SOPHIA (2010) 49:1–13 DOI 10.1007/s11841-009-0159-7

Moral Evil and Leibniz’s Form/Matter Defense of Divine Omnipotence Jill Graper Hernandez

Published online: 21 January 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Leibniz’s form/matter defense of omnipotence is paradoxical, but not irretrievably so. Leibniz maintains that God necessarily must concur only in the possibility for evil’s existence in the world (the form of evil), but there are individual instances of moral evil that are not necessary (the matter of evil) with which God need not concur. For Leibniz, that there is moral evil in the world is contingent on God’s will (a dimension of divine omnipotence), with the result that even though it is necessary that God exerts his will, there are particular products of his will that are contingent and unnecessary— including human moral evil. If there are instances of evil which are contingent on God’s will and yet unnecessary, then the problematic conclusion for Leibniz’s view must be that human evil depends upon divine concurrence, not just for its possibility in the world (which is necessary) but for its instance (which is contingent). If the form/matter defense of omnipotence contains a true paradox, then God concurs in the form as well as the matter of evil. To assuage this difficulty for Leibniz, I will argue that he could either give up an Augustinian notion of evil, or rely upon a distinction between *potenta absoluta* and *potenta ordinate*, which was popular among important thinkers in the medieval period. Keywords Problem of evil . Moral evil . Leibniz . Omnipotence . Divine concurrence The presence of moral evil in the world has long been a bane for theories that posit the existence of a divine being which has certain omni-qualities. If there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good creator, moral evil in the world should be eradicated or, in the very least, limited. This paper will specifically assess how the omnipotence of God can be compatible with the presence of human moral evil, especially for views like those of Leibniz, who argued that God created this world out of moral necessity to instantiate the best of all possible worlds. J. G. Hernandez (*) The University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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Leibniz’s defense of divine omni-qualities against the problem of evil is well known. His view of omnipotence suffers more particularly against the problem of evil, however, since Leibniz understands there to be a distinction about divine willing (between what God must necessarily produce and what God allows) that has the confounding result that God concurs in some individual moral evil. If God is all-powerful, and can choose among certain events, then it seems possible that God could be implicated morally for permitting certain instances of evil in the world. Leibniz provides at least three defenses of the co-existence of divine perfection and evil in the world, and to varying degrees they function as defenses against the view that God concurs in moral evil. They are: the ‘best of all possible worlds’ defense, the ‘divine duty’ defense, and the ‘form/matter’ defense. In each, Leibniz relies upon an Augustinian notion of ‘evil’ as privation to argue that although the possibility of evil must be necessary, the existence of evil in the world is merely contingent (D 114).1 On Leibniz’s view, the immediacy and specificity of God’s concurrence applies in order to bring about as much perfection as is possible (T I.12). That God allows human moral evil to occur, however, is insufficient to show that God causes moral evil in the world, just as it is insufficient to prove that God’s potency is limited by some inability to prevent evil. In this project, I contend that the third Leibnizian defense of divine omnipotence (namely, that God concurs in the matter of sin, but not in the form of sin) fails on two counts. First, although the adoption of an Augustinian view of evil helps Leibniz’s first two defenses of divine omnipotence succeed (since it shows that created limits are imperfections but not imperfections that lead necessarily to moral evil), evil-as-privation does not suffice to alleviate worries about the inability of God to prevent some moral evil. If God is omnipotent, and evil is a privation of good, then it follows that God is not culpable for metaphysical evil, but the origin and amount of moral evil in the world remains problematic. In fact, the use of evil as a privation seems to commit one to the view that God concurs in human moral evil: if an omnipotent God causes x (humanity, which is created with metaphysical but not moral limitations), and x causes y (moral evil), the result seems to be that God concurs in the production of y just as much, and just as directly, as God concurs in the production of x. Not only does Leibniz’s form/matter defense of omnipotence fail to alleviate worries about divine concurrence of human moral evil, it also creates a paradox when juxtaposed against the dual nature of divine omnipotence (i.e., omnipotence of existence, or ‘essence’, and omnipotence of action, or ‘will’). God creates out of Leibniz, G.W. (1695) ‘Dialogue on Human Freedom’. In Philosophical Essays, Ariew and Garber, trans. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989. Henceforth, abbreviated ‘D’. Other abbreviations of Leibniz’s works are: ‘Letter to Arnauld’ (1686), ‘LA’ in Ariew and Garber; ‘On Contingency’ (1686), ‘OC’ in Ariew and Garber; ‘On Freedom and Possibility’ (1680–82), ‘FP’, in Ariew and Garber; Theodicy, ‘T’. Chicago: Open Court, 1985.; ‘Discourse on Metaphysics’ (1686), ‘DM’ and ‘Correspondence with Arnauld, Leibniz to von Hessen-Rheinfels’ (1686), ‘vH’: both in Philosophical Texts, Woolhouse and Francks, trans., New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, D2, ‘Dialogue on Human Freedom’, Early Modern Texts, edited by Jonathan Bennett, earlymoderntexts.com; ‘DM’; and Confessions, ‘C,’ Confessio Philosophi: Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671–1678, Translated and Edited by Robert C. Sleigh, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 1

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moral necessity,2 with the result that although it is necessary that God creates, individual objects in creation are not necessary. The existence of individual objects in creation depends upon God’s will (T.I.9) rather than on his essence. In the same way, since most human actions do not come from God’s essence, they are not necessary events. The implication is that human actions are contingent on God’s will—which demonstrates the paradox: Leibniz maintains that God concurs only in the possibility for the existence of evil (which is necessary) but not in particular instances of evil (which are not necessary). Instances of human evil are contingent on God’s will, the products of which are contingent. Moral evil, then, as a product of human will is not necessary. If moral evil is not necessary, then it seems to rely upon divine concurrence for its instance (which is contingent) as well as for its possibility (which is necessary). If the form/matter defense of omnipotence contains a true paradox, then God concurs in the form as well as the matter of evil. Even though the form/matter defense does not salvage divine omnipotence for Leibniz, I will conclude that Leibniz could recast his defense, and could do so in a way that would benefit any similar view that both defends divine omnipotence and denies divine moral culpability in the occurrence of human moral evil. Rather than relying upon an Augustinian privation or a distinction between the permissive and productive will, a distinction can be employed that is prevalent in other medieval and early modern theologians, that of potenta absoluta and potenta ordinata. If the moral order of the universe is not grounded in what is essential (necessary) but in what is intended (contingent on God’s will), then human evil relates to what God has in fact instantiated, and so does not impinge on divine ability absolutely. This distinction can better support Leibniz’s suggestion that evil must be necessarily founded, though contingently existent, and better rebuffs the critique that God concurs in particular instances of human evil.

Leibnizian Defenses of Divine Omnipotence Leibniz’s responses do explain (to a certain degree) some of the concern over divine concurrence of metaphysical evil, but the presence of human moral evil in the world still deals a sharp blow to Leibniz’s notion of divine omnipotence, and so requires further inquiry. Since Leibniz contends that at least some human actions are contingent, he does believe human actions are free and are the sort of things that will receive moral punishment or reward. But the human ability to freely choose moral evil stands in contrast to divine omnipotence, since it suggests either that God is impotent to prevent and limit evil, or God actually creates evil by choosing to

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The distinction between moral and logical/metaphysical necessity is quite complex, and cannot be exhaustively dealt with here. In spite of the many different interpretations of Leibnizian necessity, there is widespread agreement that metaphysical necessity is tied to moral necessity. There is no logical contradiction in denying that God makes the choice he does make, but he is bound morally (Leibniz uses the expression ‘moral necessity’) so that in some sense God could not choose otherwise than he did. For a thorough examination of contemporary scholarship on this issue, see R.S. Woolhouse, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Metaphysics and Its Foundations, Princeton (1998), 120ff.

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instantiate a world in which so much moral evil obtains. Either result is inconsistent with the traditional theistic conception of God as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good—and so is unsatisfactory from a Leibnizian account. For Leibniz, even the necessity for God to create this particular world could come neither from ‘primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical necessity,’ nor ‘with a complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness, and for understanding in this first source of things’ (T I.68). God must create, then, out of sufficient reason but the act of creating must be a free and beneficent act. A proper Leibnizian response, then, to the problem of evil for divine omnipotence can minimize neither God’s understanding nor his will. A suitable account of divine omnipotence must distinguish theoretically between two aspects of omnipotence, God’s understanding and his will. Omnipotence is equivalent to divine independence of existence and action (DM 58). God’s existence is his essence, and is inseparable from his immensity of intellect (OC 28). God is omnipotent in existence, because he is the only necessary being, wholly independent from any other thing (D 112). Further, his independence of existence grounds all possibilities, since if God did not exist, nothing would be possible. This is true, both for the world that God chose to obtain, and for those possible worlds that will never obtain. Divine omnipotence cannot correctly be understood, however, as simple independence of existence, but on Leibniz’s view must also include independence of action, or will. God’s action, though independent from any other thing, is not identical with God’s essence (FP 20), since the contrary for most of God’s actions does not imply a contradiction.3 Rather, divine action is situated in God’s will, which produces both natural and moral actions. Natural action is that in which God has absolute creative freedom and so is that action by which God expresses his productive will. The entirety of creation is contingent upon the divine choice to produce this particular world. Moral action is action in which God’s permissive will is displayed, and by which it can be recognized that God has no superior. (Humans also have access to a version of spontaneity that is sufficient to make them the author of their own acts.4) Leibniz believes that the permissive will similarly is not necessary, since it does not stem from God’s essence; instead, it is contingent upon God allowing certain states of affairs and human choices to occur.5 The permissive will of God permits humans to act and choose freely, even though the metaphysical limits of their created humanity means that at least moral evil is possible. We can take heart, however, because God only permits evil if the evil is a part of a sequence

