Why Plantinga Must Move from Defense to Theodicy

Abstract

In his numerous writings on the Will Alvin Plantinga has taken pains to emphasize that he is not engaged in theodicy. In God, Freedom, and Evil, for instance, Plantinga wrote as follows: Quite distinct from a Free Will Theodicy is what I shall call a Free Will Defense. Here the aim is not to say what God's reason is [for permitting evil], but at most what God's reason might possibly be.1 The Free Will Defense proposes then, that it is possible that God could not create a world containing moral good without creating one with moral evil as well. This possibility hinges, of course, on the further notion that moral good can be produced only by persons who are free in the libertarian sense. It is libertarian freedom which raises the possibility that God might not be able to create a world with moral good, but without moral evil. Now the question I want to pursue is whether Plantinga must be committed to libertarian freedom, given his view of God's goodness. It is not altogether clear whether or not Plantinga himself thinks he is required to accept libertarian freedom. He is quite clear, however, that he need not believe the proposition he suggests to save theism from the charge of contradiction, namely, that God could not have created a world containing moral good, but no moral evil. In order to save theism from contradiction, one needs only to identify some proposition which is compatible with the claim that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good, and which entails that there is evil in the world. The proposition one identifies need not be true or even plausible. Indeed, the proposition can do the job even if we know it is false.2