The Relationship between Pantheism and Theism

I wrote the following paper back in 2008 as an attempt to explore with greater metaphysical precision the relationship between theism and "pantheism." A careful, metaphysical look at the nature of God in classical theism raises the issue of how classical theism relates to pantheism and to religions that have often been labeled “pantheistic,” such as eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The paper was written with a philosophical audience in mind.

The relationship between pantheism and theism is of immense importance philosophically and religiously, and the two are often compared and contrasted with each other. However, in my experience, these comparisons and contrasts typically tend to leave the definitions and analyses on a metaphysically superficial and imprecise level. I would like to attempt to help remedy this situation by providing a metaphysically deeper analysis of the similarities and differences between theism and pantheism. I will then show how this deeper analysis helps to elucidate the nature of theism in such a way as to help theists respond to certain philosophical objections to theism that have frequently been proposed by pantheist and atheist thinkers and to articulate a better critique of the pantheistic worldview.

Where Pantheism and Theism Agree

The form of theism I will be discussing is classical theism, which is the form that has been articulated and defended (with more or less consistency) by all the major branches of historic Christianity--Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestant traditions. This is the form of theism that has given rise to the classical arguments for the existence of God (such as the cosmological and ontological arguments).

The word “pantheism” has been applied to more than simply one monolithic philosophical perspective. For the purposes of this paper, “pantheism” can be defined as “the belief that all reality is one metaphysically simple unified being and that all distinctions between particulars are ultimately illusory.” This definition accords well with central strands of prominent Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which are usually considered to be “pantheistic.” “Theism,” on the other hand, as I am using it in this paper, can be defined as “the belief that there is one metaphysically simple unified being (God) who is the source and ground of all created reality but that the created particulars are not identical with but are truly distinct from the simple divine being.” So the question is, “Where do these two philosophical/religious perspectives agree, and where do they disagree?” My contention is that classical theism, when examined with metaphysical strictness and developed to its full logical conclusion, will be found to agree with the first half of the definition of pantheism but to disagree with the second half. Thus, classical theism agrees that “all reality is one metaphysically simple unified being” but disagrees with the claim that “all distinctions between particulars are ultimately illusory.”

I suspect that the way I have gone about delineating the line of agreement/disagreement between theism and pantheism will seem very strange to many theists, many of whom might wonder how I can say that theism agrees that “all reality is one metaphysically simple unified being.” But the fact of the matter is that classical theism requires such a view in light of its assumptions, beliefs, and arguments. Classical theism has always taught that God is an absolutely unified, simple being who is the foundation and source and explanation for all of reality and who is outside of all space and time, not subject to change, not affected by anything ultimately distinct from him or independent from him. One of the most comprehensive statements on the nature of God in classical theism (from a Christian perspective) can be found in John the Damascene’s book, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, written in the eighth century AD:

We believe, then, in One God, one beginning, having no beginning, uncreate, unbegotten, imperishable and immortal, everlasting, infinite, uncircumscribed, boundless, of infinite power, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, without flux, passionless, unchangeable, unalterable, unseen, the fountain of goodness and justice, the light of the mind, inaccessible; a power known by no measure, measurable only by His own will alone (for all things that He wills He can ), creator of all created things, seen or unseen, of all the maintainer and preserver, for all the provider, master and lord and king over all, with an endless and immortal kingdom: having no contrary, filling all, by nothing encompassed, but rather Himself the encompasser and maintainer and original possessor of the universe, occupying all essences intact and extending beyond all things, and being separate from all essence as being super-essential and above all things and absolute God, absolute goodness, and absolute fulness : determining all sovereignties and ranks, being placed above all sovereignty and rank, above essence and life and word and thought: being Himself very light and goodness and life and essence, inasmuch as He does not derive His being from another, that is to say, of those things that exist: but being Himself the fountain of being to all that is, of life to the living, of reason to those that have reason; to all the cause of all good: perceiving all things even before they have become: one essence, one divinity, one power, one will, one energy, one beginning, one authority, one dominion, one sovereignty, made known in three perfect subsistences and adored with one adoration, believed in and ministered to by all rational creation , united without confusion and divided without separation (which indeed transcends thought). (1)

The logic of the classical theistic view of the universe and the nature of God implies that all things exist in God, by participation in the being of God. This has frequently been recognized by classical theologians. Once again, John of Damascus makes this quite explicitly clear:

That which is comprehended in place or time or apprehension is circumscribed: while that which is contained by none of these is uncircumscribed. Wherefore the Deity alone is uncircumscribed, being without beginning and without end, and containing all things, and in no wise apprehended. (2)

Thomas Aquinas provides us with another example of this way of thinking:

It must be said that every being in any way existing is from God. For whatever is found in anything by participation, must be caused in it by that to which it belongs essentially, as iron becomes ignited by fire. Now it has been shown above (Question 3, Article 4) when treating of the divine simplicity that God is the essentially self-subsisting Being; and also it was shown (11, 3,4) that subsisting being must be one; as, if whiteness were self-subsisting, it would be one, since whiteness is multiplied by its recipients. Therefore all beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation. Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly. (3)

Since in classical theism there is only one God, who is the fullness and source of all of reality and who explains all of reality, there can never be any more being added to reality than there is to begin with. To suggest that created beings, by being created, add more being to reality than there was before is to make God a finite being, circumscribed by a greater common reality that contains both him and the created beings. If the “stuff” we are made of is truly separate from God and in addition to his substance, then it cannot ultimately be explained as having come from God and been created by him. God can only give what he has; he cannot give what he has not. The concept of creation ex nihilo is not the idea that new being can come from absolutely nothing, which is logically absurd. To describe creation as God increasing the overall “substance content” of reality is to make it an irrational, magical concept. It is a principle of logic that one cannot get more than one has to begin with without adding something in from outside, but when we are talking about God and ultimate reality, there is no outside, nothing to add from. Rather, creation ex nihilo is the idea that created beings are not made from a preexisting substance, which would make them to some degree independent from God, but are entirely derived from God, so that they are entirely and utterly dependent on God for the beginning and the continuation of their being.

If we were to think of created beings as adding to the substance of the universe and actually existing “outside” of God, rather than existing in him and by means of a participation in his being, then we would be turning God into one particular among other particulars in a greater common reality. One of the most compelling arguments for God is the need for a common, unifying reality to explain the diversity of the universe. To put it another way, what is it that puts the “uni” in “universe”? Theists have often argued that the existence of a universe implies that there must be a simple, uncompounded being who is the source of all reality. If there were no common source or ground for the particulars in the universe, they would be utterly independent of each other and could share no common reality at all, which would be impossible and logically meaningless. If their common source and ground was a compounded being, a being with parts, that common ground would itself be made up of particulars that would need a common unifying reality to explain them. So we need a simple being as the foundation of all reality. But if created beings are truly, ultimately distinct from God, so that, in metaphysical strictness of language, they exist as an entirely distinct and additional substance (or substances), then God can no longer be the simple, common reality that unifies all things. If created things are not rooted in participation in the being of God, then they are independent entities, and the common reality that includes both God and his creatures would not be an uncompounded, simple reality. This would leave us either with no simple, common reality at all, which would be logically absurd, or we would have to look back further for another simple being that could explain both God and created beings, and that would be the real God.

Also, if we are truly, ultimately, metaphysically separate from God and are additions to the basic substance content of reality, then it seems that we must inevitably bring into our conception of our relationship with God the concept of space. If we are not in God, nor exist by participation in his being, how can we be distinguished from God except by being in a separate location, not taking up the same space? We must inevitably picture God and created beings as existing side by side, both having to move over, so to speak, to make room for the other. But it is absurd to think of God as existing in space, as classical theologians have always recognized, because a spatial object cannot be the common reality that explains all the particulars. A spatial object is inherently a finite being, divisible into parts.

If we are created by God and derive our being from him, as all classical theists believe, then this implies that we must exist “in God,” as in some sense an aspect of his being. If God is a simple entity, then it is impossible to participate in him without somehow being an aspect of his simple being. The only alternative would be to have some spatial picture involving created beings taking some of God’s being and then moving off with it to some alternate location where God is not, as if God could give us pieces of himself, or as if God were like an extended flow of electricity that we could somehow feed on as an appliance feeds on electricity through an electrical outlet, or as if God’s being were like sap flowing through a tree which we as branches could “suck out” and live on. These analogies are not necessarily bad in every respect--indeed, the latter is biblical--but we are interested in developing a metaphysically strict account of things, and we need to be precise. Therefore, we are left with no other conclusion but that classical theism requires that created entities derive their being from God, exist in him and by participation in his being, and thus in a very real sense exist as aspects of God’s being.

While describing created entities as “aspects of God’s being” is very odd-sounding in a theistic context, I want to stress that it does not really add anything to the notion that we exist “in God” and “by participation in God.” As I am going to argue below, saying that we are aspects of God’s being is very different from claiming that we are God, or claiming that God and created beings are identical, or any such thing. This is where the fundamental difference between theism and pantheism comes into the picture. But what I have said so far, though in the interests of being metaphysically precise I have opted to use somewhat daring language to express it, is no more than has always been at least implicit, and sometimes explicit, in classical theistic thought. It is expressed in the very language of the Bible, as well as being implied in everything it says on the nature of God. (4)  Speaking of God to the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill (and quoting, approvingly, their own poets) in Acts 17:27-28, Paul says that God “is not far from each one of us; for in him we live and move and have our being.” In Colossians 1:16-17, Paul says of Christ (as God the Son), “All things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and in him all things consist.” I have already quoted John of Damascus, who could be said to represent Eastern Orthodoxy, and Thomas Aquinas, who could be said to represent Roman Catholicism. Let me add to these quotations a couple from Jonathan Edwards, who, as a prominent Reformed theologian, will suffice (at least for the purposes of this paper) to show the presence of these ideas in historic Protestantism as well. In The Nature of True Virtue, Edwards argues that there can be no true virtue without love to God:

Therefore, he that has true virtue, consisting in benevolence to being in general, and in benevolence to virtuous being, must necessarily have a supreme love to God, both of benevolence and complacence. And all true virtue must radically and essentially, and, as it were, summarily, consist in this. Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day. (5)

Edwards explicitly acknowledges, in the same book, that “God himself is in effect being in general.” (6)

Where Pantheism and Theism Disagree

Now, having shown that classical theistic doctrine entails the conclusion that all created entities are aspects of God’s being, rather than something strictly metaphysically separated from him--which is the claim of the first half of the definition of pantheism--I will now show that this fact does not at all imply the second half of the definition, namely, that “all distinctions between particulars are ultimately illusory.” In other words, I am going to argue that the fact that all created beings exist in God and are aspects of his being does not imply at all that human beings are God, that God is human beings, that flowers and rocks are God, that flowers and rocks are human beings, that God is flowers and rocks, etc. There is a true distinction between God and the creation, and there are true distinctions between the various created entities. Furthermore, these distinctions are crucial for understanding the nature of God, the nature of created entities, and the relationships between God and the creation and between created entities and each other.

