By Randall L. Broad
Liberty Corpus is a
collection of the discussion boards, research papers, and other writings
compiled while studying systematic theology at Liberty University Online. The
posts published here have been further researched, edited, and redacted from
their original assignments.
A RESEARCH
PROJECT SUBMITTED TO REV. ISAIAH NENGEAN IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COURSE THEO 626-B04
A SYNTHESIS OF
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ AND THE TRINITY OF THE POST-MODERN WORLD
Introduction
In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia brought peace to Europe
after more than a century of war and made possible a cultural and political
transformation that served as an important bridge between the
Renaissance (1454-1648) and Enlightenment (1649-1789). The Treaty of Westphalia
was the birth place of the nation-state that would pave the way for the
American and French Revolutions where the preeminence of the individual and the
secularization of government would become vital to national life. The
Enlightenment spawned evolution's in the natural and social sciences that lead
to the industrial revolution (1790-1899) and a modern worldview where truth
became increasingly experiential and relative. For much of the Renaissance Age,
Christendom was torn apart by war and religious struggle. The Peace of
Westphalia, ended what was officially called the Thirty Years War, but was in
fact a part of a long struggle between Catholic and Protestant monarchs.
Today we live in
a postmodern nuclear world characterized by a metaphysical and intellectual
skepticism that emerged from two world wars and the rapid growth of technology
and scientific thought. No truth is safe from postmodern skepticism and it is
this challenge theologians and the church must face in this age. One of the
most difficult issues confronting theologians is defending God’s attributes of
goodness and omnipotence in light of the problem of evil. This is not a new
challenge though; it is as old as the church itself. The first definitive
effort to address this issue was made by Saint Augustine (354-430) and his free will defense became church dogma
for centuries. In 1710, German metaphysician, logician, epistemologist, and
mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) published his defense
of God entitled Theodicy and gave birth
to a new and essential theological task.
“The theological
attempt to justify God’s righteousness and goodness amidst the experience of
moral and natural evil and suffering in the world is called theodicy (theo-dike).
Though it can be argued that the human has no right to justify God and that sin
is in its essence unintelligible, Christianity cannot avoid the question of the
existence of evil, because it is a genuine difficulty.”[1]
The existence of evil is a genuine difficulty for postmodern
theist just as it was for Augustine and Leibniz.
The thesis of this paper is mankind’s view of the world
through the postmodern lens of secularism, individuality, and relativism allows
and justifies sin through the exercise of free will which produces moral evil in
the world. This project will construct an argument around four statements:
- The
creator God is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being who created the best
possible world.
- Sin
is unavoidable in any creature less perfect than its creator.
- God
created man with individual free will that by his fallen nature is secular
and views the world through the lens of relativity which creates, allows
and justifies sin.
- Thus God is not responsible for sin and the accompanying evil it creates.
It is important to note this is not a theodicy
in the strictest sense of the word. Sin
and evil existed long before the postmodern era; however, other than providing
background this paper will focus on the view of sin and the evil in the
postmodern worldview. It is also important to remind the reader this paper is concerned only with moral sin which has a
human cause. It will not address evil caused by weather events, natural
phenomenon, or uncaused human suffering such as cancer or viral diseases. These
types of evil are not necessarily the
fault of individuals … though skeptics could argue this physical suffering is caused
by lifestyle choices and people’s decisions to live in the path of hurricanes
or on fault lines where earthquakes occur.
I
The creator God is omnipotent and
omnibenevolent and He created the best possible world.
The
first principle we must establish is the presupposition the creator of the
universe is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being who created the best
possible world. Today, theistic principles are challenged regularly by
academics, scientists, and atheists who seem determined to deconstruct theism. This
phenomenon was born in the Enlightenment, matured in the Industrial Revolution,
and has become increasing aggressive in the postmodern age. Kenneth Surin has
pointed out Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers did not set out to
disprove God.
