Universalism, Freedom, and the Problem of Evil

One recurring worry about universalism is that it would undermine the ability of theists to respond adequately to the problem of evil. This worry was expressed repeatedly by Perry Robinson, for example, in his recent Ancient Faith Radio interview. The worry seems to be rooted in the idea that the best theistic response to the problem of evil involves the invocation of significant freedom: God allows the evils of the world to occur because God wishes us to have significant freedom to shape our destinies. But universalism holds that we lack significant freedom with respect to our ultimate destinies, since it holds that all are eventually saved.

How serious is this worry? I think it is far less serious than many take it to be. I want to offer a few reasons why in this post.



1. Let us start by granting a key premise that drives this worry. Given what it is to be human, our dignity and flourishing depend on possessing significant freedom—by which I mean the freedom to make choices that have a real effect for good or ill, both for ourselves and in the broader world. Put simply, our dignity depends on being able to have an impact. Our lives and choices have to matter, in the sense of making a difference for better or worse. I accept all of this. And I think all of this helps explain why a world in which people make some horrific choices might be compatible with the existence of a good God.

2. In thinking about significant freedom and its importance for human dignity, we need to recall that in order for human freedom to be significant, it needn’t be unconstrained. In fact, in the real world human freedom is never as a matter of fact unconstrained. It is hemmed in by the limits imposed by the laws of nature and by the choices of other creatures. Sometimes the latter constrains our freedom farther than we think is morally permissible—as in, for example, the case of slavery. But not every human constraint on the freedom of others is excessive in this way. Facing such legitimate constraints from other human agents and from predictable natural laws is compatible with having freedom that is significant. Put simply, having significant freedom does not depend on being able to fly without the aid of technology if I so choose, or on the ability to get away with murder (to commit murder without facing the risk of subsequent capture and imprisonment). Those who aren't free to do these things may still have freedom that is significant.

3. If God were to intervene to prevent the evil consequences of our choices whenever those consequences would otherwise exceed some threshold of gravity, then, given God’s omnipotence, it would never be in our power to do anything so grave. Hence, we would lose significant freedom with respect to all choices beyond that threshold level of moral gravity. However, we might still have significant freedom below that threshold level of moral gravity. If that threshold level were very low—so that we can’t inflict harm even equivalent to a papercut on ourselves and others—it is arguable that the scope of our significant freedom would be rendered so trivial that we wouldn’t experience our lives as having the potential to make any sort of meaningful impact. Hence, a policy of very substantial divine intervention would undermine human dignity profoundly. But the alternative to such a low threshold level of intervention is not no intervention at all. For example, at the other extreme, one might have a threshold but set it so high that it precludes us only from making choices whose negative outcomes are the most extreme one can conceive—namely, negative consequences of endless or eternal gravity. To have significant freedom with respect to everything but our ultimate eternal destinies is to have enormous significant freedom to effect the world for good or ill, perhaps even to the point of being able to make this mortal coil into a hellish nightmare (albeit a finite one).

4. What someone should have the freedom to achieve is ordinarily thought to be a function of their maturity level. While we allow the immature (children and young adults) to make choices with significant consequences, we generally think it appropriate for a responsible adult to take steps to keep them out of situations in which their free choices could have consequences that exceed the scope of what—given their maturity level—they are ready to take responsibility for. We might suppose that as we grow and mature, this scope expands outward.

But we might also, reasonably, believe that there are some kinds of outcomes so grave that we are never mature enough to be responsible for choices that could produce them. Marilyn McCord Adams has argued that eternal damnation is one such outcome. Her argument turns on the nature of human freedom in this life. Our freedom always develops under sub-optimal conditions, conditions which lead to coping mechanism and other impairments that follow us into adulthood. Even if we devote ourselves to overcoming them, none of us will ever purge ourselves completely. Thus, in the real world, all human freedom is impaired freedom. And, Adams argues, if you have impaired freedom, then you are no more competent to make choices that could eternally damn you than a toddler is to make choices that could get them killed. Just as a loving parent would try to make sure a toddler were not put in situations in which their choices could kill them, likewise a loving God would try to make sure none of us were put in situations in which our choices would damn us eternally. But for God, of course, there isn’t the same gap between “try” and “succeed” that we find in fallible and finite human parents.

