With respect to the second principle, that one should "not permit significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions simply to provide other rational beings with goods they would morally prefer not to have", we might ask: What does "morally prefer" mean? Questions arise, too, concerning the third principle that one should "not permit, rather than prevent, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions on would-be victims (which would violate their rights) in order to provide them with goods to which they do not have a right, when there are countless morally unobjectionable ways of providing those goods". To which goods, if any, do we have a right? What grounds our right to any goods to which we have a right? How do we assess the moral objectionability and moral non-objectionability of various ways of

providing goods? How many ways are required for countlessness? Can we tell when there are countless morally unobjectionable ways of providing certain goods?

Sterba works in his book to clarify the meaning of the proposed principles by the discussion of examples designed to answer some of these questions—for instance, he thinks we have a right to freedom from assault and a right to enough resources to satisfy our basic needs (though there is not a case in the (Sterba 2019) book grounding the existence of these rights and corresponding obligations on God's part), and he holds that the trauma a child suffers from being grabbed by kidnappers is not significant and especially horrendous, though his being killed by the kidnappers is—but one might nonetheless be left puzzled, unable to discern conclusively whether or not the principles are true and accomplish the work intended.

I agree with Sterba that God's existence is not compatible with all the evil in the world—that is, with the facts about evil in our world including its amount, intensity, and distribution. In the remainder of this paper, I will take up certain aspects of Sterba's discussion in his thought-provoking book, matters that I think are worthy of further exploration, critique, or defense. In particular, I want to inquire further into some issues concerning human freedom, including its nature and its value. I will also make some suggestions about why God might be thought to have moral obligations towards us. As Sterba is, of course, aware, his argument depends on the premise that God is essentially a morally good agent so that the moral requirements he identifies, if correct, would apply to God. As part of his defense, Sterba argues against Brian Davies' case for thinking that God is good but not morally good. Sterba might wish to go on in further work to rebut at length Mark Murphy's recent extended arguments (Murphy 2017, 2019) for the view that an absolutely perfect being need not be morally good. In Section 3 below, I will offer some friendly proposals for grounding the claim that God is essentially morally good.

### **2. The Nature and Limits of Human Freedom**

One of the most interesting aspects of Sterba's book is his view on God's proper role in granting and constraining the freedom of created beings. On this matter, Sterba writes:

A world where everyone has unlimited freedom is not an ideal world by any stretch of the imagination. Rather, such a world could easily become a war of all against all, or a war of the thugs against the rest. By contrast, what would be ideal from the perspective of freedom is a world where everyone's freedom is appropriately constrained ... But when are constraints on freedom too much and when are they appropriate? (Sterba 2019, p. 53)

Notice that "unlimited freedom" is quite strong language—one might wonder if it suggests that the hypothetical created beings have freedom with respect to all logically possible actions, such that they would be able to turn water into wine without adding chemicals and could part the Red Sea on their own power and could jump over buildings in a single bound unaided. One might legitimately ask why God would not create beings with such powers. I think Sterba is concerned, given the context of the passage, with freedom concerning actions that are, in fact, physically possible for us human beings and that range across a moral spectrum from amazingly good to horrifically evil. He is concerned with the question of when God would interfere with a created being's exercise of free will with respect to the badness or wrongness of the potential act. The question is an important one concerning which limits are appropriate on the moral range of options we can carry out.

Sterba suggests that on a "justified policy of constraint" (Sterba 2019, p. 53), God "would be allowing evildoers to bring about the evil consequences of their actions for a broad range of cases where the consequences, especially for others, are not significantly evil" (Sterba 2019, p. 55). In addition, he says, "God would be allowing would-be wrongdoers to imagine, intend, or even take the initial steps toward carrying out their seriously wrongful actions, and just stopping wrongdoers from bringing about significantly and especially horrendously evil consequences of those actions" (Sterba 2019, p. 55).

Sterba clearly values freedom and sees it as something that God would give to created beings. He observes that a just state interferes with one person's freedom to assault another person—more precisely, intervenes when possible to prevent the execution of one person's intention to assault another person—in order to protect the other person's freedom from assault (or the other person's right to live and move about without being assaulted). On analogy to the constraints put on a person's freedom by a just state, Sterba argues that God would put constraints on the range of actions created persons are free (or able) to carry out.

Sterba's view on this matter contrasts with that of Richard Swinburne, whose treatment of the problem of evil includes the contention that our being able to do really terrible things is a good thing. In order to have free will of especially high value, Swinburne argues, the range of actions with respect to which we are free must be broad, including not only somewhat-good and somewhat-bad actions, but also actions that are very bad, even acts that are dreadfully wrong. If we are free to perform wrong actions, then we have what Swinburne calls "very serious free will", and that, he contends, is better than our having mere (nonserious) free will (Swinburne 1998, p. 84). Swinburne holds that our having very serious free will requires that wrong actions be live options for us, so he also thinks that in giving us very serious free will, God would also need to give us bad desires.

For Swinburne, central to a successful theodicy is appeal to the good of libertarian free will—that is, free will understood in such a way that its possession by us is incompatible with the truth of causal determinism—but there must be other elements, as well, among which is the value of "being of use". We can appreciate the need for this additional proposed value by reflecting on some instances of freely chosen wrongdoing while taking into account the situation of the victim of the wrong act. In cases of betrayal and violence, for instance, the free will of the person who betrays another and the free will of the person who acts violently toward another are meant to justify God in allowing the betrayal and the violence to take place. However, the victims of the betrayal and of the violence do not, in those instances, acquire something of high value themselves. Rather, they suffer the deep pain of being betrayed and treated violently. One might attempt to defend the claim that in such cases, the overall situation is still good, given the presence of the very serious libertarian free will enjoyed by the perpetrators, and one might allege that we need not be concerned with respect to theodicy beyond that. Or one might suggest that the victims themselves do experience, whether they realize it or not, the value of being of use. Swinburne suggests that it is *good for a person* to contribute to the wider good "even by being used as the vehicle of a good purpose" (Swinburne 1998, p. 101). A person might *be of use* in his suffering for the general (allegedly greater) good of the existence of libertarian free will in created beings. Or he might be of use in suffering for the benefit of the opportunity for character growth or for connection with God on the part of others. However, these thoughts of Swinburne's concerning "being of use", when we apply them, for instance, to persons who are tortured and to victims of sexual abuse and slavery, are to my mind morally abhorrent.

Sterba, I think, would agree, because suffering torture, sexual abuse, and slavery are horrendous evil consequences of immoral choices that God, if God were to exist, should have prevented.

Now, the question I want to pose is this: Why would God create persons with the power of libertarian free will and allow them freely to imagine, intend, and take initial steps toward carrying out seriously wrongful actions (intervening only to prevent significant and especially horrendous consequences)? What would be good about granting people such power? I am not sure it is good. Recall that Sterba's case for the obligations of God is made by reference to the analogy of the obligations of a just state. Notice, however, that a just state has to deal with people as they are, with the characteristics and tendencies, the physical and psychological abilities, of human beings already largely fixed. However, God gets to do the "fixing" at the start. God does not have to manage and govern human beings as God finds them (as the state has to do). Rather, God gets to create whatever beings there are, however God chooses to create them, with whatever physical and psychological traits and abilities he wants for them to have.

In other words, the political state comes in after the facts about creation are settled. It gets human beings as they are. God, though, establishes what beings there are and what physical traits and proclivities, inclinations, urges, drives, and powers they have. What would motivate a perfect being to create human beings who imagine, intend, and freely begin to carry out horrific actions that bring harm to other human beings, to nonhuman animals, and to the environment? What is the rationale behind the thought that God would only interfere with the completion of the process of human beings' bringing to fruition their horrifically harmful intended outcomes rather than creating beings with different psychologies and abilities altogether?

In short, this is the question on which I think it is important for us to reflect: On what grounds should one think that free will is a good worth giving us and a good worth respecting (by noninterference) in some cases and to some degrees? That is, why would a perfect being grant and respect the power of free action to and in created beings *at all*?

One suggestion is that God's creation of beings with free will enables there to be moral goodness in the world, and the existence of moral goodness is the God-justifying reason for permitting evils in the world that result from the creaturely misuse of the power of free will. A problem for this suggestion arises when we consider Alvin Plantinga's influential definition of moral goodness: Moral goodness is goodness brought about by an agent with significant freedom, where significant freedom is defined as the power to act freely with respect to actions that matter morally, that is, which are either right or wrong for the agent (Plantinga 1974, p. 30). Plantinga's understanding of free will is as follows: "If a person is free with respect to a given action, then he is free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing it; no antecedent conditions and/or causal laws determine that he will perform the action, or that he won't. It is within his power, at the time in question, to take or perform the action and within his power to refrain from it" (Plantinga 1974, p. 29).

Libertarian free will, though, is not required in order for *goodness* to exist. There can be kindness, and knowledge, and mutual understanding, and meaning in life, and creativity, and love, and beauty in the world without any kind acts, or acts of acquiring and disseminating knowledge, or creative acts, or loving acts being acts that are performed with free will as Plantinga and other libertarians conceive of it (Ekstrom 2016, 2021). Libertarian free will is required for moral goodness as Plantinga defines moral goodness, but that is only because by the term "moral goodness", he *means* goodness brought about by beings with libertarian free will. An appeal to the value of "moral goodness" as a proposed (or possible and for all we know true) God-justifying reason for the existence of evil (or for the facts about evil) thus involves an appeal to the alleged value of libertarian free will, a value that is sufficiently high to make it worth its costs. By way of examining various proposals concerning the alleged intrinsic value and extrinsic value of libertarian free will, I argue that it is not at all clear that libertarian free will is sufficiently valuable (Ekstrom 2016, 2021). On Daniel Howard-Snyder's proposed success condition for a defense against the logical problem of evil, a defense succeeds only if it is not reasonable to refrain from believing the propositions that constitute it (Howard-Snyder 2013, p. 24). I argue that it is reasonable to refrain from believing that libertarian free will is worth the costs of the evil it brings into the world. Thus, I think that the free will defense is not successful.

 In support of the idea that human freedom is good, he points to its enabling character development that makes us fit (less unfit) for a heavenly afterlife with God (Sterba 2019, pp. 52, 61–62). Sterba does not give attention to varying libertarian and compatibilist conceptions of free will. (He refers to libertarian free will as "contra-causal freedom", but there are many libertarian accounts of free will that are not contra-causal, including event-causal indeterminist accounts) (Ekstrom 2000, 2019a).

However, I think it is crucial in addressing the problem of evil that we attend to different libertarian and compatibilist accounts of free will, because it is through doing so that we can see that various goods we may have thought we needed libertarian free will to achieve in fact require only compatibilist free will. For instance, we could form and maintain friendships—and grow in knowledge of and love for our friends, as well as grow in knowledge of and love for strangers, and in this sense, develop our characters through time—with only compatibilist free will, and God could set the parameters of the way our psychology works and the way the physical world works so that such development would be enabled without the need for our having libertarian free will and without the facts about evil in our world being what they are. So, the human ability to imagine, intend, and undertake horrifically harmful actions is not justified by its being needed for friendship, love, knowledge, and growth in our relationships and personalities. Moreover, it is not clear that temporally extended moral character development by way of libertarian free choices in a world full of evils is a good in the first place, and it is not clear that we should need to make ourselves "fit for" a heavenly (after)life with God. Why would God make beings that are "unfit" to be in the presence of and in harmony with God? If they need to have certain sorts of characters in order to be in the presence of and in harmony with God, then why not create them with characters that are sufficiently fit to enjoy friendship with God to begin with?

What I have asked is why God would create beings who are free to form inclinations to subject others to torture, sexual abuse, and slavery, and why God would enable those beings to begin to carry out those inclinations, intervening only to prevent the significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of those inclinations and choices. I do not think that the case Sterba has provided is sufficient to defend the moral goodness of God's so acting.

### **3. Divine Requirements**

In addition to the three moral evil prevention requirements enumerated above, Sterba also proposes nine "natural evil prevention requirements". He sets out his argument from the natural evil in the world as follows:

Here, we might ask this question: What is the basis for Sterba's contention that God would prevent the horrendously painful consequences of natural forces (such as hurricanes and diseases) on human beings? What positive case could we give in favor of the position that God, by nature, would do so? Likewise, why should we think that we have a right not to be assaulted that is correlative with a duty on God's part to protect us from assault? Why think that God has an obligation to us to intervene in the execution of other persons' evil intentions to harm us in serious ways?

Here are two arguments I defend (in Ekstrom 2019b, 2021) for the view that God, by the nature of God, would promote our welfare and prevent pointless setbacks to our welfare, whether those pointless setbacks derive from natural forces or from an agent's actions. These are arguments in support of the position that a perfect being would be essentially morally good. Let us call a setback to an agent's welfare or an instance of suffering (or the risk of the setback or suffering) "pointless," following Rowe, just in case that setback or suffering (or risk of the setback or suffering) is not logically necessary for bringing about a greater good or preventing an evil as bad or worse.

The argument from the intrinsic value of persons is as follows. First, persons have intrinsic value. Second, any agent who knows of some being that it has intrinsic value and also knows of herself that she is capable of promoting that being's welfare and preventing pointless setbacks to the welfare of that being has a pro tanto requiring reason to promote that being's welfare and to prevent pointless setbacks to the welfare of that being. Third, God is an agent. Fourth, God, as an omniscient being, knows which beings have intrinsic value and knows what God is capable of doing. Fifth, God, as an omnipotent being, is capable of promoting the welfare of, and preventing pointless setbacks to the welfare of, any persons in existence. Therefore, for any person in existence, God has a pro tanto requiring reason to promote promote that person's welfare and to prevent pointless setbacks to that person's welfare.

Suppose the argument from intrinsic value just given were to fail because it is not the case that persons have intrinsic value, either in the sense of nonderivative value or in the sense of non-instrumental, final value. Still, I think we could provide a successful argument for the conclusion that a perfect being would have a requiring reason to prevent our pointless suffering. The second argument is as follows. First, any rational agent who intentionally brings into existence a sentient being—or allows that being to evolve when that agent could have instead prevented its existence—has a pro tanto requiring reason to prevent that sentient being from suffering pointlessly, so far as that agent is able to do so. Second, God is essentially omnipotent and hence is able to prevent the pointless suffering of sentient beings. Third, God is essentially a rational agent. Therefore, if God were intentionally to bring into existence a sentient being—or allow that being to evolve when he could have instead prevented its existence—then God would have a pro tanto requiring reason to prevent that sentient being from suffering pointlessly.

### **4. Argument from the Facts about Evil**

Here is an argument related to Sterba's, one that I find more it a more straightforward matter to contemplate:

(1) If God were to exist, then God would have justifying reasons for allowing the facts about evil in our world to obtain. (2) If God were to have justifying reasons for allowing the facts about evil in our world to obtain, then we would be able to discern those reasons. (3) Despite collectively trying very hard, we do not discern God-justifying reasons for all the facts about evil in our world. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that (4) There are not God-justifying reasons for the facts about evil in our world. Therefore, (5) God does not exist.

Some theorists, Mark Murphy, for one, deny the first premise. Murphy alleges that God may allow some facts about evil in our world, including facts about human suffering and death, to obtain for no reason at all, because God has no requiring reason to prevent them (Murphy 2017, 2019). Skeptical theists, such as Michael Rea and Michael Bergmann, deny the second premise. They emphasize the chasm in knowledge and understanding between human beings and God, alleging that we are not justified in believing of any fact about evil (or instance of evil) that there is no God-justifying reason for it to obtain, even given our failure to discern such reasons. Theodicists, including John Hick and Richard Swinburne, deny the third premise. They present reasons for which God is justified in allowing the facts about evil in our world. "Defenders", such as Peter van Inwagen (2006), suggest God-justifying reasons that are possible and for all we know true.

I argue against all of these theorists and in defense of the argument from the facts about evil in my recent book (Ekstrom 2021).

Sterba (2019) book can be read as a partial defense, according to which some evils those that are not significant and especially not horrendous consequences of immoral actions or of natural forces—are such that it would be justified for God to permit them, if there were a God, because those evils are necessary for the greater goods of human freedom and for the process of moral character development ("soul-making") allegedly needed to make humans beings less unworthy of a heavenly afterlife with God. In other words, God's existence is logically compatible, on Sterba's view, with evils that are not significant and especially not horrendous. I have questioned the success of this partial defense. However, Sterba's case remains for the incompatibility of God's existence and the degree and amount of evil in the world. On the matter of that incompatibility, we agree, although we make the case in different ways.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** This study did not involve humans or animals.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

### **References**

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Ekstrom, Laura. 2016. The Cost of Freedom. In *Free Will and Theism: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns*. Edited by Kevin Timpe and Daniel Speak. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 62–78.

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Ekstrom, Laura. 2019b. The Practical Life of God. In *Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion*. Edited by Paul Draper. New York: Routledge, pp. 109–26.

Ekstrom, Laura. 2021. *God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will*. New York: Oxford University Press.

Howard-Snyder, Daniel. 2013. The Logical Problem of Evil: Mackie and Plantinga. In *The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil*. Edited by Justin McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder. Malden: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 19–33.

Mackie, John Leslie. 1955. Evil and Omnipotence. *Mind* 64: 200–12. [CrossRef]

Murphy, Mark. 2017. *God's Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Murphy, Mark. 2019. Is an Absolutely Perfect Being Morally Perfect? In *Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion*. Edited by Paul Draper. New York: Routledge, pp. 93–108.

Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. *God, Freedom, and Evil*. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Sterba, James. 2019. *Is a Good God Logically Possible?* Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Swinburne, Richard. 1998. *Providence and the Problem of Evil*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

van Inwagen, Peter. 2006. *The Problem of Evil*. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

### *Article* **The Sovereignty of Humanity and Social Responsibility for Evil Prevention**

**Janusz Salamon**

Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
**Abstract:** In this paper, I suggest that James Sterba's recent restatement of the logical problem of evil overlooks a plausible theistic interpretation of the divine–human relation, which allows for a theodicy impervious to his atheological argument, which boils down to God's failure to meet Sterba's "Evil Prevention Requirements". I argue that such requirements need not apply to God in a world under full human sovereignty, which presupposes that God never intervenes to change the natural course of events to prevent evils, as God has a decisive "greater good justification" for not intervening, namely respecting human sovereignty. This non-interventionist view of divine providence can be made tenable by the great good and dignity of the God-granted human God-like self-creativity implied by human sovereignty (a concept inspired by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola). The Mirandolian theodicy can both accommodate and complement Dostoyevsky's Russian Orthodox view of "beneficial suffering", predicated against the background of the conception of "collective selfhood", overlooked by Sterba despite "featuring" on the cover of his book, no doubt due to his libertarian–individualistic assumptions about human agency and human flourishing, which a proponent of a theistic theodicy may do well to resist.

**Keywords:** logical argument from evil; James Sterba; Mirandolian theodicy; the sovereignty of humanity; Dostoyevsky on evil; relational conceptions of selfhood

"No fixed seat, no special look, nor any particular gift of your own have we given you, Adam, so that what seat, what look, what gifts you choose for yourself, those you may have and hold as you wish, according to your purpose. For others, a definite nature is confined within laws that we have prescribed. With no strictures confining you, you will determine that nature by your own choice, which is the authority under which I have put you. I have set you up as the center of the world so that you will be better placed to survey what the world contains. And we have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that on your own, as molder and maker, specially appointed to decide, you may shape yourself in the form that you prefer. You can sink back into lower forms that are beasts; from your own resolute spirit, you can be born again to higher forms that are divine. O the supreme generosity of God the Father! This is man's supreme and astonishing good fortune, to whom it is given to have what he chooses, to be what he wants". (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, *Oration on the Dignity of Man*, Copenhaver (2019, pp. 460–61))

### **1. James Sterba's Dostoyevsky Riddle**

The cover of James Sterba's magisterial study of the problem of evil (Sterba 2019) confronts the reader with one of the most heart wrenching examples of gratuitous evil in all of the world's literature. In Dostoyevsky's *Brothers Karamazov*, the atheist brother, Ivan, tells a story of a little serf boy who in play threw a stone and unintentionally hurt the paw of the master's favorite hound. The next day, in front of his mother, the boy is, upon the order of the master, torn to pieces by the master's pack of dogs (cf. Dostoyevsky 1993, pp. 205–6). Sterba reports the story at the high point of his dispute

**Citation:** Salamon, Janusz. 2021. The Sovereignty of Humanity and Social Responsibility for Evil Prevention. *Religions* 12: 418. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel12060418

Academic Editor: James Sterba

Received: 4 May 2021 Accepted: 31 May 2021 Published: 8 June 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

with sceptical theists (cf. Sterba 2019, pp. 72–3), contemporary philosophical defenders of God's justice who argue that God has good reason for permitting every evil that actually occurs in the world, however, we are unable to discern it due to our epistemic limitations (cf. Bergmann 2011, pp. 375–99). Sterba, like Ivan Karamazov, considers cases of such horrendous evils—no doubt occurring daily throughout human (and animal) history—the ultimate test of the rationality of the belief in "a good God". Having considered the wide range of candidates for the justification of God in the face of such evils, Sterba comes up with a new formulation of the logical problem of evil, which implies that theism—understood as a belief in the existence of God that is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful—is necessarily false, because God fails the test of moral goodness miserably (and not just perfect goodness, but even goodness that would be expected from every human agent). Yet, the cover of Sterba's book points to a riddle and invites a question, "Why Dostoyevsky himself, by no means a man of easy faith, did not consider his charge against God, which he put in the mouth of Ivan Karamazov just months before his own death, a sufficient reason for abandoning his own Christian faith?". "What theodicy (understood here as intellectual resources to make sense of apparently senseless evils, in the apparent absence of divine intervention to prevent them) allowed Dostoyevsky to overcome the problem of evil which haunted him throughout his life?". When his first child, Sonya, died of pneumonia three months after her birth, Dostoyevsky's wife has recorded that he "wept and sobbed like a woman in despair" (Kjetssa 1989, p. 219). Ten years later, his son, Alyosha, died before reaching the age of three. Seeing his anguish, his philosopher friend, Vladimir Solovyov, took him to the Optina Monastery where Dostoyevsky was consoled by the charismatic monk Ambrose, the prototype of Father Zosima, the holy monk in *Brothers Karamazov*.

I begin my engagement with Sterba's *Is a Good God Logically Possible?*—which has every chance to become a classic of the philosophy of religion, even if my argument against him holds—by drawing attention to his omission of the theodicy implicit in *Brothers Karamazov,* because I sense this may be highly revealing of what kind of response to the problem of evil Sterba may have overlooked in his near comprehensive treatment of the recent philosophical attempts at theodicy. I will incorporate into my reply to Sterba, in particular, these ideas about the possibilities for the defeat of evil found in Dostoyevsky, which presuppose an anti-individualistic religious anthropology and, thus, remain in stark contrast to Sterba's own account of selfhood, which is robustly libertarian. These individualistic assumptions underpin, in obvious ways, all Sterba's arguments, even though they are not explicitly stated in one place (a libertarian–individualistic account of human agency is also taken for granted in his earlier major publications, Sterba (2014); Sterba (2020)). Thus, when Sterba regularly uses phrases like "the fundamental requirements of our morality" (Sterba 2019, p. 6), one is tempted to doubt whether the phrase "our morality" truly refers to the entire human race. In any case, I wish to draw the reader's attention to the fact that disparate fundamental anthropological assumptions may have radically divergent implications for the analysis of the problem of evil.

Indeed, it is my conviction that Sterba's cumulative atheological argument from evil is essentially valid, and if one grants Sterba his assumptions, one will be forced to accept that his new logical argument is also sound. For this reason, I wish to deconstruct his argument by challenging two of his assumptions (or two sets of assumptions), namely, one pertaining to the nature of human agency and human flourishing, the other pertaining to the nature of the human–divine relation. As it will be only in the last section of the paper that the implications of my knock-down argument against Sterba will be presented (and only then we will be able to integrate Dostoyevsky's theodical insights into my "Mirandolian theodicy"), it may be good to sum up, at this stage, the crux of my response to Sterba.

I submit that throughout his work, Sterba takes for granted that theism entails that God, having created the world, retains full sovereignty over the Earth with all its inhabitants. If that assumption is granted, God must be treated as a moral agent in the world who must be held responsible, directly or indirectly, for everything that happens in the terrestrial realm. It is this conceptual concession that opens the door to Sterba's application

to the analysis of the problem of evil of (a) his analogy between God and "ideally just and powerful state" (which prescribes the state intervention to limit the freedom of citizens to act out their evil intentions that would cause significant evil to the innocent would-be victims, thus limiting the victims' more significant freedom), as well as of (b) his so-called "Pauline Principle" (i.e., St. Paul's apparent rejection—in Romans 3:8—of the idea that it is acceptable to do evil, so that good could come out of it). Yet, it is the application of these two principles that generates the main support to Sterba's conclusion that a good God is logically impossible. Therefore, I purport that the soundness of Sterba's new logical argument from evil rests ultimately on a tacit assumption (no doubt tacitly presupposed by most participants in the debate about the problem of evil) of a feudal conception of divine sovereignty, as supposedly logically implied by theism, according to which God, as the only genuine sovereign, exercises his full sovereignty over his creation, while humanity is assigned the role of vassals or stewards, expected to obediently execute divine will, in all its details. However, Mirandola's scenario of God giving up his sovereignty over humanity in the act of creation, and granting full sovereignty to humanity, makes enough sense to dispense with such feudal social imagery, and, as a consequence, block Sterba's application of his evil prevention requirements to God. Not more needs to be said at this stage about the sovereignty of humanity, as the concept of full sovereignty (or "Westphalian sovereignty") is self-explanatory, in that it excludes legitimate intervention by other sovereigns in the realm under someone's sovereignty (cf. Philpott 2020).

However, apart from disarming Sterba's argument, the Mirandolian theodicy affirms the possibilities of the defeat of undeserved evils (by identifying the great good of human sovereignty exercised by humans in common) in a way that makes it less vulnerable to Sterba's criticism than Plantinga's free will defence (precisely because the latter is predicated on the exercise of free will individually). Thus, in order to reveal the full potential of the Mirandolian theodicy to resist Sterba's argument from evil, a social or relational conception of human agency and human flourishing has to be expounded, which I will do on the example of Dostoyevsky's "Russian Orthodox view" of selfhood, although I presuppose that a range of such relational conceptions of selfhood, bearing a family resemblance, can be identified in the cultures, philosophies, and religions of the world.

Indeed, understanding the religiously defined goal of life in collective terms is something we are familiar with, not just from Christian theology (with the idea of the Church as the people of God whose spiritual interdependence extends even beyond "this world"), but also from the traditional Jewish view of God forging a covenant with the people of Israel (and forgiving on Yom Kippur the sins of "all the people of Israel"). Similar sentiments are expressed in the Buddhist idea of the possibility of sharing the karmic merits with others, captured especially powerfully in the "Bodhisattva vow" to liberate all sentient beings, which is taken by Mahayana Buddhists. Corrigan (2017) also stresses that while appropriated and shaped by Dostoyevsky's highly original mind and the modern sensitivities of his time, these insights were drawn by the writer from diverse theological and philosophical sources (including Schopenhauer, who drew the attention of his contemporaries to Buddhism), the same sources that also made Tolstoy—who did not subscribe to any religious orthodoxy—emphatically reject modern individualism. Influenced in his youth by Rousseau's vision of the primitive utopia, Tolstoy, well versed in the South Asian and East Asian philosophical and religious sources, attributed such non-individualistic ideals of selfhood to all great spiritual traditions of humanity, especially to simple people uncorrupted by the temptations of individualism generated by the competitive spirit of modernity. More recently, Craig Ihara applied Western ethical resources to explain why, in the Confucian ethics, the language of rights is out of place. A simple analogy that captures the logic of the Confucian ethics as using the language of duties, instead of the language of rights, is between an ethical community and a sport team, for which the only sure path to victory (i.e., achieving the good each of the players seeks) is cooperation, which makes claiming rights by team members against each other meaningless (cf. Ihara 2004, pp. 11–30). Similar ideas have been explored by a group of Western scholars of East Asian studies in a

book bearing an apt title, *The Oneness Hypothesis: Beyond the Boundary of Self* (Ivanhoe et al. 2018). In the context of this paper, it is imperative to acknowledge the global popularity of this communitarian conceptualisation of the proper human relations as it is likely to yield an understanding of good and evil akin to that found in Dostoyevsky, rather than that presupposed by Sterba. Before moving into details, an explanation may be in place, why, given that my argumentative strategy pace Sterba involves two arguments, namely, (a) an argument from the divine non-intervention ("the Mirandola theme") and (b) an argument from the plausibility of a non-individualistic account of human agency and human flourishing ("the Dostoyevsky theme"), the bulk of the paper will be devoted to the exposition of the latter, while the former is more central from the point of view of the refutation of Sterba's argument from evil. There are two reasons warranting such a structure of the paper. Firstly, in this argumentative counterpoint—to use a musical metaphor—the more important argument ("the Mirandola theme") presupposes the other argument ("the Dostoyevsky theme") in such a way that, without establishing the plausibility of the latter (i.e., a non-individualistic view of "collective selfhood" and the related "social responsibility" for good and evil), the former (i.e., granting full sovereignty over the Earth to imperfect humanity) will be judged by Sterba to be morally impermissible, as it is bound to lead to violations of the individual autonomy of many victims of significant evil resulting from the immoral behavior of others, which God might have prevented by not granting humanity full sovereignty. In other words, without calling into question the indispensability of his libertarian–individualistic account of human agency and human flourishing, Sterba will be able to establish that God must not grant such sovereignty to humanity. However, it must be stressed that in order to undermine the conclusion of Sterba's argument that a good God is logically impossible, a weaker version of my argument should suffice, that is, I am not under obligation to prove in this paper that God never intervenes in the human affairs to prevent evil or to produce good (how could one do such a thing?), nor do I have to prove that Dostoyevsky's relational view of the self is necessarily the only plausible one on offer. It suffices for me to suggest that the accounts of selfhood and of the human–divine relation entailed by the Mirandolian theodicy are perfectly plausible (rather than necessarily true). However, I also need to show that these views are broadly compatible with at least some "traditional" interpretations of theism. That is why, apart from wanting to encourage James Sterba, as the author of *Is a Good God Logically Possible?*, to see himself in the mirror of his cover, I move now to Dostoyevsky, whose views about evil emerge uncontroversially from Eastern Orthodox Christianity, an ancient religious tradition that has an undisputed claim to theistic orthodoxy, and has shaped the beliefs about good and evil of hundreds of millions of people over centuries. Indeed, there are volumes of work by mainstream contemporary Eastern Orthodox thinkers, such as Vladimir Lossky or John Zizoulas, who defend a radically communitarian vision of inter-personal, as well as divine–human, relations akin to that found in Dostoyevsky, and define them as central to the entire religious tradition, grounded in the Byzantine patristic sources.

### **2. Selfhood Integrated into Other Selves and Vicarious Suffering**

Dostoyevsky clearly intended *Brothers Karamazov* to be his religious opus magnum, written under the impression of the above-mentioned visit to the Optina Monastery and the question of how evil might ultimately be defeated within the framework of the Christian worldview lies at its heart. While not suggesting that my preferred philosophical solution to the problem of evil aligns perfectly with what Dostoyevsky might have thought on the matter, I submit that the theodical intuitions scattered in his writings can be incorporated into my own Mirandolian theodicy, which I believe can resist Sterba's impressive analytic onslaught. Two motives relevant to the discussion of the problem of evil emerge repeatedly throughout Dostoyevsky's oeuvre. Both are well attested in the Russian Orthodox religious thought, which has inspired the writer. His first theodical idea links the experience of intense suffering to that suffering individual's potential for metanoetic transformation (the term "metanoia*"*—literally "change of mind" in Greek—in the New Testament refers

regularly to "change of heart", "turning to God", and "true conversion"), which leads in the direction of the deification (*theosis*) of the person as the condition of her participation in the Divine life (*koinonia*). This transformation presupposes "a completion of one's unfinished personality" through the realisation of the relational nature of one's selfhood and the achievement of "selfhood integrated into other selves" (Corrigan 2017, p. 18). The second theodical idea to be found in Dostoyevsky links undeserved suffering to the concept of "vicarious suffering"—suffering for others or in place of others (cf. Terras 1987, pp. 58–64). In both cases, evil is seen as either directly beneficial, enabling suffering individuals to make progress on the path towards the completion of their personality, or as indirectly beneficial, being an unavoidable consequence of the communitarian nature of the human collective to which the following divine commandment applies: "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2).

Following the Orthodox Christian tradition, Dostoyevsky takes for granted that innocent victims of evil will ultimately be rewarded by God and that their sacrifice is seen as contributing, on the model of Christ's own sacrifice, to the good of "his body, that is, the church" (Collosians 1:24). Evil is, on such a picture, seen as either a manifestation of the ordinary human condition (of being an "unfinished personality"), or as an opportunity for metanoetic transformation and completion, or as an occasion to contribute to such transformation of other persons (with whom we are all intimately connected as members of "one body of Christ"), or as a result of the failure of some to integrate themselves into the selves of others, which makes them, willingly or unwillingly, able to inflict evil on others. For this reason, the consummate individualist, the Underground Man of Dostoyevsky's early masterpiece *Notes from the Underground,* is also portrayed as the ultimate egoist, and is arguably the most negative human type in his entire oeuvre, more removed from the writer's ideal of humanity than any in his long catalogue of dark characters (cf. Scanlan 2002, p. 81). One might also recall that Raskolnikov, at the beginning of *Crime and Punishment,* is portrayed as a totally isolated individual unable to forge any close human relationship, a consequence of his rampant rationalism, resulting from the negative influence of the contemporary Western currents. He is thus depicted as a victim of the "epidemic" of individualism imported to Russia from the West, which Dostoyevsky encountered during his visit to England and against which he wants to warn his compatriots and humanity at large. Raskolnikov will also, at the end of the novel, face the task of seeking purification through suffering in a penal colony. The second of our theodical motives is also present in *Crime and Punishment*, namely at the turning point of the whole story, when Sonya (no doubt bearing such a name to indicate connection with "sophia", the Divine Wisdom of the Eastern Orthodox theology) instructs Raskolnikov that having committed murder he must first, even before beginning expiation through suffering, "stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!' Then God will send you life again". This is a remarkable idea that, one is tempted to say, could cross only a Russian writer's mind, that evil cannot be redeemed without reconciliation with "all the world" and "all men". Evil is not solely an issue between the perpetrator and God, who can offer pardon to the perpetrator; not even between the perpetrator, the victim, and God—evil is a social issue, indeed, a global issue, an issue that concerns humanity as a whole.

The impact of these two ideas on theodicy can be appreciated only when the reader suspends the tacit, ordinary, modern individualistic assumptions about human flourishing and considers how communitarian the anthropological orientation of some religious worldviews may be. That such a strongly communitarian vision of human existence constitutes the core of Dostoyevsky's message is made plain by Yuri Corrigan in his recent in-depth study of the philosophical presuppositions of Dostoyevsky's work. He sums it up as follows: "As an enemy of individualism, Dostoevsky categorically rejected the concept of a self that was not inherently integrated into other selves. He conceived of the Christian ideal as the overcoming of the 'I', the development of an ability 'to annihilate this I, to give it wholly to all and everyone, undividedly and selflessly', and he persistently criticized

the European bourgeois conception of selfhood). 'In Christianity', he once remarked in his notebook, the attempt to 'determine where your personality ends and another begins [ . . . ] is unthinkable.'" (Corrigan 2017, pp. 3–4).

Corrigan's entire book is devoted to the explication of this anti-individualistic conception of "open-ended, relational self" (p. 28), which he also refers to as "extended self", "collective self" (p. 18), "collective personality" (p. 30), and "intersubjective selfhood" (p. 18). All of these terms presuppose that "fullness of being exists only within human relationships" (p. 24). "The self is rooted in other worlds, (. . . ) the worlds of other consciousnesses. Thus, the personality in Dostoevsky is thought of (. . . ) as an activity, event, or point of view that constitutes itself outwardly through relationships" (pp. 17–18). As a result of the relational nature of personhood, Dostoyevsky's "characters apprehend their depths outside of themselves, in the souls of others" (p. 17). This belief in the absolute need for the completion of the initially unfinished selfhood in relationship with the other is captured by Dostoyevsky in terms of "discovering a principle outside of the self—a transcendental anchor for selfhood" (p. 9). Corrigan already finds, in a short story, *A Weak Heart*, written by Dostoyevsky in his 20s, such "paradigm of the collective self" and description of "the conflation of self and other and the problem of collapsed interiority that will resonate throughout Dostoevsky's career" (p. 8). Human personality is, thus, in Dostoyevsky's works, constituted by two aspects: "inward self" (or "indwelling self") on the one hand, and "relational self" on the other (p. 14). Referring to these two modes of the existence of the self, Corrigan speaks about "tension between interiority and intersubjectivity" and about "the indwelling and relational models of selfhood", the former designating the "unfinished personality", and the latter the "collective personality" (p. 18).

It is my contention that such a conception of selfhood generates an entirely different set of questions and possible answers regarding undeserved and horrendous evils, than an account of the self as autonomous, self-sufficient, and atomistic, capable of self-realisation and flourishing alongside and without entering into communion with others who do not flourish. It seems to me that the heart of the matter lies in the possibility of formulating the goals of human life in diverse ways. Dostoyevsky does not presuppose that the goal of life is "having a good life" or "enjoying life", which might be consistent with the Aristotelian vision of human flourishing as an actualisation of our *natural* (as opposed to supernatural) potentialities for good (let us call it a "welfarist" vision of human flourishing), which ideally would encompass moral and intellectual goods (virtues), as well as what Sterba calls "consumer goods, that is, experiences and activities that are intensely pleasurable, completely fulfilling, and all encompassing" (Sterba 2019, p. 37). Such an individualistic and welfarist perspective on the goals of life justifies Sterba's rights-talk about "goods to which we are entitled" and "goods to which we have right", which gives rise to his atheological argument, as one of the main problems with God's inaction to prevent significant and horrendous evils is that it results in a violation of the rights of the victims, as is evident from the following formulation of the Evil Prevention Requirement III: "Do not permit, rather than prevent, significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions [or of natural evils—JS] on would-be victims (which would violate their rights) in order to provide them with goods to which they do not have a right, when there are countless morally unobjectionable ways of providing those goods" (p. 84). Conversely, envisaging personal transformation from an atomistic personality to a personality integrated into other selves as the main goal of human life, which makes it, in an important sense, a collective goal, makes the language of rights (including the distinction between the goods to which we have a right and those to which we have no right) out of place in the analysis of the inter-personal relations, and by extension, in the analysis of evil, for at least three reasons. Firstly, the completion of personality as the goal of life takes place in the inter-personal space within which all of the relevant goods have the nature of a gift to which nobody has a right, as nobody can claim an inalienable right to the love, friendship, or cooperation of any particular person (such rights can be claimed only after being first established by way of a social contract or on the ground of solidarity governed by the logic of mutual

gift giving). Secondly, no particular moral, intellectual, or consumer goods to which we might have a right, other than our existence itself, are presupposed as a condition of the successful process of the completion of personality, as the metanoetic transformation is an inner transformation to which the language of entitlement does not apply, and which cannot be granted by someone or otherwise affected by use of any external goods. Thirdly, and more generally, the collectivist account of selfhood presupposes the agathological interdependence of individuals (from "to agathon" for "the good" in Attic Greek), therefore the analysis of good and evil must take place within the collective agathological drama and, strictly speaking, cannot at all be "analysed" (in the Greek sense of the term "analysis" originally denoting "a breaking up"; cf. Harper 2001–2012).

Thus, from the point of view occupied by Dostoyevsky, controversial as it might sound on the welfarist view of human flourishing, the relation between the life-chances to achieve the goal of life (defined in personalist terms) and the circumstances of life (which might be described in terms of the availability or depravation of some goods), is essentially ambiguous (which explains why Dostoyevsky, knowing full well the conditions of life of the Russian peasantry, was not impressed by the material achievements of the Western civilisation he witnessed first-hand during his prolonged stays in Germany, England, France, and Italy). It is as if the main problem with evil, for Dostoyevsky, is that it is an expression and the proof of the failure of some individuals to undergo successfully metanoetic transformation, rather than that it deprives someone his rights. I cannot but think at this point about the remarkable unanimity between Dostoyevsky and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn about the potentially beneficial role of suffering. Having spent years in a Stalinist labour camp and working on a book intended as a tribute to the millions of victims of the Gulag, the Nobel Prize winning author was able to write the following words: "Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul" (Solzhenitsyn 2007, pp. 312–13).

The account of the human good that is presupposed in such a non-welfarist and "participatory" model of life of the members of the community of persons within which goods, including goods brought about by way of intense suffering, are exchanged between persons, cannot be dismissed out of hand as a viable anthropological alternative. Yet, it also cannot be transposed onto an individualistic account of human flourishing. For this reason, Sterba is right when he dismisses John Hick's soul-making theodicy to the extent Hick shares (which I presume he does) with Sterba a libertarian-individualistic conception of selfhood. As such a conception implies little or no connection between the soul-making of individual X ('the assaulter') and the soul-making of individual Y ('the assaulted'), Sterba's following argument, pace Hick, appears obviously plausible: "Could it be that God's permitting all the evil in our world is justified by the opportunity for soul-making it provides? Not if having the opportunity for significant soul-making in our world is dependent on having significant freedom such that a net loss of significant freedom in our world would result in a net loss of the opportunity for significant soulmaking as well. Unfortunately, this does seem to be the case. Moreover, whenever serious assaults occur, what happens is that the particular opportunity for soul-making of the assaulters, an opportunity for soul-making that no one ideally needs to have, is exercised badly at the expense of the opportunity for soul-making of their victims, an opportunity for soul-making that all would-be victims should have" (pp. 35–36). However, the whole point of my laborious exposition of Dostoyevsky's "Russian Orthodox view" of collective, extended, relational selfhood is that it undermines the apparent obviousness of Sterba's above argument and offers a more collectivist vision of soul-making immune to Sterba's criticism. How so? Firstly, on the collectivist account of selfhood, soul-making is not an individualistic affair, but is, rather, intimately linked to soul-making of others, including the soul-making of one's assaulters (Socrates' ban on harming one's enemies and Jesus' call to love one's enemies readily comes to mind as an indication that this thought is not senseless). Secondly, if instead of making a tacit assumption that the only way to conceive

of human flourishing is the Aristotelian one, we accept a more inclusive formula that human flourishing is about the actualisation of the human potentialities for producing good, then agathologically successful may be also a person who, in the course of her life, produces goods in the lives of others, without experiencing them (an idea parents, teachers, or physicians are familiar with). Indeed, such agathological interdependence of individual persons has a similar logic as welfare interdependence, which underlies socialist approaches to socio-economic policy, close to James Sterba's heart, as is evident from his numerous publications in political philosophy (cf. e.g., Narveson and Sterba 2010; Sterba 2010). Against the background of such a relational view of a good life, the strict opposition between the soul-making of the assaulters and the soul-making of the assaulted, implied by Sterba in the above argument, becomes less obvious.

On the face of it, Hick's soul-making theodicy is capable of accommodating an "extended" or "relational" view of soul-making, as Hick sees soul-making as a God-granted opportunity for "human goodness slowly built up through personal histories of moral effort (. . . ) in an environment whose primary and overriding purpose is not immediate pleasure but the realising of the most valuable potentialities of human personality" (Hick [1966] 2007, pp. 256, 258). However, Sterba seems right by assuming (throughout Chapter 3 of his book) that speaking about "potentialities of human personality", Hick presupposes an individualistic account of selfhood, which makes his theodicy vulnerable to an obvious line of attack, implied in Sterba's above argument against Hick: what about the soul-making of the serf boy from Ivan Karamazov's story? If Hick would respond that God will simply grant the serf boy the fullness of eternal life, irrespective of the boy's failure to undergo the process of soul-making in "this life", one might remark that Hick's insistence on the great importance of soul-making, supposedly justifying even horrendous evils, does not square well with Hick's allowance for the possibility of achieving life's ultimate goal without significant progress in soul-making attained in this life. Furthermore, such a move would open the theodicy of soul-making to a charge, formulated by Marilyn Adams, quoted approvingly by Sterba, of the lack of unity between goods produced and evils experienced by a person in this life and the goods granted by God in the afterlife (cf. Sterba 2019, p. 37). However, the collectivist corrective to the soul-making style of theodicy makes these charges less critical, as then the agathological success of the individual victims of evils is differently conceived (perhaps on the analogy of the contribution of the victims of the defensive war to the freedom and long-term flourishing of the nation). Needless to say, theistic traditions that presuppose such a collectivist account of selfhood may point to some form of divine reward for the victims as their solution to the problem of evil, but then, unlike Hick, they will be able to argue that the unity between what happens in this life and the next is preserved precisely because of the collectivist nature of their interpretation of something like the Hickian soul-making. In short, Sterba's arguments against the soul-making theodicy do not apply to the collectivist variation on it, a theodicy of metanoetic transformation of the selves under the relational account of selfhood, which I purport is implied by Dostoyevsky in *Brothers Karamazov* (and is presupposed by my Mirandolian theodicy).

Another theodicy that Sterba (Sterba 2019, pp. 71–110) successfully challenges is "sceptical theism", defined earlier, a theodicy I also reject (cf. Salamon 2017). Here, the limitations of the theodicy implied by Dostoyevsky must be acknowledged (and therefore must be supplemented by the sovereignty component of the Mirandolian theodicy), as, to the extent Dostoyevsky, following the Russian Orthodox tradition, is likely to accept that God on occasion does intervene in the human affairs to produce good or prevent evil, he may be forced to retreat to some form of sceptical theism. Dostoyevsky may need to resort to sceptical theism in order to answer the question that Sterba might put to him in the following manner: what exactly might justify divine non-intervention to prevent, rather than permit, the horrendous evil consequence of the immoral action of the boyar resulting in the serf boy being torn to pieces by dogs in front of his mother, when that could easily be done by God (something that must be presumed, if one accepts that God does act on occasion to prevent evils)? I am inclined to agree with Sterba that theists who accept that God does intervene on occasion in the human affairs to prevent evils have no good answer to that question (and, needless to say, the cruel murder of the serf boy may be substituted by any number of horrendous and cruel mass-murders and genocides). When Sterba's logical argument from evil is directed against theism of this kind, I think his argument is both valid and sound. Therefore, the only way to block Sterba's logical argument from evil is by dropping the assumption that God does intervene on occasion in human affairs to prevent evils, and providing a plausible justification for such a move. This is, in a nutshell, the motivation for the Mirandolian theodicy to be outlined in the coda of this work.

