I find the notion that the actions of two dubiously historical individuals introduced all natural evils. There is more than sufficient evidence of death and catastrophe long before homo sapiens came along. Some other explanation is required if we are to remain in keeping with a modern scientific world view.

I think natural evils are all too often treated as completely exogenous to human choice. I would argue that many are attributable to human choices. The choice to build a house on unstable soil on a barrier island exposes one to the risk of a hurricane destroying your house and hurting you. The choice to start a farm on a 100-year flood plain when it’s not flooded for 90 years exposes one to similar risk of crop loss.

In modern times, New Orleans was a city built in a highly flood-prone area, which modern engineering purported/hoped to protect from natural forces. One might call it pride to think that human ingenuity had trumped nature so thoroughly as to preclude likely natural disaster.

A question I have is at what distance in time/accountability does “evil” become attached to a harm? If a bomber were to blow up a city’s one water supply, but hurt no one directly, are they responsible for short-term dislocations and potential violence that all but inevitably would ensue from a population center going dry? To what extent do public officials and residents bear responsibility for providing the infrastructure and living in, respectively, a city dependent not on natural sources of water, but on human engineering?

As far as other horrors like cancer in infants, there is an some epidemiological evidence that environmental contaminants, for instance, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and pesticides, increase to the risk of such cancers following exposure in utero. Public health statistics, however, suggest that many cancers cannot be attributed to human-induced pollution, but rather to naturally occurring chemicals, such as aflatoxin.

Let me say that predestination and free will are paradoxical but compatible, in that, while the details of how we got to our end are not fixed, the end result is, as far as our salvation. I find that both free will and predestination are scriptural, and so to rectify this paradox, many choose one side or the other because their theological and logical methods do not allow for such paradoxes, though they be real.

Others, in my mind, include grace and truth, mercy and judgement, faith and responsibility, faith and works, man’s dual nature (both divine and fallen), as well as Jesus’ dual nature (god and man).

The argument isn’t very common among western Christians but it is very common among Eastern Orthodox Christians, of which I am one.

So yes, moral virtue and innocence are not the same. Moral virtue is acquired through free acts for contingent beings. So yes, Adam/Eve and the devil were originally created good and innocent but not personally righteous. The point of giving them initial “hoops” to jump through was so that they could become morally virtuous or righteous and hence like God, fixed in goodness.

But no, disobedience for the saints is no longer an option in heaven becuase they have through habituation or sanctification if you like become deified, partakers of God’s nature and so fixed in goodness like God is. So no magic, just habituation through God’s grace.

So why doesn’t God give us moral virtue from the get go? Not to get too technical there are several revolving ideas. One of them is that virtue can’t be had naturally because it involves choice. You don’t choose your nature, which is why you aren’t responsible for it. Virtue is then built up through choices into habits or settled dispositions. Some of these can become so strong as to be practically unalterable. Someone so habituated or accustomed to doing good simply can’t be tempted to do evil. That is the idea. So I at least have some small amount of virtue such that it would be impossible to get me to murder my family for a nickle. There is just no logically possible circumstance where I am the way I am and I murder my family for a nickle. To that extent I am fixed in virtue. Since I am the sufficient, though not only cause of my being so, being so fixed doesn’t threaten my freedom, moral responsibility or personhood.

This is why God gives us a test in the garden to give us the opportunity to do good. The lie of the devil is not that we can become like God, but that we can do so without the effort, we can be instantly gratified. “You can have it your way.”

Here is one reason for thinking that free will and determinism are not compatible, that is they both cannot be true. What is determinism? For our purposes, it is the thesis that the past state of the world, together with the laws of nature are sufficient to render inevitable one unique future. So, if my choices are rendered inevitable by some antecedent or past state and the laws of nature and the past state of the world and the laws of nature aren’t up to me, then it follows that my choices are not up to me either. So it cannot be the case that my choices are up to me AND determinism is true.

Incompatibility and paradox are not the same things and I think there are good reasons for thinking freedom and determinism are incompatible and not merely paradoxically related. And usually a paradox is a case where we have intutive dispositions to hold on to both ideas, but I can’t think of any reason why someone would want to hold on to determinism.

Certainly divine freedom and determinism are incompatible. Nothing either internally nor externally determined the choice of the Trinity to create or redeem. So in at least one case and one significant case they are not paradoxically related in any obvious or intuitive way.

So in heaven, disobedience will still be an option (hence, free will will still exist), but no one will choose it because, do to the magic of our glorification, we will all have moral virtue?

So I guess that begs the question, why did God not give us moral virtue to begin with and avoid this mess? I know, different question from the “free will” defense of the POE. But that is part of the POE discussion.

As for determinism and free will being incompatible, I believe that such an either/or perspective is neither correct nor orthodox.

I am of the opinion that many profound truths appear in paradoxical pairs, and to omit one or the other is both incorrect and heretical. Hence such paradoxes as “grace and truth met in Jesus Christ.”

Determinism (or predestination) and free will do BOTH exist in reality, even if that stretches our logic to its limits.

The answer to your question regarding to devil and Adam is yes. They have not acquired moral virtue yet. That is why they are given probationary tasks. This does not imply that they are not good with respect to their nature. On my view created agents are constitutively good from the get go qua nature, but not yet morally righteous so that they can be said to be initially innocent.

I don’t think my account is circular. If anything, what you have noticed is consistency and the necessary preconditions to formulate a sufficient defense or theodicy and not circularity. Moreover, what I have pointed out is that your argument doesn’t logically follow given the logical possibility of my view. So free will doesn’t always require the possibility of disobedience, it only requires a plurality of options and the latter is silent on what the moral value of those options are. God could not have created a would without the possibility of disobedience without also removing the possibility of genuine obedience and personal righteousness for those can only be had given libertarian freedom. It is moral virtue for which free will is the necessary condition that serves as the reason why God cannot create such a world. That is, moral responsibility and determinism are incompatible. Hence I take options b and the possibility of b that you give above shows that your argument is a non sequitur. I hope that clarifies.

Therefore, I remain convinced that libertarian freedom is not only wrong, but can only be defended with some sort of neutralizing force. But as I have demonstrated in another blog (at least to my own satisfaction), even then it does not work as choices would be held in a perpetual state of suspension and history does not demonstrate freedom of this sort.

The charity is appreciated but I think you haven’t grasped my point, which I think is on point. I wrote my master thesis in philosophy on libertarianism and a sizable chunk was on conditional analysis. I don’t know why you wouldn’t then recognize the fairly well established analytic flavor and moves I have made. To state that antecedent causes were sufficient to bring about the only “free” choice that was available to me not only begs the question as to what constitutes freedom in the first place, but seems to sap “free” of any meaningful content. If it is inevitable to select only one option, that doesn’t appear to be “free” in any meaningful sense. The question isn’t how much freedom I possess, but what it is and if I have it. A true libertas is then not necessarily constituted by a inevitability of a single option but rather the fixity in virtue all the while there is present a plurality of good options, a point that a compatibilist like Anselm admits constitutes true libertas.

The major points to reiterate are that a compatibilist account of freedom leaves you apologetically barren. And your definition of libertarian freedom as contrary choice between options of opposing moral value is false in light of the counter-examples that I proffered.

This does not explain Lucifer’s choice, nor Adam and Eve before their corruption.

So the angels, including Lucifer before his fall, are not virtuous?

It seems that the whole argument is based on the “temporary” possibility of evil. But I think you may only be presupposing the temporal nature of it based on your need to explain the lack of evil in heaven, or the unavailability of evil after justification.

But I’m not sure this is not circular (sorry, double negative there).

But again, perhaps I am misunderstanding the Free Will argument for the problem of evil - but I understood it simply, and without the idea of acquired righteousness. That is, if free will always includes the possibility of disobedience, then the absence of disobedience (e.g. in heaven) means the absence of free will. And if free will exists in heaven, but evil does not, why in the hell (pun intended) could God have not created an earth that included free will without disobedience?

It seems that the whole idea of free will including the possibility of evil means that either (a) there is no free will in heaven, or (b) free will does NOT include the possibility of evil, and is therefore not a proper explanation for the problem of evil.

I am not disagreeing with you, just trying to understand your argument, and I hope you understand mine.

Now, I am not saying that you made a libertarian free choice to do such, but must say that do to your upbringing, genetics, and experience you made the only free choice that was available to you at the time of the writing. While your choice was free it suffers from libertatis imperfectio. While you have made a free decision that lacked necessitas coactionis, it was not true libertas. That is why I shall extend gratias to you considering that I suffer from the same fate (although not a godless fate).

Moreover, even if conditional analysis were a coherent notion, it would be saddling the Libertarian with a Compatibilist notion of freedom and hence begging the question.

Thirdly, nature does not determine the choices of agents. This is certainly false in the case of the Trinity since the Trinity is not determined to create or redeem. And we are made in God’s image and the same language about humans making choices is used of God in the bible. Moreover, Adam’s nature, as well as the devil’s, were good and so if their nature determined their choices, it would have been impossible for them to sin, but they did. And it seems to at least border on Manicheanism to say that we have an evil nature. Our nature even post fall is still instrinsically good. If it weren’t Christ would not take it up. It seems strange to me for people who harp on God’s power to think that humans can thwart God’s will for human nature by their choices and at the same time complain that Libertarians think that God is not supreme.

Lastly, your comments leave untouched my querries as to what metaphysically grounds or explains the logical/theoretical possibility of choosing evil in the eschaton.

This is why I say that libertarian freedom, defined by the actual possibility of contrary choice is not feesible either philosophically or biblically in my opinion. How can someone choose against their nature?

Hope that makes sense.

If it is logically possible for evil to occur, what staves off a second fall? Was Adam sanctified and if so how does his differ from those in the eschaton? And why think that it is a logical possibility to sin in heaven? What grounds the metaphysics of possibility here?

Second, I think you have left libertarianism untouched since it proffers not the power of contrary choice, but that freedom necessarily consists in choosing alternatively. So, just because the saints in heaven and Christ in his human will can’t choose evil options, it in no way follows that they cannot choose alternatively since there are many good things in heaven to choose from.

Again, it comes down to what I said in the original post, true libertarian freedom (the power of contrary choice) is not feasible, either here or in Heaven. We choose according to who we are and while, theoretically speaking, we could choose against our nature, we never would, otherwise it is not us who are making the decisions.

Well I am not arguing and Libertarianism doesn’t hold that in order for there to be free will, evil must be a possibility. So I reject premise 1. It is rather that free will is a necessary condition on virtue and virtue for contingent creatures requires a temporary possibility of evil.

Rejecting premise 1 doesn’t imply that free will is a necessary condition on moral responsibility or personhood. The possibility of evil is a necessary condition for contingent beings prior to acquiring a virtuous status but God is not a contingent being. So God is free with libertarian freedom without the possibility of evil.

So why must it be the case that evil is a possibility for contingent persons? Because personal righteousness or personal virtue or praise worthiness is acquired. That is, there is a difference between nature and person. Morality or righteousness is personal and not natural. So, this is why pesonalistic predestinarianism is false, just like the Catholic view of the Immaculate Conception of Mary since they confuse person and nature. This is why there is no inherited guilt or inherited sin, only inherited deficiences in our common nature. Sin is in the person, not the nature or on the flip side, righteousness is personal and not natural.

For true freedom to exist, the ability to choose evil must exist
There is no ability to choose evil in heaven
Therefore, true freedom does not exist in heaven.

So perhaps the first statement is untrue? If so, then that means that the freedom of choice argument is untrue, as far as the existence of evil is concerned.

Or perhaps the second statement is untrue. Perhaps in heaven, disobedience to God or righteousness is impossible for some other reason - not that we are unable, but that the option somehow does not exist? But that would then beg the question, why didn’t God create earth that way?

What do you think?

As I noted above, a libertarian conception of free will doesn’t require us to define evil as between options of opposing moral value-good and evil. It only requires that there be a plurality of options to choose from. So God can choose to create or choose not to create, to redeem or not to redeem.

IN heaven and in Christ’s human will, there is a fixity in virtue that for the former is acquired and the latter is always had since Christ is a divine and not a human person/hypostasis. So the possibility of evil for us is temporary. It is like using a ladder to get to the next level. Once you get there, you don’t need the ladder any longer.\

So just so long as heaven offers us a plurality of good things to choose between it can be the case that it is impossible for the saints in heaven to sin and yet they have libertarian free will since they have become partakers of God’s nature.