Explaining evil, part 2

Now I'll comment on some aspects of Helm's presentation. 

An important feature of this contribution to the questions raised by evils is that such a theism is monistic….Some contrasting systems are dualistic, positing two equally ultimate sources of good and evil, Light and Darkness, engaged in an everlasting wrestling match, and so on. Judeo-Christianity is not like this. God is the creator and purposer of all that is. So the question, "Why evil?" when posed of this God, becomes at least two questions (50).

In that regard, freewill theism is dualistic. Although the forces of good and evil aren't equally ultimate, they are independent of each other. 

"What is God's purpose in permitting/ordaining evil?" The fulfilling of what end or ends required evil?…This  is a question that is teleological in character. I don't think an atheist has a place for this question, because any atheistic system has only one set of sources of evil, namely uncreated matter. A theist may reply to our question by recognizing that he does not have a clue as to why there is evil in God's world. But the question nevertheless makes sense: God must have a ground or grounds. The second question is, "Granted that God is the ordainer of evil, how does evil occur?" (50).

In this monism there are two categories of players: God the creator and human beings his creatures, with the use of their own minds and wills…In materialist atheism, there is only one set of players, configurations of matter more or less complicated. Some of these posses agency, others do not (50).

How such configurations get to ask anything is a major problem in such an outlook…Atheists, like theists, may resort to anthropomorphism. Perhaps these evils are bound up with the self-preservation of some species, or of species generally. Maybe evils and pains are spurs to good: to maternal care, or the development of clothing for a covering against heat and cold, or as a sign of the onset of serious sickness…They arise from our penchant for imputing functions or purposes to some of the natural order that does not having anything like human intentions a we experience these…And if we are thorough-going materialists, we also have the task of explaining how those arrangements of matter that are you and me come to have the capacity to impute good and evil to other chunks of matter. Good and evil are ultimately epiphenomena of physical changes (51).

Useful contrast. 

The fault, the incarnation, and the offering of the Incarnate One is needed, for the display of the glory of God in the redemption of men and women. The point here is not simply that the incarnation was necessary, but that an evil world in which God himself came and suffered for us is incommensurably better than one in which there was no evil, but also that there was no incarnation (53).

The problem is that Helm never gets around to explaining what makes a redeemed world incommensurably better than an unfallen world. He never gets much beyond the bare assertion. 

In fairness, he isn't presenting a full-blown theodicy since the topic of the book has a different emphasis than the problem of evil. Still, for a Christian, to ask why there's any evil at all is necessarily bound up with the problem of evil and theodical considerations.  

The theist must end his explanatory narrative by invoking the will of God; it was the good pleasure of God that this is so. Why is it the good pleasure of God that this is so? This is a question that cannot be answered, not because there is no answer, but that there is no answer apart from the will of God (55).

I don't know what that means. Sure, the answer can't be detached from God's will, but God has reasons for what he wills, so a Christian can explore the possible reasons. God's bare will is not the ultimate explanation. I don't think Helm is a theological voluntarist. God's will is characterized by his wisdom and benevolence. There's a rationale for whatever God wills. 

Given the immaculate and necessary perfection of God, moral evil can only arise from the creature. It is a logical consequence of the monistic character of the Creator-creature distinction that God is the only source of good and that moral evil has its source according to orthodox Christianity in the creature (55).

i) I don't think that's an option for a Calvinist. Predestination is the ultimate source of evil. 

Now there are different aspects to that. To take a comparison, in Perelandra, why doesn't the Queen succumb to the Un-man? At one level, that's because everything that happens was plotted by the novelist, who exists outside the narrative. At another level, the Un-man would eventually wear down her resistance but Ransom finally gives up on trying to outargue the Un-man and kills him. So there's an explanation within the narrative as well as an explanation outside the narrative.

By the same token, there was a plot in God's imagination. In the plot, Lucifer fell, then successfully tempted Adam and Eve to follow suit. God instantiates his mental narrative in real space and time, with conscious agents. Lucifer fell in the real world because that necessarily corresponds to the plot in God's mind. 

ii) However, that doesn't rule out factors or motivations within the plot. For instance, although Adam sinned, perhaps he didn't perceive his action as evil. Perhaps he misperceived his action as virtuous. 

There is about evil a deficiency or loss of negativity. Augustine, influenced somewhat by the neo-platonists at this point, called evil a privation. Hence it could not be the direct action of God who is only capable of creating not of destroying. Blindness (say) is not a positive property, but a negative property (56).

i) As I understand it, the motivation for the privative theory of evil is that if evil is nothing, then God didn't create evil–since nothing can't be a creative object. An agent, even an omnipotent agent, can't create nothing. Nothing isn't the effect or result of anything. So that let's God off the hook–or does it?

ii) Even if we grant that technical distinction, does it really hold up? For instance, suppose you say the empty spaces in a snowflake are nothing. Yet those specific empty spaces, those particular shapes, are caused by the lattice pattern of the snowflake. The configuration of the empty spaces wouldn't exist apart from the crystalline structure. So even though the empty spaces aren't directly created, they are caused. 

Likewise, even if we say blindness is a privative property, blindness is caused by certain factors. Even if you say blindness isn't directly created, it is indirectly created by whatever conditions give rise to blindness, viz. disease, accident, genetic defect. So I don't see how you get any theodical mileage out of that distinction.

In fairness, Helm isn't necessary trying to justify the ordination of evil at this juncture, but explain its origin. How rather than why. But it still reflects the limitations of that theodical strategy. 

Someone who is compatibilistically free may go through stages in which, until he makes up his mind, he is as ignorant of his future as is any open theist who hold that God is ignorant of some libertarian future (31).

Corrects the popular misconception that the experience of deliberation implies libertarian freedom. Also, useful comparison with open theism.