“The primary intellectual
figures of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment—Newton, Descartes, Leibniz,
Spinoza, and later, Hume, Kant, and Hegel—were not of course moral nihilists or
out-and-out atheists; nevertheless, they were confronted, or perceived
themselves as being confronted, by a problem (that of accommodating morality
and religious faith in a mechanistic, desacralized universe) which simply could
not have posed itself to their intellectual forebears, the thinkers of
"the medieval synthesis."[2]
The
medieval synthesis Surin speaks of was the joining of faith and reason through
the scholastic movement.[3] The scholastic
movement had its foundations in monasticism. However, the rise of the
university secularized learning and fractured knowledge into academic
disciplines making way for the preeminence of mathematics and the natural
sciences which relied solely upon the observation of measurable and
experiential phenomenon. This scientific approach now is used in all systems of
knowledge including philosophy and theology.
This
first section of the paper will look briefly at three Enlightenment thinkers whose
works presuppose God’s omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and His creation of the
best possible world. The so called Continental Rationalist’s, Rene Descartes
(1596-1650), Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
(1646-1716) were metaphysicians, logicians, epistemologists, and mathematicians
who vigorously defended God’s omnipotence and goodness. Rene Descartes is most famous for his Cogito, ers sum, I think therefore I am,
to him his ability to think was predicated on never accepting any idea as true that
could not be doubted. Since he doubted every idea other than Cogito, ers sum, then Descartes concluded
his existence and his idea of God could only have come from a perfect and
necessary being. He, like Leibniz later in the Theodicy, argued an imperfect being could not exist without the
presence of a perfect creator who by necessity does exist.
Benedict
Spinoza held the highest virtue of the mind was to know God. In his most famous
work, Ethics first published in 1677,
Spinoza’s developed his philosophy around the nature of God. Everything in his worldview
was predicated on a God of infinite attributes who manifested Himself
throughout creation. Borrowing Aristotle’s definition of substance as something capable of independent existence, Spinoza asserted
the only one who could fulfill this definition perfectly was God, the first
principle.[4] Spinoza
remains popular in the post-modern era because pantheists have applied his work
to the concept of nature as god, but Spinoza’s thoughts on God went far beyond
the limitations of nature. Frank Magill wrote Spinoza, “… posits an infinity of
attributes as belonging to God, only two of which (thought and extension) are
known directly in our natural world.”[5]
Spinoza articulated another idea critical to the conclusion of this paper. He
held the belief a false idea was an idea not properly related to God (i.e. the
source of most of our sins from Adam to now) and human freedom from passions
came from truth, which is to say from an idea related to God.
The
most significant work from the Enlightenment on evil was Gottfried Leibniz’s, Theodicy, published in 1710. Not only
did Leibniz coin the phrase theodicy, he wrote of those who would conceive of a
God who acted at random or without cause or reason:
I do not see how they could
avoid falling into an opinion so strange, unless they acknowledged that there
are reasons for God’s choices, and that these reasons are derived from his
goodness: whence it follows of necessity that what was chosen had the advantage
of goodness over what was not chosen, and consequently that it is the best of
all possibles.[6]
Leibniz
held there was a morally sufficient reason for evil because God by his perfect
nature could not create anything less, thus this world is the best world
possible and it does contain evil. This is a major stumbling block for theist
today who would defend the omnipotence and goodness of God, yet it remains a problem
mainly for Christians. Kevin Surin points out about postmodern thinkers, “Quite
obviously, the problem of evil (in its classical form) is not a problem for the
atheist, nor is it a problem for someone who believes in a finite God or a
malevolent deity. Nor is it a problem for the person who denies that evil has
any "reality"—evil would not, for example, be a problem for the
person who believes that good and evil are simply states of mind, purely
subjective phenomena, lacking any basis in objective reality.”[7]
The
important conclusion to our first statement is the best possible world to God may not be the best possible
world to us. We must have faith in God and his omnipotence. We must also have
faith God created the best possible world as Leibniz claimed. Our faith God
created the best possible world is as important as our faith in his existence claimed
by Descartes or any of his attributes claimed by Spinoza. Jurgen
Moltmann poses an intriguing question to the postmodern mind, “But suffering and evil, on the one hand,
and the indelible memory of hope, on the other, raise this question for us. In
a godless world we hunger for righteousness upon the earth that is, for a world
which we can recognize as God's world. If the world, the way it is, would proffer
a theodicy, we would need no faith. But if there were no theodicy question,
where would the risk of faith be?”[8]
In other words, the question of God’s existence, his omnipotence and goodness, the
theological and philosophical exercise of theodicy bring us to the faith God
created the best world possible.
