#306 Does Creation Imply Moral Improvement?

Dr. craig’s response

I’m so pleased, Eric, that your antagonism toward your former faith is waning. It’s so unnecessary. It seems that many ex-Christians have been raised in environments that were dysfunctional, anti-intellectual, and even emotionally abusive. Not only does the historic Christian faith have so much more to offer than that, but the contemporary renaissance in Christian philosophy affords an opportunity for believers to drink deeply from the well of serious Christian thought.

You have correctly characterized classical Christian theism as holding that God is a maximally great being. Since God is a morally perfect being, I’m inclined to agree with you that the addition of states of finite goodness cannot increase the overall goodness of reality. Adding quantities of goodness to God’s goodness is rather like adding finite quantities to the actual infinite: for any natural number n, ℵ0 + n = ℵ0. The infinite just swallows up any finite number added to it, leaving us with just infinity. So the state of affairs consisting of (God + creatures) is no morally better than the state of affairs consisting of just (God).

Notice that this does not imply that we cannot compare finite states of affairs with each other in terms of their moral goodness. Just as we can compare natural numbers in terms of their quantity, so we can compare finite states of affairs in terms of their moral goodness. So it is unproblematic for theists to say that “God allows evil because he has morally sufficient reasons to do. These reasons are such that allowing evil brings about a morally better state of affairs, e.g., it is better for humans to have free will to choose between good and evil than it would be if we were causally determined to choose the good.” Here the contrast is between two finite states of affairs in terms of their moral goodness. It is better for human beings to be endowed with freedom of the will and, hence, to be moral agents than to be mere puppets or machines.

What does follow from what we have said, I think, is that God’s motive for creation cannot be to morally improve the overall state of reality. But it is no part of Christian theism to say that God’s motivation for creation was to make reality morally better. Rather, as I have explained elsewhere (e.g., QoW #172), it is plausible that God’s motive for creation is to bestow inestimable benefit upon creatures, namely, the benefit of knowing God, Who is Goodness itself. This is not to say that a world in which God creates creatures is overall morally better than a world in which He refrains from creation. Not at all; given God’s perfect goodness such a world is not morally better than a world in which God remains alone. That’s why God is not morally compelled to create such a world. Rather creation, like salvation, is simply by grace.

You say, “No moral purpose is served by creating beings with free will to choose evil that is not already fulfilled by God's goodness alone.” I’m not sure what you mean by “moral purpose.” Denying that God’s purpose in creation is to morally improve the overall state of reality does not imply that God does not act with moral purposes. For example, it is morally better for there to be persons with the freedom to choose evil than for there to be mere brutes. That seems to be a moral purpose for creating such persons rather than brutes. We might even affirm that it is morally better that creatures with free will exist than that no such creatures exist. That would provide a moral purpose for creating them. What remains correct, however, is that the purpose of creation cannot be to morally improve the overall state of reality. But since I do not think that that is the purpose of creation, such a conclusion is inconsequential.

So God created you and me, Eric, in order that we might experience the wonder and joy of knowing Him forever, the source of infinite goodness and love. That is a wonderful prospect!