### **3. Kenosis as a Condition of Bearing Fruit in the Lives of Others**

The two theodical motives about suffering and evil: a transformative suffering (potentially beneficial for the suffering person) and vicarious suffering (potentially beneficial for others) are present in the entire Dostoyevsky's oeuvre, but they culminate and interlace in Dmitry Karamazov's acceptance of the sentence to years of hard penal labour for the crime of patricide he has not committed. This makes Dmitry, rather than his atheist brother, Ivan, or the saintly ascetic brother, Alyosha, the main hero of *Brothers Karamazov*. Dostoyevsky presents Dmitry's katorga in Siberia (something the writer himself was subjected to) as an opportunity for Dmitry to undergo "purification through suffering", but at the same time as an opportunity to suffer vicariously for his father and brothers (including the actual murderer, half-brother, Smerdyakov) to expiate for their sins (Dostoyevsky 1993, pp. 648–49). Both forms of suffering are ultimately beneficial and thus are instances of evil defeated. The centrality of this idea of beneficial suffering in the overall design of the novel is signalled early on, in the second of the thirteen scenes of the book, when during the meeting of Karamazovs with Father Zosima, the holy monk having a premonition of Dmitry's future in a penal colony, kneels before him and kisses his feet as if acknowledging the sanctity of his future suffering (Dostoyevsky 1993, p. 62). Incidentally, the scene is clearly inspired by the Russian Orthodox idea of "sanctification of suffering", which is fundamental to the entire Russian spiritual tradition, going back to the first Russian martyrs, "innocent" princes Boris and Gleb murdered by their "evil" brother Sviatopolk. Both these motives about beneficial suffering are also alluded to in the motto put on the top of the first page of *Brothers Karamazov,* the quote from John's Gospel (12:24): "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (Dostoyevsky 1993, p. 1) There can be little doubt that Dostoyevsky chose this quote to highlight the core message of *Brothers Karamazov.* However, here, again, the message becomes clear only when the fragment will be read against the background of the spiritual communitarianism presupposed by the Russian Orthodox tradition, which Dostoyevsky contrasts with the individualistic orientation of the Western liberal tradition, rooted in Protestantism which he designates 'Geneva idea'. He is highly critical of this tradition of thinking about human relations, since he is convinced that in it, "the vision of social harmony is sacrificed to "a principle of individualism, a principle of isolation, of intense self-preservation". In a social order in which each personality "fights for what it wants, ... demands its rights", and "desires to separate", social cohesion, insofar as it exists, is dependent on contracts between calculating individuals rather than on mutual love." (Ward 1986, p. 74).

Now, given such philosophical instincts of the author of *Brothers Karamazov*, it should be clear that the aforementioned employment of the biblical image of the seed that has to die in order not to stay alone, but instead bear much fruit, is intended to convey a certain ideal of human flourishing, according to which the appropriate way of "bearing much fruit" is by bearing it in the lives of others. So here, again, the central objection against Sterba's more individualistic approach to the analysis of the impact of evil on human flourishing suggests itself: the goods and evils that take place in the lives of various individuals may, in the horizon of a theistic worldview, be interconnected in such intricate ways within human communities (including trans-generational communities, such as nations or humanity as

a whole) that the evil experienced by some individuals may be "defeated" by the good experienced by other individuals. As controversial as moving in this direction may appear at first, there can be no doubt that Dostoyevsky's favourite biblical quote about the grain of wheat that bears much fruit implies that "death" is a precondition of a fruitful life, and "death"—even if what is meant here is only the "death" of our ego, overcoming our self-centred existence—involves suffering, undoubtedly experienced at the time as evil, perhaps even significant or horrendous evil. There is just no other way to bear much fruit than by first dying, and this "mechanism" of bearing much fruit by paying a high price of suffering and self-denial (kenosis is the Greek biblical term used in Flp 2:7 to capture this dimension of Christ's self-sacrifice) manifests itself not only in the life of finite creatures, but in the suffering and death of Christ, and is also revealed as characteristic of the Divine mode of existence.

An arguably even more challenging component of this biblical message embraced by Dostoyevsky as central to his Christian anthropology is the implicit warning that the worst of all possible options is "to remain alone". How to understand this warning? Why is remaining alone the most negative state of affairs? Is not a lone individual always in the presence of God, as Luther saw it, and thus never alone? It is here, I submit, that a truly radical view of all good and evil as a reality that is social or relational, rather than individual, is implied. However, how can good and evil not be at its core individual in nature? Do not terms "good" and "evil" ultimately pertain to states of mind(s) of conscious individuals (human or animal) and only by extension to some states of affairs in the world, which causally contribute to the content of these mental states that are perceived by conscious creatures as good (desirable) or evil (undesirable)? I think they do, but still, the content of these mental states we call "good" or "evil" may be such that they are always intimately connected to the analogical mental states of other conscious creatures.

The question that is hanging in the air at this point, and which James Sterba might raise even earlier, on the first mention of "collective selfhood" or "spiritual communitarianism", concerns the place of individual freedom, autonomy, self-ownership, and self-direction in the larger scheme of Dostoyevsky's vision of human life. Dostoyevsky thought very hard about this issue, which he framed in terms of reconciliation of the "I" and the "all". That he considered the preservation of freedom essential to a genuinely "Christian life" is clear from one of his most famous literary creations, namely the Grand Inquisitor Scene from *Brothers Karamazov,* the message of which boils down to denunciation of Catholic Christianity for the distortion of the ideal of humanity revealed by God in Christ, precisely by sacrificing human freedom on the altar of the provision of welfare (Ward 1986, p. 158). However, given everything said so far about Dostoyevsky's view of selfhood, the freedom he has in mind cannot be a libertarian, "negative freedom"—perfect freedom from interference by others. Indeed, Dostoyevsky's search for reconciliation of the "I" and the "all" must be restricted to some version of "positive freedom", freedom to be able to realise human potentialities for producing good, "agathological freedom", one might say. However, for Dostoyevsky, "bearing much fruit"—fruit of the good, and not just for oneself, but for others too—presupposes Christ-like consent "to die". Otherwise, the seed will stay alone and barren of the good. Therefore, far from being a passive victim, resigned to whatever comes his way, Dostoyevsky envisages a suffering individual as potentially a co-redeemer of the imperfect humanity. So, Dostoyevsky searched for his conception of freedom in the vicinity of what he considered to be the essence of Christ's freedom, who at once represents paradigm of the highest realisation of personal existence, and yet also "emptied himself" or "made himself nothing" (Philippians 2:7, in New International Version), "by taking a form of a servant"—a servant of the others' good. Corrigan detects in Dostoyevsky a passionate effort to reconcile these two goals of personal development that seem opposed to each other, namely achieving ultimate selflessness and achieving the ultimate completion of one's selfhood: "In the very same passages where Dostoyevsky espouses the annihilation of the 'I', he fervently advocates the necessity of 'becoming a personality, even at a much more elevated level than that which has now been defined in

the West' (5:79). The 'annihilation' of the 'I', for Dostoevsky, depends, in fact, upon the 'very highest development of the personality', the "fullest realization of one's I" (20:172)." (Corrigan 2017, p. 4). In Dostoyevsky's own words, with "the appearance of Christ (. . . ) it became as clear as day that the highest, final development of the individual (. . . ) is to seemingly annihilate it, to give it wholly to each and every one whole-heartedly and selflessly. And this is the greatest happiness. In this way the law of Christ merges with the law of humanism, and in the merging both, both the 'I' and the 'all' (in appearance two extreme opposites) mutually annihilated for each other, at that same time each apart attains the highest goal of his individual development. This is indeed the paradise of Christ" (Dostoyevsky 1973, pp. 39, 96).

Do these "dialectical" investigations yield Dostoyevsky a conception of freedom that may address Sterba's legitimate concern with the consent of an individual victim of evil as an indispensable requirement of free acceptance of undeserved suffering and thus a condition of "bearing much fruit"? As Sterba puts it convincingly: "It should be pointed out that any greater moral good that would serve as a justification here [i.e., in the context of an attempt at a 'Greater Moral Good Defense' of God's permitting evil—JS] must also have freedom as one of its components because that is the way all moral goods are constituted for us" (p. 33). I think the only sensible option open to Dostoyevsky is to resort to a notion of "implied consent" or "tacit consent", which is used regularly in political philosophy, in the context of social contract theories. What such theories presuppose is a general acceptance by a citizen of the overall legal framework of the state, which provides beneficial, on the whole, conditions for human agathological development and human flourishing. So, on Dostoyevsky's picture, such general consent as a condition of freedom would have to amount to acceptance, en bloc and in advance (be it with inner strife), the necessity of suffering as divine will, on the model of Christ in Gethesemane: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." (Luke 22:42) However, is it plausible to assume that the serf boy torn into pieces by his master's dogs might have given such a tacit, en bloc consent to divine will to suffer and die? A positive answer would stretch credulity. However, again, Dostoyevsky's implicit theodicy fails on this point only if the writer presupposes (as I think he does) that there is no way to avoid a conclusion that God must have permitted this particular case of evil. Indeed, such a conclusion cannot be avoided, if one assumes that God does intervene on occasion to prevent some evils, as on such an interventionist interpretation of divine providence, God must decide when to intervene or not on case by case basis. That is why the non-intervention clause of the Mirandolian theodicy, which denies this premise is necessary to fix this problem inherent in Dostoyevsky's theodicy (and arguably in any other theodicy considered by Sterba in his book).

### **4. The Mirandolian Theodicy and Social Responsibility for Evil Prevention**

The Mirandolian theodicy, while presupposing the relational conception of selfhood explored so far, provides an answer—absent in Dostoyevsky—to the question about human freedom and autonomy. On the Mirandolian picture of the divine–human relation, God does not interfere with human freedom at all. Humans are left to their own devices, to realise their potential for freedom, to expand their freedom, to discover new ways of being free in more meaningful ways. It is only that the social dimension of human existence and of human consciousness makes individuals inescapably dependent on each other in their understanding and exercise of freedom. Mutual interference in each other's freedom is the order of the day. Apparently, one may be free only with others, not free from others. However, debating the nature of freedom is not the main subject of this study. What is its subject, is the question whether Sterba is right that the facts about all the evils of the world testify that if God existed, he would be constantly violating human freedom by failing to prevent significant evils.

The Mirandolian theodicy denies that theism necessarily entails that God exercises absolute sovereignty over the Earth, and thus nothing can take place in the human realm without God's permission. Instead, the Mirandolian theodicy presupposes that God granted humanity full sovereignty and thus human freedom that is restricted only by natural human limitations and by humans themselves. This sovereignty may be best understood on the Rousseauian model of "popular sovereignty" (i.e., the sovereignty of the populus, exercised by the people in common), according to which citizens are free only when they themselves shape their destiny by legislating in common and executing in common their own laws, which facilitate the production of good and the prevention of evil in the realm under their sovereignty (cf. Philpott 2020).

