DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT DIVINE FREEDOM
Adherents of traditional western Theism have espoused CONJUNCTION: God is essentially perfectly good and God is thankworthy for the good acts he performs. But suppose that (i) God’s essential perfect goodness prevents his good acts from being free, and that (ii) God is not thankworthy for an act that wasn’t freely performed. Together these entail the denial of CONJUNCTION. The most natural strategy for defenders of CONJUNCTION is to deny (i). We develop an argument for (i), and then identify two ways for the defender of CONJUNCTION to respond. Next we turn to a considerably different, rather less obvious route toward defending CONJUNCTION that is compatible with (i)—one which instead denies (ii). Here too we identify two ways for the defender of CONJUNCTION to proceed, yielding a total of four ways for the theist to respond. Because the last of these represents an important and underappreciated alternative for the theist, we devote the second half of the paper to developing and defending it. We argue that divine responsibility is sufficient for divine thankworthiness and consistent with the absence of divine freedom. We do this while insisting on the view that both freedom and responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism.
I.
Introduction
Two central claims in western theistic religions are that (G) God is essentially perfectly good and that (T) God is thankworthy for the good acts he performs. That the divine-goodness tenet (G) has figured prominently in the philosophical development of western monotheism is clear. But theists have also traditionally held to a view of God and his actions according to which the appropriate human response to God is one of devotion, adoration, and thanks. If perhaps less central than (G) to theistic orthodoxy, the thankworthiness proposition (T) is at the very least a claim that most theists would be loath to give up. Here then is a conjunction to which most practicing theists are firmly committed:
CONJUNCTION: (G) God is essentially perfectly
good and (T) God is thankworthy for the good acts he performs.
Is CONJUNCTION true, or at any rate defensible? Two other theses, each plausible in their own right, look to serve as premises of an argument threatening the very coherence of CONJUNCTION. The first “no-freedom” premise of The Incoherence Argument (as we shall call it) claims that an essentially good being must be so constrained by its nature as to render it not free; the second “not-thankworthy” premise claims that a being is thankworthy for acting as it does only if that action is freely performed.[1] Here are “no-freedom” and “not-thankworthy” as they apply to our present case:
No-Freedom
(G ® ~F) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being free.
Not-Thankworthy
(~F ® ~T) God isn’t thankworthy for an act that wasn’t performed freely.
The divine-goodness tenet (G) of Theism and the objector’s no-freedom premise (G ® ~F) together entail that God’s good acts are not free. This, conjoined with the objector’s not-thankworthy premise (~F ® ~T), entails the denial of the divine-thankworthiness tenet (T). We can state The Incoherence Argument as follows:
The Incoherence
Argument
1. (G ® ~F)
2. (~F ® ~T)
3. Therefore, (G ® ~T)
4. (G ® ~T) implies that conjunction—i.e., (G & T)—is incoherent.
5. Therefore, conjunction is incoherent.
In order to defend CONJUNCTION against this charge of incoherence, the theist seems forced to deny either the no-freedom premise (G ® ~F) or the not-thankworthy premise (~F ® ~T).
Our aims in this paper are two: first, to reflect critically on those two premises, with the aim of identifying ways to defend the theistic CONJUNCTION, and second, to argue in support of one of those ways. The most natural strategy for defenders of CONJUNCTION is to deny the first premise of The Incoherence Argument, the no-freedom premise (G ® ~F). In Section II below we develop an argument for the no-freedom premise, and then identify two ways for the defender of CONJUNCTION to respond. In Section III, we turn to a considerably different, rather less obvious route toward defending CONJUNCTION that is compatible with The Incoherence Argument’s no-freedom premise—one which instead denies the argument’s second, not-thankworthy premise (~F ® ~T). Here too we identify two ways for the defender of CONJUNCTION to proceed. All told, then, in pursuing our first aim we will be articulating four ways for theists to respond to The Incoherence Argument. The last of these has, to our knowledge, received little notice in the literature. Because we think it represents an important and underappreciated alternative for the theist, our second aim is to develop and defend it.
Our defense of this last response to The Incoherence Argument argues for the following two claims, which we’ll call “responsible-though-good” (RG) and “thankworthy-if-responsible” (TR):
Responsible-Though-Good
(RG) God can be responsible for the good acts he performs even if he is essentially perfectly good.
