A Response to the Modal Problem of Evil (original) (raw)
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Addendum: footnote 25 should be "'Contrary to Loke, “Divine Omnipotence”". In two recent articles, Johannes Grössl offers a thorough examination of the difficulties concerning Christ's impeccability and claims that no Christological model has yet to resolve them. Using the Divine Preconscious Model and interacting with contemporary discussions concerning divine omnipotence and moral perfection and the distinction between directly and indirectly free actions, I defend the possibility that God Incarnate possesses libertarian freedom without desires for evil choices, given which it is metaphysically impossible for him to choose evil. I show that my proposal is able to answer Grössl's objections and is superior to other proposals.
In Defence of the Coherence of the Concept of God
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The problem of divine exclusivity
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 1993
Classical theists claim that God is both a morally perfect being and a gracious being. God is not just good, but morally perfect: there is no being possible which is morally better than God. 1 God is gracious in that he grants divine favor to those who do not deserve mercy. 2 The attribution of these two properties to God-graciousness and essential moral goodnessis religiously significant in that part of being worthy of worship consists in just these properties. If God were not morally perfect, he would not be an appropriate object of unconditional worship. If God were not gracious then he would not deserve moral praise. But despite the religious value of these two properties, there is a problem inherent in the attribution of both to a being: if God is such that it is not possible that there be a morally better being and if God is gracious to some but not to others, then God could have been morally better than he is. Insofar as graciousness is a supererogatory act which warrants praise and insofar as divine grace is extended only to some and not to others, then it is possible that God could have been morally better than he is. In what follow I argue that the classical theistic claims that God is essentially morally perfect and that God is gracious to some (but not to others) are incompatible. The incompatibility of these traditional claims is what we will call 'the problem of divine exclusivity.' I begin with some preliminaries concerning the notions of divine goodness and divine grace.