example, but Satan’s words on that occasion were not God’s words. Satan, not God, was the asserter, the communicator there. We therefore hold that God himself offers no communicative encouragement to anyone to sin even though he may bring about the opportunity for them to do so. Indeed, on the contrary, far from offering anyone communicative encouragement to sin, God publicly condemns sin.

In this connection it is worth noting that when God wishes for a human being to be tempted into sin, he is presented in the Scriptures as procuring the services of evil spirits for the task (Judges 9:22–24; 1 Samuel 16:14–23; 1 Kings 22:20–23; 1 Chronicles 21:1). God uses third parties here, we believe, precisely because God’s holiness precludes him from offering a communicative presentation of sin as favourable. That would be dishonest communication, and God is not dishonest. But, although God does not lie, the spirits he sends do. At any rate, it is chiefly this idea—the idea that God might be enjoining a believer to sin through a particular episode of temptation—that we believe James is concerned to correct in this passage.³

But there is also the affective dimension to be considered. A friend might fall into a sinful practice, and then encourage you to join in on account of the great enjoyment that they find in it, thereby tempting you. Your friendship with them thus imperils you. The idea that something like this might happen to God the Father—he is placed under a sore desire to sin, a desire that gets spread out in some way to his followers—is also an idea James appears concerned to repudiate here by his insistence that God ‘cannot be tempted with evil’. Of course, if part of what James intends to rule out is that God likes sin, then that is no difficulty for our view. We reaffirm our conviction that God hates sin, even though we believe he intends that particular sinful acts occur.

Thus, by affirming both that God finds sin repulsive and that he offers no communicative encouragement to anyone’s sinning, we believe that we have adequately aligned ourselves with James’s meaning in this passage. But it is perfectly possible for God to intend that sin occur while hating sin and refusing to offer any communicative encouragement to the effect that people should engage in sin. Thus, there is no problem here for our project.

Finally, should anyone be suspicious about the more restrictive meaning we impose on James—more restrictive, that is, than our objector’s—we offer two more points.

First, that the Lord’s Prayer surely forces us to read James more restrictedly. Jesus himself instructs us to pray to our Father in Heaven, entreating that he ‘lead us not into temptation’ (Luke 11:4). The fact that such a request needs to be made suggests that God does indeed frequently lead his people into temptation. One might respond that when God leads someone into temptation, he doesn’t intend that they succumb to that temptation. We agree that God’s intending that they succumb doesn’t follow from what is implied by the Lord’s Prayer, but the point is that by granting that God sometimes leads people into temptation, one is already forced to restrict the first-blush reading of James. And if it is agreed that God frequently deliberately leads people into tempting situations, then it no longer seems a stretch to say that God leads people into temptation with the intent that they fall into sin thereby.⁴

Secondly, if one is to read the passage from James (and the passage from Matthew) as entailing that God does not intend that sin occur, then we point out that that is to place those verses at odds with the force of the many verses we have discussed earlier, and it seems to us that the combined strength of the verses we discussed in earlier chapters outweighs whatever countervailing strength might be had by the verses discussed in this chapter. Thus, submission to the overall force of the testimony of the Christian Scriptures should incline one to our view.

8.5 Philosophical Concerns (i): Mooney and White

Certain thinkers have, while securing various other theological desiderata, gone to some pains to avoid the implication that God intends that sin occur. (Mooney 2019), for instance, is concerned that the use of greater-good defences in response to the argument from evil carries the ready implication that God intended that sin and evil occur for the sake of the goods arising therefrom. He therefore introduces a distinction between foreseen and intended means parallel to the distinction between foreseen and intended effects. This is similar to the idea presented in (Kamm 2007), but Mooney appeals to voluntary bodily movements to illustrate his version of the idea. It seems that when one forms an intention to move one’s arm, one does not, typically, intend the intermediate physiological causal chain involving one’s nervous system (even when one is aware that that is how one’s body works). We thus have a case, Mooney avers, of a foreknown but unintended means. We might say something similar, he says, in the case of God:

But if my hand-raising intention is effective by means of an unintended physiological causal chain, then perhaps some of God’s volitions are also effective by means of unintended intermediary causes. In particular, perhaps God can cause certain evils which are a necessary means to some good simply by intending that good or a broader, good state of affairs which includes that good, while merely foreseeing and not intending the evils themselves. (Mooney 2019: 219)

White (2016) makes a suggestion in a similar vein. His concern is that theological determinism appears to imply that God intends that sin occur. White prefers to think of God as standing outside time and actualizing the whole of history, the whole space–time block, ‘all at once’. White believes that such a picture of the matter permits one to avoid any troublesome implication about God’s intending that sin occur. For if God is simply selecting from timeless eternity his preferred possible history to actualize, then the sin in that history is not God’s causal means to the actualization of the good in that history, even though it is necessary to it, for God’s bringing about of the sin in that history (insofar as he may be said to do that) is not causally prior to his bringing about of the good in that history—he indivisibly causes the whole thing to come to be. White concludes:

Thus it is perfectly possible for the theological determinist to hold that God intends the good aspects of the world but merely foresees the evil aspects. There is no need to hold that God ever intends evil, although his will determines every detail of creation. (White 2016: 92)

We do not challenge here, as a matter of pure philosophy, Mooney’s and White’s suggestions.⁵ We simply note that, since the Scriptures affirm that God has intended that certain sins occur, Mooney’s and White’s enterprises are unnecessary and misguided.