Some theists may worry that a denial of the possibility of God's intervention to prevent evils in the human world due to the non-intervention clause implied by the Mirandolian conception of human sovereignty leaves us with a God of deism rather than with God of "traditional theism". I beg to differ, as the only "traditional" theistic belief about God that the defender of the Mirandolian theodicy questions is that God intervenes in the natural course of events in the terrestrial realm to prevent evils and to produce goods, and one does not get from theism to deism just by denying that God acts in the world to prevent evils and produce goods. Unlike in the case of theism, there seems to be no scholarly consensus regarding what the minimal conceptual requirements are that a deistic God is supposed to satisfy, but two beliefs about God seem to be shared by deists, namely, (a) the denial of any form of religious revelation and (b) a view of an absentee God (cf. Byrne 2013, pp. 52–78). Neither of these beliefs are entailed by the Mirandolian concept of human sovereignty, as plenty of scope is left for God to be present to human consciousness, and thus engage with and inspire human beings in the course of history (see, e.g., Bernard McGinn's multi-volume definitive account of the history of Christian mysticism; McGinn (1995)).

In the culminating point of a devastating criticism of Alvin Plantinga's classic "solution" to the logical problem of evil, namely his free-will defence, James Sterba states (p. 26): "Plantinga needs to provide a greater good justification, or possible justification, particularly for God's permitting significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of wrongdoing other than by simply appealing to the freedom of the wrongdoers, given that these are consequences that God, and you or I on occasion, could easily prevent. And Plantinga has not done this".  Now, I must and can be brief in outlining the main advantages of the Mirandolian theodicy when compared with other theodicies that came under Sterba's scrutiny.

Firstly*,* on the Mirandolian view, the greatest dignity of humanity comes from the God-granted right and ability of human persons to be self-creators and thus co-creators with God (God providing a wide range of possibilities, some of which human beings realise by tracing this rather than that path of possible human development). Importantly, such a scenario is capable of accommodating global value pluralism, as it presupposes that God, out of the divine plenitude of the infinite good, "creates" the myriad of agathological possibilities (possibilities for realisation of various goods leading to creaturely flourishing), while various parts of humanity, in its history of evolution and progress, realise only some of these possibilities. This "multi-realisability of the good" (which has its ultimate source and ultimate fulfilment in God, whose very nature is to be the Infinite Good) makes the idea of the "best possible world" (and hence the Leibnizian theodicy of the best possible world) incoherent. Having granted full sovereignty to humanity, which includes freedom of human beings to develop their potential for good in the direction chosen by them, God cannot have one particular idea of the optimal realisation of the agathological potential of human nature, as this potential is, of its nature, pluralistic. Consequently, God may not intervene in human affairs, as an intervening God would forestall and preclude human choices regarding the direction of their agatological development (individual and social), more than one of which may be good (that is what is meant, in this context, by "value

pluralism"). It follows, therefore, that Sterba's justifiable criticism of "the best possible world" style of theodicy misses the target in the case of the Mirandolian theodicy, according to which the question why the state of affairs in the world is less than optimal cannot even arise.

Secondly, the Mirandolian theodicy is designated in such a way in recognition of Mirandola's suggestion that God could not be more magnanimous and generous towards his rational creatures than in lavishing upon them the sovereign right, that is full and "supreme authority" over every aspect of their life and everything that is happening "within the territory" they inhabit (Philpott 2020). However, the sovereignty of humanity, stretching in time for millennia and presupposing evolution, development and progress, cannot be conceived differently than as exercised in common, with all the consequences that such a non-individualistic vision of human agency entails, including the well-researched "problem of collective action", which illustrates the unavoidability of suboptimal outcomes (i.e., "evil"—in the vocabulary of this paper) (Reisman 1990). Indeed, the problem of collective action provides a serious challenge to Sterba's individualistic approach to the analysis of evils, as it makes precise attribution of responsibility for particular evils impossible (making all evil essentially social).

The idea of social nature of good and evil, which gives rise to social responsibility for evil prevention, is given credence by the increasing volume of research on deviant, destructive, and evil behaviour by empirical psychologists and cognitive scientists. Philip Zimbardo, in his classic *The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil* (Zimbardo 2007), characterises with impressive lucidity the two hypotheses explaining evil behaviour as the "dispositional view" (the "bad apple" approach) and "situational view" (the "bad barrel" approach). Zimbardo, like many other psychologists, while not denying the influence of individual dispositions and choices on an individual's behaviour, ascribes much greater weight to the situational factors in shaping human behaviour (in short, bad barrels often turn good apples into bad apples). It does not require much philosophical imagination to notice the relevance of such a conclusion to our current debate. If evil behaviour of individuals is in a significant way causally related to a myriad of factors, events, and circumstances, each of which are not a result of a deliberate decision of the agent under consideration or even any particular agent, but rather an outcome of a cumulative impact of countless actions and events over time, there are only two coherent scenarios available to a theist trying to conceptualise how an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God relates to the realm of human action and human experience. One envisaged by Sterba and the other presupposed by the Mirandolian theodicy (the third one is brooding in the mists of sceptical theism which is the same as evading the question).

On Sterba's "traditional" account of the divine–human relation, a good God, if he existed, would be required, among other things, to prevent all significantly evil consequences of human actions. Sterba does not see a problem with God doing just that and also making space for the significant moral freedom of human agents.  Sterba appears to ignore the fact that Dostoyevsky's boyar behaves as he does because he is a feudal lord, so, presumably, instead of just preventing the serf boy from feeling pain and dying when attacked by the boyar's dogs, God would do better by fixing the socio-economic system of the feudal Russia in which such human relations as the one between the boyar and the serf boy and his mother are thinkable. As disagreeable as it may sound, the boyar may be thought of as a victim of feudalism (Hegel's master-slave dialectics springs to mind), as, to take a hint from Socrates, by committing such a gross injustice, the boyar commits moral suicide and he presumably would not have done so, were he not born into a family of feudal lords (equally plausibly, Adolf Eichmann would not end up being complicit in the murder of 200,000 Hungarian Jews, if he would be born in 21st Century Denmark—even though, we would probably still prefer to avoid

his company). The point is that if Sterba would acknowledge the decisive impact of the situational factors on the behaviour of individuals, he would have to require God to make sure that all individual agents are placed in a "barrel" of circumstances that would have no negative impact on their behaviour. I suspect that would, in the end, mean no less than placing each individual agent in a perfect world, surrounded by perfect agents (and not just morally perfect agents, but cognitively perfect and perfect in just about every possible way, otherwise they are bound to create an environment conducive of evil behaviour—so we are back in a "bad barrel"). That would, to my mind, require God to create, right from the start, a species homo deus (to use Yuval Harari's half-joking term) and to place it in paradise.

Conversely, the Mirandolian theodicy is capable of accommodating fully any deliverances of human sciences, including empirical psychology, as it has no problem with accepting the evolutionary and developmental nature of the human and animal world, with all its imperfections and limitations, as well as its potential for improvement and endless progress. The Mirandolian theodicy takes into consideration both the collective action problem and the decisive impact of situational factors on human behaviour. On the Mirandolian view of human condition and of the divine–human relation, evil is a natural consequence of the sovereignty exercised by imperfect humanity in common and, as such, does not need to be explained or justified by reference to human free will, which—as the case of Eichmann and countless other examples of "ordinary" people contributing to the causal chain resulting in unimaginable evils testify—is a very implausible candidate for accounting for the actual nature and distribution of evils in the world. In this way, the Mirandolian theodicy dispenses with the free-will defence, which fell easy prey to Sterba's argumentative assault. The Mirandolian theodicy dispenses also with sceptical theism which, as mentioned earlier, was dimissed by Sterba as insufficient rubbutal to his logical argument from evil. I argued elsewhere (cf. Salamon 2017) against sceptical theists in somewhat different fashion than Sterba, suggesting that in the absence of the ability of affirming what divine goodness must minimally imply and what it may not imply, the human God-talk cannot take off the ground, as without being able to affirm divine goodness in a positive (or kataphatic) manner, we are left without any positive reason for acknowledging God as worthy of worship or as an anchor of human agathological hope for the fulfilment of human desire for the infinite good. Negative (or apophatic) theology may be appropriate when reporting mystical experiences or when referring to implications of divine omnipotence and divine omniscience, when divine goodness has already been affirmed.  I call this combination of affirming minimal agathological implications of the concept of divine goodness, while at the same time affirming human inability to formulate similar implications in the case of divine omniscience and divine omnipotence, "theistic scepticism". Theistic scepticism is an antithesis of "sceptical theism", as it allows for affirming that God must not act in a manner that is entirely opposed to fundamental human agathological intutions, while at the same time affirming that we may not know how God will bring about the realisation of an eschatological scenario within which the agathological promises of a given religious tradition regarding the achievability of the greatest good will be fulfilled. Such theistic scepticism is presupposed by my Mirandolian theodicy.

Lastly, the Mirandolian theodicy also has something interesting to say about the "natural evils". Sterba does not define "natural evil", but limits himself to pointing to some paradigmatic examples (cf. Sterba 2019, p. 157): "They include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, diseases, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, lightning strikes, and floods". Throughout the book he reiterates that "natural evils" should be clearly distinguished from "moral evils". However, on the Mirandolian assumption of human sovereignty over the Earth, the distinction is blurred for two different reasons. Firstly, the above-mentioned empirical

research into the psychology of human behavior casts doubt on the clear-cut differentiation between "moral" and "non-moral" aspects of human agency (in addition to calling into question the clear-cut distinction between its individual and social dimensions). This problematizes Sterba's analysis of evil behavior in purely individual and moral terms, at the cost of the social and natural/non-moral considerations. Secondly, and more importantly, with humanity's extraordinary technological progress, humanity gradually incurs new moral obligations to prevent "natural evils", such as deadly or painful diseases, as well as the natural disasters enumerated by Sterba. If 'ought' implies 'can', then 'can' often implies 'ought', and humanity's growing capability of preventing "natural evils" and limiting human and animal suffering puts the responsibility for the occurrence of such evils increasingly on the shoulders of the sovereign humanity, thus transforming natural evils into moral evils.

Appreciation of the social and situational dimensions of evil behavior of individuals, as well as the acknowledgement of the growing responsibility of humanity for the prevention of all sorts of evils happening in the realm under human sovereignty, calls for solidarity in the face of all the evils of the world. The Latin etymological root of "solidarity"—the Roman legal term: obligatio in solido—captures the sentiment underlying the Mirandolian theodicy well: the obligation of humanity as a whole to cooperate in the work of evil prevention, as only in common—in solido—humanity will be able to fulfill God's will to defeat evil.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The study did not report any data.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

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### *Article* **Heaven and the Goodness of God**

**Jerry L. Walls**

Department of Philosophy, Houston Baptist University, Houston, TX 77074, USA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
**Abstract:** In this essay, I argue that we should take fully seriously the doctrine of heaven when dealing with the problem of evil in our world. The hope of heaven is integral to Christian theism so it cannot be neglected in any substantive discussion of the problem of evil. Indeed, heaven provides resources to respond to even the worst of evils and to fully redeem them in such a way that the victims of those evils can fully affirm the goodness of their lives. Anyone who achieves heaven will experience a good of such significance and value that the ultimate beauty and goodness of their life could not be questioned. The Christian doctrine of the afterlife also provides resources to make sense of ultimate accountability. The perpetrators of horrendous evil cannot escape and will be called to account for their actions. However, even those who have committed such evil evils can be fully transformed in such a way that they can be fully reconciled with their victims and heartily embraced by them. This shows the doctrine of heaven to be not only profoundly hopeful, but also starkly honest and realistic.

**Keywords:** horrendous evil; incommensurate good; optimal grace; sanctification; forgiveness; Marilyn Adams; William Hasker

**Citation:** Walls, Jerry L. 2021. Heaven and the Goodness of God. *Religions* 12: 316. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel12050316

Academic Editor: James Sterba

Received: 22 March 2021 Accepted: 27 April 2021 Published: 29 April 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

James Sterba lays down an interesting challenge in his recent article, "Is a good god logically possible?"  This is a great reminder that issues of theodicy, and of philosophy of religion generally, are not mere academic debates, but rather issues of pressing existential concern. What is at stake in this debate is of enormous significance for every single human being. No informed person can rationally be indifferent to the issues that are on the line here. The problem of evil is very much an existential issue for all of us.

I shall respond to Sterba not so much by trying to poke holes in his argument, but rather by showing a way that God can be vindicated as perfectly good, even though he allows the horrific evils of this world. In saying God "allows" horrific evils, I am assuming that creaturely free will is a good thing, although it has been abused, and that such freedom accounts for much of the evil in our world. This does not mean that those who abuse their freedom by committing such evils are justified, or that the evils themselves are justified. But it does mean that God's perfect goodness will be vindicated in the end and he will be seen as justified. I begin by telling a true story of a horrific evil that happened to the sister of one of my former students.

### **1. Moral Absurdity or Profoundly Moral Aspiration?**

Sixteen years old Suzy Holliman was home alone one day, missing school because she had the flu. That was the day Ricky Lee Sanderson chose to burglarize the house, seeking money to support his drug habit. Finding Suzy at home, he raped her and then locked her in the trunk of his car, before killing her. As he dug her grave, she scratched on the locked trunk of the car, desperate to escape the horrific fate she no doubt realized awaited her. After digging the grave, Sanderson strangled and stabbed her to death.

Not long afterwards, Sanderson was arrested and then pled guilty to the charges of kidnapping and murder. Two years later, he was sentenced to death for his heartless crime. However, that is not the end of the story. He was converted to Christianity after he was imprisoned and became an outspoken witness for his faith in the years leading up to his execution. He was encouraged to make further appeals but refused to do so and requested that he be executed because he claimed to be concerned that further delays would cause unnecessary suffering for the Holliman family. When he eventually went to his death thirteen years after committing murder, he claimed to be at peace and even went so far as to say that he was prepared to face his victim in the life to come. "I think about facing Suzi Holliman when I'm executed. What's that going to be like? I'm ready to do it. I'm going to be with Christ." (Walls 2002, p. 128).

Suzi's father was understandably dubious about Sanderson's claim to conversion. Despite the facts that he is a practicing Christian, Hugh Holliman made no attempt to hide his true thoughts or to masquerade his honest feelings. Rather, he was brutally honest about his own deeply conflicted feelings about the man who had ruthlessly murdered his daughter, and then professed to be a follower of Christ who anticipated meeting his victim in the life to come. "The hopes and dreams he took away from us and the world—I tried but I can't forgive him. You know there is forgiveness there, but I can't see God totally forgiving him for something like that." (Walls 2002, p. 115).

Hugh Holliman's doubts that even God can forgive such a heinous act are reminiscent of one of the most famous passages on the problem of evil in the literature, namely, Ivan Karamazov's rejection of theodicy. Ivan comes to his despairing conclusion after rehearsing a series of horrendous abuses of children including that of a peasant boy who hurt the paw of a powerful general's dog with a rock he had thrown. The general stripped the boy naked and then forced the mother to watch as he set loose his dogs on the child, who was torn to pieces. Speaking for these victims, Ivan announces that he does not wish to see the mother forgive the general on behalf of the child in the final harmony at the end of the world.

She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she wants to, let her forgive the tormentor her immeasurable maternal suffering; but she has no right to forgive the suffering of her child who was torn to pieces, she dare not forgive the tormentor even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, then where is the harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have the right to forgive? I don't want the harmony; for the love of mankind I don't want it (Dostoyevsky 1992, p. 254).

As Ivan sees things then, his very love for humanity requires him to reject the promise of the life to come and the hope it offers that the evils of this world might be redeemed. Indeed, as he sees things, some evils are so egregious that they can never be forgiven, and this means some relationships are so badly shattered that they can never be healed, even if there is life beyond the grave. Notice, moreover, that Ivan registers his protest precisely on behalf of the victims of horrendous suffering. It is, he claims, his very love for these persons that requires him to reject the hope of heaven, and to resign himself to the hopeless despair of endless moral indignation.

The promise of heaven is a frontal challenge to the despairing resignation of Ivan. One of the most moving, and memorable, descriptions of what will happen when heaven comes to earth, and God makes his home with his children, is that "he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Revelation 21:4). As beautiful as this description is, it is no less staggering.  If heaven is real, there will no doubt be many former thugs, racists, rapists, murderers, adulterers, terrorists, and schemers there along with their victims. Is the hope of such a place realistic, or is it pious nonsense?

### **2. Who Has the Moral High Ground?**

Let us begin to explore these questions by asking who really has the moral high ground in this dispute. Atheists often assume the moral high ground in the problem of evil debate, contending that belief in an all powerful and perfectly good God is a morally insensitive thing to hold in view of the terrible evil in our world. Indeed, this is just the sort of stance Ivan takes in the famous passage cited above. It is precisely his love for mankind that will not allow him to believe in a perfectly powerful and good God and in a heaven that will redeem the tears of little children who have suffered so terribly at the hands of heartless tormentors. His protest against heaven is fueled by moral indignation.

It is worth emphasizing, however, that the perception of such heartless evil that inspires the passionate response of Ivan may well call forth a radically different response, and indeed, a response that is no less sensitive to the horror of terrible evil. Peter van Inwagen no doubt speaks for many when he remarks that he has "never had the least tendency to react to the evils of the world by saying 'How could there be a loving God who allows these things?

Van Inwagen's response is very much characteristic of what I mean by an existential response to the problem of evil. His response is very much that of one who is personally invested in the issue, not only for himself but for others as well. He does not approach the matter merely as an interesting puzzle to solve. He realizes that his own life as well as that of others depends on whether or not there is a God. He cannot approach the matter with objective indifference given what is at stake.

Of course, this hardly settles the matter of whether there is a God or not. Still, it is worth highlighting the fact that a keen sense of the horror of evil may elicit from some a strong conviction that there *must* be a God as surely as it elicits from others a passionate conviction that there *cannot* be a God.

In any case there is a further point to be made here. It is arguable that if one is truly concerned for the suffering of innocent persons as Ivan eloquently claims to be that one should at the very least strenuously hope that there is a God and an afterlife that will set things right rather than reject that hope. Richard Creel urges this hope upon us and presses the limits of how far we should take this.

Why hope that there is a God? Because of compassion for those who have suffered innocently; because of desire that their suffering not have been useless and terminal, i.e., redeemable after death. As long as it is logically possible that evil be defeated, that innocent suffering is not meaningless and final, it seems to me that we have a moral obligation to hope that that possibility is actual. Therefore, we have a moral obligation to hope that there is a God because, if there is a God, then innocent suffering is not meaningless or final (Creel 1986, p. 149).

Again, this is not a dispassionate response. It is motivated by compassion for those who have suffered, and "desire" that their suffering is not the last word on their lives.

By contrast, Ivan's protest "for the love of mankind" has the ironic effect of writing off the terrible suffering of the very people for whom he claims to be concerned. His rejection of the hope of heaven pronounces a sort of finality upon the suffering of the very people he claims to care so much about. The losses they have sustained are permanent and can never be redeemed. The little boy who was torn to pieces spent his final few moments in utter terror. At best, the story of his life will remain as a testament to the absurdity of life. His dying cries will forever remain unanswered by a pitiless universe and we shall never again hear from him. Moreover, there are countless innocent sufferers never acknowledged in history books or classic novels, and their tears too soak the earth but no one will ever know them or personally care about them.

In view of all this, Ivan's claim of the moral high ground is dubious to say the least. Indeed, his atheism has far less concern for innocent sufferers than it may initially seem. Perhaps this better helps us to understand van Inwagen's emotional response to the evils of this world. Perhaps we too can understand Creel's insistence on why we have a moral obligation "for the love of mankind," to hold fast to the hope that God exists and that heaven can redeem even the worst of evils.

Christians in fact believe that such hope is not only existentially demanded, but also rationally warranted, and that we are not in fact reduced to desperately clinging to the mere logical possibility that God exists. Rather, we have ample warrant to believe not only that God exists, but that his perfect love and goodness will be fully vindicated.

### **3. An Incomparable Good**

Marilyn Adams has attempted to show this in response to the problem of horrendous evil by appealing to some central themes in Christian theology. It is important to emphasize here that she is not required to invent some novel ideas to respond to evil, but only to take seriously the resources of classical Christian belief.

In the first place, Adams has developed the idea that an intimate relationship to God is an incommensurate good, and that recognition of this good is an essential resource in a satisfactory theodicy. That is to say, God is a good of such overwhelming value that he is simply incomparable with respect to any finite good, however extraordinary and attractive. Any attempted comparison would utterly fail to compute. Here it is important to recognize that it is simply fundamental to Christian theism that an intimate relationship with God is not only the greatest possible good for created beings, but that it is the one essential thing for deep and lasting happiness and satisfaction.

Given the supreme nature of this good, any person who achieves it will ultimately be perfectly happy regardless of how much or how grievously he suffered in this life. By contrast, any who does not achieve it will end up miserable regardless of how much pleasure or satisfaction he enjoyed in this life.  The radical significance of this and the implications of it can hardly be overstated. Adams spells out the profound implications for the problem of evil.

If a face-to-face vision of God is an incommensurate good for human beings, that will surely guarantee, for any who has it, that the balance of goods over evils will be overwhelmingly favorable. Indeed, strictly speaking, there will be no balance to be struck. And no one who received such benefits would have any claim against God's justice or complaint against his love. God will have bestowed on those who see him 'up close' as great a good as such a finite container can take (Adams 1992, p. 183).

Notice the last line: this represents the greatest possible good for these persons. The happiness envisioned simply could not be surpassed.

It is important to stress that this supreme good is incommensurate not only with other goods, but also with evils. There simply is no way to compare or measure the joy of this supreme good with finite goods or evils. The beauty and goodness of God as experienced "up close" is of such incomparable value that it will utterly swamp any evils we might have experienced. The apostle Paul seems to have had some such thought in mind when he wrote that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18).

There is a second point Adams develops in addition to the fact that an intimate relationship with God is a good of such value that it cannot be compared to any finite goods. God also has the supreme power and creativity that will enable him to fashion of any of our lives something of extraordinary beauty regardless of the harm and damage we have experienced in this life. One of the devastating things about evil is its power to shatter our lives in so many ways. It can crush our spirits as well as mangle and distort our bodies. It can shred our psyches and mutilate our emotions.

This is a most distressing reality for the likes of finite beings like ourselves. The hard truth is that such evil is altogether beyond our capacities to repair. As Adams puts it, our "meaning making capacities" are completely overwhelmed by such horrendous evil, and we are forced to consider the unhappy conclusion that "lives marred by horrors can never again be unified and integrated into wholes with positive meaning." (Adams 1999, p. 148).

This is perhaps even more of a challenge for those who have experienced long term suffering, which can be more painful and difficult to heal in significant ways than even intense short term suffering. In such cases, there may be far more damaged pieces, and perhaps more extensively damaged ones, to unify and integrate into a beautiful whole. Indeed, to finite creatures, again, it may seem inconceivable and utterly impossible.

Consider again the little boy who was torn to pieces when the heartless general set loose his dogs on him. It is not only his body that was torn to pieces, his very life was also ripped apart. We may understandably doubt that his body, let alone his life, could ever be put back together again. However, here is where belief in God makes an enormous difference. We may rationally hope that where human imagination and resources utterly fail, God's infinite capacities do not. Not only can God put this little boy's life back together, he can make it of it something extraordinarily beautiful.

So let us recall Ivan's protest against heaven, one that he registers "for the love of mankind." Is it really objectionable to think God should put this boy's life back together since he allowed it to be shattered in the first place? Is there something objectionable in believing that God should shower upon him the sort of love that he never knew in this life since God allowed the general to commit such atrocities against him in this life? Is it really better that his tragic life should stand forever as a monument to heartless cruelty than that God should pick up the pieces of his broken life and put them back together as something of stunning beauty and positive meaning?

I do not see how anyone who cared for this young boy could maintain this protest or presume to hold the high moral ground that Ivan seems to claim. Quite to the contrary, it is not only better, but immeasurably better to hope that heaven is real and that God has the resources to overwhelmingly defeat whatever evils have been suffered in this life.

Indeed, this case brings into sharp relief the ultimate difference between Christian theism and atheism with respect to the problem of evil. We can opt for despair or we can believe, or at least hope, that there is a God with infinite power and creative resources, as the Christian tradition affirms. If there is such a God, he is ultimately responsible as its creator to fix the evils of our world, whether those evils are excruciating short term tragedies, or cases of enormously complicated long term suffering. While God's creative redemption does not justify evil, God himself is justified if he redeems evil and restores creation to a condition more glorious than we can imagine. In any case, this is simply the logic of Christian theism, and we should not fail to bring all of its resources to the table when we deal with the problem of evil.

### **4. Not Just Forgiven, Utterly Transformed**

Now here it may be objected that Ivan's complaint is as much about the perpetrators of treacherous crimes as it is their victims. Even if there is some way God can redeem the lives of those who have suffered greatly, the perpetrators of these horrific crimes should not be forgiven, ever. So it would be wrong for the mother whose son was torn to pieces to forgive the general and it would likewise be wrong for Suzy Holliman's father to forgive Ricky Lee Sanderson. If this is so, the moral objection to heaven remains intact.

Raising these questions does point up the radical claims of the Christian gospel. Recall Ivan's pointed question: "Is there in the whole world a being who could and would have a right to forgive?" The Christian answer to this question, of course, is that there is indeed such a person, namely Jesus Christ. He has the right to forgive first and foremost because he is God, the one against whom all sins are ultimately committed. Moreover, he is the one person who is sinless, who is fully perfect, and who offered his life as atonement so that sinners could be forgiven.

So this is the hopeful, yet disconcerting good news of the gospel. Not only is it the case that all other persons need to be forgiven, but all of them can be, even the worst among us. Moreover, this stunning claim has a large practical implication. Since all of us need forgiveness, and Christ offers forgiveness to all, none of us are in position to withhold forgiveness from others. "Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Colossians 3:13 NRSV).

However, there is another important point we need to make here pertaining to forgiveness, and that point is that forgiveness alone is not sufficient to get to heaven. Forgiveness is only the beginning of a saving relationship with God. It is also crucial that we actually come to achieve "the holiness without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14 NRSV). This is crucial to help us understand why it is not absurd to think Suzy Holliman's father could heartily embrace Ricky Lee Sanderson in the life to come.

Here is why. Everyone in heaven will not only be forgiven, but utterly transformed into the image of Christ. I am in no position to judge the sincerity of Ricky Lee Sanderson's conversion and his anticipation of meeting Suzy in the life to come. However, if he truly placed his faith in Christ, if he honestly faced the horror of his sin and sincerely repented of it, and underwent the sanctifying process that actually makes us like Christ, then there is an important sense in which he will not be the same man who heartlessly murdered Suzy Holliman. He will be the same man numerically of course, but his character, his heart, his feelings etc. will be radically transformed. He will have come to see the horrific crime he committed through the eyes of Christ, and will not only see with full clarity the pain he caused, but he will also hate his sin as God does, and profoundly regret that he ever committed it. Indeed, to embrace Sanderson would be like embracing Christ himself, for every redeemed and transformed person there will be in this sense nothing less than a "little Christ," as C. S. Lewis put it (Lewis 2001, p. 199).

It is important to emphasize here that Ivan's protest against heaven loses its moral force when we grasp that our final salvation is not merely a matter of forgiveness, but also a matter of thorough transformation. Heaven without the purgatorial fires of radical moral transformation may be vulnerable to Ivan's protest, but heaven preceded by total transformation holds the moral high ground against Ivan's protest.<sup>1</sup>

### **5. Embracing the Joy**

Our discussion thus far has shown that Christians have some distinctively powerful resources to deal hopefully with tragedies of the past. However, even if we have reason to hope that such tragedies can be redeemed, it is natural to regret that they ever occurred in the first place. Natural though this feeling may be, it raises serious difficulties as William Hasker has shown in a fascinating discussion of the implications of such regret. So let us turn now to consider some of these issues.

Hasker's analysis of these issues involves some rather precise definitions of what it means to regret something on the whole, on the one hand, and to be glad on the whole that something is the case, on the other. As he notes, the notion of being "glad on the whole" is a rather strong attitude of preference. It requires that one takes all relevant factors into account and still prefers the state of affairs in question to be the case. Being glad on the whole is thus distinct from what he calls being "circumstantially glad," which is a weaker form of preference.

Here is an example from Hasker. Suppose I am glad that Indiana won the NCAA Championship in basketball, defeating North Carolina in the final game of the tournament. Though I am very pleased they won, I might nevertheless prefer that there was no tournament at all because I regret the existence of the NCAA with its vulnerability to corruption, its tendency to detract from academics, among other problems. If I am only glad in the qualified sense that Indiana won, *given the existence of the NCAA*, then I am only circumstantially glad of that fact. By contrast, suppose I am glad Indiana won the championship regardless. That is to say, I prefer this state of affairs to no tournament at all, despite whatever drawbacks the NCAA represents. In this case, we can say that I am glad on the whole for Indiana's championship.

The question Hasker wants to pose to his readers is the far more personal one of whether they are glad that they and their loved ones are alive. This is a "person-relative" question in the sense that each person must answer it for himself. While some may return

a negative answer because of the harsh reality of severe suffering, Hasker believes most would readily agree that they are glad that they and their loved ones are alive.

Now this question is a philosophically interesting one for several reasons. Hasker's main concern however, is with issues which arise from the fact that for many, if not most of us, our very existence is inextricably connected with tragic events in the past. Hasker illustrates this by sharing the contingencies involved in his own birth. His parents came from widely separated parts of the country and they happened to meet through a series of large scale events that involved several other people as well. The most significant of these events was nothing less than World War I, which sent his father to France and led his mother to move to our nation's capital to work for the government. In short, Hasker has excellent reason to believe that had there been no war, he would never have been born. Moreover, there are no doubt similar complexities that brought together many of his progenitors of earlier generations. In view of all these considerations, Hasker formulates the following general principle.

Had major or significant events in the world's past history been different than they were, then in all probability neither I nor the persons whom I love would ever have existed (Hasker 1981, p. 156).

Here it is important to notice that Hasker's argument hinges on a particular thesis about personal identity, namely, that each of us is initially individuated by his body. That is to say, if the particular body of Hasker's had not been conceived and born, then Hasker would never have existed. On this view, each soul is correlated to a particular body in a manner like that suggested by Aquinas who held that the soul is the form of the body. That is to say, each particular soul is individuated by the particular body which it informs. Consequently, if the man who is Hasker's father had married a different woman, or even have impregnated his wife at a different time, then Hasker would not be here formulating arguments along this line.

Now it is quite interesting to see what follows from Hasker's view of personal identity, along with his definition of what it means to be glad on the whole. In the first place, consider the significant implication of what it means to be glad on the whole that something is the case.

If I am glad on the whole that P, and I know that if Q did not obtain neither would P, than I rationally must be glad that Q (Hasker 1981, p. 159).

When we combine this implication with his thesis about personal identity, we get this striking result:

If I am glad on the whole about my own existence and that of those whom I love, then I must be glad that the history of the world, in its major aspects, has been as it is (Hasker 1981, p. 159).

Here it is important to see that this consequence is not only striking, but also disconcerting. In view of it, we may even be tempted to reconsider our previous claim about being glad of our existence. Hasker finds this reaction understandable. "Perhaps, indeed, your reaction is one of bewilderment—you may feel, as a colleague suggested, that when you lump your life together with whole past history of the world, you don't know *what* to say about it." (Hasker 1981, p. 162). In this case, one may simply have no "on the whole" attitude about his existence and find himself entirely perplexed. As Hasker contends, the person who is merely bewildered is not properly situated to press the problem of evil as an objection against the existence of God. In order to make that argument effectively, one must positively regret his existence as well as that of those he loves.

My primary aim here is neither to defend nor to criticize Hasker's central argument although I am inclined to think it is sound. What I do want to highlight, however, is that the doctrine of heaven is a powerful resource to relieve the perplexity engendered by Hasker's argument. So let us proceed by first spelling out a bit more fully the nature of this perplexity. This perplexity is due, I think, to a sense that we have no moral right to be glad for our existence if our existence is contingent in some way on events which have brought terrible suffering and misery to other persons. Indeed, to be glad in such circumstances may seem obliviously self-centered or even clueless. It is hard to say exactly why, but it is almost as if those who have suffered before us, and with whom our own existence is inextricably and undeniably connected, have a moral claim against us and our happiness. To be rightly happy, it seems almost as if we somehow need their blessing or approval, perhaps even their forgiveness.

Since we cannot have this, we may feel that we owe it to them to regret our own existence. However, this is at best a rather vague and perhaps undefined feeling. Exactly what would be involved in regretting one's own existence in this sense? Would we be required actually to prefer that we, as well as those we love, did not in fact exist? And, if we were truly sincere and not merely engaging in empty hand wringing and guilt mongering, should such a preference lead us to suicide or even murder? Or should it merely involve a determined choice not to be happy, a choice to bear the suffering of others in our heart in such a way that we never experiences any real joy or take any deep satisfaction in life?

In any case, there is one thing it cannot mean and that is wishing we had never been born or wishing that past tragedies had not occurred. The reason is simple. What we can wish for must at the very least be possible, but it is not coherent to wish, strictly speaking, that the past were different than it is.<sup>2</sup> We can regret the past, but once a thing has happened, we cannot wish it away as never having happened. Our only real hope is that the past might somehow be redeemed. And, this is precisely the key to relieving the bewilderment Hasker identifies. More specifically, the doctrine of heaven represents our best hope that the past might be redeemed in such a way that we can be fully glad for our lives even if our existence is somehow implicated in some of the worst tragedies of human history. Heaven holds out the promise that persons who have suffered in terrible ways and died premature deaths have not been consigned to oblivion. The countless persons who have died in wars are not merely the waste product of human history who had to be sacrificed so that later generations could enjoy lives for which they are truly grateful.

Elsewhere, I have defended the notion of optimal grace, the notion that God will do everything He can, short of overriding freedom, to save all persons (Walls 2002, pp. 83–88). Indeed, God will compensate for lack of opportunity to receive salvation in this life and make sure that all persons have not only a fair, but a full opportunity to freely receive the eternal life for which all persons were created. And, if this is so, then all persons, without exception, will have the opportunity to experience full satisfaction and happiness. The only ones who are not finally saved will be those who simply will not accept what God freely offers, who persistently and decisively refuse his offer of grace.

 The only hope for true happiness and full satisfaction for those who have suffered greatly and tragically is precisely the same as that of persons whose temporal lives in this world have been marked by joy and pleasure.

In view of all of this, I do not think anyone has reason to refuse the joy of life, or worse, regret his very existence. This is not to deny that in this life there are many occasions to grieve and mourn, but the mourning of the believer in heaven is set in the larger context of hope for a day of redemption that will dry all tears and heal all hurts. This is the essential hope that relieves the perplexity and bewilderment of being glad of our existence even while recognizing that our existence is contingent on tragedies which would otherwise be unspeakable.

#### **6. Conclusions**

In her book, *Evil in Modern Thought*, Susan Neiman tells the story of how modernity attempted to resolve the problem of evil. The Lisbon earthquake, shocking to a world that believed in a good God, was eventually thought not be an evil, but merely an unfortunate natural event. Moral evil, by contrast, was harder to domesticate and think about rationally. Neiman recognizes that even in our contemporary world, theodicy is tempting for those