Because I’ve gotten comments in response to recent conversations on predestination and the problem of evil where I’ve proposed a “soft” Thomistic free-will defense…
I will skip the background metaphysics on this one, because 1) I have explored that metaphysics elsewhere (also here, and here), and 2) I want to quickly highlight the relevant philosophical considerations bearing in on this perennially contentious debate to 3) show how a “soft” free-will defense can be extracted from them. These considerations are subtle and easy to overlook, which has caused many Thomists (I believe, anyway) to forgo a possible free-will defense in favor of alternative solutions to the problem of evil — solutions which I think are plausible but often unpalatable. Brian Davies and his book, for example.
Furthermore, I call this a soft free-will defense because I hold to divine universal causality and that God could move us freely to avoid sin in every circumstance. The defense is therefore “soft” in the sense that God could, but wouldn’t, always cause us to freely avoid sin, for reasons I’m about to explain. (Contrarily, a hard freewill defense would say God couldn’t be the cause of our free actions — a position which, however superficially plausible, is fundamentally untenable.)
Here we go.
Principle #1: By metaphysical necessity, we are fallibly free beings.
This is true because only God as subsistent goodness itself is His own standard. (For why there is, and can only be, one God, see here.) Thus, any other being of created with liberty will always have to look to something beyond itself concerning its moral standard, and, because of this, could always fail to do so. Once this principle is understood we can see that it would be no more possible for God to create an infallible free being than a square circle.
However, could God give such graces so as to have us always consider the moral rule in every situation? I affirm that God could, but deny that God would, which brings us to the second principle…
Principle #2: In the general run, God works with things according to their mode of being.
Notice I say in the general run, because we can grant exception cases, including miracles. But God does not work miracles all the time, because it would not be wise for God to do so. Not only would constant-miracle making turn creation into catastrophic nonsense (in fact, it becomes almost impossible to imagine how intelligent beings could meaningfully interact in a world where miracles were constantly granted), it would seem to imply there was something radically deficient about creating natures in the first place if God had to constantly miraculously intervene.
The relevant distinction to appreciate is between God’s absolute power vs God’s ordained power. God’s absolute power underscores that God can bring about any/all possibilities of being, whereas God’s ordained power underscores all that accords with God’s wisdom and justice and goodness, etc, and it is God’s ordained power that must occupy our attention for the simple reason that — and certain Thomists aren’t going to like this language, but that’s fine — God’s ordained power puts constraints on God, in a sense.
Aquinas gives an example of such constraints. It is surely within God’s absolute power to annihilate the world, but God wouldn’t annihilate the world because it makes no sense, and God isn’t in the business of nonsense. Because God isn’t a leftist. Thus, it would be against God’s ordained power, then, to annihilate the world. And so we can be confident — in fact, perfectly assured — that God isn’t just going to blip us out of existence at any moment, even if in the broadly logical sense God could do so.
OK, so the connection is this. God creates things with natures. He gives things real (secondary) causal power and roles to play and ends to achieve. That is wonderful, of course. And, for the most part, God governs things according to the particular sort of thing they are — God governs acorns according to acorn nature and humans according to human nature — because that is what a good and just and wise governor does. You don’t create things for the purpose of never letting them be the sorts of things they are. Hence why in Catholic theology we emphasize that grace builds upon and perfects nature and never destroys or replaces nature.
Again, God can, and does, work exceptions — namely, miracles. But miracles are always exceptions, for precisely the reasons stated above. And it would be a fallacy of composition to assume that what is good in the exception case would be good in the general case.
Thus, for God to govern a fallible being infallibly would be something akin to miraculous intervention — perhaps God would have reasons for doing so occasionally, as we believe he did with Our Lady, but to assume God would do so generally is fallacious and misunderstands what it means for God to govern wisely.
Furthermore, as creatures made to share in the life of God, we are striving toward a terminal freedom — that is, to fully participate in The Good; to arrive at such a state where we would never turn away from Goodness itself, which is with God — by way of our fallible freedom, namely our freedom of choice, to choose (x) or not-(x). God wants us to reach our terminal freedom via this admittedly less noble form of freedom because that lesser freedom is still essential to who we are. It is this latter aspect that Thomists so often overlook, fixated as they are on terminal freedom alone. But our fallible freedom is part and parcel of human identity: It is who we are. And God works with things according to what — or in our case, who — they are.
And so we are now ready to consider why God permits the possibility of sin.
Principle #3: Love Is All You Need.
We say that God is not just subsistent goodness itself, but Love. We also say that God wills that all be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. God loves us and desires that we love him, because loving God is what perfects us. (God wanted to give us everything and what more could God give us than Himself?) Further, we must remember that love involves not just willing the good of the other but seeking union with the beloved. Because of this, love — true love — requires the uniting of two free and independent wills.
If God wants love, God must create free beings capable of willing.
By necessity, any free being God creates will be fallibly free. Because God governs beings according to the sort of being they are, it is always possible that a fallible free being may fail. Thus, the possibility of sin is simply the price paid for the outpouring of God’s creative love.
Of course, we maintain that God gives us everything we need to enter into everlasting union with him, but that God, being an infinitely wise and perfect lover, permits our possible failure – our firm and resounding, “No!” That we actually fail is on us – that is no fault of God – even if God could in his absolute power have overruled our failure in every instance. God does not do so because God respects the natures of the things he creates, guides them toward their end in accordance with what (or who) they are.
Related
Suan Sonna on the Afterlife, Universal Subjugation, and Almost Apokatastasis
Chik-Fil-A, Predestination, and Human Freedom with Fr. Gregory Pine