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This may prove to be another problem for Leibniz, of course, since it seems that if all divine attributes are perfect, none should be less than essential to the divine. But, Leibniz would probably answer that essences ground necessity in a divine being, and non-essential things are those things that need not occur. If divine will (though perfect and perfectly free) is also not constrained by necessity, then it is not essential. The contrary to the former implies a contradiction in the divine nature, whereas the contrary to God choosing otherwise (in most cases) does not imply a contradiction. (See ‘Letter to Foucher,’ and ‘On Freedom and Possibility.’) 4 Michael J. Murray, ‘Spontaneity and Freedom in Leibniz,’ in Leibniz: Nature and Freedom. D. Rutherford and J.A. Cover (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 5 Robert M. Adams. Leibniz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 16–18.

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of actions that are the best of any possible world that could be brought about.6 He writes, ‘if the action is evil in itself and becomes good only by accident, because the course of things...corrects its evilness and repays the evil with interest in such a way that in the end there is more perfection in the whole sequence than if the evil had not occurred, then we must say that God permits this but does not will it, even though he concurs with it because of the laws of nature he has established and because he knows how to draw a greater good from it’ (DM 59). God is omnipotent in will—not limited by any thing, and has absolute freedom of choice, and allows moral evil if the set of events (along with other determinates) is appropriately harmonious with this world as the best of all possible worlds (D 112). The dual nature of divine omnipotence—that of existence and action (or, essence and will)—can sufficiently address the problem of divine concurrence of evil, but that is because Leibniz imagines his notion of divine omnipotence to be most susceptible at the point where God must choose this world necessarily because it is the best of all possible worlds.7 There is another moment, however, in which Leibniz recognizes that divine concurrence of moral evil might occur as a result of divine willing. Here is where Leibniz’s second response to critics is employed, in which Leibniz argues that there is a ‘divine duty’ to allow some moral evil in the world. He writes (D 112–113) that all beings capable of morality have a moral duty to prevent someone from sinning unless it is their duty not to prevent someone from sinning. On this basis, God—a perfect creature—will always be obliged to limit the amount of evil in the world, unless his intervention would result in more (or qualitatively worse) evil obtaining. What God permits ‘must only be admitted or permitted insofar as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an indispensable duty’ (T II.24). We trust, then, that God already performs his duty to prevent evil in the world as much as he is able, and it is his duty to allow evil only that is unavoidable as a part of the best-possible-world sequence of events. To many, the divine duty defense is unsatisfactory from a simple empirical standpoint. There are daily evils—none of them significant—that could seemingly be prevented by an omnipotent God without any deleterious effects on the overall good/evil ratio in this series of events. (Nagging allergies that suddenly develop, for example, could just as suddenly vanish and no one would be worse for the wear.) Of 6 Robert C. Sleigh, Jr., in his introduction to Confessio Philosophi: Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671–1678 (New Haven: Yale, 2005, xxvii), writes about Leibniz’s struggle with necessitarianism. Although the full discussion is not relevant to this essay, it is interesting to note that Leibniz’s argument for necessitarianism is as follows: (a) because of various attributes God necessarily has, God necessarily chooses to create the best possible world; (b) whatever possible world is the best, is so necessarily; therefore (c) whatever states of affairs obtain do so necessarily. Sleigh suggests that Leibniz, in his attempt to defend divine freedom, never accepts (c). 7 See Donald Rutherford, ‘Leibniz on Spontaneity’ in Leibniz: Nature and Freedom. D. Rutherford and J. A. Cover (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 173. A referee for Sophia has noted that this results in God acting like a utilitarian. God chooses what is best, and creates a moral order designed to bring about the best states of affairs, all things considered. Some people will break God’s commands, simply by not paying attention to them. The difficulty with such a reconstruction, along with a typical Leibnizian reading, is that it takes for granted that the amount or potency of evil in the world is necessary. In fact, it obviates the problem: if some evil is contingent, and Leibniz’s divine acts as a utilitarian, then God allows evil to be in the world—not for the good that will occur if it is in the world—but in spite of it. The good of the world happens, and the evil is something to endure because the good is qualitatively better.

