Foreknowledge by Joel Hayes - Library of Theology

Bayle, "is to cause it, if he can, to be always practiced without any mixture of vice. If it is easy for him
to procure this advantage to his subjects, and he nevertheless permits vice to raise its head in his
dominions, intending to punish it after having tolerated it for a long time, his affection for virtue is not
the greatest of which we can conceive; it is then not infinite." This has been the great standing
argument of atheism in all ages of the world. This argument, as held by the atheists of antiquity, is
presented by Cudworth in the following words: "The supposed Deity and Maker of the world was
either willing to abolish all evils, but not able; or he was able but not willing; or else, lastly, he was
both able and willing. This latter is the only thing that answers fully the notion of a God. Now that
the supposed Creator of all things was not thus both able and willing to abolish all evils, is plain,
because then there would have been no evils at all left. Wherefore, since there is such a deluge of
evils overflowing all, it must needs be that either he was willing, and not able to remove them, and
then he was impotent; or else he was able and not willing, and then he was envious; or, lastly, he
was neither able nor willing, and then he was both impotent and envious." This argument is, in
substance, the same as that presented by Bayle, and relied upon by atheists in all subsequent
times.
To the argument of Bayle, the following reply is given by Leibnitz: "When we detach things
that are connected together-—the parts from the whole, the human race from the universe, the
attributes of God from each other, his power from his wisdom--we are permitted to say that God can
cause virtue to be in the world without any mixture of vice, and even that he may easily cause it to
be so." But he does not cause virtue to exist without any mixture of vice, says Leibnitz, because the
good of the whole universe requires the permission of moral evil. How the good of the universe
requires the permission of evil, he has not shown us; but he repeatedly asserts this to be the fact,
and insists that if God were to prevent all evil, this would work a greater harm to the whole than the
permission of some evil. Now, is this a sufficient and satisfactory reply to the argument of the
atheist?
It certainly seems to possess weight, and is entitled to serious consideration. Bayle
contends, that as evil exists, the Creator and Governor of the world cannot be absolutely perfect.
He should have concluded with me, Leibnitz truly says, that as God is absolutely perfect, the
existence of evil is necessary to the perfection of the universe, or is an unavoidable part of the best
world that could have been created. It is thus that he neutralizes, without demolishing, the argument
of the atheist, and each person is left to be more deeply affected by the argument of Leibnitz, or by
that of Bayle, as his faith in the goodness of God is strong or weak. If the theist, by such means,
should gain a complete victory, this would be due to the faith of the vanquished, rather than to the
superiority of the logic by which he is subdued.
To this argument of Leibnitz we may than well apply his own remarks upon another
celebrated philosopher. Descartes met the argument of the necessitarian, not by exposing its
fallacy, but by repelling the conclusion of it on extraneous grounds, "this was to cut the Gordian
knot,: says Leibnitz, who was himself a necessitarian, "and to reply to the conclusion of one
argument, not by resolving it, but by opposing to it a contrary argument; which is not conformed to
the laws of philosophical controversy." The reply of Leibnitz to Bayle is clearly open to the same
objection. It does not analyze the sophism of the skeptic, or resolve it into its elements, and point
out its error; it merely opposes its conclusion by the presentation of a contrary argument. Hence it
is not likely to produce very great effect; for, as Leibnitz himself says, in relation to this mode of
attacking skeptics, It may arrest them a little, but that will always return to their reasoning, presented
in different forms, until we cause them to comprehend wherein the defect of their sophism consists."
Leibnitz has, then, according to his own canons of criticism, merely cut the Gordian knot of atheism,
which should have unraveled. He has merely arrested the champions of skepticism "a little," whom
he should have overthrown and demolished.
His reply is not only incomplete, in that it does not expose the sophistry of the atheist; it is
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