According to William Rowe:
1) If God is perfectly good, then He must under all circumstances do the very best thing it is possible for Him to do.
2) If God creates a world, then that world must be the best creatable world.
3) But, if that is so, then God is not free with respect to His act of creation, and is deserving of neither thanks nor praise for so creating since He could no more help doing this than you and I can help breathing.
4) Therefore, God is not free.
5) Suppose that there is no such thing as the best creatable world because there is an endless series of better and better worlds.
6) That would mean that any world God creates, there would always be another better world that He could have created, and hence, God wouldn’t do his best.
7) If God exists, then He created the actual world.
8) Not only is it obvious that this world is not the best, but God could have created a different world that would have been better.
9) Therefore, If a God created this world , He is not morally perfect
1) If God is perfectly good, then He must under all circumstances do the very best thing it is possible for Him to do.
2) If God creates a world, then that world must be the best creatable world.
3) But, if that is so, then God is not free with respect to His act of creation, and is deserving of neither thanks nor praise for so creating since He could no more help doing this than you and I can help breathing.
4) Therefore, God is not free.
5) Suppose that there is no such thing as the best creatable world because there is an endless series of better and better worlds.
6) That would mean that any world God creates, there would always be another better world that He could have created, and hence, God wouldn’t do his best.
7) If God exists, then He created the actual world.
8) Not only is it obvious that this world is not the best, but God could have created a different world that would have been better.
9) Therefore, If a God created this world , He is not morally perfect
RESPONSE: Rowe’s argument is a fun puzzle, but it is only a 100 piece puzzle at best. Rowe offers a dilemma (or trilemma if you include his assumption that a state of affairs with God plus creation is better than God alone so that God again has to create and is not free to refrain from creating) arguing for the impossibility of a perfect being’s existing as a perfect being, and the impossibility of free perfect being that is morally responsible for creating the best possible world. However, there are a number of assumptions that aren’t necessarily true that serve to defeat Rowe’s argument.
1) Rowe assumes that unless perfect being has more than one choice with respect to creation, then such a being cannot be free.
Harry Frankfurt has successfully argued that free choice does not entail the ability to do otherwise. Imagine that a mad scientist has secretly wired your brain with electrodes so that he can control your choices. Suppose that in the last Presidential election, he wanted you to vote for Obama and had determined that if you were going to vote for McCain he would activate the electrodes and make you cast your vote for Obama. Now as it turns out, you also wanted to vote for Obama, and so when you went into the polling booth you marked your ballot for Obama, and therefore the scientist never activated the electrodes. I think it’s clear that you freely voted for Obama, even though it was not possible for you to do otherwise. What this thought experiment suggests is that the essence of free choice is the absence of causal constraint with respect to your choices; it is up to you alone how you choose.
Now in the case of God, if God is essentially good, then there is no possible world in which He doesn’t does His best. But does that imply that God does not freely do the good? Not if Frankfurt’s analysis is right. For God acts in the complete absence of any causal constraint whatsoever upon Him. It is up to Him and Him alone how He acts. He therefore acts freely in doing the good. That God is acting freely is evident in the fact that His will is not inclined necessarily toward any particular finite good; He chooses to do whatever He wants.
2) Moreover, God is morally responsible for his choice to create, He wasn’t forced to.
Contemporary discussions of free will often emphasize the importance of being able to do otherwise. Yet it is plausible (Kane 1996) that the core metaphysical feature of freedom is being the ultimate source, or originator, of one's choices, and that being able to do otherwise is closely connected to this feature. For human beings or any created persons who owe their existence to factors outside themselves, the only way their acts of will could find their ultimate origin in themselves is for such acts not to be determined by their character and circumstances. For if all my willings were wholly determined, then if we were to trace my causal history back far enough, we would ultimately arrive at external factors that gave rise to me, with my particular genetic dispositions. My motives at the time would not be the ultimate source of my willings, only the most proximate ones. Only by there being less than deterministic connections between external influences and choices, then, is it be possible for me to be an ultimate source of my activity, concerning which I may truly say, “the buck stops here.”
