Another world that critics might propose as better than this one is one in which human freedom is downgraded or even eliminated. This appears to be the effect of Antony Flew’s claim that God could have created a world in which humans were free but never sinned. Hence, God could have made a world with much less evil in it, and if he is good, then he should have.

Flew asks, "If this is not a case of Murdo deciding, then what is; then what would be meant by `Murdo deciding?’" The answer is quite clear. A genuine case of Murdo deciding would be one in which he was not fully determined by external causal influences, one in which his alternatives were real and not merely alternatives in his opinion, one in which the causal influences were such that they allowed Murdo himself to act as a cause, to determine which alternative to choose.

The most we can get out of Murdo’s "free" action is that he thinks he is not forced by parental pressure, the condition of his glands, etc. In all actuality, if he is fully determined, then he is not able to help himself; though he thinks he is free, he might be without alternatives. Flew’s position seems to make man’s freedom depend on what he thinks or feels, while the possibility remains that the person is the victim of a cruel joke.

If I had almost exhaustive knowledge of you, an unsophisticated immature bumpkin, and was consciously manipulating you to invest your life savings with me, you might think that you are doing so freely, but in fact you would not be free. We might talk in terms of freely doing this or that, of freely deciding between two alternatives. However, any truly aware person knows that he was possibly unduly influenced by this or that agent. If he confirms such suspicions, then Flew’s common usage of "freely acted" and "freely decided" would be paradigm cases of man being deceived or fooled into thinking he was free, when actually he was determined all the time. People are manipulated at times.

The upshot of Flew’s compatibilism would be that whatever humans do would be attributed to the omnipotent Creator. God would be directly responsible for the theft, murder, and abuses for which we ordinarily blame man. He would then be omnipotent but not good. Humans would be automatons not directly responsible for evil actions.

It appears more reasonable to see a person’s endocrine glands, the state of his liver, the weather, peer pressure, and the like as only partial causes of the person’s action. We can still talk in terms of "determined" and "caused" here, and still avoid rigid determinism. There is no objection to the view that Murdo marrying or Joe joining the Navy were free actions partially determined by many factors. If the young man knows his own mind and exerts the final element of causality, then we can say that an action is freely chosen and yet caused or determined. It is only that the last determination comes not from endocrine glands or some external agent but from the person himself.

to be loved above all else. This enables one to avoid sin while retaining one’s freedom.

The second point is the importance of the distinction between the possible as conceivable, or logically possible, and the possible as real. When we talk in terms of what is owed to us, we are in the realm of real possibility. So if we suffer the loss of something, we expect to have by virtue of being human, e.g. the use of a good leg, we are inclined with apparent justification to seek a reason why God allowed such an evil. If the reason does not make sense, then we have a problem and are tempted to complain that God is not good or not powerful. However, we have much less reason, in fact no reason at all, to complain to God for not freely giving us something that is not due to us by virtue of one’s nature. For example, we have no reason for complaining that God has not given man the strength of a lion.

If Aquinas is on the mark concerning human freedom, then Flew’s mistake is in demanding that the good and powerful God bestow upon humans a heavenly status. According to Aquinas, to be both free and determined in this way is not a state owed to us. No creature can have free choice naturally confirmed toward the good. Flew’s problem stems from this impossibility?that no human being is owed heaven in virtue of her nature. A person becomes blessed because God alone has given one that gift. Flew mentions how the Church claims that God has protected the Blessed Virgin from all sin. Indeed, it is conceivable that she be free and protected from sin, but her actualized protected status on earth is due to a free gift from God. It is not due to one by virtue of one’s own nature. Likewise, saintly persons who are protected from sin on earth are protected by special non-natural help. The saints in heaven are in no danger, because they are in the presence of their universal good which necessarily attracts them.

In reply to this author, we know what a human being is by observing that person in the world that we know. As we find someone in this world, that person reveals what she is and has been up to now. That a human being never does evil or never dies are not characteristics that we can attribute to her as such, as far as we can tell. That humans can do moral evil and that they die are characteristics found whenever and wherever men and women are found. True, of course, we have the possibility of achieving great virtue, but this is not the same as having it without effort.

