The problem of evil under a finite God
Mormonism buys a better answer to 'why does God allow evil?' by giving up the guarantee that God can fix it.
What the Church claims
An all-loving, all-powerful Heavenly Father designed mortality, with its evils, as the necessary and sufficient path to a fulness of joy.
Once the evidence is in, this claim: Contested. LDS theology answers the logical version of the problem better than classical theism does, because a God working within uncreated law is not the author of that law. The claim as worded does not get that benefit: it asserts design and omnipotence together, which brings back the question of why this much suffering was necessary. Contested, and the gap is between the philosophers and the pulpit.
The record
- David Paulsen argues Joseph Smith dissolves the logical problem of evil: God did not create matter, intelligences or eternal principles, and can only do what is 'consistent with the natures of eternal existences'.
- 2 Nephi 2:11 teaches that without opposition 'righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad'.
- Ostler's review of Beckwith and Parrish defines LDS omnipotence as 'maximal power' - all the power one being can have 'among other free beings'; his fourth volume (2020) is devoted to theodicy.
- The same canon still describes God as having 'created all things' and as one who 'comprehendeth all things' with 'all things before him' (D&C 88:41), language members ordinarily take as classical omnipotence and omniscience.
The moving target
- 1830: Opposition in all things is a metaphysical necessity.
- 2000: Evil is not God's creation; it arises from uncreated realities God must work with.
The exchange
David Paulsen; Blake Ostler (with Paulsen, 'Sin, Suffering, and Soul-Making', 2002)
Because God did not create ex nihilo, he is not responsible for the natures of intelligences or matter; evil is the price of real freedom and growth (soul-making) that even God could not obtain another way.
The answer: This is a real advantage over classical theism on the logical problem. The costs: (1) a God limited by eternal matter and law can no longer guarantee that his plan succeeds or that any given suffering is redeemed - trust becomes a bet on a very powerful being rather than on sovereignty; (2) it does not reach the evidential problem, since an embodied God who, on LDS teaching, routinely intervenes in small matters (lost keys, mission calls) evidently could prevent many horrors without violating anyone's agency (natural evils, childhood cancers); (3) the limits on God are asserted exactly where needed and nowhere specified.
What they get right: Secular skeptics should concede that the standard 'omnipotence + omnibenevolence + evil' trilemma does not straightforwardly apply to LDS theology.
Lehi, 2 Nephi 2 as used in LDS teaching
Opposition is necessary for the existence of value itself; a world without misery would be a world without joy.
The answer: As a metaphysical principle this proves too much. If good cannot exist without actual evil, then either the celestial kingdom contains sin and misery or it contains no righteousness and joy; and God, already perfected, would need ongoing evil to remain good. If what is needed is only the possibility of evil or a past acquaintance with it, then the actual quantity of horrendous evil in this world is not explained. The verse also conflates logical contrast (knowing what 'good' means) with causal necessity.
Both cases at full strength
The skeptics' case
The LDS finite-God theodicy is a trade, not a solution. By denying creation ex nihilo it relieves God of authorship of evil, but the same move means God operates under constraints he did not choose and cannot fully overcome, so the promises that 'all things work together for good' and that every tear will be wiped away become hopes rather than guarantees. Meanwhile popular LDS practice still treats God as able to intervene in detail, which re-opens the evidential problem with full force: a being who helps find car keys but not abducted children needs more than an appeal to agency. Finally, Lehi's necessary-opposition principle is either false of heaven and of God, or it is too weak to justify actual horrors. A further question is worship-worthiness. Christian critics argue that a contingent, embodied, formerly-mortal being inside the universe is admirable but not God. A secular critic can put it without the theology: nothing in the concept of such a being entails that its commands are morally binding.
The apologetic case
Paulsen and Ostler: only a theology with uncreated persons and no ex nihilo creation can say that God is wholly good and did everything he could. Maximal power among free beings is the only coherent kind of omnipotence; all Christians who accept free-will defenses already concede as much. God earns trust by an unbroken eternal track record of love, and worship is a fitting response to perfect love, not to raw metaphysical status.
What would change this
A worked-out account of exactly which interventions God can and cannot make, that fits both reported answered prayers and unprevented horrors without ad hoc adjustment.
Closely related
Sources
- Doctrine and Covenants 88
- 2 Nephi 2
- Blake T. Ostler: complete works
- Review of Beckwith & Parrish, The Mormon Concept of God: A Philosophical Analysis
- Philosophical Problems with the Mormon Concept of God
- Joseph Smith and the Problem of Evil
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