II
Sin is unavoidable in any creature less perfect
than its creator.
In the first section, the paper concluded the creator God is
omnipotent and omnibenevolent and He created the best possible world; yet the
contradiction remains. Why does this necessary being of Descartes, who
possessed the infinite attributes of Spinoza, and who created this world of
best possibilities allow sin and evil to exist? Why do things like Auschwitz,
9/11, and the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary school happen and how can
theists reconcile them with God? The thesis of this paper of course is to show
God is not responsible for any of these events, but rather these evils were caused
by the actions and choices of the perpetrators. The focus of this section will
be to present Leibniz’s second proposition sin is unavoidable in any creature
less perfect than its creator. We have already asserted the creator God is
perfect, so this section of the paper will confide itself to the argument God
created man with free will and thus through the fall he become the architect of
sin and the evil it produces.
The first to offer a free
will defense was Saint Augustine. For him the nature of evil was the desire of
free creatures. He constructs his defense around several ideas: by determining
God is not the cause of evil, then free will can be used for evil or good, and
God was right in giving it to mankind by virtue of the potential for good.[9]
The postmodern question though is why does an omnipotent God allow evil to
exist?
“The
free-will defense is one such explanation. It argues that it is better for
there to be creatures with free will and the consequent ability to do both good
and evil, than for such creatures not to exist. God, being wholly good, has
created humans with free will and we are responsible for evil by the exercise
of our free will. If God were to stop us doing evil we would not be free, and
therefore would be unable to do good. It is better that God allows us to be
free, even though our freedom has resulted in evil. Therefore God’s goodness
and omnipotence are compatible with the existence of evil.”[10]
Willow’s presentation of the Augustine’s free will defense,
concurs with what we have already presupposed. Free will was given to human
beings because the potential for good in people is greater in creatures with
freedom that live in a world of possibilities, than it is in those who lives
are predestined. Augustine’s free will defense fell short in one significant
area. It failed to explain how evil entered the world in the beginning–for
Augustine the fall is necessarily incomprehensible. Yet Adam and Eve’s sin is
significant since it represents the moment when sin entered into the world.
No solution to the problem of
evil can be complete without discussion of the sin that arises from free will.
All moral evil is derived from sin that stems from free choice. God did not
allow Auschwitz or send the gunman into Sandy Hook elementary. Spinoza might
have argued those men who orchestrated these horrendous acts held false beliefs
not properly related to God. This paper would argue false beliefs are the source
of many sins from Adam to now. The postmodern world has spawned many false
beliefs and justified them through the concepts of individuality, secularism,
and especially relativism. When truth becomes relative it became justification
for almost any behavior. “It
may be that we live in an epoch in which it is no longer possible to address
ourselves legitimately to the problem of evil: that is, it may be that ours is
an epoch in which historical conditions no longer allow us to view evil as a
"problem" that can be "answered" by an essentially
intellectual undertaking like a theodicy.”[11]
This paper believes the problem of evil can still be explained.
