Search Results

Many interpreters have supposed that the root of contingency in Leibniz's thought is that it is contingent rather than necessary that God chooses to create the best possible world. It is far from clear, however, that Leibniz believed this. This chapter argues that Leibniz did believe two theories of contingency: one based on the notion of a thing's being possible in itself whether or not a perfectly wise and good God could choose it, and one based on an identification of necessity with provability, where an infinite analysis does not count as a proof. It emerges that Leibniz's conception of possible worlds is not exactly the same as that now used in possible worlds semantics.

This chapter argues that the requirements for absolute moral perfection and freedom that theists traditionally ascribe to God cannot be met, and hence that traditional theism should be rejected. Robert Adams’ contention that God need not create the best world God can is explored and rejected, as is the claim by Norman Kretzmann (following Aquinas) that the fact that God cannot create the best possible world (because there is no such world) does not threaten God’s moral perfection. On the contrary, this chapter argues that if God creates a world but could create a better one, then it is possible for there to be a being greater than God; and so the fact that there is no best possible world and that for any possible world there is a better one means that we should conclude that God does not exist.

The widely discussed arguments for atheism known as the Problem of Evil, the Problem of the Best, and the Problem of No Best World are grounded on the alleged lack of morally justifying reasons for God to permit particular moral and natural evils and on the thesis that God would have to create the best possible world. The Hypertime Hypothesis promises a further significant advantage to the philosophy of religion by way of providing a new twist on an underexplored strategy for refuting these popular atheistic arguments. With the assistance of the view known as Skeptical Theism, this chapter examines the prospects for responding to these three arguments by constructing a case for our world’s being the best of all possible worlds, a case made surprisingly palatable by appeal to the concept of a multiverse, especially to the species of multiverse at issue in the Hypertime Hypothesis.

The arguments for the Identity of Indiscernibles in the Meditation on the Principle of the Individual, the Discourse on Metaphysics, Notationes Generales, and Primary Truths support the strong necessity of the Identity of Indiscernibles, that is, that it is necessary that no possibilia are indiscernible. Furthermore, there is textual evidence that this is what Leibniz believed. The chapter argues that this is important because the fact that there are no indiscernible possibilia allows Leibniz to maintain that God could create the world without indiscernibles. Indeed, given Leibniz’s conception of what it is for the actual world to be the best possible world, if there were indiscernible possibilia then either the actual world would contain indiscernibles or God would have created no world. Furthermore, that there are no indiscernible possibilia is part of an explanation of the possibility of there being a unique best possible world.

Central to Leibniz’s theodicy is the claim that God has chosen to actualize the best of all possible worlds. Indeed, Leibniz goes further, arguing that God’s perfection not only leads God to actualize the best world, but makes God’s choice to actualize the best world unavoidable. How then could Leibniz defend the freedom of God in creating, or the contingency of states of affairs created? This chapter by examines key historical antecedents to Leibniz’s discussion of the compatibility of God’s goodness with God’s freedom in creating, with detailed attention to the discussion as it unfolds within 17th-century scholasticism. The chapter argues that Leibniz’s own thought on this issue was deeply informed by this earlier discussion which provides crucial background for understanding his own mature view.

This chapter continues the theological examination of the problem of evil. It examines the fault line in theological responses to evil: is this the only way God could possibly have made a world? Is this the best of all possible worlds? The theological responses to evil are divided on this issue. Southgate, in particular, argues that our world is the best of all possible worlds. This chapter investigates his arguments and those of Domning and Hellwig, who believe that selfishness is morally neutral in the less than human world. In the end this chapter argues against the position that evil is necessary in a strong sense to achieve the kind of world we have today. This leaves open the possibility that good and evil have coexisted in the natural world long before humans emerged.

The flip side of this doctrine is divine aseity, or divine independence. Chapter 4 deals with this doctrine. Edwards's position is consistent with God's metaphysical independence of the creation. But there has been some recent dispute about whether Edwards can affirm that God is psychologically independent of the creation. The chapter argues that he can affirm this. In which case, Edwards has provided a strong argument for the conclusion that God can be both free and independent of the created order even if he is determined to act as he does by the nature he possesses.

Suppose God is perfectly good, perfectly rational, and perfectly free. Must He be able to do other than He does? Mark Johnston and Timothy O’Connor hold that God must have libertarian freedom. The challenge, then, is to defend divine goodness and rationality. But on the Neoplatonic view of divine freedom—God, existing independently, wills with aseity—divine goodness and rationality are not threatened. God knows and does the best. It begs the question to hold that God, being infinitely good, cannot add goodness to the world. The Neoplatonic claim is that a god who failed to create would not be infinitely good. The Neoplatonic view also supports the doctrine of divine simplicity. True, one must allow that ours is the best world. And one must address the “modal collapse.” But these projects are doable and worth the effort to preserve divine goodness, rationality, and simplicity.

The chapter examines philosophical approaches to the problem of evil. The philosophical arguments for the existence of God, given the presence of evolutionary evil and suffering, can in some sense be largely included under one heading: in spite of evil a greater good will be the result or is the case. Thus some argue that the high freedom of humans requires the presence of evil in the evolutionary process; others argue that a greater good as yet unknown to us will come of all the evil. Together with this argument is the argument that this world is the best of all possible worlds. This chapter accepts that there are few consistent ways forward other than to accept the paradoxical situation of good and evil we see around us, but it notes that theology has more resources to bring to this situation than does philosophy alone.