THEODICY: WHY
GOD ALLOWS
EVIL
Robby Lashua
DSCC Oasis
Feb. 23rd, 2014
FREE WILL
Augustine
354-430 A.D.
“And I strained to
perceive what I
now heard, that
free-will was the
cause of our doing
ill.”
Free will?
• Determinism
• Choices are caused by prior
conditions
• There are two types: Hard
Determinism and Soft
Determinism.
Free will?
• Hard Determinism
• Free will is an illusion
• It is not compatible with
determinism.
Free will?
• Soft Determinism
• Free will is compatible with
determinism.
• Often called Compatibilism
Compatibilism
• The Principle of Universal
Causality
• All that happens is the result
of cause and effect because of
sufficient prior conditions
and could not have been any
other way.
Compatibilism
• Freedom is: The freedom to
“choose” to do what your
greatest inclination or desire is.
Compatibilism
1. Law of Choice: a person’s
choices are dictated by his
desires.
“The will always chooses
according to its strongest
inclination at the moment.” R.C.
Sproul Sr.
Compatibilism
2. The Causal Necessity of
Choice: a person must choose the
way he does; no other choice was
possible.
Determinism fails because it
doesn’t account for agent
causation and runs the risk of
making everything stem from
event causation.
Free will?
• Libertarian Free Will: morally
responsible agents are the
origin of their choices and
prior conditions are not the
final determiner for the agent.
Free will?
• Hard Libertarianism: Persons
are genuinely free only if they
always have the ability to
choose contrary, or that they
are free from external
influences.
Free will?
• Soft Libertarianism: A person’s
character determines a range of
choices that the person would
make.
Soft Libertarianism
• God acts within His character.
• “It's logically impossible to make someone
freely do something. God's being allpowerful doesn't mean that He can do the
logically impossible. Thus, even though He
is all-powerful, God cannot make everyone
freely be saved. Given human freedom and
human stubbornness, some people may go
to hell despite God's desire and efforts to
save them.” –William Lane Craig
Soft Libertarianism
• God can’t:
• Lie (Num. 23:19, Titus 1:2)
• Tempt (James 1:13)
• Swear by any name greater
than Himself (Heb. 6:13)
• Do illogical things (Gen. 1)
• God is still free to make choices
within the framework of who He
is.
Five Tenants of Soft Libertarianism
1. Ultimate Responsibility: This
indicates the ultimate origin of
decisions
• The person ultimately
responsible for an action is
the source/cause of the
action.
Five Tenants of Soft Libertarianism
2. Agent Causation: a person is the
source and origin of their choices.
• Romans 5:12 “By one man sin
entered into the world”
Five Tenants of Soft Libertarianism
3. The Principle of Alternative
Possibilities: At crucial times, the
ability to choose or refrain from
choosing is genuinely available.
Five Tenants of Soft Libertarianism
4. The Reality of Will-Setting
Moments:
• a person does not always have
ability to choose the contrary.
• Certain free choices result in the
loss of freedom.
Five Tenants of Soft Libertarianism
5. The Distinction Between
Freedom of Responsibility and
Freedom of Integrity:
• Freedom of Responsibility
• The ability to be the
originator of our decisions,
choices and actions.
Five Tenants of Soft Libertarianism
5. The Distinction Between
Freedom of Responsibility and
Freedom of Integrity:
• Freedom of Integrity
• The ability to act in a way
that is consistent with what
a person knows to be the
right thing to do.
God’s Omniscience
Does God’s Foreknowledge of the actual
sins we will commit mean Determinism
is true?
“I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert
that if a man gets drunk and shoots his
family, it was the will of God that he
should do it. It may seem strange at first
that God would decree an immoral act, but
the Bible shows that he did.”
-Gordon H. Clark
God’s Omniscience
“Doesn’t the most unforced
reading of every New Testament
command to the Christian lead us
to believe that Christians can or
could actually do other than sin?”
–Clay Jones
God’s Omniscience
“Because unless I am mistaken, your
foreknowledge that a man will sin does not of
itself necessitate the sin. Your foreknowledge
did not force him to sin even though he was,
without doubt, going to sin; otherwise you
would not foreknow that which was to be.
Thus, these two things are not
contradictories. As you, by your
foreknowledge, know what someone else is
going to do of his own will, so God forces no
one to sin; yet He foreknows those who will
sin by their own will.
God’s Omniscience
Why cannot He justly punish what He does
not force to be done, even though He
foreknows it? Your recollection of events in
the past does not compel them to occur. In
the same way God’s foreknowledge of future
events does not compel them to take place.
As you remember certain things that you
have done and yet have not done all the
things you remember, so God foreknows all
the things of which He himself is the Cause,
and yet He is not the Cause of all that He
foreknows.”
Free Will in Heaven?
“And there was war in heaven. Michael
and his angels fought against the dragon,
and the dragon and his angels fought
back. But he was jot strong enough, and
they lost their place in heaven. The great
dragon was hurled down – that ancient
serpent called the devil, or Satan, who
leads the whole world astray. He was
hurled to the earth, and his angels with
him.” –Rev. 12:7
Free Will in Heaven?
“It may be that we will be able not to
sin, rather than not being able to sin. In
this case, we would still be free to sin,
but we would always choose not to
because the glories and virtues of
heaven would be so marvelous that
no one in heaven would ever choose
to act against those benefits.”
-Gary Habermas & J.P. Moreland