Leibniz
classified evil as belonging in three categories: metaphysical, physical, and
moral.[12]
Metaphysical evil refers to our imperfections which are explained by his view
presented in statement two that sin is unavoidable in any creature less perfect
than its creator. Leibniz is clear throughout the Theodicy though that God is not the author of sin. It is
unavoidable because man was given free will when God created the best world
possible. Leibniz viewed physical evil as human suffering. In the skeptical
worldview of postmodernism, suffering is wide spread. It encompasses many
aspects of modern society including health problems, crime, weather, and
poverty. Moral evil is caused by sin and is justified by individuality,
secularism, and relativism because it is difficult not to sin when we are
alone, separated from God, and uncertain of what to believe. Moreland writes, “Postmodernism
is the cure that kills the patient, the military strategy that concedes defeat
before the first shot is fired, the ideology that undermines its own claims to
allegiance.”[13]
Just what is the
relationship between the fall and man’s sinful nature today? Though we may have
been created by a perfect being, we are not perfect. Moral evil is part of the
world humanity has built, not the creation before Adam. According to the
doctrine of original sin, “… the fall of Adam and Eve rendered all human beings
incapable of achieving union with God because it left them unable to will only
what was in accord with God’s will. All moral evil, therefore, is a result of
the original fall and the subsequent, wrong choices made by the offspring of
Adam and Eve.”[14]
There is a theory in economics with free markets and perfect information; an
investor will always make the right choice. One can imagine a similar result with
free will–given perfect information man will always make the right choice.
However, as Leibniz posited, our imperfection means we as free will creatures
will never have the perfect information God had when he made the universe, thus
it is inevitable we will make bad choices. Our free will decisions will
continue to create sin and manifest moral evil in the world.
III
God created man with individual free will that
by his fallen nature is secular and views the world through the lens of
relativity which creates, allows and justifies sin.
Sin and evil have
co-existed in the world since that fateful day in the garden. Yet the blame is
not God’s, but rather it is the fault of every creature with free will who has
made poor choices or who has embraced thoughts not of God. The essential
problem with free will is it comes with wrong choices which are made easier
when justified through the lens of the postmodern trinity. Gordon Fee writes:
One of the sure members of the modern world’s
‘trinity,’ along with relativism and secularism, is individualism. Recapturing
the biblical sense of the significance of the individual, but revising it to
fit a non-biblical, naturalistic worldview, the Enlightenment led the modern
Western world into a totally individualistic understanding of life, which has
never been more prevalent that it is today. The individual is the be-all and
end-all of everything; subservience of individual rights to the common good has
become the new ‘heresy’ to be rejected at all costs. The individual is god;
narcissistic self-interest and self-centeredness is the chief end of life.[15]
Secularism,
Individualism, and relativism have become justifications for the denial of
God’s goodness, omnipotence, and even his very existence–in essence making the
problem of evil nonexistent for those that would embrace this worldview.
However, as theists we cannot ignore the stronghold in the world evil has
gained under the justification of these three modern concepts. In the next few
paragraphs, we will examine each member of this worldly trinity in greater
detail.
As
stated earlier the idea of secularism originated in the university as the
medieval synthesis of faith and reason was abandoned for the fragmented
specialization of academic disciplines. This process eventually overlapped into
medieval society and after a century of warfare, the Treaty of Westphalia
ushered in a new European culture that spurned the ecclesiastical power of the
church and created the sovereign power of the nation-state. Politically, secularism reached its apex in the American
Revolution, where the separation of church and state was a key principle
of American democracy. The founding Fathers were the victims and descendants of
those who fled the religious persecutions and warfare of the Old World. When
they sought independence they went to great lengths to ensure the political
rights of individuals and limit the power of the church in government. Secular
individuals became the “be all, end all” as Gordon Fee stated.[16]
Thus in the postmodern era, mankind came to value secularism so much he set
himself apart from God and claimed sovereignty over his own life.
Postmodern
thought that creates, allows, and justifies sin is more than secular though. It
also involves the narcissistic self-interest and self-centeredness of
individuality. Two attributes mankind developed after the fall and which
have contributed to a great deal of the sin and evil in the world. Postmodernism
has yet to be fully defined yet, but scholars have pointed out:
… It
usually involves a cluster of such convictions and values as: 1) an ideological
pluralism in which no one religion or worldview contains absolute truth; 2) the
impossibility of objectivity in interpretation and the treasuring of
value-laden approaches; 3) the importance of human communities in shaping
ourselves and our interpretive perspectives; 4) a rejection of the negative modernist
evaluation of religion and spirituality; 5) an emphasis on the aesthetic, the
symbolic, and ancient tradition; 6) the formative role of narrative in
understanding our own life-pilgrimages and those of others, along with the
rejection of the existence of any overarching “meta-narrative” that can give
meaning to all individual stories; and 7) language as determinative of thought
and meaning.[17]
It is man’s individuality that makes him secular, while postmodern society
may define him by these attributes; it is through his relative
self-justification of his sin he assumes the mantle of secularism. The rise of
secular individualism created a world without objective reality, truth, value,
reason, and so forth; and as Moreland pointed out critics contend, “All of
these are social constructions, creations of linguistic practices, and as such
are relative not to individuals, but to social groups that share a narrative.”[18]
Individualism devalued the classic model of God and replaced it with a more
pragmatic worldview that transformed the God centered theodicy into a man centered anthropodicy
where all truth became relative.
Postmodernism
has redefined our understating of knowledge. Knowledge is no longer absolute,
but rather it has become subjective to the individuals values and moral
constraints. As Moreland pointed out, “… it represents a form of cultural
relativism about such things as reality, truth, reason, value, linguistic
meaning, the self, and other notions.”[19]
This has immense ramifications for the problem of evil. When truth becomes
relative, it compromises both good and evil blurring the line between both.
Moreland has pointed out why, “Postmodernists also reject the notion that
rationality is objective on the ground that no one approaches life in a totally
objective way without bias. Thus, objectivity is impossible and observations,
beliefs and entire narratives are theory-laden.”[20]
The question a theist should ask is why is objectivity so important anyway? If
we look at sin and evil through the slant of our theistic worldview, then don’t
you look at whatever is wrong in the world through the lens of your skeptical
postmodern world view? So is your view any better than mine?
The justification of sin and evil through
secularism, individualism, and relativism is a rejection of divine authority in
favor of individual sovereignty. Yet denying evil’s existence does not help us
avoid sin, or eradicate injustice. In fact, the denial or justification of sin
or evil acts has the opposite effect of making any behavior acceptable. Shutte
describing the effect of the self-determination which really stems from these
three attributes wrote, “Science had prepared the way for agnosticism, secularism
lead to atheism, a real loss of religious faith.”[21] The
most alarming part of the loss of the divine identity in postmodernism is these
concepts of secularism, individualism, and relativism is embraced by both believers
and non-believers. Many self-professed Christians attend church on Sunday and
live like atheists the rest of the week. Haunted by memories of 9/11 and
bombarded frequently by tragedies like Katrina and Sandy Hook, the person
living in the postmodern era lives in the bondage of their sin justifying it
through their individualism, secularism, and relativism.
IV
Thus God is not responsible for sin and the
accompanying evil it creates.
In the
previous three sections we established God’s creation of the best possible
world, the inability to avoid sin, and the role of mankind as the progenitor of
moral evil in the world. We did this by constructing our argument around four
statements. First, the creator God is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being
who created the best possible world. Second, sin is unavoidable in any creature
less perfect than its creator. Third, God created man with individual free will
that by his fallen nature is secular and views the world through the lens of
relativity which creates, allows and justifies sin. And lastly we reached the
conclusion of our argument that God is not responsible for sin and the
accompanying evil it creates. We looked at the thoughts of three Enlightenment
thinkers, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. From Descartes we borrowed his proof
of God’s existence; from Spinoza the idea of God’s infinite attributes; and
most importantly we constructed our argument around two Leibniz premises that
God created the best possible world and that sin was unavoidable in an
imperfect creature.
Having
established God’s omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and his creation in statement
three we looked at free will and explained the role the postmodern ideas of
individuality, secularism, and relativity play in undermining morality and making
any behavior acceptable. The result of this undermining of truth and
particularly God’s divine being is that we live in a world where we can do what
we want with selfish disregard for others, without any accountability to God,
and find infinite excuses for our sins and shortcomings. God is not responsible
for this sin. Yes, he did allow the possibility of sin to exist in the world
when he gave mankind free will, but he is not the author of sin. He created the
best possible world, yet with our imperfections, not his for he is perfect, we
are responsible for the creation of sin in the world. We justify our moral sin
through our staunch defense of our individuality, through the secular removal
of God from our lives, and by seeking truth to define our lives rather than
shaping our lives to fit God’s eternal truths. We can sum everything up in one
statement–God is not responsible for sin and the accompanying evil it creates.
