A grace-first picture of why God allows horrendous evils

Caleb Perl (Australian Catholic University, University of Colorado, Boulder)

Abstract: It seems like a good God would prevent horrendous evils. But horrendous evils are all around us. Right now, for instance, cuts to USAID are causing half a million children to starve to death. Horrendous evils thus seem to provide evidence against God's existence. Marilyn McCord Adams describes how God might defeat horrendous evils in each person's life - that is, how God might integrate those evils in an organic unity that restores positive meaning across the whole of that person's life. This talk tries to say how the possibility of Adams-style defeat could undermine evidence against God's existence. After all, we can still ask why God didn't avoid a world with horrendous evils, even if Adams is right that God is able to ultimately defeat them. The talk will echo ideas that others have developed - that God can graciously choose to have relationships with particular people, where God's grace is not a response to merit. This talk focuses on two challenges for this grace-centred picture: (i) exactly why horrendous evils are necessary for particular people to exist, and (ii) whether it is permissible for ordinary agents like you and me to act in the way that the grace-centred picture imagines God acting. I respond to those two challenges by building from themes in Derek Parfit's work. I argue that Parfit's conception of personhood answers challenge (i) in a way that is more satisfying than Adams' own answer. And I try to show that challenge (ii) is (covertly) a challenge in population ethics, and that there is no defensible thesis in population ethics that conflicts with the grace-centred picture.