Explain the free will defence and examine its purpose.
The free will defence was produced as a theodicy to solve the problem of evil, however it is also used in a number of other theodicies to explain the problem of evil. Firstly it is important to introduce a few concepts at the beginning of this essay. Firstly there is the distinction between the two types of evil and they are moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is evil that humans chose to carry out and therefore the responsibility lies with humans in these cases, an event such as the Holocaust can be seen as a moral evil. The second type of evil that exists in the world is natural evil. Natural evil is shown best by natural events, that cause suffering for human beings. Examples of natural evil, would include major earthquakes, tsunamis and volcano eruptions, that lead to human suffering. Now that the two different types of evil have been considered it is also important to mention the two problems that evil causes by existing in the world, and they are the logical and evidential problems of evil. The logical problem of evil can be put as an inconsistent triad. An inconsistent triad is a group of three statements, where not all three of the assertions can exist at the same time without contradictions. For the logical problem of evil the inconsistent triad can be viewed as the following: 1) God is omnipotent 2) God is all-loving (omnibenevelent) and finally 3) Evil exists. The problem with this triad is that if God is all-powerfull, and therefore has the ability to stop evil, and God is all-loving, which shows that he does not want his creation to suffer evil, then how can evil exist in the world? There are two ways of eliminating the logical problem of evil and they are producing a theodicy, which argues that a just God can allow evil, or by denying one of the assertions in theinconsistent triad. The evidential problem of evil was provided by William Rowe, who commented that there were certain types of evil that could not be explained away by a theodicy. For example, animal suffering and the suffering of children. Rowe explained that this was ‘pointless’ evil and there was no possible explanation for it. The free-will defence attempts to answer the problem of evil by producing a theodicy as to why a just God would allow evil to take place in the world. Essentially the free will defence argues that God gave us free-will for two main reasons. The first reason why God gave us free will according to the free-will defence was because it is necessary for humans to have freewill if God wants to have a relationship with us. In order to have a relationship with someone, it is necessary for both parties to have free-will. Therefore, we are God’s creations, and he wanted to have a relationship with us, he afforded us free will. The importance of free-will for a relationship can be explained easily by applying ‘The Parable of the King and the Peasant Girl’. In this parable there is a king who fancies a peasent girl. The King could introduce a law that states that she has to marry him, or he could go to her and impress her with all his wealth, hoping that she would want to marry him. However, in order to ensure that the peasent girl, loves the King for who he is, he dresses in peasent clothing and goes to try and woo her. The reason the King did this because he wanted to ensure that it was the will of the peasent girl to marry him, and therefore this parable shows that free-will is important in order for us to have a relationship with God. Therefore the free-will defence says evil