Walk with the Lord …
Ephesians 1:17
(RLB241229)
© Copyright 2015: Randall L. Broad
Disclaimer: This commentary is written by Randall L. Broad. It is in no way affiliated with or represents any denomination, university, church, or pastor. Any errors or omissions are purely my responsibility.
Bibliography
Brueggemann,
Walter. "Thoedicy in a social dimension." Journal for the Study of
the Old Testament, no. 33 (October 1985): 3-25.
Descartes, Rene. Meditations
on First Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett, n.d.
Fee, Gordon D. Paul,
the Spirit, and the People of God. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996.
Feinberg, John S.
No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God. Wheaton: Crossway, 2001.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique
of Pure Reason. Translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn. Amherst: Prometheus, 1990.
Klein, William
W., Craig L. Blomberg, and Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. Introduction to Biblical
Interpretation. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004.
Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy.
n.d.
Magill, Frank N.,
ed. Masterpieces of World Philosophy in Summary Form. New York: Harper, 1961.
McWilliams,
Warren. "Only the Triune God Can Help: the relation of the Trinity to
Theodicy." Perspectives in Religious Studies 33, no. 3 (September 2006):
345-359.
Moltmann, Jurgen.
"Resurrection as Hope." Harvard Theological Review 61, no. 2 (April
1968): 129-147.
Moreland, J.P.
"Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn." JETS 48,
no. 1 (March 2005): 77-88.
Plantinga, Alvin.
God, Freedom, and Evil. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977.
Schuurman, Henry.
"The Concept of a Strong Theodicy." International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion 27, no. 1/2 (Feb-Apr 1990): 63-85.
Shutte,
Augustine. "Conceptualizing Christian Faith in a Scientific and Secular
Culture." Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 124 (March 2006): 33-55.
Surin, Kenneth.
"Theodicy?" Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 2 (1983): 225-247.
Vanhoozer, Kevin
J. Nothing Greater, Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God.
Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001.
Vorster, Nico.
"The Augustinian Type of Theodicy: Is It Outdated?" Journal of
Reformed Theology 5 (2011): 26-48.
Willow, Adam.
"Augustine, the origin of evil, and the mystery of free will." Religious
Studies 50, no. 2 (June 2014): 255-269.
[1] Vorster, Nico. "The Augustinian Type of Theodicy:
Is It Outdated?" (Journal of Reformed Theology 5; 2011): 26.
[3] The
Scholastic Movement was a historical evolution of learning from monastic
schools to secular universities as we know them today. Beginning in the late
eleventh century, universities and the accompanying academic disciplines
emerged over a period of five centuries.
[4] Magill, Frank N., ed. Masterpieces of World
Philosophy in Summary Form. New York: Harper, 1961: 418.
[6]
Leibniz Theodicy Essays on the Justice of God and the Freedom of Man in the
Origin of Evil: Part II section 226.
[8]
Moltmann, Jurgen. "Resurrection as
Hope." (Harvard Theological Review 61, no. 2 April 1968): 141.
[10]
Willow, Adam. “Augustine, the origin of evil,
and the mystery of free will." (Religious Studies 50, no. 2 June 2014): 256.
[12]
Leibniz Theodicy Essays on the Justice of God and the Freedom of Man in the
Origin of Evil: Part I section 21.
[13]
Moreland, J.P. "Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern
Turn." (JETS 48, no. 1, March 2005): 88.
[14]
Schuurman, Henry. "The Concept of a Strong
Theodicy." (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 27, no. 1/2, Feb-Apr
1990): 74.
[20]
Moreland, 77.
[21]
Shutte, Augustine. "Conceptualizing Christian Faith in a Scientific and
Secular Culture." (Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 124, March
2006): 36.
Nice post. Thanks
ReplyDelete