5. To say that a loving God would ensure that none of us were put in situations where our choices would damn us eternally is not the same as saying that God would not give us significant freedom. In fact, freedom of a very, very broad scope is consistent with a God who takes damnation off the table of consequences we have the freedom to bring about. Intervening only at the level of eternal damnation is the other extreme of intervening at the level of paper cuts. We might call it “minimal” intervention, since it intervenes only to prevent the very worst outcome conceivable—horror that remains eternally unredeemed. The argument from evil depends on holding that a good God would have a lower threshold for intervention than this—that a good God would, say, intervene to prevent finite horrors like those suffered by Holocaust victims (horrors which might be redeemed by being situated within an eternal context that overwhelms them with infinite goods and “defeats” them in Adams’ sense). A theodicy that responds to the argument from evil by appealing to the importance of significant freedom, even with respect to the production of such horrors as those that comprised in the Holocaust, is not therefore threatened by the belief that God would so arrange the world that we lack significant freedom with respect to the very worst conceivable evil that any creature could suffer (eternally unredeemed horror in the outer darkness).

6. I want to close with a suggestion about lingering moral worries about a God who guarantees the salvation of all. Many feel uneasy about this doctrine because it seems to require that God take extreme steps to protect us from our own foolishness--steps that literally prevent us from putting ourselves in certain choice-making situations. What if someone is really determined?  The fear is that to guarantee the salvation of all when there are those who might be sufficiently determined will require shutting them down in coercive ways.

But let’s invoke the parent analogy one more time to explain an important distinction that may be in play here.

There are two ways that parents might act to protect their children from situations in which their choices would have consequences too weighty for the maturity level of those children. On the one hand, the dangerous situations might be ones that exist beyond the scope of the parents’ control, and so they take various steps to try to keep their children from stumbling into these situations. On the other hand, the dangerous situations might be ones whose existence depends on what the parents do, and so they choose not to create the dangerous situations in the first place.

Consider the difference between the following: (a) Parents hear of a wild party that is going on in their neighborhood—a party put on by the 15-year-old son’s classmate, in which there will be drugs and prostitutes and, perhaps, guns present—and who take steps to keep their son away from the party. (b) Parents choose not to host a wild party featuring drugs, prostitutes, and guns, so as not to create a situation into which their son might stumble and thereby confront choices he is too young to handle wisely.

In situations like (a), there may be limits to what parents can legitimately do to keep their children safe. Even if the only way to keep their son from the party were to duct-tape him to the bed, we’d be hesitant to endorse such an action. But we should not draw the wrong lesson from this. The problem with duct-taping the boy to the bed isn’t that this makes it impossible for the boy to decide for himself whether to attend such a dangerous party (one that would confront him with choices whose consequences he isn’t mature enough to handle). After all, if there would be no such party to attend if the parents don’t throw it themselves, their refusal to throw it isn’t thereby rendered morally wrong—even though their refusal to throw such a party makes it impossible for the boy to decide for himself whether to attend such a dangerous party (one that would confront him with choices whose consequences he isn’t mature enough to handle).

Here’s the point: If I can keep my child away from a dangerous situation by simply refusing to create the dangerous situation myself, that refusal may be permissible even if it is not permissible to do whatever is required to block my child from entering such a dangerous situation that exists out there beyond my control.

But in the case of God, it seems that there are very few (if any) dangerous situations that exist out there beyond God’s control, such that if God deems those situations unsuitable for our level of maturity, God would have to (metaphorically speaking) duct-tape us to our beds if he wanted to make sure we didn’t end up in those situations. Because God is the sovereign creator of the universe, most (or all) dangerous situations exist because that is (metaphorically speaking) the kind of party God has decided to throw. So, if God wants to keep us from situations in which we confront choices that could eternally damn us, it seems that He wouldn’t need to constrain us from walking into such situations. He’d simply need to choose not to create a world in which such situations arise.

So, for example, God could decide not to create a world in which our eternal destinies are fixed by finite choices we make in this life. Designing the world such that all opportunity to repent of our foolishness ended at the moment of death would be designing the world such that our finite choices in this life could damn us eternally. God could choose not to throw that kind of party. Instead, God could design human nature such that our capacity for free choice--including the choice to repent--remains after death, and could furthermore make the offer of divine grace a standing offer that remains throughout a creature's existence. In that case we can never finally damn ourselves, because the nature of freedom and the nature of God's offer guarantees that the possibility of redemption is never taken off the table.

And, as I have argued in a few articles and as John Kronen and I argue in God's Final Victory, if the possibility of redemption remains, for each unredeemed creature, a real possibility so long as the creature remains unredeemed, the likelihood of universal salvation becomes a mathematical certainty.

In other words, many of the moral qualms about universalism may be rooted in failing to distinguish situations like (a) from situations like (b)—and by fallaciously importing moral concerns that arise with respect to (a) into circumstances that are really more like (b).