Being protected from sin, being created with a stronger bias toward good or with self-interest as a less powerful driving force is not something that we expect to find in man as such. It is, indeed, conceivable, but something is added. God could have made a world in which human beings were free, were tempted, and did not sin, but this would be a pure gift. Possibility taken as the lack of contradiction is not sufficient of itself to lay an obligation on God to create things in a certain way.

Anything beyond human powers that we might be but are not, any possible radical change in the world that we cannot as human achieve, we have no right to claim. What man is not, the possible worlds that he can conceive, cannot be the basis of a demand that anyone, including God, bring them into existence. What God can give in the order of grace is, indeed, conceivable, but can in no way be the foundation of a demand that he bring about this or that kind of world. Nobody can demand that God actualize such a possibility under penalty of being called less than all powerful or less than all good.

Flew and McCloskey ignore this restriction and think that God should bring about anything God is able to do. They gloss over the distinction between the order of nature and the order of grace. The latter order allows God to give something freely, to give something which is not owed to the receiver of the gift, or something that goes beyond the nature of the receiver.

The nature of a gift is at the heart of the matter. If we insist that God is obliged to give that gift of grace, then we destroy its nature as a gift. How can it be a gift, if it had to be given? What if a man demands sex from his woman and she reluctantly complies? What if she demands flowers and he grudgingly presents them?

God should have the perfection of being able to genuinely give something, that is, to give it of his own free will. What God gives is his to give or not to give. It is actualized at God’s will, accordingly as God freely chooses to do so or not. To be able to give something freely is a perfection which we cannot deny to the Divinity. If we claim that he is not good or not powerful because he did not give it, then we effectively deny that perfection to him.

Hence, we cannot say that God is not good because, although he could have given each of us a special power to avoid doing any evil action, he did not do so. What God can do in the order of grace is conceivable, but in no way can it be the foundation of a demand that he bring about this or that kind of world.

In answer to the question, "Could God have made a world of men who did not sin?", we have to answer, "Yes." However, this possibility must be taken in the context of the power of God to give a creature something beyond its own capacities. It does not give rise to any basis for a demand that God do so. This squares with Plantinga’s position, as long as we understand the latter as applying to the world as we find it, i.e. without special help.

One might object that, because he does not create a human that does not do evil, God is not as magnanimous as he might be, and since he is all perfect, he should be magnanimous in the ultimate degree. The problem with this proposal, again, is that it would effectively deny God’s freedom. In asking for something that is not owed a creature in virtue of his nature, it expands almost indefinitely the limits to what we can demand of God. Giving priority to the magnanimity principle would lead us to demand that God bring about a creature that has every power and differs from himself by only one characteristic. This would be a strange demand which would contradict the idea of a supererogatory action which we maintain God is free to actualize.

That God because of his magnanimity should have created humans who could not sin gives rise to another problem: it would place on God an obligation to create better and better worlds, which in turn would mean that he would be determined somewhat by conceivable creatures, by the kind of world to be created. This is in opposition to the nature of action as it could be applied to God: that nothing can satisfy his will or determine him other than himself. No conceivable world can be presented as the world which God has to create. But this would be the case if God allowed the type of creature to function as a determinant of his creative act.

Flew’s compatibilism and use of the natural and heavenly status distinction undermine his objection that God should have brought about a world in which humans were free but did not sin. There still remains, however, the possibility that we humans be given a lesser degree of freedom. Even if we do not have to see God as necessarily bringing about a world in which no human could do evil, there is always the possibility that we would be better off if God had created us with a restricted freedom, and, hence, that he should have done so. This leads us to ask "How much freedom should we be willing to trade away for a world with a lesser amount of evil? To what degree should God limit our freedom so as to reduce the amount and intensity of evil?"