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course, inconveniences aside, the sheer amount of evil actions—those to which we ascribe the predicate ‘senseless’ to, for example—could surely be limited by an omnipotent being without implicating such a being in the production of more evil in the world. The most plausible reply that theists might give is that God is capable of very fine distinctions, so that any evil in the world really is required, even if we are unable to discern why. Similarly, Leibniz invokes his ‘best possible worlds’ defense to alleviate our intuitive doubts about the amount of evil in the world: ‘It is true that one may imagine possible worlds without sin and without unhappiness, and one could make some like Utopian romances: but these same worlds again would be very inferior to ours in goodness’ (T II.10). The theist’s commendation that we can ab effectu conclude that greater good comes out of the states of affairs in which evil is present and forceful does little to assuage the concern over the amount of moral evil in the world that an omnipotent being could seem to make, even a bit, better. This criticism is more effective in light of the notion of ‘omnipotence’—the ability to do anything logically possible, so being bound only by necessity. If God is omnipotent, it is true that he must produce and allow the best states of affairs logically possible, since it is necessary for God to bring about the best. For Leibniz, not all events that happen in the world are necessary– there are such things as contingent events. (It is necessary for God to bring about the best world sequence, and so, in order for human freedom to be salvaged, the possibility for human moral evil must exist in the best possible world).8 If there are such things as contingent events, it must be asked where evil events fit in. Either there are no evil contingent events (so, all evil is necessary), or there are evil contingent events that God could change, but chooses not to. The possibility that all evil events are necessary should be evaluated in tandem with its corollary: at least some good events are contingent. If it is true that some good events are contingent and not necessary, but evil events are necessary, the result is a series of scenarios in which God must allow for evil, but need not allow for good, which seems odd. Good should be necessary, as well as contingently produced by divine and human action, and some evil (much of which is a human choice) should be contingent. If some evil is contingent, then it need not be the case, and if it need not be the case, then an omnipotent being should be able to prevent or limit some evil acts. Leibniz, however, does not leave the best possible worlds and divine duty defenses to do all of the philosophical work for his notion of divine omnipotence. Instead, his third defense, which depends on a distinction between the form of evil and the matter of evil, is intended to show more forcefully that even if there is a great deal of evil in the world, God cannot be blamed as an efficient cause of moral evil. Like the ‘best possible worlds’ defense and the ‘divine duty’ defense, the ‘form/matter’ defense relies upon an Augustinian notion of evil as privation (DM 81). Jolley notes, ‘The philosophical moral, then, is that whatever God creates is good, and this is equivalent (by contraposition) to saying that whatever is not good is Leibniz writes to Arnauld, (LA): ‘Just as we might judge, for example, that a perfect square does not imply contradiction, although there has never been a perfect square in the world, and if one tried to reject absolutely these pure possibilities he would destroy contingency and liberty. For if there was nothing possible except what God has actually created, whatever God created would be necessary and God, desiring to create anything would be able to create that alone without having any freedom of choice.’

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not created by God. If we add the further plausible premise that whatever is not created by God has no positive reality, the doctrine of negativity of evil follows.’9 Since particular individuals are mere possibilities (that is, particulars are not necessary beings, and are contingent only on God’s will for their existence, see vH 100) in this series of events, created things are limited (D 112). Man’s original limitation arises from the metaphysical boundaries of his nature, since every created thing is restricted in its knowledge and power. Moral evil comes out of human will. Leibniz explains, ‘Their sin is grounded in their essence, though it doesn’t result from their essence as a necessary consequence; it is something accidental or contingent, and arises from their will; and God’s infinite wisdom enables him to derive from the bad of this sin an incommensurably greater good.’ (D2 5). The foundation of evil is necessary, then, which for Leibniz means that metaphysical limits as well as the conditions for human moral evil must be present in this particular world. Individual instances of human moral evil, however, are not necessary, but are contingent. So, for Leibniz, it must be the case that evil is possible, but it is only contingent that evil is actual.10 In spite of the necessity of the possibility for human moral evil in the world, on Leibniz’s view God is not implicated morally when he concurs in producing this state of affairs in which there is moral evil. Leibniz contends that at the time of creation there was nothing positively bad (D 114) in created things. Evil came into the world as a result of man’s lack of attention to God’s commands. So, Leibniz concludes, ‘from an imperfection that was merely privative in the beginning, he [man] fell into something positively bad’ (T I.69). God cannot be blamed morally when man—who is created metaphysically limited and yet morally innocent—actually engages in moral evil. Just as God cannot change mathematical laws (D 112), God cannot create metaphysically limited, free beings who are also programmed to necessarily always act morally. ‘God being supremely wise cannot fail to observe certain laws, and to act according to the rules physical as well as moral,’ (T II.28), and so humans are created with metaphysical constraints and the possibility for immoral choice. The world and man, then, are confined just in virtue of the fact that they are contingent, created, limited things. The boundaries of created things can be a type of metaphysical evil, if we understand ‘evil’ in the Leibnizian sense as a lack of perfection. (Under this rendering of metaphysical evil, all created, contingent beings are imperfect in virtue of their metaphysical limits.)11 Differently, moral evil occurs 9

