The Free Will Defense

By Dolores G. Morris

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So what kind of a story can we tell to explain how the loving God of Christianity might allow the degree of suffering and evil that we see in this world? The details vary, but most Christians who offer a defense agree that human freedom must feature heavily in any such story—that is, most defenses are versions of the free will defense. Alvin Plantinga succinctly captures the core of the free will defense in the following passage:

A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.

In this brief passage, Plantinga touches upon the two key aspects of any free will defense. First, God judges significant human freedom to be a great good. Second, significant human freedom cannot be had without suffering. When Plantinga writes that God “can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from actually doing so,” he means that it would be logically impossible for God to do such a thing. The freedom to perform evil entails the ability to perform evil.

Why should that be? Not all freedom entails suffering. After all, God could simply allow us to choose between various flavors of ice cream, types of leisure activities, and perhaps favorite colors. Then we could all be free without ever harming ourselves or others! The kind of freedom at the heart of the free will defense, the freedom to perform evil, requires far more than this. Consider the words of Richard Swinburne:

Of course thrills of pleasure and periods of contentment are good things, and—other things being equal—God would certainly seek to provide plenty of those. But a generous God will seek to give deeper good things than these. He will seek to give us great responsibility for ourselves, each other, and the world, and thus a share in his own creative activity of determining what sort of a world it is to be. And he will seek to make our lives valuable, of great use to ourselves and each other. The problem is that God cannot give us these goods in full measure without allowing much evil on the way.

This kind of freedom is central to the free will defense—namely, morally significant freedom. Morally significant freedom is the freedom to choose between good and bad options: between benefiting and harming yourself or someone else; between helping and hindering a friend; between helping and hindering an enemy; between generosity and stinginess, encouragement and destruction, love and hate.

To see why the existence of morally significant freedom entails the possibility of suffering, first suppose that it did not. That is, suppose it were possible for there to be creatures with morally significant freedom and yet no possibility of suffering. What would that require? It seems that there are two options here: either these creatures must believe that they can choose between good and evil but are in fact made in such a way that they always choose the good, or these creatures can choose evil but are immediately thwarted every time they attempt to execute their choice. In the first case it should be clear that these creatures do not actually have morally significant freedom after all; they have the feeling of freedom, but it is an illusion. What about the second case? Well, if every time I choose to hit you my arm muscles refuse to cooperate, or a powerful force-field prevents me from being able to make contact with your body, or you are simply transported to a new location, then was I actually free to hit you? I don’t think so. I was free to choose to hit you, but actually hitting you was never really an option. Stranger still, if suffering is to be wholly avoided, then it seems that you must also be protected even from the knowledge that I wanted to harm you, and that I must somehow be made not to mind when my will is thwarted.

In this scenario, I may choose between good and evil, but I may not do evil. When I choose evil, I do not succeed in doing what I aim to do. To prevent my suffering, God prevents me from caring about these failed acts; to prevent your suffering, he prevents you from knowing that I intended to bring you harm. I hope that it is clear that this is not the kind of freedom that can “give us great responsibility for ourselves, each other, and the world.” This so-called freedom is not morally significant freedom. There is just no way to give creatures morally significant freedom without thereby allowing them to bring harm to themselves and others. Morally significant freedom really does entail the possibility of evil and suffering.

— Dolores G. Morris (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is an instructor of philosophy at the University of South Florida. Her current research and teaching focus on the mind-body problem, the implications of Hempel’s Dilemma for contemporary physicalism, and philosophy of religion.

* Excerpted from Dolores G. Morris, Believing Philosophy: A Guide to Becoming a Christian Philosopher (Zondervan Academic, 2021).

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

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Believing Philosophy

Philosophy has been a part of Christianity since its earliest days. But Christians today often don't realize or are skeptical of all that philosophy can offer them. Believing Philosophy introduces Christians to philosophy and the tools it provides to believers, helping them understand, articulate, and defend their faith in an age of unbelief.

Along with explaining how and why Christians should study philosophy, philosopher Dolores Morris also surveys key issues in Christian philosophy, including:

• The problem of evil

• Rationality and faith

• Free will

• Skeptical theism

• The moral argument for the existence of God

• Reformed epistemology

These chapters introduce each problem, explain Christian responses, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each response, and leave the final verdict to the reader. Finally, each chapter concludes with a list of recommended further readings.

“Dolores Morris’s accessible book on Christian philosophy is a wonderful gateway to understanding the relationship between faith and reason. Morris works through caricatures and misrepresentations about philosophy, and she presents important arguments and analyzes issues to show how philosophy under the lordship of Christ can be a vital, faith-shaping tool both for individual Christians and the overall well-being of the church.”

— Paul Copan, Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics, Palm Beach Atlantic University

Find Believing Philosophy at Amazon, Zondervan Academic, and other major booksellers.

* This is a sponsored post.