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I. Richard Swinburne's Theism

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I. Richard Swinburne's Theism UNIVERSITY OF NAVARRA ECCLESIASTICAL FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY Alex Mbonimpa The Providence of God according to Richard Swinburne: A Critical Study under the Guidance of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thesis for a Doctorate supervised by Prof. Dr. Rev. Enrique Moros Pamplona 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION ................................................................ 11 Method.............................................................................. 15 Biographical Note............................................................. 19 Acknowledgements .......................................................... 24 I. RICHARD SWINBURNE’S THEISM ............................ 27 1. Justification and Knowledge ............................................ 29 1.1 Subjective Justification ............................................. 30 1.2 Objective Justification .............................................. 32 1.3 The Quest for an Ultimate Explanation .................... 35 a) How Explanation Works ........................................ 37 b) The Truth of an Explanation .................................. 41 c) Candidates for an Ultimate Explanation ................ 46 1.4 The Justification of Theism ...................................... 47 a) The Simplicity of Theism....................................... 47 b) The Limit of Scientific Explanation ....................... 50 2. The Attributes of God....................................................... 53 2.1 What Swinburne Says about the Attributes .............. 54 a) God’s Omnipresence .............................................. 54 The Providence of God According to Richard Swinburne b) God’s Omnipotence ............................................... 54 c) God’s Omniscience ................................................ 55 d) God’s Freedom ....................................................... 56 e) God the Creator ...................................................... 58 f) God’s Eternity ........................................................ 61 g) God’s Necessity ..................................................... 63 2.2 The Limits to the Attributes of God ......................... 66 a) Limits of Theistic Personalism............................... 67 b) Limits to God’s Power and Necessity .................... 69 c) Limits to God’s Creation ........................................ 78 d) Limits to God’s Knowledge ................................... 82 e) Limits to God’s Perfection and Eternity ................ 87 3. The Arguments for the Existence of God ......................... 95 3.1 What Swinburne Says about the Arguments ............ 96 a) The Types of Arguments ........................................ 96 b) The Possibility of a Proof ....................................... 97 c) The Inductive Probability of Theism: Swinburne’s Procedure ........................................ 100 3.2 The Limits to the Arguments for the Existence of God ............................................................................. 106 a) The Criticism to Kant ........................................... 107 b) Swinburne’s Arguments: Are they a Posteriori? ............................................................ 109 c) The Justification of Theism via Simplicity .......... 112 d) Deductive Arguments ........................................... 122 6 Table of Contents e) Conclusion............................................................ 131 II. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL ............................................ 135 1. Providence: What a Good God Would Do ..................... 136 2. Theodicy in the Christian Tradition ............................... 141 2.1 Privatio Boni ........................................................... 142 2.2 Free Will and Grace ................................................ 147 2.3 The Fall ................................................................... 157 3. Weighing Good against Bad: Swinburne’s Theodicy .... 162 3.1 The Existence of Bad States: Terminology Used ... 164 3.2 A Reply to the Atheist’s Argument ........................ 166 3.3 Questions that Arise from Swinburne’s Theodicy ......................................................................... 171 a) The Terms Contained in Premise 2 ...................... 172 b) The Principle of Justification: What We can Allow God to Do .................................................. 176 c) Does God Have the Right to Permit Evil? ........... 179 d) Is Evil Necessary? ................................................ 182 3.4 Other Contemporary Views on the Problem of Evil 188 a) The Difficulty Posed by Evil to Theism .............. 189 b) The Defenders of God Given the Problem of Evil ....................................................................... 195 c) An Evaluation and the Way Forward ................... 203 d) Conclusion............................................................ 211 III. THE CONCEPT OF GOOD ................................ 215 7 The Providence of God According to Richard Swinburne 1. Swinburne’s Concept of Good ....................................... 217 2. The End: The Principle in the Practical Field ................ 222 2.1 The Aspect of Desirableness .................................. 224 2.2 Reason in the Practical Field .................................. 227 a) The Intentionality of Human Actions .................. 228 b) Human Action as Rational Striving ..................... 233 c) The Ultimate Good ............................................... 245 3. The Teleological Concept of Nature .............................. 254 3.1 Nature: Inclination to a Given Perfection ............... 255 3.2 The Proper Good of Man ........................................ 263 4. The Ontological Status of Evil ....................................... 266 4.1 The Existence of Evil: Swinburne’s Concept ......... 267 4.2 Evil: The Absence of the Due Good ....................... 269 a) The Existence of Bad States in General ............... 270 b) The Existence of Pain ........................................... 274 c) The Existence of Moral Evil ................................ 276 5. Moral Goodness and God’s Goodness ........................... 281 5.1 The Perspective of Morality ................................... 281 a) The Goodness of Actions according to their Intentionality ........................................................ 282 b) Consequentialism ................................................. 286 c) Swinburne’s Concept of Morality ........................ 295 5.2 God’s Goodness ...................................................... 300 a) Swinburne’s Concept of God’s Goodness ........... 300 8 Table of Contents b) The Priority of God’s Goodness over Moral Goodness .............................................................. 303 c) A Theodicy according to the Notion of the Ultimate Good ...................................................... 307 d) Conclusion............................................................ 316 IV. THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM......................... 321 1. Swinburne’s Concept of Freedom .................................. 322 1.1 The Current Debate on Freedom: Compatibilism vs Incompatibilism ......................................................... 323 1.2 The Basis of Human Free Will ............................... 329 1.3 The Free-Will Defence ........................................... 333 1.4 The Role of Desires in Free Will ............................ 334 2. Freedom: Man’s Self-Determination towards the Good ............................................................................... 337 2.1 Free Will is for the Sake of the Good ..................... 338 2.2 The Acts and Object of the Will ............................. 354 2.3 The Direction of the Desires by Reason ................. 358 2.4 Conclusion .............................................................. 367 3. Other Themes of Providence .......................................... 370 CONCLUSION .................................................................. 375 REFERENCES ................................................................... 379 9 INTRODUCTION “Providence is concerned with the direction of things to an end. Therefore, as the Commentator says, whoever denies final causality should also deny providence.”1 I shall propose in this work that this affirmation is valid – even in today’s philosophy – and should be a starting point for any attempt to understand and explain the providence of God. In order to reach an adequate understanding of the concepts of providence and of good, it is necessary to have recourse to the concept of the ultimate good.2 I shall study the theme of divine providence in Richard Swinburne’s work and show that the absence of the concept of the ultimate good makes it highly difficult, not to say impossible, to explain and defend adequately God’s providence. According to Swinburne, the traditional theist understands divine providence as follows: God created and sustains [the Universe and all its wonders] for supremely good purposes. Some of these good purposes, he believes, have already been realized or are now being realized. But most traditional theists, and among them Christian theists, believe that other good purposes are yet to 1 St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate, q.5, a.2, co. The translation used in this work is that of Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1952. 2 I shall use ‘ultimate good’ interchangeably with ‘ultimate end’ and ‘supreme
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