As is generally the case, things are different on this point in the case of God. Even if God's character absolutely precludes His performing certain actions in certain contexts, this will not imply that some external factor is in any way a partial origin of His willings and refrainings from willing. Indeed, this would not be so even if he were determined by character to will everything which He wills. For God's nature owes its existence to nothing. So God would be the sole and ultimate source of His will even if He couldn't will otherwise (SEP).
3) Perhaps more surprisingly, I also think that (3) is false.
Moral praise and blame have to do with duty fulfillment. Someone who fulfills his moral obligations is morally praiseworthy. But as I have explained in my treatment of God’s goodness, I don’t think that God has any moral duties. For moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, and presumably God doesn’t issue commands to Himself. Therefore, He has no obligations to live up to. Borrowing a distinction from Kant, we can say that God acts in accordance with a duty but not from a duty. Because God is essentially loving, kind, impartial, fair, etc., He acts in ways that would for us be the fulfillment of our duties (WLC).
4) William Rowe assumes that an actual infinite cannot be traversed by successive addition:
William Rowe assumes that there is a potential infinite of endless possible worlds that has never reaches an upper bound of goodness. This assumption only works if one assumes that an actual infinite cannot be traversed by successive addition. If an actual infinite can be traversed, then there is such a thing as the best of all possible worlds.
5) Rowe fails to distinguish between strictly logically possible worlds, and metaphysically possible worlds (or feasible worlds):
Because of human free will, not every world that is strictly logically possible is feasible. Or again, not everything that is conceivable is achievable. As Alvin Plantinga demonstrated, if the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are not made true by the will of God, then there may be worlds that are not feasible for God to create since it is logically impossible to make some creature freely do something. Thus, whether or not one can traverse an actually infinite number of possible worlds by conceiving of them one after another, it may be that there are only a finite number of possible worlds that are feasible for God to actualize. So then, for all we know, the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are such that there is an upper bound on the number of worlds feasible for God to actualize, which would mean that there is a best possible world for god to actualize. Recall, the moral perfection isn’t properly understood apart from the rest of God’s attributes so that God can be morally perfect, and yet, given His omnipotence and creaturely freedom, the number or worlds open to Him to actualize would be delimited as a finite subset amongst all the conceivable worlds which themselves may be actually infinite.
At this point, the only thing Rowe has left to say is that even if I am right, surely this current world is not the best world amongst the finite subset of feasible worlds that a perfectly good God could have chosen to actualize. I am not sure how Rowe could claim to know this, but let’s grant him his point because as a Christian I agree with him. This world is not the best of all possible worlds, but, I think it is the best of all possible ways into the best of all possible worlds. By the best of all possible worlds I am referring to heaven. Finally, then, we have arrived at the last assumption that is false in Rowe’s argument, namely, that an omnipotent and perfectly good being could and would create the best of all possible worlds from the start. However, not every logically possible world is feasible for God to actualize given libertarian free will, “For the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that are actual in any world doesn’t depend just on God’s will; it also depends crucially on the free will of the persons in it. And it cannot be guaranteed that they will co-operate. If God were to try to actualize a world with no sin, it may be that the persons in it wouldn’t go along and would abort God’s intention by freely choosing to disbelieve.” For heaven is not maximal; it’s a part of a world, namely that part in which people are blessed for their pre-mortem response to the Gospel. Thus, heaven entails that there was a life prior to death. Now someone might say, “All right; but still God could just create a sort of heavenly existence having the same people in it without any pre-mortem life.” Let’s concede the point. But then we’re dealing with a brand new possible world, and it may not be the case that all of those people would freely believe in God if they were created in such a state.