Thankworthy-If-Responsible
(TR) A person is thankworthy for performing a good act so long as that person is responsible for the act in question and it is performed for the right reasons.[2]
Since our objection to the second not-thankworthy premise is intended to be compatible with the first no-freedom premise, it allows that both the no-freedom premise (G ® ~F) and the responsible-though-good claim (RG) are true. Together these entail that God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents his good acts from being acts which God does freely, but does not prevent them from being acts for which God is responsible. This might suggest to some readers that we are endorsing a sort of compatibilism, according to which an agent can be responsible for doing A even if forced to do A. We reject such compatibilism. Our defense of (RG) and (TR) will be consistent not only with the no-freedom thesis, but also with the incompatibilist view that both freedom and responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism. Thus our objection to the second not-thankworthy premise (~F ® ~T) amounts to an incompatibilist defense of CONJUNCTION, according to which there can be divine responsibility (and thankworthiness) without divine freedom.[3]
II. The Problem of Divine Perfection and
Freedom
How might an objector to CONJUNCTION defend the no-freedom thesis?
No-Freedom
Thesis
(G ® ~F) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being free.
The strongest defense of this first premise of The Incoherence Argument seems to us most forcefully developed using recent work of William Rowe.
A.
A Rowe-Inspired Defense of the No-Freedom Thesis
In his 1993, Rowe offers the following argument for the conclusion that God cannot bring it about that he performs an evil act:
1. God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an evil act. (Assumption to be refuted.)
2. From God’s performing an evil act it follows that God is not perfectly good.
3. If X has it in its power to bring about p, q follows from p and q does not obtain then X has it in its power to bring about q.
4. God has it in his power to bring it about that he is not perfectly good. (From 1 to 3.)
5. Being perfectly good is an essential attribute of God.
Therefore,
6. God has it in his power to bring it about that he lacks one of his essential attributes. [From 4 and 5.]
Because (6) is clearly false,
[7.] we must deny the initial assumption that God has it in his power to
bring it about that he performs an evil act. [From 1-6 by reductio ad absurdum.]
(Rowe 1993, 224)
Clearly this argument does not show that God’s good acts aren’t free. As Rowe himself points out, for all the above conclusion tells us, when God performs some good act there may nevertheless be many other good acts he is able to perform. If for any good act God performs he could have done otherwise than perform it (by performing some other good act instead), then it seems that God’s good acts are free.
In responding to this point, Rowe goes on to consider whether a perfectly good God can bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better. His discussion (1993, 227-29) suggests the following argument modeled after the argument given above:
1*. God has it in his power to bring it about
that he performs an act than which there is a better. (Assumption to be refuted.)
2*. From God’s performing an act than which there is a better it follows that God is not perfectly good.
3*. If X has it in its power to bring about p, q follows from p and q does not obtain then X has it in its power to bring about q.
4*. God has it in his power to bring it about that he is not perfectly good. (From 1* to 3*.)
5*. Being perfectly good is an essential attribute of God.
6*. God has it in his power to bring it about that he lacks one of his essential attributes. (From 4* and 5*.)
7*. It is false that God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better. (From 1*-6* by reductio ad absurdum.)
Since the conclusion is reached by assuming that God is essentially perfectly good, one can fairly say that this argument, if successful, yields the “no-power” conclusion that a perfectly good God lacks the power to do better than he does:
No-Power
(G ® ~P) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God from having it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better.
The intuitions driving the present effort to impugn sensible gratitude to God are that (i) his being perfectly good requires his performing only acts than which none are better, and that (ii) such a requirement conflicts with divine freedom. But to make good on (i) by showing (as above) that God lacks the power to do better is not yet to make good on (ii)—i.e., it is not yet to show that God lacks freedom in doing the good acts he does (since one might be free if one can do otherwise even though one can’t do better). We are still without a defense of the no-freedom premise (G ® ~F) of The Incoherence Argument. Consider then the following hypothesis:
No-Power-No-Freedom
(~P ® ~F) God’s good acts are free only if God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better.
This hypothesis (~P ® ~F) and the no-power conclusion (G ® ~P) defended above together entail what was being sought:
No-Freedom
(G ® ~F) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being free.
By thus combining 1*-7* in support of the no-power conclusion together with some defense or other for the no-power-no-freedom hypothesis, one would have an argument for the first, no-freedom premise of The Incoherence Argument.
Is some defense or other available for the hypothesis in question? Here is an argument for the no-power-no-freedom hypothesis:
8. God can do otherwise than what he does only if either
(a) God can perform, in place of what he does perform, an act that is better than the one he does perform
or (b) God can perform, in place of what he
does perform, an act that is worse than the one he does perform.[4]
9. If God can perform, in place of what he does perform, an act that is worse than the one he does perform, then God can perform an act than which there is a better.
10. God cannot perform an act than which there is a better. [from 7*]
11. God cannot perform, in place of what he does perform, an act that is worse than the one he does perform. [from 9 and 10]
12. God can do otherwise than what he does only if God can perform, in place of what he does perform, an act that is better than the one he does perform. [from 8 and 11]
13. God’s acts are free only if God can do otherwise than he does. [definition of freedom]
14. God’s good acts are free only if God can perform, in place of what he does perform, an act that is better than the one he does perform. [from 12 and 13]
15. God can perform, in place of what he does perform, an act that is better than the one he does perform only if God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better.
16. God’s good acts are free only if God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better. [from 14 and 15]
Since 16 just is the no-power-no-freedom hypothesis (~P ® ~F), we now have an argument for the first premise of The Incoherence Argument: the conclusions of 1*-7* and 8-16 together entail the no-freedom premise (G ® ~F).
The argument above (8-16) for the no-power-no-freedom hypothesis has only four premises: 8, 9, 13, and 15. The definition of freedom to which 13 appeals seems eminently plausible. And 9 and 15 are utterly unproblematic claims. But 8 is surely controversial, insofar as it takes for granted that when God performs an act, there is no act God could perform in its place that is either exactly as good as or incommensurable with the act God does perform. Is there a way of revising The Incoherence Argument so that it doesn’t rely on the controversial 8?
Yes, there is. But it requires a slight shift in strategy on the part of the proponent of The Incoherence Argument. Instead of deploying the no-freedom premise:
No-Freedom
(G ® ~F) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being free,
the revised strategy involves deploying a no-significant-freedom premise:
No-Significant-Freedom
(G ®
~FS) God’s being essentially
perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being significantly free,
where:
S’s act A is significantly free if S can perform, in place of A, an act that is either better or worse than A.[5]
Having turned its attention away from the less significant power of being able to do differently but no better or worse, the no-significant-freedom premise of this revised strategy remains easy to defend using the Rowe-style argument (1*-7*) given above. As already noted, that argument establishes the no-power thesis:
No-Power
(G ® ~P) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God from having it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better.
What is needed, then, in order to defend the no-significant-freedom premise (G ® ~FS), is some defense of an adjusted no-power-no-significant-freedom thesis:
No-Power-No-Significant-Freedom
(~P ® ~FS) If God doesn’t have it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better, then God’s good acts aren’t significantly free.
Here is a defense of (~P ® ~FS):
8*. God doesn’t have it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better. [assume for Conditional Proof]
9*. If God can perform, in place of some good act he actually performs, an act that is worse, then God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better.
10* God cannot perform, in place of some good act he performs, an act that is worse. [from 8* and 9*]
11* If God can perform, in place of some good act he actually performs, an act that is better, then God has it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better (since he obviously has it in his power to perform acts he actually performs – and in this case we are supposing there is a better than that).
12* God cannot perform, in place of some good act he actually performs, an act that is better. [from 8* and 11*]
13* None of God’s good acts are significantly free. [from 10* and 12* and the definition of significant freedom]
14*. If God doesn’t have it in his power to bring it about that he performs an act than which there is a better then God’s good acts aren’t significantly free. [from 8*-13* by Conditional Proof.]
This argument has just two premises, 9* and 11*, both of which are clearly true. By combining this argument (8*-14*) for the no-power-no-significant-freedom thesis (~P ® ~FS) with the earlier argument (1*-7*) for the no-power thesis (G ® ~P), one secures the no-significant-freedom premise (G ® ~FS). And that conclusion is precisely the revised first premise of the Incoherence Argument which was being sought.
B. Two Objections to the above Defense[6]
There are two popular ways of resisting both the no-freedom premise and its no-significant-freedom cousin. Each of these two lines of resistance can be viewed as objections to premise 2* of the argument for the no-power thesis (G ® ~P) which is employed in the above arguments for no-freedom and no-significant freedom:
2*. From God’s performing an act than which there is a better it follows that God is not perfectly good.
According to the first objection to premise 2*, its proponents fail to see that divine perfection is compatible with:
BETTER: For every good act that God could perform, there is a better act he could perform in its place.
Notice that the truth of BETTER guarantees both that (a) God can do otherwise when he performs some good act and that (b) God’s good acts are significantly free (since among the available alternatives are better acts he could perform in place of the act he does perform). The truth of (a) undercuts the above defense of the no-freedom premise; the truth of (b) undercuts its no-significant-freedom cousin.
One response to this first objection—a response given by Rowe—is to reject the compatibility of divine moral perfection and BETTER by appealing again to the intuitions supporting 2*. The proposition expressed by 2* is that if it really is the case that for every act God could perform, there is a better, then God is not perfectly good. And if we assume that God is, by definition, a being that is essentially perfectly good, the upshot of 2* is this: if BETTER is true—i.e., if for every good act that an omnipotent being can perform there is a better—then there is no such being as God. In support of 2*, Rowe cites the following remarks by Philip Quinn, a theist:
An omnipotent moral agent can actualize any actualizable world. If he actualizes one than which there is a morally better, he does not do the best he can, morally speaking, and so it is possible that there is an agent morally better than he is, namely, an omnipotent moral agent who actualizes one of those morally better worlds. (Quinn 1982, 213)
Opinions divide about what to make of 2*.[7] What Rowe and Quinn offer in support of the proposition is that it seems obviously true. We shan’t risk here the distraction of assessing the merits of this controversial rejoinder to the first way of objecting to the no-power thesis. Given that Rowe and Quinn are appealing to the obviousness of what is being denied by this first objection, we suspect there may be little more to say on the issue. The proponents of this first objection and Rowe seem to have reached an intuitive stalemate.
A second objection to 2* proceeds not on the grounds that for every good act God could perform there is another still better he could perform instead, but rather on the grounds that, even if there is a good act than which none is better, God’s essential perfect goodness doesn’t entail that he will perform it. What God’s essential perfect goodness entails is only that there is some threshold of goodness for acts such that he will perform no act whose goodness falls below it. This leaves God free to choose from a large number of good acts. What is distinctive about this objection is that it neither (i) reduces God’s freedom to the less significant power of being able to do differently but no better or worse, nor (ii) depends on there being no good acts than which there are none better. Divine freedom is secured rather by the fact that there are many good acts—some better than others—whose degree of goodness is greater than the minimum required for a perfectly good God to perform them.
But of course the appeal by Rowe and Quinn to the intuitive obviousness of 2* would work just as well here as it did in response to the previous, first objection. It looks, therefore, as if here too the parties have reached an intuitive stalemate. The no-power thesis, along with the no-freedom and no-significant-freedom premises depending on it, has not been dislodged.
We now have before us the makings of two versions of The Incoherence Argument for the conclusion that the theist’s CONJUNCTION (i.e., G & T) is incoherent. The first version is the one advertised in Section I at the outset—the version deploying no-freedom:
(G ® ~F) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being free
and not-thankworthy:
(~F ® ~T) God is not thankworthy for an act that isn’t performed freely.
The second version, which surfaced more recently in Section II.A, deploys no-significant-freedom:
(G ®~FS) God’s being essentially perfectly good prevents God’s good acts from being significantly free
and the revised not-thankworthy premise:
Revised Not-Thankworthy
(~FS ® ~T) God is not thankworthy for an act that isn’t significantly free.
Each version of the argument looks to have its own weakness. The weakness of the first version, which includes the argument for no-freedom consisting of 1*-7* and 8-16, is that it depends on the controversial premise 8 (according to which God has no available alternative actions exactly as good as the act he does perform). The second version avoids reliance on 8 by proceeding not via no-freedom but instead via no-significant-freedom, defended using 1*-7* and 8*-14*. However, this second version has the weakness of deploying the less obviously plausible revised not-thankworthy premise. The original not-thankworthy premise seems plausible enough: it is quite natural to think that if God was not free in performing an act—if he couldn’t do otherwise than perform it—then he was forced (constrained, determined) to perform it, in which case he isn’t thankworthy for performing it. But those considerations offer no support for the revised not-thankworthy premise. For, working no longer under the assumption implicit in 8, the new assumption that God is not significantly free offers no reason to think he can’t do otherwise—and, therefore, no reason to think he was forced to perform the act he did perform. So why think the revised not-thankworthy thesis is plausible at all?