8.6 Philosophical Concerns (ii): A Leibnizian Objection

Someone might be sceptical, however, about our use of the Scriptures. Such a person might put to us the following objection in the spirit of G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716):

Look, all this in the Scriptures about God’s intending this or that—it’s all just non-literal talk. God is accommodating himself to our lowly conceptual arena. He doesn’t really have all these discrete intentions; the only end he really seeks is to create this, the best of all possible worlds, and his whole undivided creative energy is the sole means.

We respond that it would simply be too misleading on God’s part for him to present himself as seeking numerous different ends across the Scriptures, and employing a wide variety of means for those different ends, if he didn’t, in fact, intend those things individually. The Scriptures tell us, for instance, that God chastens believers for their good (Hebrews 12:9–11). If we are to understand that God intended only the great world ensemble, then this looks untrue.⁶ There is quite a difference between God’s saying, ‘I intended this time of trial for your strengthening in righteousness’, and his saying, ‘The fact that that time of trial strengthened you in righteousness was just a by-product of my seeking the greatest possible world’. The first is profoundly personal. The second is not. Thus, we take the implications of the Leibnizian objector’s scepticism for the accuracy of the Scriptures’ talk about God’s intentions to be too damaging to accept.

8.7 Philosophical Concerns (iii): The Doctrine of Double Effect and Christian Ethics

Finally, one might take issue with our project because it involves, one might think, the denial of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), and because of the broader implications that denial would have for Christian ethics. Drawing from (Cavanaugh 2006) and (Mangan 1949: 43), we can state the DDE as follows. A person may permissibly perform an action that they foresee will produce a good effect and a bad effect provided that four conditions are met:

• (i) The action in itself is good or at least morally indifferent.

• (ii) The good effect and not the evil effect is intended.

• (iii) The good effect is not produced by means of the evil effect.

• (iv) The good effect is sufficiently good to compensate for the permitting of the evil effect.

This doctrine is said by (McIntyre 2019) to have its origin in (Aquinas 1920: II-II.Q64.a7), and has held a venerated position in Roman-Catholic thought, and also, on that account, in the Christian tradition more generally.

Our arguments given in this volume for the claim that God intends that sin occur involve God in a straightforward violation of conditions (ii) and (iii) of the DDE, however: we have affirmed both that God intends that certain evil effects of his actions (namely, certain sins) occur and that the good effects of certain of God’s actions are produced by means of certain evil (sinful) effects.

But if there is no absolute prohibition on intending that sin occur (for God does it, and it is compatible with his perfect goodness), then, an objector might argue, the floodgates have been opened. How did Christians respond to utilitarian-style reasoning that was happy to employ wickedness as a means to a greater good? They appealed to DDE: ‘wicked means cannot be justified by good ends!’. But if DDE is false, then this response can no longer be straightforwardly made. Moreover, the great tradition of ethical theory that Christian philosophers from Aquinas to Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) have built around the principle of double effect (concerning euthanasia, abortion, just-war theory, and so forth) must now be disregarded.

So runs the objection. We do grant that our position will have various implications for Christian ethics, but we are sympathetic to accounts on which ethics at the intra-human level remains largely unchanged. Consider Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) on the issue:

the […] reason why it would not be lawful for a creature to permit evil to come to pass, and that it would not be wise and good and virtuous in him so to do, is that he has not perfect wisdom or sufficiency, so as that it is fit such an affair should be trusted with him—he goes beyond his line, he goes out of his province, he meddles with things too high for him. It is everyone’s duty to do things fit for them in their sphere, and commensurate to their power. God never betrusted this providence into the hands of creatures of finite understandings, nor is it proper that he should. (Edwards 1743)

Edwards’s position appears to be that God has not entrusted human beings with the right or privilege of intending that sin occur. God considers them not wise enough to be good stewards in that regard. One might put the following gloss in terms of rights on the matter: it is permissible to intend that sin occur only if one has the relevant sort of rights over the sinner, but only God has such rights; the only way, therefore, for non-divine beings permissibly to intend that sin occur is if God grants them that right, but he has not granted human beings that right.

If such an account is true, then it does indeed look as if much of the Christian ethical tradition can be drawn from without alteration. For, although our contention implies that God-to-human ethics is a rather different matter from what the Christian tradition has typically supposed, it does not follow from that that there needs to be any great shift in how we understand human-to-human ethics.

Nevertheless, although this suggestion from Edwards appears to us to have shown that there need be no shift in human-to-human ethics, what reason have we to believe that, as a matter of fact, God has not granted to us the right to intend that sin occur?

We believe that Jesus’ warning discussed above in Matthew 18—‘whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea’—goes quite a way to establishing this. Jesus’ warning here is couched in terms so dreadful that no sensible Christian could consider it a light matter to lead a little one into sin, even a ‘small’ sin.