The Possibility of a Spinozian Christianity
Baruch Spinoza writes to prove a total pantheism in which God is the universe. His argument attempts to eliminate a supernatural creator of the world, and instead assert that the universe results from God’s necessary principles, manifested in cause and effect. This eliminates the possibility of anthropomorphizing God, and destroys the notion of worship. However, I will argue that Spinoza’s scheme leaves room for the possibility of a special mode which operates as the more traditional sense of “God,” and that this special mode is not only compatible with Spinoza’s overall argument, but also with the Christian worldview, as well as other religions which anthropomorphize God.
These are the premises of Spinoza’s argument. First, he argues that two separate substances can have no attributes in common. This is because he defines a substance as that which can be thought of on its own: “each substance must be in itself and be conceived through itself; that is, the conception of the one does not involve the conception of the other” (Spinoza 32). Take, for example, an ice cube. What makes it a separate substance (we will see this is wrong, but for the sake of argument) is the fact that it can be imagined as existing with nothing else in the universe. However, if two objects share an attribute, then to imagine one object a person must also imagine the other object sharing that attribute. As a result, these two objects are actually one substance, because if they were two they would not share any attributes.
Furthermore, separate substances can have no interaction. This follows from the fact that if there are to be really two substances, they could have nothing in common, and for if there were anything in common they would share an attribute. It is only by sharing this common attribute that one can affect the other; but if they are separate attributes they can have nothing common between them Therefore, there can be no interaction between separate substances. One can think of here the problem of Descartes’ substance dualism. If the mind is really distinct from the body, many materialists argue, then how can it affect the body? The mind/body problem thus becomes a great example of the sort of strange incomprehensibility in the idea of two separate substances interacting.
Spinoza continues on to argue that there can only be a single substance in the universe, since there can not be multiple substances of the same attribute (you could not tell them apart) and one substance cannot create another substance (after all, creation is interaction of a sort, and one substance creating another would be interaction. But interaction between separate substances has been disproven) ( 33). Spinoza argues that by substance, we mean that which exists, and therefore substances must exist. And he argues that the substance would have to be infinite, for if a substance is to be somehow limited it would have to be by another substance. But since separate substances cannot interact, all substances must be infinite, and since there is only one substance, it must be an infinite one.
Traditionally, God has been defined by Medievalists as an infinite substance possessing the greatest attributes. As has been argued above, from Spinoza, the one substance is infinite, and since it is the only substance, it must necessarily possess all attributes in the universe, since there are no substances to hold other attributes. This definition of substance is the same definition of God. Therefore, substance is God, and God is the universe. Stated another way, God is the infinite substance of the universe which possesses all possible attributes.
The question, of course, is how the universe looks so complicated if there is only one substance. He begins to answer this by positing that the infinite substance of God has all attributes. His next step is to explain that there are, in a sense, two levels to the attributes of God. There is first the basic, eternal nature of God which never changes, and which underlies the entire universe. “All things, I repeat, are in God, and all things that follow from the necessity of his essence (as I shall later show)” (43). There are then the laws of cause and effect, which come from God’s second level, the necessity of cause and effect: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinite things in infinite ways (modis), (that is, everything that can come within the scope of infinite intellect).” So there is the highest level of necessity, where attributes of God cannot change. Then there are secondary attributes of God, modes, which change and manifest every possible thought of the “infinite intellect.” All of these modes are the single substance, but they are simply shaped, one could say, in a different way. So God is everything in the universe; each mode is part of the same substance, manifesting a different set of secondary attributes. This is, as I understand it, Baruch Spinoza’s pantheism.
Importantly, during all of this Spinoza is dismissing the idea of a supernatural being which can change the flow of cause and effect. After all, if God is the universe, then it does not make sense to think of God as poking the universe with his divine power. God does not cause the earth to rotate; the earth is part of God, and that part of God must necessarily rotate. This calls into question the Medieval assumption that God orders the universe: “Indeed, they hold it as certain that God himself directs everything to a fixed end; for they say that God has made everything for man’s sake and has made man so that he should worship God” (57). It does not make sense, according to Spinoza, to anthropomorphize God as actively ordering the universe in a Leibnizian way, because God simply is God, and if the universe is God, then God does not need to change the universe; in fact, God cannot change the universe. All God does is be the infinite substance, the eternal qualities which manifest as temporal modes.
There is a second reason why anthropomorphizing no longer makes sense in Spinoza’s world view. Humans are only one possible mode of God; there is an infinite possibility of other modes. Humanity is not an essential attribute of God, but only a secondary, temporal mode. It would then be wrong to ascribe human traits to God because the only part of God that is human is humanity itself. It would be like describing an entire car in terms of its steering wheel, and whenever a new part of the car is discussed, one tries to use terms which arise from studying the steering wheel, or depicting the car itself as one large steering wheel. This obviously makes no sense. Similarly, describing humanity does not describe many other possible modes of God, and it also does not describe the eternal, essential, necessary attributes of God. For these two reasons, God as Spinoza defines it should not be anthropomorphized.
However, Spinoza overlooks a possibility which his system could allow for: God is not the eternal attributes, but could be a special mode which shapes the substance into other modes. This argument could defend any version of theism, from monotheistic traditions to polytheistic ones. Zeus, Odin, and Thor could be especially juiced up modes which are filled with more attributes of greatness, power, and temporal existence than other modes. It seems logically possible, at least, that the essential attributes could somehow manifest themselves into such modes, which are greater than ordinary modes. Perhaps this is all that could be meant by the word “god”: modes which are notably more powerful or influential than ordinary modes. After all, the heat of the sun is simply a greater mode of fire than the heat in my electric fireplace. I can imagine quite easily a humanlike mode which is vastly more powerful than the ordinary human mode, and could in fact imagine that mode desiring to hurt me, protect me, save me, etc.
Of all religions, this is especially compatible with Hinduism. Hinduism, as taught in the Upanishads, teaches that there are many gods which are actually manifestations of the essential powerhouse of the universe, Brahma. Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna and so forth are indeed gods; they are modes of Brahma that proceed out of, and yet are a piece of, that energy source. Similar ideas could be applied to paganism, to the Greek, Norse, or Roman pantheons.
In a moment, I will turn to discussing this idea in terms of Christianity. First, I want to mention the fact that Spinoza attempts to give no account of how the eternal attributes of God are moved into modes. In other words, why is it that the substance of God starts a chain of cause and effect which manifests itself in different temporal modes? A possible answer is that within the substance, there was a mode that already existed. This could be a sort of special mode, which began the chain of cause and effect, and perhaps has the power to interact with those modes later on. This special mode would be very different from the other modes. First of all, to explain its uniqueness, it would have to be the first mode to exist, and would have to exist forever, in order to actively create new modes out of its substance. This would not necessarily have to be eternal existence. Medievalists make a distinction between eternal and everlasting. Eternal is always existing because it is outside of time; everlasting is always existing, but within time. Perhaps this special mode which causes and interacts with the lesser modes is such a thing. It could be a mode which always existed, always manifested its attributes, but also has temporal existence.
We don’t have to stop here in describing this possible mode. Not only could it be an everlasting mode, it could be the best mode. Like with the sun and the fireplace example, which are according to Spinoza modes, I can imagine modes having degrees of goodness, power, and so forth. If that is the case, I can also imagine a “best” mode of the eternal substance. I can imagine a mode which has always existed, a mode which is stronger than all other modes, a mode which is smarter than all others, and in general has more and better perfections than any other modes. These could all be secondary attributes, manifesting out of the essential attributes into this imaginable “best” mode.
This can perhaps reinstate the traditional notion of God, though in a pantheist sense. What we mean by God could be the best mode of a single substance, and we are modes of the same substance, but simply manifested at a lower level of greatness. We are lesser because unlike this initial mode, we do not have the secondary attribute of being everlasting, nor that of omnipotence, omniscience, and the rest.
