A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

“Such reflections,” it has been urged, “afford as little ground for gratitude as for submission. Why do we feel grateful to God for those favours which are conferred on us by the agency of our fellow-men, except on the principle that they are instruments in his hand, who, without ‘offering the least violence to their wills, or taking away the liberty or contingency of second causes,’ hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, and upon them, whatsoever himself pleaseth? On any other ground, they would be worthy of the principal, and He of the secondary praise.”[156] True, if men are “only instruments in his hand,” we should give him all the praise; but we should never feel grateful to our earthly friends and benefactors. As we should not, on this hypothesis, be grateful for the greatest benefits conferred on us by our fellow-men; so, in the language of Hartley, and Belsham, and Diderot, we should never resent, nor censure, the greatest injuries committed by the greatest criminals. But on our principles, while we have infinite ground for gratitude to God, we also have some little room for gratitude to our fellow-men.

Section VI.

It may be contended, that it is unfair to urge the preceding difficulties against the scheme of necessity; inasmuch as the same, or as great, difficulties attach to the system of those by whom they are urged.

This is the great standing objection with all the advocates of necessity. Indeed, we sometimes find it conceded by the advocates of free-agency; of which concessions the opposite party are ever ready and eager to avail themselves. In the statement of this fact, I do not mean to complain of a zeal which all candid minds must acknowledge to be commendable on the part of the advocates of necessity. It is a fact, however, that the following language of Archbishop Whately, in relation to the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, is often quoted by them: “Let it be remembered, that it is not peculiar to any one theological system: let not therefore the Calvinist or the Arminian urge it as an objection against their respective adversaries; much less an objection clothed in offensive language, which will be found to recoil on their own religious tenets, as soon as it shall be perceived that both parties are alike unable to explain the difficulty; let them not, to destroy an opponent's system, rashly kindle a fire which will soon extend to the no less combustible structure of their own.”

No one can doubt the justice or wisdom of such a maxim; and it would be well if it were observed by all who may be disposed to assail an adversary's scheme with objections. Every such person should first ask himself whether his objection might not be retorted, or the shaft be hurled back with destructive force at the assailant. But although the remark of Archbishop Whately is both wise and just, it is not altogether so in its application to Archbishop King, or to other Arminians. For example, it is conceded by Dr. Reid, that he had not found the means of reconciling the existence of moral evil with the perfections of God; but is this any reason why he should not shrink with abhorrence from the doctrine of necessity which so clearly appeared to him to make God the direct and proper cause of moral evil? “We acknowledge,” says he, “that nothing can happen under the administration of the Deity which he does not permit. The permission of natural and moral evil is a phenomenon which cannot be disputed. To account [pg 224] for this phenomenon under the government of a Being of infinite goodness, has, in all ages, been considered as difficult to human reason, whether we embrace the system of liberty or that of necessity.” But because he could not solve this difficulty, must he therefore embrace, or at least cease to object against every absurdity which may be propounded to him? Because he cannot comprehend why an infinitely good Being should permit sin, does it follow that he should cease to protest against making God the proper cause and agent of all moral evil as well as good? In his opinion, the scheme of necessity does this; and hence he very properly remarks: “This view of the divine nature, the only one consistent with the scheme of necessity, appears to me much more shocking than the permission of evil upon the scheme of liberty. It is said, that it requires only strength of mind to embrace it: to me it seems to require much strength of countenance to profess it.” In this sentiment of Dr. Reid the moral sense and reason of mankind will, I have no doubt, perfectly concur. For although we may not be able to clear up the stupendous difficulties pertaining to the spiritual universe, this is no reason why we may be permitted to deepen them into absurdities, and cause them to bear, in the harshest and most revolting form, upon the moral sentiments of mankind.

The reason why Dr. Reid and others could not remove the great difficulty concerning the origin of evil is, as we have seen, because they proceeded on the supposition that God could create a moral system, and yet necessarily exclude all sin from it. This mistake, it seems to me, has already been sufficiently refuted, and the existence of moral evil brought into perfect accordance and harmony with the infinite holiness of God.

But it is strenuously insisted, in particular, that the divine foreknowledge of all future events establishes their necessity; and thus involves the advocates of that sublime attribute in all the difficulties against which they so loudly declaim. As I have examined this argument in another place,[157] I shall not dwell upon it here, but content myself with a few additional remarks. The whole strength of this argument in favour of necessity arises from the assumption, that if God foresees the future volitions of men, they must be bound together with other [pg 225] things according to the mechanism of cause and effect; that is to say that God could not foresee the voluntary acts of men, unless they should be necessitated by causes ultimately connected with his own will. Accordingly, this bold position is usually assumed by the advocates of necessity. But to say that God could not foreknow future events, unless they are indissolubly connected together, seems to be a tremendous flight for any finite mind; and especially for those who are always reminding us of the melancholy fact of human blindness and presumption. Who shall set limits to the modes of knowledge possessed by an infinite, all-comprehending mind? Who shall tell how God foresees future events? Who shall say it must be in this or that particular way, or it cannot be at all?

Let the necessitarian prove his assumption, let him make it clear that God could not foreknow future events unless they are necessitated, and he will place in the hands of the sceptic the means of demonstrating, with absolute and uncontrollable certainty, that God does not foreknow all future events at all, that he does not foresee the free voluntary acts of the human mind. For we do know, as clearly as we can possibly know anything, not even excepting our own existence, or the existence of a God, that we are free in our volitions, that they are not necessitated; and hence, according to the assumption in question, God could not foresee them. If the sceptic could see what the necessitarian affirms, he might proceed from what he knows, by a direct and irresistible process, to a denial of the foreknowledge of God, in relation to human volitions.

But fortunately the assumption of the necessitarian is not true. By the fundamental laws of human belief, we know that our acts are not necessitated; and hence, we infer that as God foresees them all, he may do so without proceeding from cause to effect, according to the method of finite minds. We thus reason from the known to the unknown; from the clear light of facts around us up to the dark question concerning the possibility of the modes in relation to the divine prescience. We would not first settle this question of possibility, we would not say that God cannot foreknow except in one particular way, and then proceed to reason from such a postulate against the clearest facts in the universe. No logic, and especially no logic based upon so obscure a foundation, shall ever be permitted to [pg 226] extinguish for us the light of facts, or convert the universal intelligence of man into a falsehood.