First of all, we can observe the simple, obvious fact of these distinctions. I can reason to the existence of God, and I can reason from the existence of God to the fact that I must exist in God as an aspect of his being; but it is equally evident to my reason that I am not God. God and I have very different characteristics that distinguish us quite conclusively. For example, God is omnipotent; I am not. God knows all things; I do not. I stubbed my toe a few days ago; God has never stubbed his toe, not having a toe to stub. I am guilty of sin; God is not. I have a body which physically limits me; God does not. And so on.

It is also evident to my reason that I am different from, say, a rock. A rock has no consciousness (at least as far as I can see); I do have consciousness. A rock does not feel pain; I do (as I was reminded of when I stubbed my toe, not God’s toe, the other day). Rocks and I are made up of different substances combined in different ways. And so on. I could go on to show that God is different from rocks, but I suspect this is not necessary.

So reason leads me to believe both that I am an aspect of God’s being and that I am emphatically not God. How can this be? Let’s consider an analogy: Let’s say I were to write a novel. In writing this novel, I invent an entire fictional world. This world is real enough in its own sphere, and my thinking of it gives it some reality, but not a reality external to myself. In creating this fictional world, I invent various characters with different personalities who engage in various activities within the flow of the novel. Let’s look at one of these characters--we can call him Bob. Now, what is the relationship between Bob and myself? Well, Bob is a very dependent being. He is entirely derived from me, from my thinking, and is entirely dependent on me for his initial as well as his continued existence. Bob exists “in me,” in my thoughts. He exists by participation in me and my thoughts. We could say that “in me Bob lives and moves and has his being” and that “in me all things in Bob’s universe consist.” Bob is not metaphysically separate from me. His thoughts and feelings exist as participations in my thoughts and feelings. Bob therefore could accurately be described as an aspect of my being. And yet it would be absurd to equate Bob with myself. Bob and I are very different. Bob is a character; I am the author. Bob is dependent upon me for existence; I am not dependent upon Bob for existence. Bob likes cauliflower; I hate cauliflower. Bob is an accountant; I am a philosopher. And of course I could go on and on. In fact, not only are Bob and I truly distinct, and our distinctions are very important with regard to understanding the two of us, but I can even enter into a relationship with Bob. I could write into my novel a section in which I, the author, speak to Bob and strike up a conversation with him. Bob, upon learning about me, might wonder how we are related. He might reason that he is in some sense an aspect of my being. However, if he concluded from this that therefore he was the author, or that he was not dependent on anyone else but himself for his existence, Bob would be very seriously mistaken.

Classical theists of all stripes have commonly understood God’s purpose for creating the world to have been God’s desire to express and manifest his glorious perfections. Thomas Aquinas had this to say about God’s goal in creating the world:

Every agent acts for an end: otherwise one thing would not follow more than another from the action of the agent, unless it were by chance. Now the end of the agent and of the patient considered as such is the same, but in a different way respectively. For the impression which the agent intends to produce, and which the patient intends to receive, are one and the same. Some things, however, are both agent and patient at the same time: these are imperfect agents, and to these it belongs to intend, even while acting, the acquisition of something. But it does not belong to the First Agent, Who is agent only, to act for the acquisition of some end; He intends only to communicate His perfection, which is His goodness; while every creature intends to acquire its own perfection, which is the likeness of the divine perfection and goodness. Therefore the divine goodness is the end of all things. (7)

With this doctrine traditional Eastern Orthodoxy and most historic Protestants would agree. Calvin, for example, called the world a theater for God’s glory. The Westminster Confession, a classic Reformed statement of faith, has this to say about God’s end in creation and providence:

It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good. (8)

God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy. (9)

This doctrine leads us to a very natural understanding as to why the created world, and the created entities in it, exist as aspects of God’s being. The created world is an aspect of God’s knowledge of himself. God delights in the manifestations of his own perfections as he exercises them in his works of creation, providence, and redemption. In the Westminster Confession’s language, “the glory of [God’s] wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy” are displayed in the creation and history of the created universe. Part of God’s display of his glory to himself and his delight in that glory takes the form of God’s authoring a world, a world dependent on him and existing by participation in him, and yet not identified with him. In this world, he displays his attributes. He displays his power in creating, upholding and sustaining this world. He displays his wisdom in its vast and incomprehensible coherence. He displays his justice as a response to the evil rebellions of his creations. He displays his wisdom in his using their evil for his own good purposes. He displays his mercy in the salvation of his chosen people. He displays his power, wisdom, and goodness, by contrasting it with man’s weakness, foolishness, and wickedness, and by causing his creatures to go to him and to him alone as the ultimate supplier of power, wisdom, and goodness. Those who cut themselves off from the all-sufficient source of life die. Those who, by his grace, come to him live through him and through him alone. So we can see that it is crucial to understanding the very purpose for our existence that we understand both our participation in God and also our distinction from him. In fact, these two are inseparable and merge together to describe our true character as creatures--beings who are utterly dependent on God. The concept of “dependence” includes both the idea of our participation in God and of our distinction from God.

One possible misconception needs to be addressed before we move on. If we are aspects of God’s being in some sense, does that make us “part” of God, and therefore in some sense partly divine? No, it does not. We have already seen that created beings are not God. Nor is it possible that they should be “part” of God in the sense that they could be 10% of God, 1%, .0001%, or any other percentage. The God of classical theism is a simple, uncompounded being; he has no “parts” or “pieces.” He is inherently indivisible. Therefore it makes no sense to speak of anything as constituting a certain percentage of him. If I were to say that I am, say, .0000000001% of God, that would imply that if one keeps on adding more and more beings like me to the equation, enough of us would eventually add up to 100% God. But this is absurd. God is not the sum of all the particulars in the universe. No amount of addition of particular entities can even begin to add up to a simple, infinite being. God is the undivided being who is the foundation of the being of the particulars, but he is not the particulars themselves. The particulars exist in him and by participation in him, but he must be considered distinct from them all, even as a group. Therefore, not only are we not God, but we are not even partly divine. In God we live and move and have our being, but that being that we have must be considered to be nothing in comparison to the being of God (much as Bob in my novel, while adding up to something in his own sphere--the world of the novel--yet is nothing in comparison to me, and you can never even begin to add up to me simply by adding more and more Bobs). One could continue to add more and more Mark Hausams together forever and one would never come any closer to adding up to God than with only one of me or none of me. This makes sense in the context of God’s goal of displaying his glory in the creation. God displays his all-sufficiency by virtue of the entire dependence of the created beings on him, which involves the understanding that the created beings are in themselves nothing and therefore must look outside of themselves to God for all their needs. The role we play in God’s display of his glory, which is an aspect of his knowledge of himself and love of himself, is that of those whose lack contrasts with God’s fullness--we are the backdrop, so to speak, for God’s fullness--and also those whose inherent nothingness is filled up by God’s inherent fullness by his grace alone, and therefore to his glory alone. We provide the emptiness which allows God’s all-sufficient fullness to be seen in all its glory and power. Therefore, although our being is in God, our identity as creatures is characterized by our nothingness in comparison to God’s fullness. (10)

Analysis of Buddhism from a Metaphysically-Sophisticated Classical Theistic Point of View

Having now established that classical theism agrees with the first half but disagrees with the second half of the definition of pantheism, and having shown to some degree the importance of this for understanding our identity in relationship to God, I now want to show how a proper and precise understanding of theistic metaphysics in this area helps theists to launch a successful criticism of the pantheistic worldview, and also to respond to some common philosophical objections to theism coming from both pantheists and atheists.

Most theistic arguments against pantheism are on the right track, I believe, but having a more precise understanding of theistic metaphysics and how they relate to pantheistic metaphysics can significantly boost the theist’s articulation of his case. As we have seen, pantheists are in a way half right. Significant portions of their belief system are quite true and accurate. When theists can recognize where pantheism goes right, they can use this as a platform for making a convincing argument as to where pantheism goes wrong. Let me give a concrete example of this. In Buddhism, there is a strong emphasis on “getting away from one’s self.” The big problem human beings have, according to Buddhism, is that we don’t recognize the reality of the Undying, Unborn, Unchanging behind the flux and flow of our spatio-temporal universe, and so we come to identify ourselves with ourselves alone and to become attached to our selves and to the objects of the self’s desires. But the reality is that the self is ultimately only an illusion, and so are all the particular objects we become attached to, and therefore they cannot satisfy--this is the cause of human suffering. The reality behind the illusion is the Unchanging Infinite. What we need to do is to come to see things in the right way and to learn to think and live accordingly. We need to see that the Unborn, Undying is the reality and attach ourselves to that, recognizing ourselves and the particulars as illusions and giving up our attachments to these. If we can identify not just with ourselves but with Infinite Being, we can find that which is truly real, permanent and satisfying, and therefore find true happiness. Theists ought to recognize a lot of truth in this--that God is the ultimate reality, and that we should look outside of ourselves to him for our happiness. We should learn to get beyond ourselves and our petty desires and try to adopt an “eternal perspective.” However, in calling the self and the spatio-temporal universe an “illusion,” and in talking about “identifying oneself with the Infinite,” Buddhism lets in some fundamental ambiguity that clouds Buddhists’ understanding of the truths that they have in their system. Although there is some truth in calling this world an illusion, in the sense that it is nothing compared to God and does not represent the ultimate level of reality (or anything remotely close to it), yet it is a misleading term. The world is not unreal--it may not be ultimate reality, but it is real in its own right. And we are real as well, although we are infinitesimal when compared to God. I do indeed need to learn to “identify with God” in the sense of seeing things from his eternal, objective perspective, but I must never forget that I am not myself God. Buddhism (and other Eastern religions) tend to get confused here, thinking that since I am not ultimate reality while the Infinite Being is, and since I am an illusion, therefore I should think of myself as the Infinite Being. But this contradicts the good start these religions have when they begin with telling us to move beyond ourselves. If I am really nothing and must move beyond myself towards God, this realization and goal are contradicted by subsequently telling me that in fact I am God and I must look within. Here is an example of how the murkiness of Buddhism in this area leads to some erroneous conclusions, from an introductory book on Buddhism written by a Zen Buddhist monk and teacher, Rev. Daizui MacPhillamy:

The principle of there being no soul is actually so fundamental to Buddhism that it is given a name (‘anatta’), and placed on the same level of importance as the principle of universal change (‘anicca’). It is regarded, in other words, as a basic property of how the universe works. Although the first thing that we tend to think of when confronted with the concept of there being no soul is its implications for death and the afterlife, it actually has consequences that are more far-reaching than that.

