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God and Freedom: A Discussion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
‘If there is no logical impossibility in a man’s freely choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings who would act freely but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good’.
(J.L. Mackie, ‘Evil and Omnipotence’, Mind, April 1955, p. 209)
A. So we are agreed that since God is the Creator he is responsible for everything that happens in creation.
B. That would seem to be so.
A. But how are we to understand ‘responsible’ here? Could it mean that God does everything that is done?
B. Apparently it does. For what is done is done either by God or by something else. Yet what something other than God does is created and God is therefore responsible for it. So everything that is done must be done by God.
A. That seems to follow. But it is subjects who do things, is it not?
B. If that means that what is done is done by something or other, then, of course, I agree.
A. And does not this mean that what is done is done by an agent?
B. Certainly.
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- Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers