Nor, again, is it difficult to suggest what this object may have been. For unless man is a free being, he can be little better than a machine—a correctly-behaved machine, no doubt, and one able to talk and think, but still only a machine. And God may not have wished that man, who is, as far as we know, His highest and noblest work, should be only a machine. Indeed, the superiority of free men who act right, though they might act wrong, to mere machines is obvious to everyone; and it may far outweigh the disadvantage that some of them should act wrong. Therefore, though we have to pay dearly for freedom, it is well worth the price; and the infinite value of goodness, as it is called, may justify, though nothing else could, the risks involved in giving man a free will.
Nor is there anything unlikely in the Creator thus caring about the conduct of His creatures. We certainly should not admire an earthly ruler who regarded traitors to his cause, and his most faithful adherents with the same indifference; or an earthly parent who did not care whether his children obeyed him or not. Why, then, should we think that God, Who has not only given us free will, but also a conscience by which to know what is right (i.e., what is His will), should yet be indifferent as to whether we do it or not? Everything points the other way, that God, Who is a Moral Being, and Who has made us moral beings also, wishes us to freely act right. Therefore He allows us to act wrong, with all the misery it involves, in order to render possible our thus freely choosing to act right.
Or to put the argument in other words, a free being is far higher than a being who is not free, and yet a free being cannot exist without the possibility of his acting wrong. So, however strange the conclusion appears, moral evil, or at least its possibility, is essential to the universe, if it is to be worthy of its Creator, if, that is, it is to contain beings of the highest order—persons and not things. Or, to put it still shorter, if God is good, it is only natural that He should create beings capable of goodness, and therefore of necessity capable of badness, for the two must go together.
And if it be still urged that, as God foreknew how men would use their freedom, He need not have created those who would habitually use it wrongly; in other words, there might be no wicked men in the world, the answer is obvious. Wicked men are as necessary as any other form of evil to test a man's character, and to develop moral perfection. For just as physical evil, pain, suffering, etc., can alone render possible certain physical virtues, such as fortitude and patience; so moral evil, or sin, can alone render possible certain moral virtues.
If, for instance, there were no sin in the world there could be no forbearance with the faults of others, no moral courage in standing alone for an unpopular cause, no forgiveness of injuries, nor (what is perhaps the highest of all virtues) any rendering good for evil. These require not merely the possibility, but the actual existence of sin, and they would all be unattainable if we had nothing but physical evils to contend with, and there were only good men in the world. The case then stands thus. Evil men are essential to an evil world. An evil world is essential to proving a man's character. Proving a man's character is essential to his freely choosing to serve God; and his freely choosing to serve God seems essential to his being such a servant as God would care to have.
One other point should be noticed before we conclude. It is that with regard to the conduct of free beings, foreknowing is not the same as foreordaining. God may have foreknown how a man would use or misuse his freedom, but without foreordaining or compelling him to do either. In the same way, in human affairs it is possible in some cases, and to some extent, to foreknow what a man will do, but without in any way compelling him to do it. This is a most important distinction, and we have no reason for thinking that God foreordained any man to misuse his freedom, though He may have foreknown that he would do so.[7]
[7] Of course if God creates a man, foreknowing how he will act, He may, in a certain sense, be said to foreordain it as well; compare Rom. 8. 29. "Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained."