[1] How ought we conceive of the relationship between God and the world? Over the past twenty-five years, no philosopher of religion has discussed more aspects of this question than William Hasker. Providence, Evil and the Openness of God is an excellent collection of some of his most original, influential thinking on such issues.
[2] The book is divided into two parts. In Chapters 1–5, Hasker defends orthodox theism (specifically the belief that the world was freely created by an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God) against the claim that the amount and types of evil we experience render this belief in some way suspect. In Chapters 6–11, Hasker discusses a recent, increasingly popular conceptualization of the relationship between God and the world labeled Open Theism, comparing and contrasting it with three other models: Theological Determinism, Molinism, and Process Theism.
[3] Chapter 1 is a response to what is sometimes called the existential problem of evil: the moral indignation felt by those who believe that a good God would surely have done more to minimize the evil in this world than has been done. Hasker argues that since the elimination of the past evils the critic has in mind would probably have changed the world to the extent that the critic and those she loves would never have existed, the critic who prefers her own existence, and the existence of those she loves, to their non-existence cannot morally fault God for causing or permitting the world to be as it is.
[4] Chapter 2 is Hasker’s attempt at a theodicy – his attempt to offer possible reasons why God might have created a world containing the evil this world does contain. What he settles on is a modified version of John Hick’s soul-making theodicy. The exercise of morally significant freedom and character growth outweighs, he believes, the attendant moral evils. And since it is reasonable to believe that the functioning of the world in accordance with natural law, with its attendant natural evils, is necessary for the morally significant lives of human beings and for the process of soul-making, God is justified in creating and sustaining it without frequent miraculous interference.
[5] Hasker acknowledges that such a theodicy is based on intuitions that not all will share. But unless this theodicy can be refuted, the claim that evil (especially natural evil) provides a reason for rejecting theism is, he argues, unwarranted.
[6] Chapters 3–5 are concerned with what is called the evidential problem of evil: If there is a good God, the only evil permitted to exist would be that which was required for a greater good that could not be obtained without it. But there is abundant evidence that much of the evil we experience is not a necessary means to a greater good. So it is doubtful that God exists.
[7] In Chapter 3, Hasker considers the popular theistic response, offered by such philosophers as Stephen Wykstra and William Alston, that our cognitive powers are too limited to identify what would count as justifying goods for the world’s evils. Hasker rejects this approach because he believes it entails a wide-ranging skepticism that would undermine certain beliefs that we do want to hold, for instance, certain beliefs about evils we think the world would be better off without.
[8] Chapters 4 and 5 are discussions of whether a good God would be obligated to prevent all gratuitous evil (evil that God could prevent without losing a greater good or permitting some other equal or greater evil). Hasker believes not. We can only have morally significant lives, he argues, if we can choose between good and evil, and such choice would not be possible if God were always to prevent gratuitous moral and natural evil. Moreover, he adds, it would be dishonest of God to allow us to believe our choices could produce gratuitous evil if they really couldn’t.
[9] Chapters 6 gives the reader a good introduction to Hasker’s understanding of Open (or Free-will) Theism. With respect to God’s power, we are told, Open Theism is distinct from both Theological Determinism and Process Theism. While Theological Determinism claims not only that God can but also does control everything, including free human choice, and Process Theism claims that God cannot unilaterally control anything, Open Theism claims that while God could control everything, since to grant humans meaningful freedom is to grant them the right to go against what God would have them do, to the extent that God grants humans freedom, God voluntarily gives up control over what will occur in this world.
[10] With respect to God’s knowledge, we are told, proponents of Open Theism agree that God is omniscient in the sense that God knows all that can be known. But while those who believe God has Middle Knowledge believe that God knows not only all that has occurred, is occurring, and will occur, but also all that would actually occur (even freely) in any possible context, and while those who believe that God has Simple Foreknowledge believe that God knows all that has occurred, is occurring, and will actually occur, proponents of Open Theism have a more restrictive understanding of what can be known. Since it is logically impossible for God to have foreknowledge of a genuinely free action in a libertarian sense, to the extent that God has granted humans libertarian freedom, God cannot know infallibly in advance how things will turn out. This doesn’t mean that God cannot know with great certainty any future states of affairs. God can know some or much of what will follow from the natural laws he has put in place. God can know what God has decided he will do apart from human choice, and God can predict some or much of what humans will freely do, especially in the short-term. But to the extent that God grants humans freedom, the future in many important respects remains open from God’s perspective too.
[11] Finally, with respect to God’s ‘emotional nature,’ Hasker points out, proponents of Open Theism disagree with the historic theistic claim that God is impassible (unfeeling). God is not only affected by what occurs, God is affected by what occurs when it occurs since God did not foreknow exactly what would be occurring.
[12] In short, as Hasker sees it, to be an Open Theist is to see God open to creatures, open to the world, and open to the future. There is no perfect, predetermined plan for us or the world that God is actualizing. There is significant risk involved, both for us and God. But God is with us in time, ready to respond to at each stage of the temporal process based on what has occurred prior to that stage. Moreover, God can unilaterally intervene if necessary to keep things on track in a very general sense. This Hasker finds not only a plausible, defensible position, but an exciting, dynamic, existentially satisfying understanding of the God-world relationship.
[13] In Chapters 7, 8 and 10, Hasker argues that Open Theism offers a more satisfactory response to the problem of evil than do the other God-world relationship models. Since Theological Determinists believe that God controls all earthly activity, including free human choice, they must acknowledge that all evil is a necessary part of God’s preordained plan. But this, Hasker believes, is very counter-intuitive on two points. First, it makes it difficult to understand why God would seem to speak against that which he has ordained should occur. And second, it makes it difficult to understand how humans can be held morally responsible for the evils they produce.
[14] Since Molinists (those who affirm MK) are libertarians, they escape some of the problems inherent in Theological Determinism. Specifically, they can circumvent to some extent the question of human responsibility. But Molinists believe that God’s pre-creative knowledge of all counterfactuals of freedom – of what anyone would in fact do if granted freedom in any possible context – enables God to insure that much of what he would have occur will in fact occur. So we still have the problem of why God would sanction so much evil God speaks out against.
[15] However, the God of Open Theism, Hasker points out, neither causally determined the evils we experience nor ensured their actualization by his pre-creative knowledge of what would occur given all his creative options. Since God has granted his creatures libertarian freedom and does not know in advance the outcome of their choices, it can rightly be said that the detailed consequences of these choices (some of which resulted in evil) were not foreseen and thus not necessarily intended. And this he sees as an immense advantage.
[16] Chapter 9 is Hasker’s response to a standard criticism of the Open response to evil set forth by Process Theists: Surely a good God who had the power to intervene more frequently in earthly affairs would do so. What we find here is a revisiting of what Hasker has said in relation to gratuitous evil in earlier chapters. Frequent or routine divine intervention might well negate many of the purposes for which the world was created (for instance, to bring about a rich, intricate, closely-interrelated natural order). And while it might seem easy to identify isolated cases where divine intervention would have been of value, no one has as of yet set forth objective criteria in relation to which it can be said that a good God, all things considered, would have been obligated to intervene.
[17] In Chapter 11, Hasker discusses God’s moral nature. As he sees it, God’s moral goodness should not be conceived of as a requirement that God create the best possible world, in part because there is no such thing but also because it’s wrong to conceive of God as omnibenevolent in this sense. God, Hasker maintains, is a loving, gracious being who, though under no obligation to create, chose out of love for his creatures to create a world in which he is in dynamic interaction with them. All that is required is that God create a world that is good, and this he has done.
[18] The Appendix is said to be a reply to critics of open theism, but some of the issues discussed (for instance, the question of whether simple foreknowledge is useless, the question of whether counterfactuals need grounds, and the question of whether God can be both good and free) have little direct bearing on the open view of God and are at points elaborations on what has been covered in other chapters. Other issues discussed (for instance, the question of whether God can relate to us personally), are directly related to Open Theism but are primarily elaborations on what is covered in other chapters.
[19] But there is one significant issue that is addressed for the first time: the question of whether the God of open theism can give us a reliable revelation. Specifically, Hasker considers how a God who cannot control free human choice and does not know beforehand what such choice will be can insure that the scriptural authors could include no unacceptable material in the texts without negating the authors’ agency as free and responsible persons. Hasker’s suggestion is that if the authors were voluntarily open to God’s leading, God would not be violating their freedom by working in their minds and hearts to insure that his message was truthfully conveyed, for example, by bringing to mind what should be said or inhibiting an author from writing what was incompatible with God’s revelatory purpose.
[20] All of these essays are well-written and closely argued. And since I, too, am an open theist, I happen to agree with many of Hasker’s conclusions. But I do not at all points consider his framing of the questions adequate or his conclusions correct. Let me briefly mention three.
[21] First, I think it is somewhat misleading and unhelpful to collapse Open Theism and Free-will Theism into one category. As I understand the way these terms are usually defined, Free-will Theism is a category related to God’s power. While Theological Determinists believe that God not only can but does control all, and Process Theists believe that God could not unilaterally intervene even if he desired to do so, Free-will Theists believe that while God can unilaterally intervene and could control all, God has voluntarily granted humans significant freedom and therefore has voluntarily given up control over much of what occurs. The key point here is that Free-will Theism, defined this way, is neutral on whether God possesses Middle Knowledge, Simple Foreknowledge, or Present Knowledge (the belief that God, as Open Theists hold, does not possess infallible knowledge of future free choices). Hasker personally believes that God cannot have foreknowledge of what humans will freely do, so for him, only Open Theism, with its affirmation of Present Knowledge, can be rightly considered Free-will Theism. But not all Free-will Theists, or even all Open Theists, agree that divine foreknowledge and libertarian human freedom are incompatible, so I think it more helpful to see Open Theism as a subset of Free-will Theism (as a variant of Free-will Theism that rejects divine foreknowledge).
[22] Second, let me just mention a long-standing disagreement between Hasker and me on the providential power of Middle Knowledge. As Hasker sees it, a God who has always known what we will freely do if given freedom in any given context could, by creating a world with the ‘right’ contexts, have insured that much of what he wanted would be freely accomplished. I, on the other hand, am much less certain. Since God had no control over the truth-value of the pre-creative counterfactuals of freedom in question, whether a God with Middle Knowledge had available to him actualizable worlds that contained most of what he wanted seems to me much less certain. For instance, if we assume the Christian beliefs that God wants all to be saved and yet that many have chosen freely to reject God’s path to salvation, then it seems to me that a God with Middle Knowledge in fact fell short of achieving at least one very significant creative goal.
[23] Finally, I’m somewhat troubled by Hasker’s claim that since the elimination of the past evils the critic has in mind would probably have changed the world to the extent that the critic and those she loves would never had existed, the critic who prefers her own existence, and the existence of those she loves, to their non-existence cannot morally fault God for causing or permitting the world to be as it is.
[24] Consider the following situation. A mother has a husband who is sexually abusing their 13-year-old daughter. She knows that this is occurring but chooses not to intervene by calling the authorities although she has it in her power to do so. Let us further assume that when the daughter eventually becomes pregnant, the wife finally has the husband removed from the house and helps her daughter, who is encountering significant psychological problems, raise the child. Finally, let us assume that the daughter is eventually able to regain her life, marries, and that she, her mother, and the child all live lives that they admit are on balance good.
[25] Does, however, the fact that they are now happy (that they prefer their existence to their non-existence) mean that they cannot justifiably wish the abuse had not occurred? That is, does the fact that the daughter and child believe that their lives are on balance worth living mean that they cannot consistently maintain that the mother was not justified in allowing the abuse to occur when she could have prevented it? It seems to me the answer is clearly no. In short, to generalize, I don’t see as a general rule why one cannot maintain that a current state of existence is on balance good (even be very happy that things are presently as they are) while at the same time maintaining that some of necessary conditions for this current state should not have been allowed to occur if someone could have stopped them. And if one can maintain this, then one can in a morally consistent manner claim both that those who could have acted differently in the past should have at times done so while also living as full participants in this world (even if ‘this world’ would not exist if those past events had not occurred).
[26] And the same, I think, is true for the person raising the existential problem of evil. She, as I see it, can consistently argue that a good God should not have allowed certain things while at the same time be happy to be alive and living as a full participant in this world. To argue otherwise is, I believe, to assume a strictly utilitarian moral perspective in a context in which a deontological perspective (what is right is not dependent on future consequences) seems to me more appropriate.
[27] However, as I said at the beginning, for anyone interested in current philosophical discussions of the relationship between God and the world, this is a very helpful collection of essays.