This could reinstate many of the traditional conceptions of God which Spinoza had first rejected. Spinoza admits that when we have the mode of God food, we are thankful that this mode of God is here for our advantage. To a greater degree, we are thankful for the mode of God we call the sun, because that mode is even more to our advantage than any food in particular. So the more good a mode does for us, the more thankful we are that God manifests in this way.
But it is possible that this special, initial mode, what I will call the Demiurge, to take a term from Plato, could be responsible for the existence of all other modes. It is a principle of logic that one thing which causes another is at least equal to, and is probably greater than, what it produces. So if a tree, a mode of God, produces a seed, also a mode of God, that seed is a lesser mode of God. In a sense, the seed owes its existence to the tree. Ultimately they both owe their existence to the essential attributes of God, but the seed seems to be also dependent upon the tree. Similarly, one can think of the Demiurge as the first, everlasting tree of God’s essential attributes, which produces the cause and effect “seeds” of the universe. It is, at the very least, logically possible that, within Spinoza’s system, such a mode as the Demiurge exists. Like the first tree, this Demiurge would be a greater mode than all modes which proceed it, and in fact, if it is the first and greatest of the modes, then the universe could in fact depend on it in a causal sense. The essential attributes of God, the essential attributes of the one substance, would still be more essential than the Demiurge, but just as the tree is essential to the seed, so the Demiurge could be essential to the universe in terms of causal necessity.
In effect, the theory of a Spinozian Demiurge saves Christianity, while retaining Spinoza’s pantheism. It is possible that the Yahweh, or Jehovah, is the Spinozian Demiurge of the Scriptures. After all, it says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” There is nothing stating either way how this was done, nor exactly what was meant by “God.” It could have meant that there was this prime, greatest mode which proceeded to create all other modes in causal necessity, according to the essential attributes. This restores a great portion of Christian theology without destroying the pantheism. It may refute the notion of creation ex nihilo, but that doctrine is post-Scripture. God can still order the universe; he’s only doing it within the essential attributes which are both a part of him and the modes he is helping to create. This retains the notion of God as the greatest possible thing; he is greater than all other modes. Also, God can be worshipped, because he can still be the cause of all other modes, including humanity. For as has been mentioned, if we can be thankful that food is edible, we can be thankful that the Demiurge has shaped us into the modes that we are, and shaped many other modes to be beneficial to us.
Finally, this restores the ability to anthropomorphize “God.” Perhaps, as has been argued earlier, we cannot anthropomorphize “God” in the sense of “the essential attributes of the infinite substance,” or in the sense of “all the modes which comprise the infinite substance.” However, perhaps the Demiurge can be anthropomorphized. After all, as C.S. Lewis argues, humanlike personality is a great making attribute, intuitively, not a lessening one. He points out: “they say that God is beyond personality, [but] really think of Him as impersonal: that is, something less than personal” (160). That is to say, removing personality hardly makes God “beyond” personality.
We could take for an example a triangle. A triangle is a more complicated notion than a line. However, one will not say that since lines are less complicated than triangles, that triangles must not be made of lines. To the contrary, what makes a triangle greater is its inclusion of the line. Similarly, a pyramid is greater than a triangle because it includes many triangles, and a square, and lines, and other attributes. So, the Demiurge would in fact be greater if among its secondary attributes it also contained something like human personality, because it would have an added dimension, which would make it greater, not lesser. This vindicates the Scriptural notion that God “made man in his image,” and makes possible a certain degree of anthropomorphization, if by God we mean this notion of a Spinozian Demiurge.
I have summarized the argument of Spinoza, which argues that there is only one substance and that all things are modes of that individual substance. Then I have argued that his system overlooks the possibility of a greatest mode, which could be what we mean when we say “God.” This permits a connectedness between all modes through a single substance, while making possible reconciliation between pantheism and Christianity, insofar as Spinoza’s system is constructed.
Works Cited
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics: An Emendation of the Human Intellect.
Lewis. C.S. Mere Christianity. Ed. Kathleen Norris. San Francisco: HarperSanFransisco, 1952.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Little Experiment
So, I've been writing a whole bunch of tangential rants lately, and I thought it might be good to post them somewhere. The rants range from topics of religion, philosophy, and literature. As I type them up, I will be posting them here. Stay tuned for the madness of the Sword of Orc!
Discussing the problem of evil
This is a paper I wrote dealing with the problem of evil for a Philosophy of Religion class. I DO NOT INTEND FOR THIS TO CAUSE A RELIGIOUS DEBATE! If you want to discuss the existence or nonexistence of God or God and morality and such things, please do not do so in responses to this paper! I am more interested about whether the arguments seem cohesive, valid and sound. You are free to argue with the argument, but please keep it FRIENDLY and as unbiased as possible. Remember, this paper does not try to prove God, only that the idea of a perfect being and the existence of evil are not logically contradictory notions, so do not harangue me for not proving God exists, when that isn’t my purpose at all. I’ll let the rest speak for itself; questions and comments are of course welcome (I got a one hundred on the paper, but mind you, it was in a five page limit, and the perfect score was in terms of expectations, not necessarily the success of the arguments!)
A Theodicy from Evil and Morality
I will here argue the theodicy that God is morally required to allow evil in order to make moral excellence possible. This requires that the evil actions be possible so that one might demonstrate in acts of free will one’s moral standing. If the possibility of evil is necessary for the highest good, that is, moral free will which chooses to do good, then God cannot intercede last-minute to stop evil, but must allow it. Two strong objections are: one, that there is no free will, and two, that if morality must preclude the ability to do evil, then God must be able to do evil, or he is therefore morally neutral. I will use Aquinas’s Five Ways to consider an argument for free will, and inquire into the nature of God to offer speculation on how we could view his moral nature.
These are the premises of my argument. (1) Moral goodness from free will is the highest good. (2) One should want to achieve the highest good, and do what is possible to do so. (3) Moral evil must be possible, or humans cannot be morally good. (4) God, all-good and perfectly moral, must allow evil so that moral good can be possible.
Our morality is ethical decisions which come from our free will: moral good is done freely, and moral evil is done freely. We intuitively praise as highest goods which come from free will, such as the good of love, or of charity, or of friendship. It is my understanding that for one to be morally good, it must be possible for moral badness. For example, say that it is morally repugnant for a human being to sprout wings and fly (setting aside for the moment the demand for a clear cut definition of good and evil). If someone were to come to you and say, “My, what a splendid human being you are! You did not sprout wings and fly! You are a morally excellent creature!” odds are good that such a statement, if made in any seriousness, would be the object of ridicule. Obviously, since it is not in one’s power to do such an action, it cannot be considered moral. Therefore:
(1) To be a relevant moral law, it must be conceivably breakable.
(2) If an action is impossible, even if it is conceivably evil, one is not morally excellent for not committing it.
For example: I have never murdered anyone in China. I am not a good person for this: I have never been to China, nor do I have the resources to get there, so my omission of such an action is irrelevant to my status as a moral being.
Assuming a God in the conventional sense, one who is loving and thoroughly righteous, it is understandable that despite his presumed perfect goodness and omnipotence, he would be morally required to allow the very worst of evils to be done. In fact, to allow for the true status of moral excellence, God would have to make it possible for free wills to choose evil, or else they would not be free, and therefore he would be preventing the highest good. And it is not enough that God only allows a smaller degree of evil. The very worst evils result, ostensibly, from the breaking of the highest moral laws. For if it is not possible to break the highest of moral laws, then it is not possible to be the most excellent of moral creatures. Suppose that:
(A) is a trivial moral law.
(B) is an important moral law.
(C) is the greatest moral law.
If I was able to conceivably break laws A and B, but was physically restrained from breaking C, then I am not morally excellent for adhering to C, and am in no way responsible for upholding it. For me to be at my moral best, I must uphold moral laws A, B, and C, while being fully capable of breaking them all. So, if God were to make the greatest moral good possible, he would have to create a moral free will capable of committing the greatest of evils, or the will is not truly morally free, and therefore not as excellent as possible. And we have agreed that we intuitively hold things in highest esteem that result from our free will, such as love, and in this case, morality. And since God is perfectly good, his desire is to create a world in which the highest moral excellence is possible, so he must create creatures both capable of upholding all moral laws, from trivial to great, and of breaking them as well.
In summary, maximum evil must be possible, or a person cannot prove maximum goodness. As the perfectly moral being, God must create beings fully capable of doing moral evil and moral good, for if he did not, he would be creating a world in which the highest moral good is not possible, which as the perfect moral being he cannot do, for he must allow for the greatest of goods.
A strong argument against this is simply determinism. If determinism is true, then there is no free will, and talk of moral excellence is nonsense. Determinism states that everything happens as the result of a cause: our actions are the results of causal reasons, which can be traced down a causal chain without ever needing to mention free will. And for any free actions, it seems that one cannot have a reason for acting, or that reason is the determining factor and therefore it is not free will. But I think consideration of Aquinas’s proofs for God could yield something of an argument for free will. In the universal causal chain, there is either an infinite regression, or there is not. If there is not, there is an uncaused cause. The person who rejects infinite regressions is not considered irrational, even though one is possible, because though we cannot disprove one, an uncaused cause may appear more rational to that thinker. God, of course, is assumed to be this uncaused cause. Now certainly, Aquinas’s proof does not prove God, but it demonstrates that an Uncaused Causer is rational. With this in mind, we could inquire into what motivates the Uncaused Causer. Why does it cause things? Randomness? Surely not, or randomness would be causing it, and then it would not be uncaused. Other factors, reasons for action? Again, no causes can be moving God: he is uncaused, either by ordinary causes or by randomness. So, he must move somehow, and that is by a sort of eternal motion of will, what I will call Uncaused Causality. In this sense, God’s will is the most free. It is caused neither by randomness nor other causes. As is famously said, I postulate that God created people in his image. An aspect of this, the Free Will Defender says, is Uncaused Causality. Now, this free will is not nearly as dynamic as God’s. We are limited by our bodies, by our talents and by our environments in the realm of physical possibility. But what we are not limited by is our ability to choose our actions freely, from inside our determined system. The determinist will argue that our Uncaused Causality is irrational, but my reply is: But the ultimate Uncaused Cause is acceptable to anyone considering the universal causal chain. So our wills can be said to freely make new moral causal chains, and when we move to do so, we have neither ordinary causes nor randomness moving us, but the third force, Uncaused Causality, our limited version of what God instances most perfectly.
The second, equally strong, objection is that if moral evil is necessary, and God is all-good and so incapable of evil, he cannot be moral by this theodicy, which most theists would be disturbed by. When God acts, classically he can only do good, and therefore is not moral, since he cannot freely choose otherwise. Now, I have argued for Uncaused Causality as the root of free will, and God is completely uncaused, but invoking this doesn’t seem to get us out of the problem. My reply is that God is the supreme instance of morality; he is the standard Being and isn’t separable from moral law. It’s not that he causes morality or that it causes him, but that morality is in the very essence of God, so he cannot deviate from it. God is not the exception to the rule; he is the rule by which free wills measure themselves. So, moral laws A, B, and C cannot be broken by God, anymore than I can choose to stop being a human being. My moral free will has parameters of my physical person; God has the parameters of being the morality to which one ascribes. We might not like limiting God in this way, but likes and dislikes are not philosophical arguments. The objector may reply: But why didn’t God simply make more free wills that were perfect instances of morality? Because you can’t duplicate a standard. The standard is itself. If God is the standard, he must be the only instance of it. We cannot be the standard; we can only try to emulate it. You cannot have more than one of a standard; you can have multiple things which fit a standard, but those things can deviate or return to it without changing the standard itself. So with God. He is the spiritual incarnation of the standard of morality: we can emulate it, maybe even perfectly, but we cannot ourselves be the standard. According to the standard, we must choose to ascribe to it freely, so must be able to deviate from it; but a standard cannot deviate from itself.
I have argued that for humans to be moral, we must be able to choose the highest of moral evils in order to perform in moral excellence. I have noted two objections; from determinism, and concluded that our free will is a miniature form of Uncaused Causality; and from God’s morality, and replied that God is the only standard of morality, so does not need to measure up to himself to be himself. This is my theodicy for the problem of evil.
A Theodicy from Evil and Morality
I will here argue the theodicy that God is morally required to allow evil in order to make moral excellence possible. This requires that the evil actions be possible so that one might demonstrate in acts of free will one’s moral standing. If the possibility of evil is necessary for the highest good, that is, moral free will which chooses to do good, then God cannot intercede last-minute to stop evil, but must allow it. Two strong objections are: one, that there is no free will, and two, that if morality must preclude the ability to do evil, then God must be able to do evil, or he is therefore morally neutral. I will use Aquinas’s Five Ways to consider an argument for free will, and inquire into the nature of God to offer speculation on how we could view his moral nature.
These are the premises of my argument. (1) Moral goodness from free will is the highest good. (2) One should want to achieve the highest good, and do what is possible to do so. (3) Moral evil must be possible, or humans cannot be morally good. (4) God, all-good and perfectly moral, must allow evil so that moral good can be possible.
Our morality is ethical decisions which come from our free will: moral good is done freely, and moral evil is done freely. We intuitively praise as highest goods which come from free will, such as the good of love, or of charity, or of friendship. It is my understanding that for one to be morally good, it must be possible for moral badness. For example, say that it is morally repugnant for a human being to sprout wings and fly (setting aside for the moment the demand for a clear cut definition of good and evil). If someone were to come to you and say, “My, what a splendid human being you are! You did not sprout wings and fly! You are a morally excellent creature!” odds are good that such a statement, if made in any seriousness, would be the object of ridicule. Obviously, since it is not in one’s power to do such an action, it cannot be considered moral. Therefore:
(1) To be a relevant moral law, it must be conceivably breakable.
(2) If an action is impossible, even if it is conceivably evil, one is not morally excellent for not committing it.
For example: I have never murdered anyone in China. I am not a good person for this: I have never been to China, nor do I have the resources to get there, so my omission of such an action is irrelevant to my status as a moral being.
Assuming a God in the conventional sense, one who is loving and thoroughly righteous, it is understandable that despite his presumed perfect goodness and omnipotence, he would be morally required to allow the very worst of evils to be done. In fact, to allow for the true status of moral excellence, God would have to make it possible for free wills to choose evil, or else they would not be free, and therefore he would be preventing the highest good. And it is not enough that God only allows a smaller degree of evil. The very worst evils result, ostensibly, from the breaking of the highest moral laws. For if it is not possible to break the highest of moral laws, then it is not possible to be the most excellent of moral creatures. Suppose that:
(A) is a trivial moral law.
(B) is an important moral law.
(C) is the greatest moral law.
If I was able to conceivably break laws A and B, but was physically restrained from breaking C, then I am not morally excellent for adhering to C, and am in no way responsible for upholding it. For me to be at my moral best, I must uphold moral laws A, B, and C, while being fully capable of breaking them all. So, if God were to make the greatest moral good possible, he would have to create a moral free will capable of committing the greatest of evils, or the will is not truly morally free, and therefore not as excellent as possible. And we have agreed that we intuitively hold things in highest esteem that result from our free will, such as love, and in this case, morality. And since God is perfectly good, his desire is to create a world in which the highest moral excellence is possible, so he must create creatures both capable of upholding all moral laws, from trivial to great, and of breaking them as well.
In summary, maximum evil must be possible, or a person cannot prove maximum goodness. As the perfectly moral being, God must create beings fully capable of doing moral evil and moral good, for if he did not, he would be creating a world in which the highest moral good is not possible, which as the perfect moral being he cannot do, for he must allow for the greatest of goods.
A strong argument against this is simply determinism. If determinism is true, then there is no free will, and talk of moral excellence is nonsense. Determinism states that everything happens as the result of a cause: our actions are the results of causal reasons, which can be traced down a causal chain without ever needing to mention free will. And for any free actions, it seems that one cannot have a reason for acting, or that reason is the determining factor and therefore it is not free will. But I think consideration of Aquinas’s proofs for God could yield something of an argument for free will. In the universal causal chain, there is either an infinite regression, or there is not. If there is not, there is an uncaused cause. The person who rejects infinite regressions is not considered irrational, even though one is possible, because though we cannot disprove one, an uncaused cause may appear more rational to that thinker. God, of course, is assumed to be this uncaused cause. Now certainly, Aquinas’s proof does not prove God, but it demonstrates that an Uncaused Causer is rational. With this in mind, we could inquire into what motivates the Uncaused Causer. Why does it cause things? Randomness? Surely not, or randomness would be causing it, and then it would not be uncaused. Other factors, reasons for action? Again, no causes can be moving God: he is uncaused, either by ordinary causes or by randomness. So, he must move somehow, and that is by a sort of eternal motion of will, what I will call Uncaused Causality. In this sense, God’s will is the most free. It is caused neither by randomness nor other causes. As is famously said, I postulate that God created people in his image. An aspect of this, the Free Will Defender says, is Uncaused Causality. Now, this free will is not nearly as dynamic as God’s. We are limited by our bodies, by our talents and by our environments in the realm of physical possibility. But what we are not limited by is our ability to choose our actions freely, from inside our determined system. The determinist will argue that our Uncaused Causality is irrational, but my reply is: But the ultimate Uncaused Cause is acceptable to anyone considering the universal causal chain. So our wills can be said to freely make new moral causal chains, and when we move to do so, we have neither ordinary causes nor randomness moving us, but the third force, Uncaused Causality, our limited version of what God instances most perfectly.
The second, equally strong, objection is that if moral evil is necessary, and God is all-good and so incapable of evil, he cannot be moral by this theodicy, which most theists would be disturbed by. When God acts, classically he can only do good, and therefore is not moral, since he cannot freely choose otherwise. Now, I have argued for Uncaused Causality as the root of free will, and God is completely uncaused, but invoking this doesn’t seem to get us out of the problem. My reply is that God is the supreme instance of morality; he is the standard Being and isn’t separable from moral law. It’s not that he causes morality or that it causes him, but that morality is in the very essence of God, so he cannot deviate from it. God is not the exception to the rule; he is the rule by which free wills measure themselves. So, moral laws A, B, and C cannot be broken by God, anymore than I can choose to stop being a human being. My moral free will has parameters of my physical person; God has the parameters of being the morality to which one ascribes. We might not like limiting God in this way, but likes and dislikes are not philosophical arguments. The objector may reply: But why didn’t God simply make more free wills that were perfect instances of morality? Because you can’t duplicate a standard. The standard is itself. If God is the standard, he must be the only instance of it. We cannot be the standard; we can only try to emulate it. You cannot have more than one of a standard; you can have multiple things which fit a standard, but those things can deviate or return to it without changing the standard itself. So with God. He is the spiritual incarnation of the standard of morality: we can emulate it, maybe even perfectly, but we cannot ourselves be the standard. According to the standard, we must choose to ascribe to it freely, so must be able to deviate from it; but a standard cannot deviate from itself.
I have argued that for humans to be moral, we must be able to choose the highest of moral evils in order to perform in moral excellence. I have noted two objections; from determinism, and concluded that our free will is a miniature form of Uncaused Causality; and from God’s morality, and replied that God is the only standard of morality, so does not need to measure up to himself to be himself. This is my theodicy for the problem of evil.
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