A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

This doctrine was maintained by Melanchthon on practical as well as on speculative grounds. It is useful, says he, in its tendency to subdue human arrogance; it represses the wisdom and cunning of human reason. We have generally observed, that whenever a learned divine denounces the arrogancy of reason, and insists on an humble submission to his own doctrines, that he has some absurdity which he wishes us to embrace; he feels a sort of internal consciousness that human reason is arrayed against him, and hence he abuses and vilifies it. But reason is not to be kept in due subordination by any such means. If sovereigns would maintain a legitimate authority over their subjects, they should bind them with wise and wholesome laws, and not with arbitrary and despotic enactments, which are so well calculated to engender hatred and rebellion. In like manner, the best possible way to tame the refractory reason of man, and hold it in subjection, is to bind it with the silken cords of divine truth, and not fetter it with the harsh and galling absurdities of man's invention. Melanchthon himself furnished a striking illustration of the justness of this remark; for although, like other reformers, he taught the doctrine of a divine fatality of all events, in order to humble the pride of the human intellect, his own reason afterward rebelled against it. He not only recanted the monstrous doctrine which made God the author of sin, but he openly combatted it.

In the writings of Beza and Zwingle there are passages, in relation to the origin of evil, more offensive, if possible, than any we have adduced from Calvin and Melanchthon. The mode in which the reformers defended their common doctrine was, with some few exceptions, the same in substance. They have said nothing which can serve to dispel, or even materially lessen, the stupendous cloud of difficulties which their scheme spreads over the moral government of God.

Considering the condition of the Church, the state of human knowledge, and, in short, all the circumstances of the times in which the reformers lived and acted, it is not very surprising that they should have fallen into such errors. The corruptions [pg 093] of human nature, manifesting themselves in the Romish Church, had so extravagantly exalted the powers of man, and especially of the priesthood, and so greatly depressed or obscured the sovereignty of God, that the reformers, in fighting against those abuses, were naturally forced into the opposite extreme. It is not at all wonderful, we say, that a reaction, which shook the very foundations of the earth, should have carried the authors of it beyond the bounds of moderation and truth. They would have been more than human if they had not fallen into some such errors as these which we have ascribed to them. But the great misfortune is, that these errors should have been stereotyped and fixed in the symbolical books of the Protestant Churches, and made to descend from the reformers to their children's children, as though they were of the very essence of the faith once delivered to the saints. This is the misfortune, the lamentable evil, which has furnished the Romish Church with its most powerful weapons of attack;[70] which has fortified the strongholds of atheism and infidelity; and which has, beyond all question, fearfully retarded the great and glorious cause of true religion.

If we would examine the most elaborate efforts to defend these doctrines, or rather the great central dogma of necessity from which they all radiate, we must descend to later times; we must turn our attention to the immortal writings of a Leibnitz and an Edwards.

Section II.

The attempt of Leibnitz to show that the scheme of necessity does not make God the author of sin.

This philosopher employed all the resources of a sublime genius, and all the stores of a vast erudition, in order to maintain the scheme of necessity, and at the same time vindicate the purity of the Divine Being. That subtle and adroit sceptic, M. Bayle, had drawn out all the consequences of the doctrine of necessity in opposition to the free-agency of man, and to the holiness of God. Leibnitz wrote his great “Essais de Théodicée,” for the purpose of refuting these conclusions of Bayle, as well as those of all other sceptics, and of reconciling his system with [pg 094] the divine attributes. In the preface to his work he says, “We show that evil has another source than the will of God; and that we have reason to say of moral evil, that God only permits it, and that he does not will it. But what is more important, we show that God can not only permit sin, but even concur therein, and contribute to it, without prejudice to his holiness; although, absolutely speaking, he might have prevented it.” Such is the task which Leibnitz has undertaken to perform; let us see how he has accomplished it.

“The ancients,” says he, “attributed the cause of evil to matter; but where shall we, who derive all things from God, find the source of evil?”[71] He has more than once answered this question, by saying that the source of evil is to be found in the ideas of the divine mind. “Chrysippus,” says he, “has reason to allege that vice comes from the original constitution of some spirits. It is objected to him that God has formed them; and he can only reply, that the imperfection of matter does not permit him to do better. This reply is good for nothing; for matter itself is indifferent to all forms, and besides God has made it. Evil comes rather from forms themselves, but abstract; that is to say, from ideas that God has not produced by an act of his will, no more than he has produced number and figures; and no more, in one word, than all those possible essences which we regard as eternal and necessary; for they find themselves in the ideal region of possibles; that is to say, in the divine understanding. God is then not the author of those essences, in so far as they are only possibilities; but there is nothing actual, but what he discerned and called into existence; and he has permitted evil, because it is enveloped in the best plan which is found in the region of possibles; that plan the supreme wisdom could not fail to choose. It is this notion which at once satisfies the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of God, and yet leaves room for the entrance of evil.”[72]

In reading the lofty speculations of Leibnitz, we have been often led to wonder how one, whose genius was so great, could have permitted himself to rest in conceptions which appear so vague and indistinct. In the above passage we have both light and obscurity; and we find it difficult to determine which predominates over the other. We are clearly told that God is not [pg 095] the author of evil, because this proceeds from abstract forms which were from all eternity enveloped in his understanding, and not from any operation of his will. But how does evil proceed from abstract forms; from the ideal region of the possible? Leibnitz does not mean that evil proceeds from abstract ideas, before they are embodied in the creation of real moral agents. Why then did God create beings which he knew from all eternity would commit sin? and why, having created them, did he contribute to their sins by a divine concourse? This is coming down from the ideal region of the possible, into the world of real difficulties.