Can God do Evil?

Abstract

Professor Geach claims that no sense can be made of the proposition that God can do evil.1 I think, contrariwise, that the proposition has a plausible and coherent interpretation, as well as an interpretation on which it is logically inconsistent. 'A can b' may mean either 'It lies in A's power to +'2 or 'There is some possibility that A will +'. The former does not entail the latter, and there is no inconsistency in saying 'It lies in God's power to do evil, but there is no possibility, not even a logical possibility, that he will exercise that power'. Geach refers to Richard Price's argument3 that unless God can do evil he is not a free moral agent, therefore there must be some infinitesimal chance that God will do evil. I think Geach is right to reject Price's conclusion, but he does not see where Price has gone wrong. Price mistakenly tries to explain the 'can' of capacity in terms of the 'can' of relative likelihood. Geach does not recognize distinct senses of 'can' in speaking of what God can do. He says it makes no sense to attribute bodily powers to God as we do to men; which is correct but irrelevant, since if a bodiless agent can act at all it can act badly. Geach rightly expects us to be shocked by the idea that God might tell lies or break his promises. Perhaps he expects us to be shocked also by the idea that God might be guilty of non-moral faults; might, in dictating Holy Writ, commit solecisms or make weak jokes, or might be perfunctory in his government of inanimate creation. But there is nothing impious in ascribing to God the ability to act badly, for abilities are not tendencies. The power to sin neither is nor involves moral infirmity; the power to mis-spell or indite ungrammatically neither is nor involves illiteracy. To say that someone has the ability to + is to say that, given circumstances favourable to M-ing, anything which prevents the person from 0-ing is something which makes him want not to j4. Since God is almighty, his will being completely unconstrained by circumstances, what prevents him from doing wrong can only be something which makes him want not to do it. He does only what is good and right, not because he lacks the ability to do anything else but because he wills not to do anything else. It might be said: if God cannot will evil he cannot do evil, and he cannot