Richard Swinburne

Theodicy needs to show, for all actual evils e, that 1) in allowing e, a God would bring about a necessary condition of a good g not achievable in any other morally permissible way, 2) if e occurs, g occurs, 3) it is morally permissible for God to allow e, and 4) g is at least as good as e is bad. This article contributes to a full-scale theodicy by showing that A being of use (e.g., by suffering) to B is a great good for A, and that in consequence, if 1) and 2) are satisfied, 3) and 4) are also likely to be satisfied

The central doctrine of Christianity is that God intervened in human history in the person of Jesus Christ in a unique way; and that quickly became understood as the doctrine that in Jesus Christ God became man. In AD 451 the Council of Chalcedon formulated that doctrine in a precise way utilizing the current philosophical terminology, which provided a standard for the orthodoxy of subsequent thought on this issue. It affirmed its belief in ‘our Lord Jesus Christ, … truly God and truly man, … in two natures … the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person’. One individual, one thing that is; and being a rational individual, one person. An individual's nature are those general properties which make it the sort of individual it is. The nature of my desk is to be a solid material object of a certain shape; the nature of the oak tree in the wood is to take in water and light, and to grow into a characteristic shape with characteristic leaves and give off oxygen. Chalcedon affirmed that the one individual Jesus Christ had a divine nature, was God that is; and it assumed that the divine nature was an essential nature.

Armstrong's theory of laws of nature as relations between universals gives an initially plausible account of why the causal powers of substances are bound together only in certain ways, so that the world is a very regular place. But its resulting theory of causation cannot account for intentional causation, since this involves an agent trying to do something, and trying is causing. This kind of causation is thus a state of an agent and does not involve the operation of a law. It is simpler to suppose that non-intentional causing is also causing by substances (and not events) in virtue of their powers to act. That raises again the question of why their powers are bound together only in certain ways. The most probable answer is that God, the simplest kind of person there could be, brings this about because it is necessary for the existence of finite rational creatures such as ourselves.

What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. Part II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion.

Theodicy would be an impossible task if the only good states were pleasures and the only bad states were pains. This paper lists many other and greater goods, and shows that many of these cannot be had without corresponding bad states. These goods include the satisfaction of persistent desires, desires for incompatible good states, compassion with people in serious trouble, free choice of the good despite temptation, and being of use to others in providing knowledge and opportunities of certain sorts for them.

A THEIST NEEDS A THEODICY, AN ACCOUNT FOR EACH KNOWN KIND OF EVIL OF HOW IT IS PROBABLE THAT IT SERVES A GREATER GOOD, IF HIS BELIEF IN GOD IS TO BE RATIONAL--UNLESS EITHER HE HAS OTHER EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WHICH OUTWEIGHS THE COUNTEREVIDENCE FROM EVIL, OR HE HAS FOUND THE RESEARCH PROGRAMME OF THEODICY PROGRESSIVE. IT IS NOT ENOUGH, CONTRARY TO WYKSTRA AND PLANTINGA, TO CLAIM THAT GOD MAY BE PURSUING GREATER GOODS BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING. HOW EVIDENCE FUNCTIONS HERE IS WELL CAPTURED BY THE PROBABILITY CALCULUS.