One of these consequences has to do with just how much ‘at one’ we really are with the flow. A soul, being inherently a separate sort of a thing, would actually place a limit upon that oneness. No soul and no self, no limit. If neither self nor soul is ultimately real, then in truth we are, right at this very moment, completely one with the unborn, undying, unformed nature of reality, whether we recognize and experience this or not. Now, various schools of Buddhism do different things with this fact of absolute oneness. Some simply observe that it exists, while others give it a name and a prominent place in their teaching, using words such as, “we are all Buddha”, or “all people have Buddha Nature.” . . .

As a guide to practice, the understanding that we all have Buddha Nature influences practice away from trying to get something (to achieve a goal of nirvana, for instance) and towards removing the obstacles to realizing what we already have. This is an important but subtle shift. So long as one is doing Buddhist practice as a means to a goal, the effort is inevitably tainted with some degree of desire: a very noble desire, but a desire nonetheless. . . . When an individual adopts the view that he or she is already innately Buddha, all of this can be dropped and practice can be done simply for the sake of practice. . . . This gets back to the ‘goal of goallessness’ that was mentioned in the section on right effort.

Another consequence of the principle of no soul is that where there is no soul there can be no sin. Many religions define sin as the deliberate turning of the soul away from God, but if there is no soul, that can’t happen. And if we are inherently one with everything and we are Buddha by nature, what can be turned away from? The absence of a sense of sin is another major difference between Buddhism and most other great religions of the world, and it has many implications. If there is no sin and no soul, there can be no guilt, no judgement, no atonement, no absolution, no damnation, no salvation. There really can’t even be any such thing as evil, in the way it is normally thought of. (11) 

We can see a number of problematic conclusions in this selection from Rev. MacPhillamy’s book. First, it does not follow from the fact that there is an ultimate reality that is infinitely greater than the soul, in which the soul lives, and compared to which the soul is nothing, that there is no soul or self at all. Whatever I may be in relation to God, I still exist. Otherwise, there would be no “I” to be involved in this conversation. Rev. MacPhillamy’s erroneous conclusion here, which is common in pantheistic systems, leads him to other false conclusions. He concludes that because the self is an illusion, therefore the real “me” is the Buddha Nature itself (a Buddhist term for the Infinite Reality). Therefore, since I am myself already Buddha, I need really have no goals at all. I already have all that I seek. Of course, despite Rev. MacPhillamy’s attempt to salvage it, this concept makes nonsense out of Buddhist practice, since nothing at all can be done, including Buddhist practice, without some goal in mind. If I truly have all that I seek, why am I still seeking? More importantly, Rev. MacPhillamy’s reasoning leads to the conclusion that there really are no goals whatsoever we should have. If everything is an illusion except the present reality of the Buddha Nature, then as Rev. MacPhillamy himself points out, there is really no such thing as evil. Everything is ultimately as it should be. Calling one’s self and all the spatio-temporal world an illusion undercuts the importance of the reality of this world and the particulars in it. It clouds our recognition of the reality of evil and suffering in this world, and therefore guts our motivation for service in trying to do good. Yes, everything exists by participation in God, but everything is not God. Yes, everything is ultimately under the control of God and a part of his plan, but everything is not in itself pleasing to him, and therefore there are things we should fight against and ideals we should strive after. It is because the biblical worldview recognizes both our participation in God and also our distinction from God that it is able to recognize evil in the world and exhort us to do good.

Related to this issue is Rev. MacPhillamy’s reasoning that since the soul or self is an illusion, therefore there can be no sin. If sin is turning away from God, and I am God, obviously there can be no sin. But the problem here is that I am not God. Yes, I exist “in God,” and am an aspect of his being in some sense, but my identity and characteristics are fundamentally distinct from his. Therefore, there can be real relationship between myself and God (and between myself and other people), and that relationship can go wrong in the sense that I can turn against God and make him my enemy. In fact, Christianity recognizes that this is exactly what has happened, and therefore my salvation does not consist in my realizing that I am God and don’t need to be saved; it consists in my recognizing my sin, looking outside of myself to God for my salvation, and being saved by his grace through the redemption of Christ. If the soul is real, there can be sin; and if there is sin, there is wrath and justice, a need for an atonement and forgiveness, a need for cleansing, a need for reconciliation, etc. By confusing our metaphysical participation in God with the idea that we are God in our identity, Buddhism makes itself unable to recognize and deal with certain fundamental truths about God, about ourselves and our relationship with God, and about the universe in general.

A theist who understands the metaphysical implications of theism can say to a Buddhist, “You are right about a number of things--about the reality of an Infinite realm of Ultimate Reality behind the spatio-temporal world we inhabit, about the fact that we all exist by participation in that Reality, about the fact that I am nothing compared to that Reality and that I must move beyond myself to relate rightly to it. But you then forget all this and identify yourself with the Infinite and turn your focus back into yourself for your happiness. This makes no sense upon your own principles. If I am nothing, how can I be identified with the Infinite? If my basic problem is that I am ultimately attached to myself and not to the Infinite--I worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, to put it in Christian terms--and my hope is in getting beyond myself, why do you then move away from the solution and compound the problem by telling me I have the Buddha Nature within and therefore causing me to think that the source of my happiness can be found within myself?” The theist can agree with the arguments for a metaphysical unity grounding all things, and yet point out that this fact does not lead to an ignoring of the reality of the distinctions that exist. Thus the theist, by recognizing the truths in the Buddhist pantheistic system, is able, on the very basis of those truths, to expose the errors in Buddhist thinking, errors that not only put Buddhism out of touch with reality but out of touch with many of its own accurate observations as well. The theist therefore has a point of contact from which he/she can offer a critique of Buddhist pantheistic thought from within, in a sense, and therefore better understand and be better understood. (12)

A Metaphysically-Sophisticated Classical Theism Responds to Objections

A clearer understanding of the relationship between theism and pantheism can also help to answer certain criticisms and objections against theism raised by pantheists and atheists. Pantheists have often accused theism of being metaphysically naïve. Theism is pictured as belief in some super-entity sitting in the sky somewhere who may be more powerful than human beings but who is still a particular within the spatio-temporal universe, and this deity is thus seen by pantheists as something that needs to be transcended just like every other particular. Since theists never transcend their God or seem aware of the need to do so, they strike many pantheists as being metaphysically naïve, not recognizing the reality of an Infinite behind the particular entities of the universe. Theists fuel this objection when they convey the impression that they perceive God as entirely metaphysically distinct from the creation and fail to acknowledge the metaphysical unity that binds all things together in the being of God (without obliterating the importance of the distinctions). To the extent that theists do not recognize this metaphysical unity, they are indeed metaphysically naïve, and although their naiveté is not warranted by the classical theistic tradition or by biblical revelation, they bring both into disrepute through their associating them with such naiveté. Being more metaphysically precise can help avoid this criticism and reason for rejection of theism among pantheists or those attracted to pantheism.

Some philosophers have criticized the doctrine of creation ex nihilo as logically absurd. It seems to violate the principle of the conservation of matter/energy/substance. This is not merely a scientific principle but a logical one as well. If one starts out with a certain amount of something, one cannot increase that amount without adding to the system from without. If this is so, how can God increase the amount of substance in reality? Also, theists say that God is infinite and unbounded. How can an infinite and unbounded being be bounded by the existence of other entities/substances in reality? If God is not all there is, then he is not infinite. Theists say that God fills all things, being omnipresent; and yet if there are other substances, they can only be conceived to exist by imagining that God is not where they are--in other words, God does not fill them and therefore does not fill all things. And where would the additional substance come from, if there were other substances? It couldn’t have come from God, contrary to the idea of creation, since it is in addition to all that God is and has. There is nowhere it can have come from. All of these very rational objections can be answered only by pointing out that, according to a metaphysically sophisticated theism, created entities do not add to the overall substance of reality because they exist in God and are an aspect of his being, without themselves being identified with God. The very real and very important Creator-creature distinction does not require a naïve, disunified metaphysical view of reality.

In this paper I have tried to develop a more coherent, precise and thorough understanding of the metaphysics of classical theism in the context of its relation to pantheism. While I have therefore adopted some language that is a little unusual for typical theistic articulation and have made explicit certain metaphysical implications of classical theism that have often been left hazy, I want to stress again the fact that all that I have said is really nothing new; these elements have always been inherent in classical theism. I think that one of the reasons the development of some of these points has been a bit hazy in theistic thought is a fear common among theists of getting too close to pantheism. Theists have always recognized something wrong with pantheism, and have often defined themselves and their views in the context of a strong motivation to make sure they are adequately distanced from pantheism. There has been some fear that developing certain lines of thought tends to lead in pantheistic-sounding directions, and so those lines of thought have been under-emphasized. Another reason for this metaphysical haziness has been simply a lack of awareness on the part of some theistic theologians of the need for more metaphysical precision in these areas. Yet another reason is that there has been a strong movement among many theistic theologians over the past couple of centuries away from classical theism and towards non-classical forms of theism that advocate entirely different metaphysical views of reality. Some of these non-classical theologians have accused classical theism of being pantheistic or at least of tending towards pantheism, and this in turn has helped to fuel the fear of getting too close to pantheism among classical theologians. But this fear is unjustified. In becoming more metaphysically precise in these areas, classical theists can indeed avoid pantheism; and they are able to advocate a more consistent philosophical theistic perspective, understand pantheistic systems better, and better show why theism, and not pantheism (or atheism), is rational and true.

