Must God Choose the Best?

 Dr. Craig gives a video lecture for the Ukrainian Academy exploring the alleged incoherence of divine freedom and perfection. Must God Choose the Best?

Hello, this is William Lane Craig. Today I would like to talk with you about the question, “Must God Choose the Best?”

Christians believe that God is both free and morally perfect. But some contemporary philosophers have argued that God’s freedom and God’s moral perfection are logically incompatible with each other and that therefore a logical incoherence exists at the very heart of traditional theism.^[1] It would follow that God, as traditionally conceived, does not exist. Therefore, addressing this challenge is of paramount importance.

The objection takes the form of a dilemma for traditional theism: either there is a best possible world or there is not. If there is a best possible world, then God, being morally perfect, must choose it. But then God is not free to refrain from bringing about such a world. On the other hand, if there is no best possible world, then for any world that God might choose, there is always a better world that He could have chosen instead. But then it is possible for someone to be better than God is, since he could have chosen to bring about a better world than God did. Therefore, God is not morally perfect. Thus, we must reject either God’s freedom or God’s moral perfection.

We can formulate the objection as follows:^[2]

1. Either there is a best possible world or there is an infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds.

2. If there is a best possible world, then God is not free to refrain from choosing that world.

3. If there is an infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds, then God is not perfectly good.

4. Therefore, either God is not free or God is not perfectly good.

I think we may agree that denying God’s freedom or perfect goodness is not a viable escape route and therefore we must challenge the premises of the argument.^[3]

But first, it will be helpful to clear up some ambiguity as to what is meant by a “possible world” in the context of this argument. Typically, by a possible world, one means a maximal state of affairs that is broadly logically possible. But in the context of this argument the term is used more restrictedly. It seems to me that the best candidates for God’s choices are the different divine creative decrees that God might make, some of which are said to be better than others. One can compare the various decrees available to God in order to determine which, if any, decree is the best.

Even so, an important ambiguity remains. In speaking of God’s creative decree, we may be thinking either of the content of the decree, in which case we are referring to God’s various options, or of God’s act of decreeing, in which case we are referring to God’s choice of an option. The distinction is important because the connection between the value of God’s options and the value of His choices is crucial for the argument. So the force of (1) seems to be that in terms of God’s options there is either a best decree that God could have made or else an infinite hierarchy of ever better decrees. Either horn of this dilemma is said to be unacceptable for the traditional theist.

It seems to me that the first horn of the dilemma is easily challenged. In response to (2), the theist may reject the claim that the necessity of God’s choice is incompatible with its being free. It seems to be a widely accepted principle among philosophers that if a best option is available to an agent, then a perfectly rational and good agent will choose that option.^[4] Many theists believe that if there is a best possible option available to God, then in virtue of His perfect goodness God will necessarily choose that option.

If we concede this principle for the sake of argument, the question remains whether God’s necessarily choosing the best option is compatible with His freedom. It seems to me that it is. In the first place, there is no reason whatsoever to think that there is exactly one best possible decree that God might issue. There is very plausibly an indefinite range of decrees available to God which are equally good and unsurpassable.^[5] In other words, there could be many options tied for best. This fact is especially plausible in light of the fact that the range of options available to God are those which are feasible to Him in light of the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom describing how free agents would act in any circumstances in which God might place them. Even if God must choose the best, He still enjoys enormous, perhaps unlimited, freedom to choose among various options.^[6]

Moreover, and more importantly, God’s freedom of choice is plausibly compatible with His choosing necessarily. Libertarian freedom does not entail the ability to do otherwise but rather the absence of external causal factors determining one’s choice.^[7] Just as God has the power to perform a sinful act but necessarily will not, so He has the power to bring about less than the best even if necessarily He will not in virtue of His perfect goodness. God’s range of options being restricted by His perfect goodness is no more an inhibition of His freedom than of His power. The objector might protest at this point that we must then maintain with Leibniz that the actual world with all its evil and suffering is the best possible world, a conclusion that exposed Leibniz to ridicule.^[8] But as Alvin Plantinga explains, Leibniz’s failure to distinguish between broadly logically possible worlds and feasible worlds was precisely “Leibniz’s Lapse.”^[9] When philosophers say that there is no best possible world, they are typically thinking of possible worlds in broadly logical terms. It is, indeed, plausible that there is no best possible world(s) in this sense. But if, as previously indicated, our concern is not with ranking broadly logically possible worlds but rather worlds feasible for God to decree, then it is less obvious that there is not a tier of best feasible worlds. Once we focus our attention on worlds that are feasible for God, it is far from clear that there are better worlds than the actual world which are feasible for God.

Thus the theist need not be worried about the first horn of the dilemma.

But suppose that there is no best feasible world that God might have chosen. Are we then cast onto the second horn of the dilemma, that there is an infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds that God might have decreed? Not at all, for the dilemma is, in fact, a false one.

A good many philosophers have defended the plausibility of the so-called Incommensurability Thesis, the thesis that possible worlds (or feasible worlds or divine decrees) might be incommensurable in their value and, therefore, literally incomparable. Alexander Pruss identifies a number of factors that could contribute to such incommensurability, including a having mélange of moral and aesthetic values in worlds that makes it impossible to rank worlds in a single hierarchy.^[10] Pruss’ claim that various possible worlds are incommensurable in their overall value strikes me as extremely plausible. It does not preclude some worlds’ being better than others but merely a single, limitless hierarchy of ever better worlds. There could be multiple such hierarchies. I do not see how objectors can rule out the incommensurability of various feasible worlds, so as to maintain that if there is not a best feasible world there must be a single, infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds.

But let us consider (3) on its own merits. This is the argument’s most interesting and challenging premiss. If there is no best option, then God is logically required to choose an option while knowing that there is a better. No matter which option He chooses, there is always a better option which He could have taken.^[11] This fact is said to call into question God’s perfection. The key assumption behind the argument is:

A. If an omniscient being chooses an option when there is a better option that it could have chosen, then it is possible that there exists a being morally better than it.

Is (A) true?

This raises a question about two connections: first, what is the connection between the worth of an action and the worth of its consequences and, second, what is the connection between the worth of an agent and the worth of his actions? As Thomas Morris says, “Simply put, the idea seems to be that, all else equal, the better the product, the better the act; the better the act the better the agent.”^[12] Both of these connections, however, are questionable.

Bruce Langtry would sever the supposedly necessary connection between the worth of an action and the worth of the consequences of that action. He argues that in every limitless hierarchy of creatable worlds there are infinitely many pairs of worlds W and W* such that W is better than W*, yet an omniscient being’s creating W need not be a morally better action than his creating W*.^[13] Thus, God’s decreeing a better feasible world than another need not be a better action.

Morris, on the other hand, would sever the allegedly necessary connection between the goodness of an action and the goodness of the agent who performs it. He notes that agents who perform different acts of supererogation may be equally good even if one of their supererogatory acts is of greater value than that of another.^[14] Morris denies “the inference that if God could have done better, God would have been better.”^[15] But without such an inference, the objection fails.

Critics like Langtry and Morris deny that it is inevitably a moral defect to fail to choose better than one does, when it is logically impossible to choose the best. The critics are committed to no stronger a claim than:

(B) Failing to choose better than one does is necessarily a defect only if choosing the best is possible for one to do.

That principle seems quite plausible. There are cases where failing to choose better than one does would be a defect, but not always. In claiming that it is impossible that God be morally perfect if He chooses an option than which there is a better, the objector must deny (B), the falsity of which is far from obvious. Therefore, despite the initial plausibility of (A), its plausibility drops dramatically when contextualized within a limitless hierarchy of ever better options.^[16]

Fortunately for the Christian theologian, the issues raised by premiss (3) overlap significantly with secular decision theory, which is a field of study exploring both normative and descriptive accounts of how decisions are rationally made. Decision theorists wrestling with the question of what a rational agent should do when faced with a hierarchy of ever better options point out that general principles of decision-making can be overridden in specific cases by countervailing considerations. For example, it would normally be better to choose a better option if such an option is available. But that general principle is subverted when one is confronted with a limitless hierarchy of ever better options.^[17] Then one finds oneself in the admittedly uncomfortable situation of choosing an option even though one knows that a better option is always available. In the literature this is called “satisficing.”^[18] Decision theory plausibly requires rational agents to satisfice when faced with a limitless hierarchy of ever better options. Suppose, for example, that a genie offers to prolong your life for any finite number of good days, to be chosen by you.^[19] Someone might point out that for any number n that you might pick, you would be better off if you picked n+1 instead. What to do? Langtry answers: “You should satisfice--that is, choose a number that will secure an outcome which is good enough. Indeed, you are rationally required to do so. Satisficing will lead to a better outcome for you than failing to satisfice.”^[20] To refuse to satisfice is inconsistent with the obvious truth that you should select some number, rather than walk away from the offer. In foregoing a better option, one exhibits no defect or lack in rationality.

The foregoing illustration concerns the rationality of satisficing. What about the morality of satisficing? If one satisfices, is one thereby morally less good than one might have been? Analogous situations suggest not. For example, Dean Zimmerman imagines the case of an ideal gambler whose bets are a function of his confidence in the outcome: the more confident he is, the more money he bets.^[21] So imagine that someone is willing to bet him that 2+2 = 5. In this case he has to pick some finite amount of money to bet, knowing that he could always bet more. But his choice of a certain amount to bet is no expression of a lack of confidence in the outcome. Similarly God’s choice of an option than which there is a better is not an indication of a lack of perfect goodness.

Even more analogous to God’s case would be the case of an ideal philanthropist who can bestow any finite amount of money on his beneficiaries. The fact that he must pick some finite amount, always knowing that he could have picked a greater amount, is no infraction of his generosity. In the same way, God’s choice of a good world to bring about is no detraction from His goodness, even though by the very nature of the case He could have chosen a better world instead. Thus, it is possible for even a morally perfect being to choose less than the best when the options are limitlessly ever better.

Langtry also provides an ethical variant of his thought experiment. Suppose that you are the guardian of a child and are morally obligated to act in that child’s best interests. The genie offers to prolong the child’s life for any finite number of good days, to be chosen by you. What should you do? He says, “An argument similar to the one above leads to the conclusion that, morally speaking, you should satisfice for the sake of the child.”^[22] A plausible decision theory will recommend that moral agents “select some good state of affairs even though they could select a better one.”^[23]

Langtry agrees that in order for a wise choice among options to be possible there must be standards of acceptability and guidelines for choosers. In Langtry’s longevity illustration, for example, it would be irrational to choose just one year of prolonged life; rather we should choose a number which is high enough. But in such cases there comes a point at which one is not morally better for picking n+1 rather than n for the number of days. Any such number Langtry deems “admissible.” Where is the “cut off” line?

Our answer will depend, says Langtry, on our assumptions about the values whereby our options are ranked. Are they such as to permit us to delineate options which are “good enough” from those that are not?^[24] Langtry proposes that a world is good enough if it is “non-disappointing” in light of the values that underlie the ranking of worlds and, moreover, is abundantly better than those worlds that barely escape being disappointing.^[25] This language, however, can be misleading. In one sense a world in which even one sinner is lost is disappointing to God. But such a world may still be, in Chris Tucker’s terminology, “choice worthy.”^[26] What is meant by “disappointing” in this context is “not choice worthy.” “Worlds” that are not choice worthy will be so because they are inconsistent with God’s nature as a perfectly just and loving being. Seen in this light, such options are not really possible worlds after all, since they are incompatible with God’s nature and so not actualizable. There are, in fact, no worlds which are disappointing to God in this sense. Any world which is consistent with God’s perfectly just and loving nature is acceptable and choice worthy.^[27] If there are ever better feasible worlds, God may freely satisfice, for they are all good enough. Even the least valuable world compatible with God’s perfect nature will be a very good world, and so God exhibits no defect in selecting it.

Daniel Rubio reminds us that we should be cautious about overturning plausible judgements with the theories that we construct. “If we find a formal theory that looks good, but does not cohere with our judgments about cases, we should look for an alternative theory that does so cohere. It should take a very powerful result, like an inability to find any coherent theory of value that affirms our judgment, before we abandon intuition at some formal theory’s say-so.”^[28] This seems to me precisely the case with the objection based upon the theoretical principle (A). It seems to me that the satisficing scenario concerning what a perfect being might indefectibly do, when faced with a choice among a limitless hierarchy of options, is very plausible and trumps principle (A).

In summary then, whether we adopt the position that there is a best of all feasible worlds or not, there is no good reason to infer that God’s freedom and perfection are incompatible. If there is a best feasible world that God decrees, He does so freely, since He decrees as He does in the absence of external causally determining factors or irrational impulses. Moreover, given the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom with which God must work, the actual world might be, for all we know, the best world feasible for God. But even if there is no best feasible world, it is very plausible that God’s available options are incommensurable, so that He is confronted neither with a best world nor with an infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds. And even if He is confronted with such a single, ordered hierarchy, satisficing is a popular and well-defended strategy among decision theorists which God may adopt without sullying His moral character. The claim that an agent is morally imperfect because he chooses an option when he knows there is a better option is subverted by the presence of a limitless hierarchy of ever better options. By severing the supposedly necessary connection between the goodness of an option and the goodness of an action or, alternatively, between the goodness of an action and the goodness of an agent, we preserve God’s goodness when choosing from a limitless hierarchy of ever better divine decrees.