Central to this issue is that human freedom is relative and limited. It is safe to say that we are not absolutely free to do anything we can think of doing?we act within certain more or less defined limits. True, we can strive to surpass our limits in Jonathan Seagull fashion, but when we say that we are free, we do not mean, for example, that we are now free of the laws that govern our body and our mind. We are not free to take certain powerful chemicals into our body and live, nor can we fly through the air or live under the sea as we do on land. In any action we are subject to the causal influence of the environment and of the food and fluid we take into our body, to say nothing of the persuasive force of ideas that we read or hear.

Freedom is not a question of all or nothing. We might be free to make non-moral

decisions?what to eat for dinner or what to wear to work, whether or not to go for a walk, whether to read this book rather than some other. Even the prisoner under a life sentence is free to curse or to accept his fate, to be kind or harsh to his fellow inmates, to plan an escape or to compose a poem. He is free to put his left sock on first in the morning and free to choose the subject of his cell daydreams. Such a freedom would be attenuated, a less powerful, lower level type of freedom.

Our freedom is lessened but not lost when, for example, we are snowed-in during a blizzard or must put into port during a storm at sea. At such times, we turn to options that are still available to us. The oppressed and hunted, though they are acutely aware of when and to whom they can speak freely, know that sometimes it can be done. At times we can use our remaining freedom to break through the limits placed on us by nature or by others, as when those manipulated and used by the powerful revolt, overthrow their oppressors, and right the order of justice. Neither before nor after the revolution have such persons lost all human freedom.

The objectors demand that the Creator bring about a world in which humans would be free in a significantly weaker sense, that would place more restrictions on what we can do to each other. Some might claim that God should have seen to it that man could not wage war, betray, torture, insult, and humiliate his fellowman, steal large sums of money or property, rape or murder his fellow human beings. Some might ask that man be not able to commit genocide, to abduct a child or spouse, to steal a car, to cheat in a business deal, to be greedy, to be callous, to be niggardly toward the poor. Others might ask that it be impossible for man to become so insane that he guns down the innocent. A world might be proposed in which nobody could be unfaithful to another or could physically harm another. Such evils are the consequences of the type of human freedom in our present world.

There is much to be said for such a view. If the world were such that no evil could do harm us, if nobody could hurt another person, then we would never need help or consideration from another. This would eliminate obligations to help others and opportunities to increase in virtue. It would severely limit the number of possible moral actions. If God creates a type of person that is preserved from moral evil, then, as the scope of human freedom is severely narrowed, the value of freely chosen good actions would be diminished significantly.

If we eliminate the possibility of doing wrong in a context, do we not remove the value of a good action done in that context? If we diminish the possibilities of doing evil, then we diminish the value of the opposed good actions. If we were not able to hurt or persecute others, then the value of treating others kindly and with justice would be downgraded. Although our world is very complex and demanding, it is questionable whether we would really want a world in which no person responsibly would be able to treat another unkindly, to cheat, or to be unfaithful.

We have said above that we can strive to surpass our limits, that we can use our present freedom to break through the limits placed on us by nature. We can try to refine our knowledge of the world, discover new modifications of nature’s laws and thereby increase our own power and freedom. We can rightly work to make the world better and enjoy whatever progress we achieve as the result of deserved diligent effort with all its value. Granted that we would not have the same challenges to virtue as we would have in our dangerous world, we would still rightfully bask in the light of rewards truly earned. It would be the fulfillment of what some would call our destiny: to become ever more free, to free ourselves from the obstacles that confront us in our present challenging world.

An important consequence of genuine and powerful human freedom can be seen in Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. According to Plantinga, if we are free in this way, then there are worlds that God cannot bring into existence; we determine to some extent the "shape" of the world; how the world exists, what it is like, depends in a way on how we use our freedom. This applies to both non-moral and moral actions.

The import of this is the possibility that in any and every world of free beings God would actualize, there might be one or more persons who would do one or more evil actions. A person, indeed, everybody, might suffer from "transworld depravity." That is, if God creates humans as genuinely free, then not only persons could sin in any world, but also any number of persons could sin in any world. One can easily see the implications of this. We have the freedom to do evil even of the worst kind. We have the power to make the world a "hell on earth."

Of course these ideas have to be understood with the proviso that God does not give humans something they do not deserve in virtue of their nature. Or, . . . that God can annihilate the world at any time and bring about a world vastly different from our own. There is nothing to prevent God from taking away man’s freedom sometime in the future and making him a "quasi-human" or automaton. This would amount to annihilating him and making him into something with a different nature. It remains true, however, that there are certain things God cannot do, as long as this is the only world he will create and as long as he does not give humans a special gift.

If Plantinga is right, and we exclude the possibility of God giving a free gift which humans do not deserve in virtue of their nature, then a position such as Flew’s asks us to accept an impossibility: that humans are free and that it is possible that God see to it that they always must do what is morally right. If we accept the possibility of a state of affairs that includes grace, then the request is possible but out of order.

Finally, our present capacities for bringing about good give rise to another argument against diminishing our freedom and for our present powerful freedom. Why should we opt for diminished freedom when it is possible that we already have it within our power to be honest, truthful, peaceful, generous, loving toward our neighbor, and the like? Much of the evil in the world is due to our apathy or lack of caring. In many instances we know what is right and wrong, and how to avoid the wrong, but do nothing about it.

We have considerable power to alleviate the suffering of many unfortunates in the world. Many of the evils that beset us?poverty, want, homelessness, ignorance, starvation?are due to lack of care for others, a greed for power that runs roughshod over those who cannot defend themselves, an unwillingness to sacrifice some of our wealth, or an unwillingness to work. Those with the power?the intelligence, the talent, resources, and wealth?do not have a real intense desire to rid the world of evils. Many of the rest of us do not work to control the dark side of our person and thereby allow cruelty, greed, exploitation, corruption too much power in our lives.

Some of us have enough of the world’s wealth to live comfortably, but are more concerned with bettering our own condition than with moderating the suffering of others. Others are out and out hedonists and are intent on attaining a more sumptuous lifestyle which leaves little willingness to sacrifice and work hard to overcome the ignorance and want of the less fortunate. Some do not want to work and to manage their affairs prudently?they are willing to live off others. Others are not that concerned about the amount of evil in the world as long as it does not affect their own lives, as long as it is not too close to home. Obviously, we do not have to be this way?we really have it in our power to rid humankind of much evil?truly it is our decision.

When a person has it within his power to correct a destructive way of life, does nothing about it, and then proceeds to blame others for his condition, we are hardly sympathetic towards him for the consequent suffering he must go through. We have it in our power to be peaceful, generous and helpful toward our neighbor?we have the power to eliminate much of the evil in the world if we choose to use it. Why should we blame God for our selfishness, our injustices toward and abuse of others, for the outrageous movements such as genocide and famines brought about by war? We will say more about such possibilities in the next chapter, where we will consider the claim that God should modify human freedom so that war is impossible.

1. Antony Flew, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom," New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1958), pp.144-169.

2. Ibid., p. 153.

3. Ibid.

4. Antony Flew, "Possibility, Creation, and "Temptation," The Personalist, vol. 52 (1971), p. 112. Cf. also, H. J. McCloskey, "On Being an Atheist," Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, ed. J. R.Burr and M. Goldfinger (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 132.

5. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 1 cura et studio, R. Spiazzi (Taurini: Marietti, 1953), q. 22, art. 5.

6. Ibid., art. 7.

7. Ibid., ad 2.

8. Ibid., ad 3.

9. Ibid., ad 6.

10. H.J. McCloskey, "God and Evil."

11. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, pp. 217-221, 289-297. God and the Universe of Faiths (Glasgow: Collins, 1977), Ch. 4.

12. David Griffin, Evil Revisited, p. 178.

13. Ibid., p. 204.

14. Ibid., p. 176.

15. Ibid., p. 84.

16. John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths, Ch. 4. Cf. also, Hick’s Evil and the God of Love, pp. 309-310.

17. Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 43-57.