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1    John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book I, Chapter VIII (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33041.htm - accessed on 6/3/08).

2   Ibid., Book I, Chapter XIII.

3     Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 44, Article 1 (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1044.htm - accessed on 6/3/08).

4    I am assuming here that the correct interpretation of the Bible is the classical theist interpretation.  I am, of course, aware that this is a controversial assumption, but it is beyond my scope to argue for it here.

5    Jonathan Edwards, from “The Nature of True Virtue,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume One, revised and corrected by Edward Hickman (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 125.

6    Ibid., 141.

7    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 44, Article 4 (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1044.htm - accessed on 6/4/08).

8    Westminster Confession, Chapter 4, Section 1 (http://opc.org/wcf.html - accessed 6/4/08).

9    Ibid., Chapter 5, Section 1.

10    Besides the terms “pantheism” and “theism,” the term “panentheism” has been used to describe views that do not want to equate God and the created universe but want to affirm that the created universe exists “in God” in some way.  Is the view that I am advocating here a form of panentheism?  If we take the word itself, in its bare etymological meaning--”everything in God”--my view could be seen as a form of panentheism.  However, this word is usually used in much more specific ways; it is usually associated with non-classical forms of theism such as process theism which are diametrically opposed to my classical metaphysical views.  So while the word itself might not be a bad description of what I am advocating, the word in its actual common usage I reject as referring to ideas that are fundamentally different from and fundamentally opposed to my own.  My views do not involve a rejection of classical theism but rather a following through of certain logical implications of classical theism.

11    Rev. Dazui MacPhillamy, Buddhism From Within: An Intuitive Introduction to Buddhism (Mount Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey Press, 2003), 79-80.

12   I should note that although I have characterized Buddhism as pantheistic, it would be more precise to say that Buddhism and other Eastern “pantheistic” religions, such as Hinduism, often vacillate between pantheism and theism.  They are not always consistently pantheistic.  The extent to which the Eastern religions really differ from theism and are truly pantheistic is a complicated subject that is very much worthy of more thorough study.  I think that this issue should be a focus in dialogues between theists and practitioners of Eastern religions.  For an example of this vacillating, see “Zen is a Religion,” by Zen Master Rev. Jiyu-Kennett.  It can be found online at https://berkeleybuddhistpriory.org/2020/02/26/zen-is-a-religion/.  The essay is from a collection of oral teachings published as Roar of the Tigress by Shasta Abbey Press.  Here is a sample from the essay:  “And do not suffer from the notion that Zen training will make you anything other than a human being.  Accepting our own humanity is one of the hardest tests of all-acceptance.  There is a great difference, you know, between thinking you are God and knowing that what is in you is of God.  ‘I am not God, and there is nothing in me that is not of God,’ is the way in which one has to think about it.  The reason for Zen practice is to find the Eternal.  On finding the Eternal, we call it ‘enlightenment’.   To know the Eternal (and you really do know It once you have had this experience) is to know how infinitesimal you are in the scheme of things: to know that you are ‘no-thing’: even a grain of sand is miles too big.  When you forsake self in this way, then you are the universe, and, if you’ve done it right, you might behave like it.”

The Unverifiability of Claims Based on Personal Experience

The Unverifiability of Claims Based on Unreplicable Personal Experience

Sometimes arguments are made for particular points of view by means of appeal to personal, unsharable experiences, or "personal testimonies."  One example of this I've run across a lot comes from the Latter-day Saint community.  "I know that the Book of Mormon is true and I testify to you that it is true."  How do you know that?  "I prayed about it, and God has testified it to me by the Holy Ghost in my heart."  How did that happen?  What was that like?  How did you know it was the Holy Ghost?  "I can't explain it.  It was so clear, so real . . . I just knew it was the Holy Ghost!"  Well, how do you know it wasn't just your feelings?  Perhaps your praying worked on your emotions so that you got a powerful feeling, maybe even had something like a mystical experience of some sort, but it had nothing to do with the truth of the Book of Mormon but was simply a subjective experience.  "No, no, I know it wasn't that."  How do you know?  ". . . I can't explain it.  I just know.  There is no way for me to communicate my experience to you.  You'll just have to have the experience for yourself."  (I've had conversations very much like this in the past with Latter-day Saints.)

This kind of conversation seems to leave things at a bit of an impasse.  I have no way of proving directly that the person I'm talking to did not have a personal, revelatory experience of some kind that proved, conclusively, that the Book of Mormon is true.  I have no access to that personal experience to prove or disprove it.  Nor can my Latter-day Saint friend prove to me the verity of her personal experience.  So where can we go from here?  Actually, the Latter-day Saint way of thinking provides a way out of the impasse, at least to some degree.  I can replicate the experiment, so to speak.  I can pray about the Book of Mormon too, and see if I get the same experience.  If I don't, my Latter-day Saint friend will often suggest possible reasons for the failure--perhaps I was not sincere enough, or I didn't pray in quite the right way, or something like that.  I can then check my procedures, my motives, etc., and if I determine that I was indeed acting with honesty, integrity, and sincerity, that I was praying in the appropriate way, etc., then I can probably conclude from that that my friend's testimony has been falsified.  So there is a way forward there.

It becomes harder when the emphasis is placed on the personal experience and no way is provided by means of which I could replicate it.  If, upon reporting to my Latter-day Saint friend that the Holy Ghost did not testify to me of the truth of the Book of Mormon, she continues to insist that, nonetheless, her personal experience was real and proves the Book of Mormon to be true, despite our ignorance as to why I was not able to receive the same testimony, we are again back at an impasse.  She can't prove her experience true, and I can't prove it false.

This impasse is even more at the forefront in other conversations.  In recent years, a "personal experience" sort of argument has been made use of quite a bit in the areas of homosexuality and transgenderism.  The conversation often goes a bit like this (I'm simplifying to focus in on the point at hand, of course):

ALBERT:  You Christians are wrong to tell gay people they can't live the gay lifestyle.

RICK:  How do you know that?

ALBERT:  Because it is cruel.  Gay people are wired to be attracted to members of the same sex.  It is hard and cruel to tell them they have to suppress this part of themselves.

RICK:  Well, it all comes down to whether or not Christianity is true, doesn't it?  If Christianity really is true, then the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good Creator of the universe and author of the objective moral law has told us that homosexual acts are unethical and we should not engage in them.  He would know, wouldn't he?  So if there is good reason to conclude that this worldview is true, then it follows that homosexual acts are unethical, doesn't it?

ALBERT:  But that is cruel!  You are telling people they can't be themselves!  It is unjust to ask this of anybody!

RICK:  I understand and sympathize.  I don't doubt that following the objective moral law in this area is very hard for those attracted to the same sex.  Perhaps it can be a comfort to them to realize that following the objective moral law tends to be hard for everyone, though the "hardness" manifests itself in different ways.  Ethics asks hard things of people.  It calls some to be martyrs, to endure death and torture rather than follow the crowd.  It calls us all to learn self-control, to suppress natural desires and bring them under the control of reason, which is an incredibly difficult thing to do.  Restraining sexual desires in particular is notoriously difficult, and yet we are all called to self-control.  It takes little imagination or empathy to consider all the ways in which, not just homosexuals, but lots of people have to struggle hard to control and redirect sexual desires that would lead them down paths most of us would recognize as harmful or unethical.  It is notoriously hard to "do the right thing" sometimes.  We should sympathize with each other, but we have no rational basis to conclude that something must be OK to do simply because it is very hard not to do it.

ALBERT:  All your answers are glib and cold and meaningless.  You can't possibly understand what homosexuals go through because you aren't a homosexual.

RICK:  I may not be a homosexual, but I am a human being, and I do have some idea of how hard life can be.  I recognize though, certainly, that I cannot really know, experientially, fully what it is like to walk in someone else's shoes.  But that doesn't prove that my ethical beliefs are incorrect.

ALBERT:  Yes, it does!  Since you can't know what it's like to be me, you can't tell me my feelings are invalid.  I'm telling you that I know, from personal experience, that a good God could never demand that homosexuals suppress their homosexual impulses.  It would be too cruel.  You can't understand that, but you have to believe it, because I am telling you from my own personal experience.

RICK:  But how do I evaluate your personal experience?  You claim to have experience that proves that homosexual acts cannot be unethical.  But I cannot have that same experience, so how can I verify whether or not it shows what you think and claim it shows?

ALBERT:  You don't have to verify it!  You just have to accept it!  I'm me, so I get to testify to my own personal experience!  You don't get to say anything about it!  You just have to accept what I'm telling you.

RICK:  But that would be irrational.  Just because you have personal experiences and have interpreted them in a certain way, that doesn't prove that you might not be interpreting them wrongly.  I can't just accept your point of view without critical analysis.  That would be to believe things without sufficient evidence, which would be dishonest.

ALBERT:  No, it would not be dishonest.  It is the only just, the only compassionate thing to do.  If you respect me, you will accept my personal testimony about myself without question.

(Again, this is a hugely oversimplified and unrealistic conversation, of course.  For a somewhat closer approximation to a real conversation, though still fictional, see here.)

Rick is right not to accept Albert's personal testimony uncritically, despite Albert's attempts to persuade him that compassion requires him to do so.  While we ought to be compassionate and empathetic towards people and the personal difficulties they struggle with, if we are interested in truth, we cannot accept conclusions without adequate grounding in the evidence.  As Rick noted, just because a person claims to have had some particular experience, it doesn't prove that they've really had that experience or that they've interpreted their experience correctly.  The simple fact that I am me doesn't make me infallible in the interpretations of my own experiences.  We all know that, if we are sufficiently self-aware.  People can often be misled by false interpretations of their own subjective experiences, especially if those experiences are tied to deeply-felt emotions or desires.  Again, just because my Latter-day Saint friend had some "religious experience," that doesn't by itself prove to me that they have rightly interpreted their experience to have given them infallible proof that the Book of Mormon is a revelation from God.  Very few of us, rightly, are going to become Latter-day Saints simply on the basis of such personal-testimony claims, which is why Latter-day Saints typically go on to tell people how to replicate that experience in their own lives.