6) On Aquinas’ metaphysics, any possible world that has God in it, is the best of all possible worlds. Moreover, since god’s existence is necessary, that entails that every possible world is the best. Just as when a teacher imparts knowledge to his students, there isn’t more knowledge in the world, there are more who have knowledge. Likewise, when God creates creatures, there isn’t more goodness in the world, but there are more who have the property of goodness. Rowe is willing to grant this point I think, but he does say that there is more qualitative goodness in a world with creatures rather than in a world without creatures. Assuming that is true, then as long as the following statement is possibly true, then it shows that Rowe’s argument is not successful:
Since God can’t make someone freely do something, and there may be no worlds of universal salvation feasible for God that don’t have other overriding deficiencies in them (i.e. such worlds may only have one person in them), God chose to create a world with an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and has given everybody sufficient grace and opportunity to come to salvation, but as long as creatures are significantly free, it may not be feasible for God to achieve a heaven without this prior stage of fall, salvation, and sanctification leading up to heaven; and on balance, every creatures life is worth having. Lastly, it is each creatures highest good to have a relationship with God, and there are no other possible worlds in which creatures are happier than they are in the actual world.
1) Rowe assumes that unless perfect being has more than one choice with respect to creation, then such a being cannot be free.
Harry Frankfurt has successfully argued that free choice does not entail the ability to do otherwise. Imagine that a mad scientist has secretly wired your brain with electrodes so that he can control your choices. Suppose that in the last Presidential election, he wanted you to vote for Obama and had determined that if you were going to vote for McCain he would activate the electrodes and make you cast your vote for Obama. Now as it turns out, you also wanted to vote for Obama, and so when you went into the polling booth you marked your ballot for Obama, and therefore the scientist never activated the electrodes. I think it’s clear that you freely voted for Obama, even though it was not possible for you to do otherwise. What this thought experiment suggests is that the essence of free choice is the absence of causal constraint with respect to your choices; it is up to you alone how you choose.
Now in the case of God, if God is essentially good, then there is no possible world in which He doesn’t does His best. But does that imply that God does not freely do the good? Not if Frankfurt’s analysis is right. For God acts in the complete absence of any causal constraint whatsoever upon Him. It is up to Him and Him alone how He acts. He therefore acts freely in doing the good. That God is acting freely is evident in the fact that His will is not inclined necessarily toward any particular finite good; He chooses to do whatever He wants.
2) Moreover, God is morally responsible for his choice to create, He wasn’t forced to.
Contemporary discussions of free will often emphasize the importance of being able to do otherwise. Yet it is plausible (Kane 1996) that the core metaphysical feature of freedom is being the ultimate source, or originator, of one's choices, and that being able to do otherwise is closely connected to this feature. For human beings or any created persons who owe their existence to factors outside themselves, the only way their acts of will could find their ultimate origin in themselves is for such acts not to be determined by their character and circumstances. For if all my willings were wholly determined, then if we were to trace my causal history back far enough, we would ultimately arrive at external factors that gave rise to me, with my particular genetic dispositions. My motives at the time would not be the ultimate source of my willings, only the most proximate ones. Only by there being less than deterministic connections between external influences and choices, then, is it be possible for me to be an ultimate source of my activity, concerning which I may truly say, “the buck stops here.”
As is generally the case, things are different on this point in the case of God. Even if God's character absolutely precludes His performing certain actions in certain contexts, this will not imply that some external factor is in any way a partial origin of His willings and refrainings from willing. Indeed, this would not be so even if he were determined by character to will everything which He wills. For God's nature owes its existence to nothing. So God would be the sole and ultimate source of His will even if He couldn't will otherwise (SEP).
3) Perhaps more surprisingly, I also think that (3) is false.
Moral praise and blame have to do with duty fulfillment. Someone who fulfills his moral obligations is morally praiseworthy. But as I have explained in my treatment of God’s goodness, I don’t think that God has any moral duties. For moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, and presumably God doesn’t issue commands to Himself. Therefore, He has no obligations to live up to. Borrowing a distinction from Kant, we can say that God acts in accordance with a duty but not from a duty. Because God is essentially loving, kind, impartial, fair, etc., He acts in ways that would for us be the fulfillment of our duties (WLC).
4) William Rowe assumes that an actual infinite cannot be traversed by successive addition:
William Rowe assumes that there is a potential infinite of endless possible worlds that has never reaches an upper bound of goodness. This assumption only works if one assumes that an actual infinite cannot be traversed by successive addition. If an actual infinite can be traversed, then there is such a thing as the best of all possible worlds.
5) Rowe fails to distinguish between strictly logically possible worlds, and metaphysically possible worlds (or feasible worlds):
Because of human free will, not every world that is strictly logically possible is feasible. Or again, not everything that is conceivable is achievable. As Alvin Plantinga demonstrated, if the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are not made true by the will of God, then there may be worlds that are not feasible for God to create since it is logically impossible to make some creature freely do something. Thus, whether or not one can traverse an actually infinite number of possible worlds by conceiving of them one after another, it may be that there are only a finite number of possible worlds that are feasible for God to actualize. So then, for all we know, the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are such that there is an upper bound on the number of worlds feasible for God to actualize, which would mean that there is a best possible world for god to actualize. Recall, the moral perfection isn’t properly understood apart from the rest of God’s attributes so that God can be morally perfect, and yet, given His omnipotence and creaturely freedom, the number or worlds open to Him to actualize would be delimited as a finite subset amongst all the conceivable worlds which themselves may be actually infinite.
At this point, the only thing Rowe has left to say is that even if I am right, surely this current world is not the best world amongst the finite subset of feasible worlds that a perfectly good God could have chosen to actualize. I am not sure how Rowe could claim to know this, but let’s grant him his point because as a Christian I agree with him. This world is not the best of all possible worlds, but, I think it is the best of all possible ways into the best of all possible worlds. By the best of all possible worlds I am referring to heaven. Finally, then, we have arrived at the last assumption that is false in Rowe’s argument, namely, that an omnipotent and perfectly good being could and would create the best of all possible worlds from the start. However, not every logically possible world is feasible for God to actualize given libertarian free will, “For the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom that are actual in any world doesn’t depend just on God’s will; it also depends crucially on the free will of the persons in it. And it cannot be guaranteed that they will co-operate. If God were to try to actualize a world with no sin, it may be that the persons in it wouldn’t go along and would abort God’s intention by freely choosing to disbelieve.” For heaven is not maximal; it’s a part of a world, namely that part in which people are blessed for their pre-mortem response to the Gospel. Thus, heaven entails that there was a life prior to death. Now someone might say, “All right; but still God could just create a sort of heavenly existence having the same people in it without any pre-mortem life.” Let’s concede the point. But then we’re dealing with a brand new possible world, and it may not be the case that all of those people would freely believe in God if they were created in such a state.
6) On Aquinas’ metaphysics, any possible world that has God in it, is the best of all possible worlds. Moreover, since god’s existence is necessary, that entails that every possible world is the best. Just as when a teacher imparts knowledge to his students, there isn’t more knowledge in the world, there are more who have knowledge. Likewise, when God creates creatures, there isn’t more goodness in the world, but there are more who have the property of goodness. Rowe is willing to grant this point I think, but he does say that there is more qualitative goodness in a world with creatures rather than in a world without creatures. Assuming that is true, then as long as the following statement is possibly true, then it shows that Rowe’s argument is not successful:
Since God can’t make someone freely do something, and there may be no worlds of universal salvation feasible for God that don’t have other overriding deficiencies in them (i.e. such worlds may only have one person in them), God chose to create a world with an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and has given everybody sufficient grace and opportunity to come to salvation, but as long as creatures are significantly free, it may not be feasible for God to achieve a heaven without this prior stage of fall, salvation, and sanctification leading up to heaven; and on balance, every creatures life is worth having. Lastly, it is each creatures highest good to have a relationship with God, and there are no other possible worlds in which creatures are happier than they are in the actual world.
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