Nicholas Jolley. Leibniz. NY: Routledge, 2005, 168. A critic might point out that if ‘perfection’ is a relative term, then it would be false that things that have limits are necessarily imperfect. For Leibniz, however, this would conflate what is meant by ‘evil’— metaphysical evil is a limitation of created beings, not one for which anyone is morally culpable. (Humans, of course, are not to blame for being created, and God cannot create anything as great as himself, so he is not blameworthy on this point, either.) But, created beings are not as great as God, because they depend on a necessary being for their creation and sustenance. Leibniz reserves the term ‘metaphysical evil’ for the ‘imperfection’ of being limited. 11 DM 30, T 20. Adams (1994, 50, 56) notes, ‘Leibniz thought this entitled him to hold that evil is not caused by God, but by the limitations inherent in the concepts of the creatures that it was best, on the whole, for God to create.... He also thought it provides an answer to complaints that individuals might be tempted to make against God: “you will insist that you can complain, why did God not give you more strength. I reply: if he had done that, you would not be, for he would have produced not you but another creature.”’ 10

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whenever members of humanity do not properly attend to the laws of God. Man’s most significant moral flaw is his inattention to what ought to be done. Critics of divine omnipotence argue that the presence of moral evil in the world cannot be explained merely by God’s passive permission of evil in the world, but that God becomes an author of sin, since God productively chooses the events in this world that then allow evil to occur. (Robert Sleigh’s 1996 article, ‘Leibniz’s First Theodicy’12 articulates three ways in which God could author sin: 1. by freely eliciting a sinful choice; 2. by causally contributing to some creature’s freely eliciting a sinful choice; or 3. by freely choosing not to prevent some creature from eliciting a sinful choice. I think that critics of divine omnipotence actually employ a fourth notion of authorship, in which God authors evil by: 4. freely choosing not to prevent conditions in which creatures will freely elicit a sinful choice.) Leibniz responds to this criticism by offering the form/matter defense of divine omnipotence: God concurs in the matter of sin, but does not concur in the form of sin (D 112). By ‘matter’ Leibniz does not mean ‘particular’ or ‘individual’; rather Leibniz means that God concurs in the fact of sin—or in the state of affairs in which there is moral evil. By the ‘form’ of sin, Leibniz means the universal ‘evil’, so that God cannot concur in evil as evil. The form/matter defense for Leibniz functions to show that God does not want, nor does he cause, individuals to sin, but that God must bring about the state of affairs in which evil happens, because it is the state of affairs in which a pre-established harmony obtains. The result is that Leibniz thinks divine concurrence of evil really is just divine concurrence in the best states of affairs. What divine concurrence is not, for Leibniz, is causation of evil. When God permits a state of affairs to come about that necessarily makes evil possible (i.e., the aforementioned ‘matter’ of sin), God is not concurring to bring about evil for evil’s sake. If Leibniz is right, human moral evil must at least be possible. And, since our world contains the best series of events possible, God has a divine duty to allow the possibility of moral evil to obtain. God must concur in allowing evil to be possible, but for Leibniz, divine concurrence just is God permitting the matter of the best series of events to occur, which occurs without God’s efficiently causing evil. God could never allow evil qua evil to exist. As for the amount or severity of particular human evil, the only logical explanation that follows, according to Leibniz, is that God has already limited the amount of evil in the world. God is all-powerful in action and in intellect, purely independent, and so the existence of evil does not impede or constrain what God is able to do, or what he has done. The omnipotence of God, then, remains intact even in spite of the presence of moral evil in his created order. