Robert Adams' talk "Perfection, Justice, and Love in Leibniz's Theodicy," delivered at the Leibniz's Theodicy: Context and Content Conference at the University of Notre Dame, September 16-18, 2010
From the Old Testament prophet Micah (chapter 4), we read:
For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore;
but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.
The use of force against another person or group of people is now a topic of frequent conversation in my personal and professional life. I can’t seem to escape the conversations. It is something I seem to have to wrestle with on a daily basis.
For starters, I am the father of two boys who use force upon one another on a regular basis. Anyone who has more than one boy can likely identify. I am often interceding, and occasionally am forced to use necessary force to break things up or discipline the guilty party if one can be determined beyond a reasonable doubt (which is rare).
I am also now in a position at a police department and am responsible for, among other things, the policies and training which have to do with the use of force officers use in their daily tours of duty. The process of trying to navigate through police use of force is a very tricky business in 2022 as lawmakers demand more accountability and transparency, dare I say perfection, by police agencies following very public failures of officers to use reasonable force that were understandably condemned by society and the vast majority of police officers.
In addition, recent events in Eastern Europe have shocked the world, and caused many governments to suddenly come alive to the concept of the morality of force with the first military incursion on European soil since World War II. This stems from the aggressive use of military force by a dictator who seems unafraid to increase the ferocity of his attacks to target non-combatants and using weapons that cause massive destruction and human misery.
Whether it be the short-lived, interpersonal violence between two brothers, the use of force by a government against its citizens, or the use of military force to achieve a political agenda, use of force is a critical issue for Christians and non-Christians to have a consensus on, in terms of how we make judgements of right or wrong, good or bad.
We all intuitively know that there are times that people seem to objectively agree that a use of force is wrong or right. Thousands of laws and legal precedents are available to help us make judgements, but we aren’t all legal scholars, despite what social media would lead you to believe.
When it comes down to examining the question of morality in force used against others, I have found one consistent word at the center of every evaluation, judgment and public opinion poll; reasonable.
The statute in Illinois for the use of force by a police officer does not spell out every circumstance or technique that officers should use, but says that any use of force should be “objectively reasonable”. This, of course, translates into the policies that guide how a police officer’s use of force is to be conducted and evaluated.
In fact, the root word “reason” appears in the conversation on force long before the Illinois lawmakers decided to use the term. It appears in the fourth amendment of the Bill of Rights where the framers of the constitution indicate that people should be free from unreasonable search and seizure of their property and their person. Whether it is a search of your house or your arrest or the use of deadly force against you, the framers demanded that it not be unreasonable on the part of the government.
The idea of force being “reasonable” can translate nicely across the spectrum mentioned above. Are the actions of an angry brother, or a police officer facing resistance, or a country using the might of its army to take territory reasonable?
With the brothers fighting, the parent asks if the force was reasonable. Was this a matter of bullying, or retaliation for theft of a toy, or was it self-defense?
When an officer uses force, the supervisor or the attorney or the judge or the media asks, what was the purpose of the force that was used? The questions posed to determine reasonableness of force by police (see the facts of Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor) ask the questions, what was the offense that led to the force, was the person actively resisting and was the person a threat to anyone?
As nation rises against nation we see the same kinds of questions playing out in deliberations in government and in the media. What is the offense that caused a country to strike another? Was the act an appropriate response to the threat, and what is the danger in not resorting to elevating a conflict into an all-out war?
If the use of force at an interpersonal level, a societal level and an international level all seem to take reasonableness into consideration, one problem develops. This problem is that reasonableness tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Bias and a lack of information continue to be the sources of disagreement for what constitutes reasonable force.
A parent may give one child more credibility than another, potentially trampling the truth. A police officer’s actions can be considered totally understandable to other officers based on an entire sequence of events that lasts 30 minutes, but society might justifiably dispute that determination based on only viewing a video that only depicts 30 seconds of the interaction. A country can claim that an existential threat exists, or ownership of disputed borderlands, but the rest of the world has reacted to unjustified force by nations who fail to provide adequate justification for their actions in the form of sanctions, blockades and world wars.
If the idea of reasonableness is what drives our understanding of moral righteousness in conflict, how can we possibly hope to do it right by everyone, all the time?
Perhaps the answer was provided by the most important pastor in the most important sermon. Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, tells His listeners, “So, whatever you wish others to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12, ESV).
One way to test your worldview is to see how it plays out in the real world. Does it work for real people? Unfortunately, we live in a world where we don’t often see people treating others as sane people would want to be treated. But if you play out a hypothetical world in your imagination where everyone is sane and treats others the way a sane person would want to be treated, things get a lot more peaceful really quick.
Who, outside of the varying degrees of broken, tormented souls who make the decision to harm themselves, would want to inflict harm upon himself physically, mentally or emotionally? We live in a reality where everyone thinks they should be treated like the most important person in the world. If we treated other people like they were the most important person in the world, imagine how the average human interaction would change.
Can it be that simple? If we allow ourselves to consider the hypothetical, and every man and woman obeyed this simple command to treat others as you would like to be treated, how fast could we beat our swords into plowshares? I see no other worldview with a morality plan of action that allows this to be the case.
Tony Williams is currently serving in his 20th year as a police officer in a city in Southern Illinois. He has been studying apologetics in his spare time for two decades, since a crisis of faith led him to the discovery of vast and ever-increasing evidence for his faith. Tony received a bachelor's degree in University Studies from Southern Illinois University in 2019. His career in law enforcement has provided valuable insight into the concepts of truth, evidence, confession, testimony, cultural competency, morality, and most of all, the compelling need for Christ in the lives of the lost. Tony plans to pursue postgraduate studies in apologetics in the near future to sharpen his understanding of the various facets of Christian apologetics. Tony has been married for 9 years and has two sons. He and his family currently reside in Southern Illinois.
Two incredibly important questions that every human person should consider involve God’s existence and nature: (1) Does God exist? (2) If so, what is he like? [1]
One of the unique features of the moral argument is its ability to not only provide evidence for God’s existence, but also shed a significant amount of light on God’s character. For example, the moral argument points to a God who exists, but also to God as essentially good and loving, as well as holy and transcendent. The moral argument also indicates that God is deeply personal.
Although there are numerous facets of morality that gesture in the direction of a personal God, the moral value of justice is considered here.
What is justice? Among other things, justice is a personal response to the wrongdoing of morally free human persons.[2] It is said that justice has been served when a guilty party has been punished for his or her wrongdoing. Rather than merely existing as an abstraction of the universe or flowing from a non-personal process of sorts, justice is a property of persons. When a judgment is made upon a particular person or group of persons (or a situation in general), whether it be one of approval or disapproval, a mind and a will are assumed, and generally speaking, one who possesses a mind and a will and the possibility of grasping the role of justice is a person. Is it plausible for justice to simply exist apart from connection to a person or persons? William Lane Craig responds to this question in the following manner:
It is difficult, however, even to comprehend this view. What does it mean to say, for example, that Justice just exists? It’s hard to know what to make of this. It is clear what is meant when it is said that a person is just; but it is bewildering when it is said that in the absence of any people, Justice itself exists. Moral values seem to exist as properties of persons, not as mere abstractions—or at any rate it’s hard to know what it is for a moral value to exist as a mere abstraction.[3]
On a human level, it is clear that justice exists and that its instances are present in persons. What about ultimate justice, if such a thing exists?
When a human person chooses to carry out a criminal act, he is deserving of punishment, and only when he receives the punishment he deserves, has justice been served. This raises a difficult question: What about the times when justice does not seemingly prevail, at least in this life? There are countless examples of this throughout history, including Joseph Stalin and his participation in the killing of between twenty and sixty million people, Adolf Hitler and his role in the murder of six million Jews, and Pol Pot and his slaying of nearly one-third of the Cambodian population (between one and three million Cambodians). Other examples include the numerous persons who get away with atrocities such as rape, sex trafficking, child abuse, and murder. When human justice is not enacted in this life, should one hope that there is a personal God to enact justice in the next? According to Richard Creel,
As long as it is logically possible that evil be defeated, that innocent suffering is not meaningless and final, it seems to me that we have a moral obligation to hope that that possibility is actual. Therefore we have a moral obligation to hope that there is a God because, if there is a God, then innocent suffering is not meaningless or final. . . . To be sure, the Holocaust was enormously tragic—but without God it is even more tragic. Indeed, a far greater evil than the evils of history would be that the evils of history will not be defeated because there is no God.[4]
If there is no God or the divine is altogether non-personal, legitimate hope for ultimate justice appears unattainable.[5] On the other hand, if there is a holy and personal God who exists, then “innocent suffering is not meaningless or final.”[6] Therefore, by considering the concept of ultimate justice, one is able to postulate not only the existence of a personal deity who is capable of enacting justice, but also an afterlife in which ultimate justice is served.
At this point, a Platonist might suggest that justice merely exists as an abstraction of the universe, and that there is no need to ground justice in a personal God. Suppose that an abstract Platonic realm does exist for a moment. In theory, it is at least possible to understand how ultimate justice could possibly exist, but it is much more difficult to grasp how a non-personal realm (with no ultimate person in view) could enact justice because enacting seemingly requires the existence of a person who does the enacting. Abstract realms cannot enact justice; personal beings enact justice. And in this case, if there is such a thing as ultimate justice (which I believe there is), and if there is to be legitimate hope of it being enacted, it is reasonable to posit the existence of a personal God.
Although there are several belief systems that set forth the notion of a personal God, with some conceptions coming nearer to adequately accounting for what is required of a personal God than others, Christianity uniquely demonstrates that not only is God personal, but that he has always been personal. If the only sense in which God is personal is in his personal interactions with human persons, then one could say that God’s personality was frustrated before he created human persons or that God became personal only after he created human persons. To say these sorts of things presents all sorts of theological and philosophical problems, namely, that God is dependent on something other than himself and therefore not self-sufficient. However, a Trinitarian conception of God, which is a distinctly Christian concept, solves these sorts of problems, suggesting that God has always been personal in and through the inner personal relations of the three Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the fundamental reason why the Judeo-Christian God, the God of the Bible, provides a robust account of the personal nature of justice (and the personal nature of morality in general): he is intrinsically personal himself.
Stephen S. Jordan is currently the Campus Pastor at Liberty Christian Academy, where he previously served as a high school Bible teacher for nearly a decade. He is also a Bible teacher at Liberty University Online Academy, an Associate Editor at www.moralapologetics.com, as well as a Senior Research Fellow and curriculum developer at The Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University. Prior to these positions, Stephen served as a youth pastor in North Carolina for several years and taught courses at a local Seminary Extension for a year. He possesses four graduate degrees (MAR, MRE, MDiv, ThM) and a PhD in Theology and Apologetics. His doctoral dissertation was on the moral argument, where he argued for the existence of a personal God from morality. Stephen and his wife, along with their four children, reside in Goode, Virginia. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, being outdoors, fitness, sports, and good coffee/tea.
[1] Portions of this article adapted from my unpublished doctoral dissertation at Liberty University.
[2] According to Kant, “In his moral actions, however, man is a free agent and is, therefore, liable for consequences of actions done…In a word, the key to the imputation of responsibility for consequences is freedom.” Immanuel Kant, Lectures in Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1963), 60.
[3] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 179.
[4] Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 149-150.
[5] There are those who accept the need for justice on a human level but dismiss the need for ultimate justice. However, on this view, it appears that there are many who get away with injustice unscathed. For this reason, among others, it at least seems logical to hope there is such a thing as ultimate justice and that it will be enacted.
[6] Along the same lines, Marilyn McCord Adams states: “If Divine Goodness is infinite, if intimate relation to it is thus incommensurably good for created persons, then we have identified a good big enough to defeat horrors in every case.” Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 82-83.
Editor’s note: R. Scott Smith has graciously allowed us to republish his series, “Making Sense of Morality.” You can find the original post here.
Another more naturalistic form of ethics comes from John Rawls (d. 2002), which might be better described as secular. Rawls’s works have had enormous influence, especially in his conception of justice as fairness.
Taking democracy as his starting point, Rawls spells out the basis for how today we can come together and form the basis for such a society. Yet, this faces the challenge of a plurality of reasonable, competing “doctrines” (conceptual frameworks, or paradigms) that address substantive notions of the nature of the good, the meaning of life, and more. These doctrines appeal to metaphysical, moral, and/or religious views, including substantive understandings of justice. Examples could be religious groups and adherents of different philosophies and worldviews.
Each “doctrine,” he thinks, has its own internal rationale for its beliefs. What justifies them is not that they correspond with reality, for, similar to Kant, we cannot know that directly. Instead, they should be internally coherent. Yet, this means each doctrine will have its own criteria for the substantive questions of life, making them largely incommensurable. If so, it seems we cannot form a democratic society on the basis of these private, substantive kinds of reasoning.
How then can we form a society on the basis of apparently neutral, public reasons? Rawls uses a thought experiment in which representatives of different groups are in an original position, behind a veil of ignorance. They are to reason as though they are abstracted from their lives’ situations and conditions, and they are to choose principles of public, procedural justice as the basis of a society. He claims they would adopt two principles: 1) the equality principle: there is an equal claim for all citizens to basic rights and liberties; and 2) the difference principle: there is equality of opportunity, and the greatest benefit should go to the least advantaged socially and/or economically. He thinks the members of these different “doctrines” can find an overlapping consensus and form a social contract based on these two principles of procedural justice.
Rawls tries to take seriously the fact of diversity and how we can come together as a unified society. He also realizes that while doctrinal views may differ greatly, nonetheless we can dialogue and find commonalities.
Yet, there are several problems with his views. Rawls thinks a secular, procedural basis for justice enables him to remain neutral in regards to the various doctrines. He too would need to be philosophically neutral, for such views belong to the doctrines, he claims. But, Rawls’s own views are not philosophically neutral. He has bracketed out any metaphysical notions of justice and other morals. He also has privileged his epistemology, that we cannot know such morals as they are in reality. Thus, we should embrace epistemic coherentism (a belief is justified not by its correspondence with reality, but by its internal coherence within a given web of beliefs).
Put differently, Rawls seems to think he can set aside his own standpoint and gain a neutral vantage point, to claim no one doctrine’s philosophical views can be a suitable basis for a democracy today. Yet, he seems to be privileging his own doctrinal stance, that secular thought is what is needed.
Therefore, Rawls’s reasoning invites the question: why shouldn’t the competing doctrines argue publicly, to see if they can offer compelling reasons for their views of the nature of justice, the good life, etc.? Just because we have a plurality of moral viewpoints, it does not follow that none is more rationally defensible than another. The mere fact of diversity does not necessitate a procedural basis for justice.
Another concern is his concept of a person as one “who can take part in, or who can play a role in, social life, and hence exercise and respect its various rights and duties. Thus, we say that a person is someone who can be a citizen, that is, a normal and fully cooperating member of society over a complete life” (Rawls, 18). Yet, this understanding could exclude many people, including those with permanent disabilities, from protection as citizens.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism
R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 7
R. Scott Smith is a Christian philosopher and apologist, with special interests in ethics, knowledge, and seeing the body of Christ live in the fullness of the Spirit and truth.
The imprecatory psalms also have value for Christians today in reminding them of God’s holy hatred of sin, evil, and injustice. Christians not only petition for the judgment of the wicked but also for sin and evil to be expunged from their own hearts.
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“The message of the gospel—God’s act of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus—is rooted in hesed. Hesed describes the disposition of God’s heart not only toward His people but to all humanity. The love of God extends far beyond duty or expectation. His forgiveness of sin fulfills a need that is basic to all other needs in the relationship between human beings and God—the restoration and continuation of fellowship with God in Jesus Christ. God’s hesed manifested in forgiveness makes a relationship with Him possible. That forgiveness comes to us freely as a gift from God based on the sacrificial act of Christ.”
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