Another example of an area where, today, we often run into the "personal experience proves everything" kind of argument is transgenderism.  "I'm a boy."  But you're a biological girl.  "I don't care.  I know I'm a boy."  On what basis do you claim to be a boy?  "I feel that I am a boy."  How do your feelings show that you are a boy?  What is your linguistic and philosophical justification for redefining the word "boy" to mean something different than it has meant in the past history of the English language, in Christian theology, etc.?  And what do you even mean by "boy" now that you've divorced the word from its original objective meaning?  "Look, I feel that I am a boy!  So if you will be compassionate and respectful toward me, you will simply accept that I am a boy and not ask any further questions!  I'm me, so I get to define myself, and you simply have to accept it, or you're a hateful bigot!"  (Of course, not all advocates of transgender ideology are so belligerent, but the belligerence is common enough in such circles that I do no injustice in making it a part of what a standard conversation of this sort often looks like.)  The problem with this, of course, is that this appeal to personal testimony provides no real evidence--or, rather, no evidence that is sufficiently accessible to people in general.  Just because I testify that I feel strongly that I should be identified as the gender opposite my biological sex, it does not follow that that feeling is correct.  It takes little imagination to understand how one could misinterpret one's feelings in such an area.  Personal experiences and feelings are interpreted in light of beliefs and assumptions a person has, and so those interpretations may only be as true as the truth of those beliefs and assumptions.  Therefore, a claim of personal feelings cannot be used to trump critical questioning of beliefs and assumptions that may underlie the interpretations.

So a claim based on unreplicable personal experience cannot, by itself, prove a belief to be true.  However, it is also true that, because the personal experience is unreplicable and out of the reach of the experience of others, claims based solely and completely on such experiences are impossible to directly disprove.  Sometimes the argument is made that because they cannot be disproved, that amounts to a good reason to accept them as true.  "I claim to have seen God!  You can't prove that I haven't seen God, so you have to accept that I have!"  But not being able to disprove something is simply not the same as proving something to be true.  If I can't disprove that elves exist, it doesn't follow that that in itself gives me good reason to believe that they do.  Again, testimonies of personal experience, when this is all we have, leave us not with proof or disproof but at an impasse.  We simply cannot know whether the claims based on the experience are valid or not.  The only rational position, then, is to be agnostic on those claims.

So does that mean that we must always be agnostic with regard to anyone's claims based on personal experience?  No.  If all we have is personal experience to go on, we would have to be agnostic, but we very often have more than that to go on.  With regard to Latter-day Saint claims, for example, we can investigate those claims at many points, as the claims touch on history, philosophy, theology, etc.  My primary reason for rejecting the claims of the Latter-day Saint worldview is because I have found them to fail philosophically and theologically.  I believe Latter-day Saint claims about God and other matters are falsified philosophically; they fail to stand up to logic.  Also, I believe I have positive reasons to believe in the truth of historic, Catholic Christianity, which entails the falsehood of the foundation of the Latter-day Saint worldview (the conviction that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, etc.).  If, having concluded that Catholic Christianity is true on the grounds of various solid evidences, I am confronted with an argument based on Latter-day Saint personal testimony, I will simply respond that, while I can't directly disprove claims based in such personal testimony, yet the mere claims do not prove themselves, and I can indirectly disprove them based on their incompatibility with other things I have reason to believe to be true.  If the Latter-day Saint protests that he knows his personal experience proves the Latter-day Saint worldview, and that I have to just accept that because I can't possibly know what he's experienced, I will reply that I have no good reason to think that he cannot have misinterpreted his own personal experience, and I have good, positive reasons coming from other sources to believe that, in fact, in this case, he has done precisely that.  If he insists that it is disrespectful of me not to accept claims based on his personal experience, I will reply that it is not a matter of respect or disrespect; it is a matter of intellectual honesty.  If a person believes he is being disrespected simply because his claims, even claims based on unreplicable personal experience, are not uncritically accepted, he needs to reconsider whether his requirements for "being respected" are actually reasonable ones or not.  We deserve to be respected as human beings, but no human being can justly claim to deserve to have everyone accept his own ideas without critical analysis.  This is not a genuine requirement for the respect we are owed as human beings.

With regard to homosexuality and transgenderism, I think the same analysis holds.  A homosexual may claim to have personal experiences that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that homosexual acts are not unethical.  If I question this claim, he may object that I am in no position to judge his subjective, personal experience.  I must reply that while it is true that I cannot directly disprove his claim, the mere fact that he claims it falls short of proving it true, for I have no reason to believe that he is an infallible interpreter of his own personal experience, and it is clear to me that there are many ways a person might be mistaken about the real meaning of their own personal experiences.  Ironically, there are plenty of personal testimonies from people out there who admit to having interpreted their own personal experiences wrongly at various points.  So it would be intellectually irresponsible for me to accept claims based merely on such personal experience as if they proved themselves.  And, in the case of homosexuality, I believe I have good, solid reasons to believe that Catholic Christianity is true, and Catholic Christianity tells me, among many other things, that homosexual acts are unethical.  Therefore, I have good reason to believe they are unethical, and this evidence is not trumped by mere claims based on unreplicable personal experiences.  With regard to claims based on transgender experiences, again, I am not going to accept claims simply because they are made, without any good reason to think they are actually true, and the mere fact that a claim is rooted in someone's unreplicable personal experience does not constitute sufficient reason to believe that it is true.  I am going to evaluate that claim in light of everything that I know from history, science, philosophy, theology, etc.

What About the Lucy Argument?

An argument for trust in claimed personal experience might be made based on the sort of reasoning famously laid out in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.  In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, four children--two brothers and two sisters--go to stay for a while at the home of an old professor.  The youngest sister, Lucy, stumbles through a doorway into another world inside an old wardrobe.  When she comes back and tells her siblings about the experience, they don't believe her.  They are very uncomfortable, because Lucy has always been honest before, and they begin to fear that she might be developing some kind of insanity.  They finally decide to go and talk to the professor about her, but he surprises them by suggesting that they accept her word along with the existence of the other world she claims to have discovered.  He points out that everyone accepts that she is an honest girl, and he rules out insanity by observation of her behavior, and so he deduces that the most likely explanation is that she is telling the truth.  (You can find this conversation in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, chapter 5.)

Lewis makes a fascinating argument here, and one that, I think, has a lot of value and validity.  In the story, Lucy's siblings suffer under a preconceived bias without any real foundation--that there cannot be other worlds occasionally accessible through things like old wardrobes--and they use that bias as a basis to reject an exceedingly credible eyewitness testimony.  The professor points out the absurdity of calling into question the honesty or the sanity of a person well known to them merely on the basis of a felt need to preserve unwarranted assumptions about reality.  It is very easy for us to let our preconceived biases affect our objectivity in analyzing arguments and evidence.  Instead of letting our prejudices determine which evidence we will allow to have its say, we should instead allow the evidence to stand judge over our prejudices--even if that means questioning deeply- and long-held, and even fundamental, assumptions about the nature of reality.

But saying that we should allow even deeply-held assumptions to be questioned by credible evidence, including credible evidence from eyewitnesses, is not the same as saying we should give an uncritical pass to all claims based on personal experience.  Some claims based on personal experience are going to be more reliable than others.  We have to look at the specifics.  In the case of Lucy, we have an honest girl, with signs of sanity, telling a very detailed story about specific incidents involving specific individuals that occurred in a specific world with a specific name which she got into by going into a specific wardrobe, etc.  Lucy's siblings really had no reason to disbelieve her story, for they had no basis for their assumption that such a thing was impossible.  Given the incredible specificity of Lucy's story, there was no plausible explanation for her account beyond the possibility that she was deliberately lying, subject to some form of insanity (vivid, detailed hallucinations, etc.), or that she really had the specific experiences she related.  Given that her siblings knew her well and had strong reasons to believe her an honest person and not insane, and given that they had no real reason to disbelieve her story, no matter how counter-intuitive it was, the professor was right in pointing out that the best conclusion was to accept her story as legitimate.  (Of course, there might still be a question about how to interpret her experiences, but there was good reason to accept that, whatever the explanation, she actually had the experiences she claimed to have had.)

This is far different from the situation of the Latter-day Saint testimony I described above.  In that case, we would need to ask some further questions.  How well do I know the Latter-day Saint I am talking to?  Although it is charitable to assume honesty when reasonably possible, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that people often lie.  I can't just discount that possibility out of hand if I do not know how trustworthy a particular person is.  And there are degrees of lying.  Sometimes people lie outright, fully consciously and calculatingly.  Other times, there is a fair amount of self-deception going on, more or less consciously.  With a relative stranger (like a missionary coming to my door), I don't typically have the personal background necessary to evaluate levels of trustworthiness.  Also, in the case of the Latter-day Saint testimony, as well as lots of other kinds of "religious experience," there is often quite a lot of interpretation going on between the actual experience and a person's conclusions or beliefs based on that experience.  With Lucy, there was hardly any.  She either had those experiences or she didn't.  But a Latter-day Saint might really have a kind of deep, emotional experience when praying, and she might honestly and with strong conviction be persuaded, for whatever reason (background biases, expectations, etc.), that that experience means that the Book of Mormon is true, and yet she might quite easily be wrong in that interpretation.  It would be good to know more details about the exact nature of the particular experience a particular person is telling us about.  With Latter-day Saints, in my experience, it often comes down to a kind of feeling of joy or peace, perhaps accompanied by a strong sense of conviction that the Book of Mormon is true.  It is easy to see that an experience like that is highly ambiguous in itself and could be due to any number of factors, and that the leap from such an experience to a specific propositional claim like "The Book of Mormon is a revelation from God" is quite a large one, and not necessarily well warranted.  It is easy to imagine how people around the world might have similar experiences but interpret them differently based on different religious backgrounds, etc.  A person need not be insane or dishonest to be fooled by such an experience into thinking they know more than they actually do.  So it makes sense to take claims in this kind of context, generally speaking, with much, much more of a grain of salt than Lucy's siblings should have taken her eyewitness testimony.  Although both cases involve claims based on unreplicable personal experiences, the specifics of the cases are vastly diverse and the responses called for are very diverse as well.

The same can be said with regard to personal-experience-based claims connected to homosexuality or transgenderism.  If a person tells me that, as a homosexual, they can tell from their feelings that being asked to control and redirect homosexual desires is too much to ask for, so that it is impossible that there could be a God who would ask that, this claim seems to be based on very subjective and ambiguous evidence.  How difficult does a task have to feel like in order to constitute objective evidence that an objective moral law from God would not require it?  I find it interesting that people who would not balk at being asked to die, and even possibly to endure torture, in order to defend their values and do what they think is right, think that the difficulty involved in being asked not to engage in homosexual acts is "too much" to such an extent that they think that constitutes objective proof that such an ethical requirement cannot exist.  I am not aware of any objective argument that can show me the upper limit of what the objective moral law of God might ask of a particular person.  If, upon receiving such a reply as that, the homosexual responds by saying, "Well, of course you can't understand, you're not homosexual!  No one can understand me but me!  You'll just have to take my word for it that my experience constitutes a valid basis for such an objective argument," I'm going to have to answer that I cannot accept that claim as constituting sufficient evidence to abandon my entire Christian worldview and adopt their view on the ethicality of homosexual acts.  There is far too much subjectivity and room for error here.  Even if the person I am talking to is being perfectly honest, how do I know he is not leaping to his conclusion in a way similar to my Latter-day Saint friend--taking an ambiguous, though deeply-felt, emotional experience and jumping to an unwarranted conclusion based on it, a conclusion lacking in an objectively solid foundation and perhaps influenced by preconceived biases, assumptions, strong desires, etc.?  So I really have no basis to agree with my homosexual friend's conclusion based simply on what he perceives his personal experience to be telling him.  And, also similarly to the Latter-day Saint case, I have strong evidence coming from other sources telling me that his interpretation of his personal experience is incorrect.  I have good reason to believe that Catholic Christianity is true, and that worldview tells me that homosexual acts are unethical.  The personal-evidence-based claim of the homosexual can no more overturn that than can the personal-evidence-based claim of the Latter-day Saint.

Intellectual, Emotional, and Pastoral Considerations Regarding Personal Testimonies about the Ethicality of Homosexual Acts

I am going to conclude all of this by pasting a portion of a conversation I had with someone recently regarding these sorts of issues, and specifically regarding claims of personal experience having to do with homosexuality.  The conversation was useful, I thought, in bringing out some important points on these topics both on the intellectual level and on the emotional/psychological/pastoral level.

This is very interesting and crucially important, I think.  My conversations with you and with others expressing similar convictions has made me think about this a great deal in recent times. . . .  A couple of thoughts: 

1. It is very understandable that our emotions will accompany our reason as we think about these sorts of issues, issues which deeply impact our worldviews, our practical lives, our sense of identity, our feelings about social justice, etc.  It’s wholly appropriate for our emotions to be involved; it would be un-human to exclude them or assume they would be excluded.  In dealing with these issues, both the emotional side and the intellectual side have to be addressed. . . .  It’s a hard balance to properly respect and respond to the emotional aspects while at the same time not allowing those aspects to cripple the ability to deal with the intellectual issues thoroughly and effectively (or vice versa).  It’s something we think about a lot.

2. An important question is what role emotions have to play in informing or making intellectual arguments.  What weight should emotion have in our reasons for believing things?  There are pitfalls to avoid here.  On the one hand, we want to take the concerns arising from our emotions seriously and not neglect important things they have to say to us.  On the other hand, we don’t want to allow our emotions to give us an excuse not to deal honestly and thoroughly with the intellectual issues.  Sometimes reality might be painful and difficult, and I might need to choose to endure some pain in order to truly question my beliefs and assumptions and allow myself to be challenged by reality.  I might have to come to conclusions that are greatly painful and hard for me.  But if I care about reality and don’t want to try to escape into a false fantasy world where I feel safer, I have to learn to take that journey despite the difficulties--at least as much as I can.

3. Following #2, emotions cannot be regarded as immune from questioning or criticism.  I think there is a temptation that some people give in to these days (I think it is a bit of a fad these days) to think that if they feel very, very strongly about something, and that something is very deeply personal to them, that that exempts them from having to question those emotions, or to allow others to challenge them.  Questioning beliefs tied up with those emotions is often seen as a kind of personal attack and offense, and that sense of offense functions as a kind of screen against questioning and criticism.  This is dangerous, because it makes people feel a kind of justification for exempting themselves from questioning deep-seated, strongly-felt, and strongly-held-and-valued assumptions.  But this is a sure recipe for maintaining unjustified beliefs and prejudices.  If we want reality, we cannot exempt even our deepest beliefs and feelings from critical questioning.  These days, it has become popular in some circles to feel this way especially about moral issues and feelings.  A lot of people feel that if they have beliefs or feelings about moral and social issues they care deeply about, that somehow the depth of those feelings and the importance of the concerns justifies exempting those assumptions from critical questioning or challenge, as if allowing those assumptions to be questioned is a kind of betrayal of the moral convictions.  But moral convictions are only valid if they are based on truth, on reality.  They must be well-founded in the evidence before we have reason to take them as valid moral convictions.  So they cannot be exempt from questioning--at least not if we care about truth and reality.

4. So simply feeling strongly that homosexual acts should be OK, or being greatly concerned for social justice for homosexuals, do not in themselves prove that homosexual acts are ethical.  We also have to keep distinct different questions.  For example, it could possibly be true BOTH that homosexual acts are unethical AND that homosexuals have been treated unjustly and unlovingly in society.  If homosexuals have been treated unjustly, it does not necessarily follow that homosexual acts are ethical, and we cannot use the former as an argument for the latter (or at least I don’t see how the former actually proves the latter).  We can’t let our feelings about social justice cloud our judgment about the actual merits of arguments and evidence.  Also, being personally involved in this question does not, in itself, provide a reason for coming to a certain conclusion.  If I am homosexual, much might be at stake for me personally in the quesiton of whether or not homosexual acts are unethical.  This shouldn’t be minimized on an emotional level, but, at the same time, it cannot be used to provide a shield against crtitical questions.

5. One possible intellectually-meritorious argument that I could see arising out of the strong, personal emotions regarding homosexuality would be the one you have alluded to--the concern, as you put it, that “it’s wrong to suppress a natural part of life.”  I’ve addressed that in some of my earlier responses . . . but it’s an important objection that shouldn’t be dismissed too quickly.  I think the argument, if we articulate it out, goes something like this:  “God would not have made the world such that some people have a natural proclivity towards homosexuality and then also have forbidden homosexual acts in his moral law.  His moral commands would be at odds with what he created, and it would be inherently wrong for there to be a moral requirement to suppress a natural part of our created identity.”

I’ve addressed some of this in earlier responses.  For one thing, the situation we are currently in, where people are required by morality to suppress their desires in a painful way, is not the ideal state of creation, but is rather a part of the world in a fallen state.  As to why God would allow the Fall to occur, or in general to allow evil and suffering to happen in the world, this leads to the discussion of the problem of evil which we’ve looked at elsewhere.  In this fallen state of things, morality and our desires often conflict, and doing the right thing is often very difficult.  Most people recognize and accept this fact, that morality often asks hard things of people, and we often praise people for doing the right thing at great personal cost to themselves.

Can any objective argument be made showing that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good God would not have done what the Catholic worldview says he has done, in creating this world, allowing the Fall, commanding what he has commanded, etc.?  Can it be shown that it could not be the case that the objective moral law of God might require people with homosexual orientation to have to work to redirect their desires in the area of sexuality and not do what comes most naturally to them?  Perhaps an objective argument can be made here which rises above only the protests of feelings (which aren’t to be taken lightly, but also don’t necessarily constitute an objective argument) or is not mired in subjectivity and unquestioned assumptions, but I have not yet seen such an argument so far as I can tell.  But I’m open to such an argument being shown to me.

In making such an argument, we must also keep in mind the complexity of the issue and all the many factors involved.  We must recognize and give full credit to the great practical, psychological, and emotional difficulties of following Catholic teaching (in the area of homosexuality, but also in many other areas), but there are many other factors to remember as well.  We should note, for example, that while sexuality is often bound up with other aspects of human relationships, relationships can exist without sexuality, and there might be ways in which many of the needs of homosexuals and others can be at least partially met by other kinds of relationships that don’t involve sexual acts.  There is much to think about in that area.  While we don’t want to underestimate the difficulties of living Catholic teaching, for homosexuals and others, we also don’t want to overestimate them, in the sense of painting a more dire picture than is actually the case or overlooking ways in which the difficulties can be assuaged to some degree.

At any rate, there is much to think about here.  It can be very difficult to ask these kinds of critical questions, and we must do so with great care and sensitivity and empathy.  At the same time, again, if we are concerned not only with validating our feelings but also with making sure our beliefs are in accord with reality, we have to ask these questions. We cannot consider such questions off limits on the grounds that they are too personal, too painful, offensive to a person’s sense of identity, etc.

And one more short snippet:

This is another form of the objection we discussed above, and, again, I think it is a very important one that can’t be easily dismissed.  But it must be looked at with all the complexity it truly involves.  Again, most people recognize that morality, or even just prudence, tends to ask us to suppress or redirect natural desires, to deny ourselves things we have a natural inclination towards.  Take dieting, for example.  It’s a very hard thing to do, because in order to eat right and healthily we often have to fight against our natural inclinations, and this is a very difficult thing to do, especially for people who really enjoy eating and get a lot out of it.  I take that very seriously, being a person myself who really enjoys eating and looks forward to it.  Eating for me is kind of an oasis that eases the difficulties of life, and it really means a lot to me (even though that might sound kind of strange to someone who doesn’t feel this way, I am quite serious).  A friend of mine has a child who was recently diagnosed with celiac disease.  And the child has Down’s Syndrome, to make it worse.  She has to avoid her favorite foods now, and her parents will enforce this.  If I had that happen to me, it would be very, very difficult.  But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be the right thing to do, and that’s my point.  We can’t necessarily easily reason from “this will be really, really difficult and asks me to suppress and redirect strong and important natural desires, leading to great difficulties in life” to “I can’t possibly be required by morality or prudence to go down this path.”  And I could add a ton of other examples of all sorts, as I know you could as well with your creativity, intelligence, and empathy.  We could write a large series of books just listing the situations in which we would both agree that people are morally or prudentially required to suppress or redirect natural desires in a way that is very painful and difficult.  So why, then, should we think it so easy to assume that homosexuality must get a pass on this, must be exempt from all these other examples?  It is not evident to me that that case can be made objectively.  Another thought:  Even if, in some cases, we have to suppress or redirect our natural desires, there are more or less healthy ways of doing that.  I’m sure there are plenty of very ineffective and unhealthy ways of trying to suppress homosexual desires.  I’m sure there are plenty of ways of suppressing or redirecting other kinds of desires as well that are unhealthy and ineffective.  I’m sure there are different ways of dieting that are more or less psychologically healthy or unhealthy.  We should obviously pursue the most healthy ways possible when we are called on to deny ourselves something we want very much.  And we have to be careful to define words like “healthy” too.  Does “healthy” mean “living happily, feeling fulfilled, etc.”?  Perhaps, in that case, sometimes morality and prudence require us to live less-than-fully-healthy lives.  We might have to sacrifice some goods and sources of contentment in order to pursue things of greater value--like forgoing an adulterous relationship to respect spouses, or controlling not eating the things we want in order to take care of our bodies.  On the other hand, if we define “unhealthy” to acknowledge we might have stress from living life, and we focus more on more specific kinds of unhealthy states of mind, we might find we can redirect our desires to a great degree without being “unhealthy.”  In short, we have to ask specific questions and look at definitions, nuances, and complexities in these kinds of things if we will avoid making question-begging arguments.

For a larger dialogue on homosexuality and transgenderism, see here.  For a short article discussing how current "woke" culture tends to commit the error discussed in this article, while also making some positive and valid points, see here.

ADDENDUM 2/24/22:  Someone might argue, against my argument above, that we are required by justice and charity towards others to have a "judgment of charity" with regard to the personal testimonies and actions of others, meaning that we should give the best interpretation possible to what a person says and does--we should assume good motives like honesty, compassion, etc., rather than bad motives like selfishness or dishonesty.  And going along with that, it might be argued, we should have a kind of "judgment of respect" regarding what other people say about their own lives.  Since I am me, surely I have the right to define myself.  If I decide that I want my name to be Horace, that's my call, not anyone else's.  You don't have the right to say, "I don't like the name Horace, so I'll name you Frank instead."  I get to choose my name, not you, because I'm me.  Similarly, if I make some kind of personal-testimony sort of claim, such as those discussed in the article above, everyone has an obligation to take my word for it and believe it simply because I'm me and other people are not.

I agree that it is right, practically speaking, to adopt a "judgment of charity" about people.  But we must distinguish between a practical stance and an actual intellectual opinion.  It might be charitable for me to assume you are an honest person until I have clear evidence to the contrary, but that doesn't mean I really know that you are an honest person or have a basis for an intellectual claim about that.  If I don't know you very well, I may have no basis to have any clear opinion regarding your tendencies towards honesty or deception.  I will have to be agnostic on that as a propositional claim.  My "judgment of charity" is not so much an intellectual opinion or propositional claim about you as simply a practical attitude.  That is, I will treat you practically as if you are an honest person until contrary evidence arises.  (And even in terms of a practical stance, this will be limited.  For example, if I don't know someone, I'm not going to decide suddenly to let them babysit my kids simply on the basis of a practical "judgment of charity."  That would be foolish, because, intellectually speaking, I really don't know how trustworthy they are.)  So a "judgment of charity" of this sort, while it might make me inclined not to raise questions about the validity of your personal-experience-based claims unless I have a need to, will not give me any basis to avoid such questions if something important hinges on the trustworthiness of your claims.  Certainly, I'm not going to adopt a whole system of views on things like the ethicality of homosexual acts or the truth of the Latter-day Saint worldview simply on the basis of practical trust rooted in a "judgment of charity."

It's similar with a "judgment of respect."  It's one thing to allow you to decide your name.  Surely you have that right because you are you, and I shouldn't try to usurp it.  But you don't therefore have a right to demand that I believe whatever you want me to believe or do whatever you want me to do, no matter the seriousness of the consequences or the intellectual merits of your claims, simply on the basis that your claims are rooted in your own personal experience.  Certainly you should be considered an important witness, and even a primary witness, to your own personal experience.  But it doesn't follow from that that respect for you requires me to accept claims based on dubious evidence or ignore evidence to the contrary, or make seriously important decisions without asking further questions or looking for further evidence or analyzing your claims more closely.  Again, practically speaking, when I can I should defer to your own statements about yourself and not adopt a challenging attitude to them unnecessarily.  But that doesn't mean I should adopt an intellectual position that goes beyond what is truly warranted by the evidence.

Philosophical Thoughts on Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Predestination

This article follows up on my article outlining Catholic teaching on free will, grace, and predestination.

The Nature of Free Will

There are two areas of philosophical confusion which, in my observation, tend to make it difficult for people to understand Catholic teaching regarding issues surrounding free will, grace, and predestination.  The first area of confusion has to do with the idea of free will itself.  There is a tendency sometimes for people to focus so much on the freedom of the will that they forget that the will is not completely unpredictable and uncontrollable.  They cannot see how the idea of free will is compatible with the idea that God knows the future and even plans the future.  In Catholic theology, the entire future unfolds, down to its last detail, exactly according to God's foreknowledge and plan (the plan of "predestination").  If that is so, many wonder, how in the world can we really have free will?  For (it would seem) if God infallibly knows everything I am going to do in the future and even has planned everything I am going to do in the future in some way, then it is impossible for anything to happen differently than God knows and has planned, and so I can't make any different choices than the ones God knows and has planned for me to make.  So I would seem to have no free will at all.  So how can Catholic theology hold together free will, foreknowledge, and predestination?

At least part of the answer is that while, of course, coercion, force, certain psychological conditions, etc., can override or circumvent the will and so limit or remove its freedom, there are ways in which the will can be moved and directed which don't override or destroy freedom.  It can be helpful here to distinguish between "necessity" and "certainty."  As with many words adapted to abstract, philosophical use, people don't always use these words in the same way, so we don't want to be so rigid in our use of these words that we can't recognize differences of meaning in how we and others use them and so end up getting into meaningless, semantic fights.  Nevertheless, in some philosophical/theological circles, these words have been used in a way that can be helpful at capturing an important distinction.  We can think of the will being moved "necessarily" or "with certainty but not necessarily."  For the will to be moved necessarily is for the will really to be obliterated by having its options removed, so that the person willing can really only do one thing and it is impossible for him to do otherwise.  For example, say you want me to eat a cucumber.  It so happens that I hate cucumbers, so it is not going to be easy to get me to eat one.  You might attempt to get me to eat a cucumber by forcing me to eat one necessarily, removing my options and so circumventing my will.  You could tie me down and force the cucumber down my throat.  Or you could use a supercomputer to take over my brain and force my body to eat the cucumber.  Etc.

On the other hand, it is possible to move the will with certainty but without necessity, without removing legitimate options and thus circumventing and destroying the act of free choice.  Going back to the cucumber example, you might get me to certainly, yet freely, eat the cucumber by using persuasion, which involves appealing to my motives so that I freely alter my choice.  You might offer me $1,000 to eat the cucumber.  If you did that, I would certainly eat it (all other things being equal).  I would still hate the taste of the cucumber, but my distaste for cucumber would lose the battle with my desire to win $1,000.  If I really hated cucumbers and wouldn't do it even for $1,000, you could offer me $1,000,000, if you happened to have that kind of money on hand (and were that bizarrely obsessed with getting me to eat a cucumber for some reason).  In a case like this, you have performed an action that caused me to do something you wanted me to do, and made it certain I would do it, but without any overwhelming or circumventing of my will.

This can happen because acts of will, while free in some ways, are not arbitrary or groundless.  This is evident both from the law of causality as well as from a simple psychological examination of how the will actually works.  The law of causality does not allow that something can come from nothing.  If an effect occurs, it must have a cause sufficient to explain the effect.  The only alternative to this would be to have something coming from nothing.  But "nothing" is nothing and so does nothing.  It has no reality, and so cannot originate anything or exert any energy or activity to cause anything to happen.  It cannot be the explanation for why anything happens.  So if anything happens, if anything in reality undergoes change, some cause must have effected that change.  If there is anything in the universe that cannot explain itself, it must be explained by something outside of itself and not by "nothing."

And with regard to the psychology of willing, consider for yourself how you make choices.  When I examine the activity of my own will, I see this basic pattern:  1. I am aware of various states of affairs that could come about or be brought about.  I call these my "options."  2. My mind begins to examine its own desires.  What do I like?  What do I dislike?  What do I want to happen?  What do I not want to happen?  3. As this process continues, I recognize that, among the things I have some desire for, there are things I want more than other things.  In other words, I find that I have "preferences."  I prefer some states of affairs to other states of affairs.  Out of the complexity of my views, ideas, and desires, my mind attempts to sort out what I truly prefer to have come about or to bring about, all things considered, in that moment.  4. Finally, I am successful at determining my true preference in the current situation, and I settle on that preference.  This act of my mind settling on a preference is what I call the act of "choice."  5. Then, if what I have chosen is to perform some action, my body (or my mind) responds to the act of choice by performing the action (or at least attempts to do so).

Is this not how the action of choosing goes for all of us?  We can see, then, by looking at it, that the act of choice is not arbitrary or outside a nexus of causation.  My choice flows from my preference.  My preference is what I most desire or value in that moment.  (And I would add that, when I am thinking of "desire" here, I don't mean mere non-rational instinct, but what my rational mind values.)  And what I desire is a product of many, many things--my personality, my beliefs and values, all the circumstances that exist around me and inside of me at the time of my choice, the earlier circumstances that led to those circumstances, all my previous experiences, the entire previous history of my life, my DNA, the choices of my parents, the choices of their parents, the entire history of the universe, etc.  At the moment of my choice, I choose what I prefer, and the desires, values, beliefs, ideas, etc., that determine what I prefer do not spring out of nowhere.  They are what they are because of prior causes.  This is why you can cause with certainty, but without will-circumventing necessity, that I will choose to eat that cucumber.  This is why, if you happened to know everything about me and all the circumstances affecting my choice at any given moment, you could always predict with 100% accuracy what I would choose.  This is why, if you happened to have control of all the causal factors in the entire universe, you could ensure that I would always choose what you wanted me to choose.

Now consider God's relationship to the creation.  God is the First Cause, the Source of all reality.  There is no being in the universe that does not derive from him.  There are no chains of causes in the universe which do not ultimately trace back to his action.  And God is also omniscient, or all-knowing.  There is nothing in all of reality which he does not know thoroughly.  If that is the case, then it cannot be otherwise than that the history of creation will unfold according to God's perfect foreknowledge and plan.  When God created the universe, he knew exactly what he was creating, and he created exactly what he wanted.  And he knew everything that would result from that creation down through the entire chain of universal history from beginning to end.  He knew all the free choices that all creatures would make.  He knew all the free choices he himself would make as he would continue to interact with creation as its history continued to unfold, for he knew himself and his own preferential tendencies perfectly as well.  So God could not have created the universe without, at the same time, perfectly knowing and planning its entire history, down to the smallest detail.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it (#308), "[t]he truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator."

And none of this is in any way inconsistent with free will, for God's foreknowledge and predestination, understood in this way, do not at all overwhelm, obliterate, or circumvent anyone's free choices.  Just as you did not obliterate my free will when you offered me money to eat the cucumber, neither does God obliterate free will when he creates a universe and ordains a history in which he knows I will choose all the things I will choose in my life.  (See here--and particularly time index 17:00-20:53--for a helpful discussion of this same issue by Bishop Robert Barron.)

The Problem of Evil

All of this leads us to the second major problem a lot of people have with Catholic teaching in this area.  Even if I can see how God's foreknowledge and predestination are consistent with the freedom of my choices, yet if all of this is so, why does God's plan involve so much evil?  Why did he choose to create a world in which so much sin and suffering happen?  Why not create one where everyone makes only right choices and is always happy?  When we think of the will as outside of God's control, this can provide a kind of smokescreen, to an extent, against this second objection.  Why all the sin and suffering?  Well, God can't really do anything about it, because he can't control free will.  (Of course, this gets God off the hook from responsibility for evil only by removing his sovereignty as God, but people often don't press these sorts of things to their logical conclusions.)  But if God can control free will, if it is not outside the effects of his plan and foreknowledge, then how could God justifiably create a world in which all this sin and suffering happen?

I won't attempt to give a complete answer to this question here, because I have already dealt with it in a separate article to which I will refer you.  Sometimes this objection is expressed in terms of feeling like God is somehow still violating my freedom by exercising such absolute control over the history of my life.  I think this thought partly stems from a failure to fully recognize how different God's relationship with us is from our relationship with other creatures.  If you were to somehow gain absolute control over my life such that my entire life history became subject to your knowledge and plans, I would complain that you had violated my "free space," for no creature from outside of myself should have that kind of control over me, and you could only have gotten that kind of control by somehow conquering me from without and subjugating me illicitly.  But I make a mistake if I then transfer that feeling to my relationship with God.  God is my Creator.  His control over my life does not result from any kind of illicit conquest or manipulation or invasion of my "space."  His control arises from the fundamental fact of who he is and who I am.  The one who creates my fundamental essence and my entire world cannot but be the source of all that I am and cannot fail to exercise a kind of ownership and control over my life and my world that no mere creature could ever have.  It is his prerogative, and no one else's, to know fully and to determine the course of the universe's history and my history.  To complain about God's plan governing my life is like complaining against my mother for giving birth to me.  "If my next-door neighbor tried to give birth to me, I should be very upset!  So how I can tolerate you having given birth to me, Mom?"  Well, by the very nature of our relationship, my mother has a kind of role in bringing me into existence that my next-door neighbor can never have (unless, of course, my next-door neighbor happens to be my mother).  My mother's unique role is not a usurpation, but a natural and fully appropriate relationship.  And so is God's unique role in my life as my Creator and the one whose plan governs my life history.  

I talked above about how God's complete knowledge of and control over the factors that determine my choices make it so that I will choose precisely and only what God wants me to choose.  But does that mean that God wants me to choose to sin?  If a person should choose to commit a mortal sin, rejecting fundamentally a right relationship with God, and end up in hell as a result of this, was it God's will for this to happen?  The answer is: yes and no.  God hates sin and suffering.  He does not take delight in either of these things.  But he sees that the overall good of the universe, that which brings about the greatest overall goodness and happiness, is best achieved by allowing certain evils to occur.  So his design for the history of the universe was not set simply on stopping me from committing any sin or experiencing any suffering.  He saw that the best way to set up the universe was to ordain a set of circumstances such that it would come about that I would, at times, commit sin and experience suffering.  He did not produce sin in me (for sin is a negative thing, like darkness, rather than a positive being, like light), but he set up the world such that he knew the result would be that I would sin and that suffering would come to me--not because he delighted in the idea of my sin and suffering, but because he knew that allowing these things would bring about a greater good.  And this extends to all the sin and suffering in the universe, even to mortal sin and hell.  So God did not want me to sin, per se, but he wanted to create a universe in which I would be freely permitted by him to sin because he knew that this universe would be the one suited to accomplish his perfect purposes.

A Brief Note on Various Philosophical and Theological Schools of Thought

How does what I've said above relate to different philosophical schools of thought regarding the nature of free will?  There are two positions, broadly speaking, which are typically discussed--libertarianism and compatibilism.  I often find that there are ambiguities in terms of how these positions are defined that make it difficult to identify with either of the labels.  For example, sometimes the libertarian view of free will is defined as the idea that "it is possible to choose otherwise at the moment of a choice," and compatibilism is defined as the idea that "the will is free if, at the moment of choice, a choice is made according to one's own mind and will, voluntarily, even if it is impossible to choose otherwise because the will is determined by the strongest desires of the person."  But the phrase "able to choose otherwise" is ambiguous.  Are we talking about the ability of my mind to actually make choices between various options--that is, my ability to use my rational mind to settle on preferences?  Or does "able to choose otherwise" imply the idea that there is no certainty in choosing--that, at any given moment of choice, there is an absolute possibility that various choices might happen such that there can be no knowledge in principle about what choice will actually be made until the choice is actually made?  "Ability to choose otherwise" in the former sense is an idea that makes perfect sense and is an essential component of what it means to make an act of will.  "Ability to choose otherwise" in the latter sense is logically absurd (because it implies that totally uncaused events happen for no reason, thus denying the law of causality) and, far from being an essential component of the idea of a free act of the will, it is completely incompatible with how willing actually takes place.  It turns an act of will, which is really the act of a rational mind settling on a preference, and turns it into something fundamentally different--a totally random event which is independent of everything that comes before it (and therefore, absurdly, independent even of the person making the choice and any act of that person) but which produces actions and events in the world.

If we define "ability to choose otherwise" in the former, rational sense, then I could identify my position as libertarian.  But if we define "ability to choose otherwise" in the latter, absurd sense, then I would be inclined to say I am a compatibilist.  The libertarian view, taken in the absurd sense, is incompatible with Catholic faith, because it implies a fundamental incompatibility between the Catholic doctrine of free will and the Catholic doctrines of divine foreknowledge and predestination (not to mention that by obliterating the law of causality it destroys the very rational fabric of reality itself).

What about the various Catholic schools of thought pertaining to free will, grace, and predestination--in particular, Bañezian Thomism and Molinism?  I think that my account of free will above is consistent with any of the accepted Catholic schools of thought.  It doesn't take sides in the details of the disputes between these schools.  For more on my views regarding the Bañezian-Molinist dispute, and in particular how I understand Molinism, see here, here, and here.  All the historic, approved Catholic schools of thought agree on the fundamental theological points of Catholic doctrine regarding free will, grace, and predestination.  Here is how Catholic philosopher Alfred J. Freddoso describes the traditional Catholic teaching on free will and predestination and how both Bañezian Thomism and Molinism agree on this teaching:

According to the traditional doctrine of divine providence, God freely and knowingly plans, orders and provides for all the effects that constitute the created universe with its entire history, and he executes his chosen plan by playing an active causal role that ensures its exact realization. Since God is the perfect craftsman, not even trivial details escape his providential decrees. Whatever occurs is specifically decreed by God; more precisely, each effect produced in the created universe is either specifically and knowingly intended by him or, in concession to creaturely defectiveness, specifically and knowingly permitted by him. Divine providence thus has both a cognitive and a volitional aspect. By his pre-volitional knowledge God infallibly knows which effects would result, directly or indirectly, from any causal contribution he might choose to make to the created sphere. By his free will God chooses one from among the infinity of total sequences of created effects that are within his power to bring about and, concomitantly, wills to make a causal contribution that he knows with certainty will result in his chosen plan's being effected down to the last detail. 

This much is accepted by both Molina and the Bañezians. They further agree that it is because he is perfectly provident that God has comprehensive foreknowledge of what will occur in the created world. That is, God's speculative post-volitional knowledge of the created world -- his so-called free knowledge or knowledge of vision -- derives wholly from his pre-volitional knowledge and his knowledge of what he himself has willed to do. Unlike human knowers, God need not be acted upon by outside causes in order for his cognitive potentialities to be fully actualized; he does not have to, as it were, look outside himself in order to find out what his creative act has wrought. Rather, he knows 'in himself' what will happen precisely because he knows just what causal role he has freely chosen to play within the created order and because he knows just what will result given this causal contribution. In short, no contingent truth grasped by the knowledge of vision can be true prior to God's specifically intending or permitting it to be true or to his specifically willing to make the appropriate causal contribution toward its truth.

For more, see my problem of evil article, and my predestination article this article follows up on.  To see arguments relative to the deeper, most fundamental philosophical issues involved in all of this, see my case for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity in general here and here.

Published on the feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort.