God’s Goodness and Glory are Limited Under Free Will

To address the charges that God cannot be both omnipotent and wholly good if he permits evil to exist, some theologians present the defense that God created beings that have complete free agency to choose what actions they will take. For these beings to truly worship God, they must be free from any outside influence that would determine the outcome of their choices. To this end, Alvin Plantinga argues, “Now God can create a world containing moral good only by creating significantly free persons.”[1] It is only because these persons are free to choose without external influence that good may come of actions. Therefore, to create a world where his creation will freely choose to obey his commandments and worship him, God must take the chance that these persons will choose to act wrongly, resulting in evil existing in the world.

This defense does not attempt to deny the existence of evil, rather, it argues that God is limited to creating a world in which evil occurs due to the free will choices of man. Charles Hodge explains that, according to this theodicy, man “must always be able to act contrary to any degree of influence brought to bear upon him, or he ceases to be free. God, therefore, of necessity limits Himself when He creates free agents.”[2] In other words, God exercises a divine limitation on his power because he esteems the free will of man of utmost value. This being the case, Plantinga argues, “then it is possible that God has a good reason for creating a world containing evil.”[3] God’s good purposes in creating a world with evil, therefore, is that he could not create any other world where there is moral good without free will.

The free will defense places the responsibility for evil on man and attempts to free God from the responsibility for its existence. As Frame notes, “Since that free choice was in no sense controlled or foreordained or caused by God, he cannot be held accountable for it.”[4] This then addresses the issue of God’s goodness. If man is entirely free in his choices and chooses evil apart from any external influence, then God’s goodness is not affected by evil’s existence, for he is not its author. Likewise, since God values the free will of man, he demonstrates his goodness by not overriding man’s will, thus treating him as an automaton. However, this defense requires that his goodness can only be demonstrated by man having the libertarian freedom to choose good or evil. Greg Welty argues that God could have given man a restricted free will wherein he freely chooses from a diversity of good actions. In this manner, God does not actively intervene in man’s choices, but instead, “restricts the range of thoughts that could occur to us in the first place,” thus eliminating the charge of creating mere robots but still creating “a world without moral evil.”[5] Therefore, God does not need man to have libertarian free will to demonstrate his goodness.

Free will adherents also have a problem concerning God’s omnipotence. As noted above, Plantinga admits that God is not free to create any world he chooses. According to him, the number of possible worlds God can create is at least partly up to the choices man will make.[6] This, coupled with absolute adherence to libertarian free will, argues for a God that is not directly involved and cannot even limit evil in his creation. If God is not free to act or create due to the free will choices of man, this strengthens Mackie’s charge that God cannot truly be omnipotent. While the Free Will defense seeks to frame God as disconnected from any responsibility for evil, it makes him powerless to do anything to stem the flow of evil in his creation.

Other Christian theologians have noted this problem as well. Addressing the claim that God cannot influence man’s choice to commit evil, Scott Christensen argues, “Scripture indicates that God intervenes to stop evil all the time,” citing numerous Scriptural examples, from God’s drowning the armies of Egypt (Ex. 14:21–29) to the warning of the Magi of Herod’s schemes (Matt. 2:12–15).[7] Whether God acts in spectacular and miraculous means to prevent evil or he orchestrates matters through his meticulous providence, he demonstrates his omnipotence over all events in history. By choosing what evils he will stop and which he permits to occur, Christensen argues, “God sovereignly intends all evil to happen that he does not prevent.”[8] Rather than being neutered by man’s libertarian freedom, God actively acts in his creation by allowing or preventing evil acts to occur. This not only asserts a biblical view of God’s omnipotence, but it also points to a God who has a definitive plan and purpose for evil. The Free Will Defense fails to rightly account for Scripture’s revelation of God in this manner and is thus lacking as a biblical response to the problem of evil.

Read here for Part I and Part III.

This article was also published on X.com.

[1] Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1989), 53.

[2] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Reasearch Systems, Inc., 1997), 434.

[3] Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 34.

[4] Frame, Apologetics, 164.

[5] Greg Welty, Why Is There Evil in the World, Revised edition (Christian Focus, 2018), 161.

[6] Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, 42.

[7] M. Scott Christensen, What about Evil?: A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2020), 92.

[8] Christensen, 92.