One can account for the attractiveness of the revised not-thankworthy thesis by appealing to the following principle of thankworthiness:
To see the appeal of this principle, consider what goes on in an action for which an agent is thankworthy even though the act has been randomly selected from among equally good alternative actions.[9] Suppose Jill knows that what Bill wants most for his birthday is help in completing his collection of paintings by a certain painter. Jill knows that there are five paintings still absent from Bill’s collection. And each costs the same amount of money, which just happens to be all the money Jill can afford to spend (she knows also that Bill would want her not to spend more than that amount on a gift for him). She is considering the five paintings to decide which one to purchase and comes to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter to her (and it wouldn’t matter to Bill) which one she buys. So she plays eeny-meeny-miny-mo and selects one and buys it for Bill, who is very grateful for the gift when he receives it (even after he hears about how her decision process went). What is going on here? Why is Jill thankworthy for performing a randomly selected act?
It seems that Jill has performed at least three acts in sequence in this example in order to purchase the painting for Bill: first, she selects from among all the actions available to her a set of five equally good alternative actions from which she plans to choose one; second, she employs a method for randomly selecting one from among those five options; third, she performs the randomly selected act. Crucial to her being thankworthy for the third act is the fact that it is a part of this sequence of acts that began with her selection of the initial five alternative actions from which she randomly selected one. In particular, it is important that she selected that initial set because she knew Bill would appreciate one of those paintings. This shows that she performed the first act (of selecting that initial set) for the right reasons, which, together with the fact that she is responsible for that first act, makes her thankworthy for it. It is, in part, because she is thankworthy for that first act that she is also thankworthy for the third act of purchasing the randomly selected painting and giving it to Bill.
Compare the Jill example with one where Jill’s sister Sue is somehow forced to buy one of the five paintings for Bill though she is permitted to choose which one to buy for him. Suppose that Sue has no reason for preferring the purchase of one to the purchase of another, and so randomly selects one. In this example, Sue doesn’t seem thankworthy for purchasing for him the painting she does purchase for him. It is true that she could do otherwise than purchase the one she does purchase. But that freedom isn’t significant freedom. As we noted in discussing the Jill example, a randomly selected act makes the agent thankworthy only if she earlier chose (for the right reasons) the set of actions from among which that act was randomly selected. And that is what is missing in this case. In the Jill case, even though Jill randomly chose an act, it is false that she had no reason for preferring the randomly chosen act to any of the alternative actions available to her. She did prefer it to the option of not buying anything for Bill and that was an option available to her. But in the Sue case, Sue has no reason for preferring the act she performs to any of the alternative actions available to her. These considerations are what render the principle of thankworthiness PT plausible: if the agent has no reason to prefer the act she performs to any of the alternatives available to her, then she doesn’t seem thankworthy for performing it.
The application to the case of God is obvious. In the case of God’s acts that are not significantly free, we know that—since in such a case all the alternative actions available to God at the time are neither better nor worse than the act he performs—he has no reason for preferring the act he performs to any of the available alternatives. Given PT, this shows that God isn’t thankworthy for his acts if they aren’t significantly free. These considerations suggest that the apparent weakness of the second version of The Incoherence Argument (i.e., that it depends on the revised not-thankworthy premise) is not a serious difficulty after all. Thus, the second version of the Incoherence Argument would seem to be better than the first version, which depends on the controversial premise 8.
Despite the apparent superiority of the second version of the Incoherence Argument, we shall continue for the moment with the first version firmly in view. Recall that we want to consider how the theist might resist the Incoherence Argument if she grants that there is some force to the arguments given above for no-freedom and no-significant-freedom. This will involve objecting to either the not-thankworthy premise or the revised not-thankworthy premise. Our strategy will thus be to focus first on the not-thankworthy premise at work in the first version of The Incoherence Argument. By showing how one may resist that component of the first version of The Incoherence Argument, we can move more fruitfully to showing how to resist the corresponding component of the second version of The Incoherence Argument—the revised not-thankworthy premise.
III. Thankworthiness Without Freedom
We begin, then, with the first version of The Incoherence Argument, which relies on not-thankworthy.
Suppose the theist feels pressed to grant the no-freedom premise. That is, suppose it is conceded that God’s good acts are unfree because an essentially perfectly good being cannot do otherwise than perform them. Is there any way for an incompatibilist to defend the coherence of gratitude to God for his good acts? Is there any consistent route by which an incompatibilist can instead deny the second, not-thankworthy premise of The Incoherence Argument:
(~F ® ~T) God isn’t thankworthy for an act that wasn’t performed freely[10]
while nevertheless granting its first no-freedom premise? As noted near the beginning of Section I, we think there is. One need only defend what we there called “responsible-though-good” and “thankworthy-if-responsible”:
(RG) God can be responsible for the good acts he performs even if he is essentially perfectly good.
(TR) A person is thankworthy for performing a good act so long as that person is responsible for the act in question and it is performed for the right reasons.
Not-thankworthy says God’s not being free is sufficient for his not being thankworthy. By way of reply we argue for two things: first, that—as (RG) indicates—God’s being perfectly good (and thus lacking freedom) is consistent with his being responsible for an act performed for the right reasons; and second, that—as (TR) indicates—being responsible for an act performed for the right reasons is sufficient for his being thankworthy.
In subsections III.A-C below we shall discuss ways of defending responsible-though-good (RG); in III.D we will defend thankworthy-if-responsible (TR). In the final subsection we will consider how our account in III.A-D, employed in response to the first version of The Incoherence Argument, is relevant in responding to the second version of The Incoherence Argument. There we shall argue that just as one can consistently reject not-thankworthy while granting no-freedom, so also one can consistently reject the revised not-thankworthy premise while accepting no-significant-freedom.
A.
Can God Be Responsible For His Nature?
That God is essentially perfectly good owes entirely to his nature. Proponents of The Incoherence Argument suspect that God is necessarily determined—forced, somehow—by his nature to perform the good acts he performs. One route toward defending (RG) is to grant that this is so, but to claim nevertheless that God is responsible for having the nature he does. If this were so, then God would at least be mediately responsible for the good acts he does. Let us see what can be made of this approach.
Aquinas reminds us of the obvious fact that thanks, praise and the like are creditable to S for an act or state of affairs A only if (i) S is responsible for A and (ii) A is good: “for to be praised or blamed is nothing else than to be charged with responsibility for a good or bad deed” (ST IaIIae q21, a2). In the present context (ii) is no worry: children know that God is and does good, and philosophers can gloss this readily enough in terms of his nature. But what of (i), of responsibility? Well, the present context has us in the company of agents, and (efficacious) willing is one obvious way of being responsible. Aquinas evidently reckoned it possible for God to enjoy that relation to his nature: “God wills his own being and his own Goodness in a necessary way, and cannot will the contrary” (SCG I.80). Echoes of divine simplicity aside, the modal strain this pronouncement may place on some contemporary ears is instructive: latter-day agency-theorists can benefit from a second reminder of Aquinas—that being an agent isn’t being a free agent, that having a will may fall short of having a free will. ‘Free agent’ and ‘free will’ have persisted as serviceable philosophical notions precisely because neither is redundant.[11]
As we shall be thinking of it, to be responsible for A involves being the front end of the causal chain issuing in A: S is responsible for her act A so long as the causal buck for A stops with S.[12] To capture this idea of the causal buck for an act stopping with the agent, we shall be deploying the notion of agent-causation defined as follows:
AC: X is the agent-cause of e iff each of the following three conditions is satisfied:
1. X is a substance that had the power to bring about e
2. X exerted its power to bring about e[13]
3. Nothing distinct from X (not even X’s character) caused X to exert its power to bring about e.[14]
Our idea then is that S is responsible for an act A so long as S is the agent-cause of A in the sense just noted. For S to be the agent-cause of A in this sense is for the causal buck for A to stop with S.[15]
On our account, being an agent-cause of A is sufficient for being responsible for A. Is it necessary? We noted earlier that our defense of CONJUNCTION would be an incompatibilist one. Indeed, the version of incompatibilism with which our defense of CONJUNCTION will be consistent is an agency theorist version according to which a necessary condition of both freedom and responsibility is agent-causation. According to that sort of incompatibilism, S is responsible for A only if S agent-causes A. Likewise, S freely does A only if S is the agent-cause of A.[16]
So we have before us two suggestions: that (a) being the agent-cause of A is sufficient for being responsible for A, and that (b) God is responsible for his having the nature he does. We’ll begin by assuming that (a) is true and consider whether, on that understanding of what is sufficient for being responsible, God is responsible for his nature. If we conclude that, given (a), God isn’t responsible for his nature, then of course he won’t be responsible for his nature if responsibility requires more than agent-causation.[17]
Initially, the idea that God is responsible for his nature would seem a misbegotten one. For God’s nature includes his great-making properties, which he has essentially: how could anything be responsible for its having the essential properties it has? There is however a metaphysical position that may be serviceable in defending the suggestion that God is responsible for his having the nature he has. The position is called ‘theistic activism’, and has been recommended by Alvin Plantinga and defended by Thomas Morris.[18] It is a development of the broadly Platonic-Augustinian view that propositions are divine thoughts and that properties are divine concepts.
Let us focus on that part of theistic activism which says that properties are divine concepts. Divine concepts, like all entities distinct from God, depend for their existence on God’s creative activity. From this it follows that, according to theistic activism, properties depend for their existence on God’s activity. But properties depend for their exemplification on their existence. So according to theistic activism, properties, including essential properties, depend for their exemplification on God’s activity.[19] More specifically, God’s exemplifying the essential properties he exemplifies depends on God’s activity, in which case God’s having the nature he does depends on God’s activity. And if something depends on God’s activity (and the activity of no other agent), then it would seem that God is responsible for it. Thus, theistic activism leads very naturally to the conclusion that God is responsible for his having the nature he does.
But is theistic activism coherent? Could properties be divine concepts? If divine properties were divine concepts, both of the following would look to be true:
(I) God’s exerting his causal power to form divine concepts is logically prior to his exemplifying the property of having causal powers.
(II)
God’s
exemplifying the property of having causal powers is logically prior to his
exerting his causal power to form divine concepts.
(I)
seems to follow from theistic activism.
For God couldn’t exemplify the property of having causal powers unless
that property existed, and that property couldn’t exist unless God exerted his
causal powers to form divine concepts (since, according to theistic activism,
properties just are divine concepts).
And (II) looks to be a necessary truth.
But, given that the relation of logical priority is an asymmetric
relation, it is impossible for both (I) and (II) to be true. From this and the plausibility of the claim
that (II) is a necessary truth, we seem led to the conclusion that theistic
activism, which yields (I), is false.
The above objection to theistic
activism, and especially its use of the notion of logical priority, needs
further defense.[20] But at the very least, the objection
underscores the fact that theistic activism is controversial. It is difficult to render comfortable to the
intellect the idea of God’s actively creating those very properties—those very
aspects of the divine nature—that are logically necessary for his creative
activity. Best, perhaps, to release
theists from the burden of defending responsible-though-good (RG):
(RG) God can be responsible for the good acts he performs even if he is essentially perfectly good
on the basis of such a controversial view as theistic activism. Let us look for an alternative.[21]
B. God’s Causing What His
Nature Entails[22]
Recall that we wish to deploy responsible-though-good (RG) in denying The Incoherence Argument’s second, not-thankworthy premise:
(~F ® ~T) God isn’t thankworthy for an act that wasn’t performed freely
in a way that is consistent both with conceding the no-freedom premise (G ® ~F) and also with the truth of agent-theoretic incompatibilism. We have rejected the option that God can be responsible for his actions by being responsible for his nature which causally or otherwise determines his performance of the good acts he performs. The option we should like now to pursue is that God is responsible for each of his good acts even though his nature entails that he couldn’t do otherwise than perform the good acts he performs.[23]
How can this be? How can God be responsible for his good acts if his nature entails that he couldn’t do otherwise than perform them? Well, easily enough: by agent-causing what his nature entails without being caused to agent-cause it. A entails B iff at every world at which A, also B. Suppose, as some people think, that properties are necessarily existing things. Then the property redness exists entails two plus two equals four. But there is no temptation to say that the existence of redness causes two plus two’s equaling four. Our proposal is that God’s being essentially perfectly good is related in just that way to his performing some good act: his being essentially perfectly good entails that he bring it about that he performs some act than which none is better, but it does not cause him to do bring that about. Nothing distinct from God causes (forces, externally constrains) him to bring that about. Recall: God is an agent. God himself is the agent-cause of his bringing it about that he performs some act than which none is better. In our preferred way of putting it: the causal buck stops with him.
But isn’t entailing even stronger than causing? Since entailing needn’t involve causing, it’s not stronger in the sense that it involves causing and more besides. But if causing “S’s causing A” is responsibility-undermining, then won’t entailing “S’s causing A” also be responsibility-undermining? Well, is the fact that “The moon orbits the earth and S causes A” entails “S causes A” responsibility-undermining? The reason that causing “S’s causing A” is responsibility-undermining is that being caused to cause precludes agent causation and, therefore, responsibility. Since S’s being entailed to cause A—even by some other necessary truth—doesn’t conflict with S’s agent-causing A, it isn’t responsibility-undermining.
But if explanations are virtues, it may be objected that our account lacks a crucial virtue. One might resist our suggestion that God’s nature entails without causing the performance of the good acts he performs by saying this: “Look, it’s not just that God did, in the actual world, agent-cause his bringing it about that he performs some act than which none is better. He had to; he does at every world. If you are right, then we have the following necessary truth:
(NT) At every possible world whenever God agent-causes anything, he agent-causes his bringing it about that he performs an act than which none is better.
But why? How do you explain that modal fact? Surely the easiest and most natural way to explain NT is to appeal to the following truth about what – necessarily – his nature causes:
(NC) At every possible world, whenever God agent-causes anything, his nature causes him to bring it about that he performs an act than which none is better.
The truth of NC would explain the modal truth reported in NT. But you reject NC. What do you offer in its place?”
Now strictly
speaking, one cannot explain the truth of NT by appealing to NC. For if God’s nature were to cause him to
bring it about that he performs an act than which none is better, then NT
wouldn’t be true: NT says that at every world God agent-causes his bringing it about that he performs acts
of that sort. And if God agent-causes
it, then his nature doesn’t cause him to cause it. Still, the objector is right to isolate NT,
to note that the position we are defending is committed to the modal fact it
reports, and to note that we’ve offered no explanation for it. What do we have to say for ourselves?
It is initially tempting to respond by suggesting that all necessities are brute, that it never makes sense to ask of some necessary truth why it is true, at any rate not if one is fishing for an explanatory sense of ‘because’ running deeper than “because it must be”. Perhaps every necessity entails every other, all are true and can’t be false, and none is true because another is.
The appeal of this response may be diminished by recalling the scholastics’ distinction between essences and propria. By their lights, essences are expressed in what they called the real definition of the kind to which a thing belonged, and are de re necessities of the thing. Yet so are other properties necessary of the thing which nevertheless are not part of its essence. The distinction was inherited from Aristotle. After explaining that a (real) definition “signifies a thing’s essence” (Topics I,5,101b35), Aristotle says that distinct from what is expressed by the definition are its “properties” (proper accidents), which “do not indicate the essence of a thing, but yet [belong] to that thing alone, and [are] predicated convertibly of it” (102a18). Here is a famous example from Porphyry: anything that is a rational animal is risible and anything that is risible is a rational animal.[24] Risibility is not the essence of man, though man has it of necessity—has it, crucially, by virtue of his nature as a rational animal. Thus is man necessarily risible because he is necessarily a rational animal, though not conversely. These examples help to show that mutual entailment between necessary truths is consistent with informative explanatory asymmetry between them. And this gives us reason to deny that all necessities are explanatorily brute.
Suppose we
proceed on the assumption that some
necessities are brute and some are not.[25] Into which category does NT fall? It
may emerge that we are forced to say
“Here we have a brute necessary truth: whenever God agent-causes anything, he
agent-causes his bringing it about that he performs good acts than which none
are better. This brute necessity is what
NT reports.” We can live with that. It is likely that brute necessities are
ubiquitous. Moreover, it seems entirely
plausible to us that we should expect NT in particular to be a brute necessity:
since NT is about agent-causation, which is uncaused causing, no causal explanation of NT will be
satisfactory. We are content, therefore,
to let our reply to the demand for an explanation of NT rest on the claim that
NT is among the brute necessities.
Some may find this unsatisfactory. For them, we offer the following speculative proposal of how NT might emerge to report a necessity that isn’t brute. According to this proposal, there would be an explanation for NT but the explanation would be a non-causal one. Arguably, there are many sorts of explanation. In addition to (efficient, agent-theoretic, …) causal explanations there are, at least, teleological explanations and what we’ll call here “mathematical/logical explanations”. Examples of the latter may be given in geometry when one explains, by way of a suitable proof, why some fact of geometry is (necessarily) true: the axioms together with the relevant proof do not merely guarantee, but explain in the mathematical/logical sense, the truth of the conclusion.[26] The existence of this kind of explanation, while acknowledging that each necessary truth entails every other, draws attention to the fact that some necessary truths are true in virtue of other necessary truths, where this “true in virtue of” relation is asymmetric. The medieval example of risibility and rational animality given above is another instance of this sort of mathematical/logical explanation. Our suggestion is that NT may have a mathematical/logical explanation even though there is no causal explanation of the modal fact reported by NT.
Have we any such explanation in mind? Consider these two claims:
(PN) God has a perfect nature.
(E) PN entails NT.
It is not implau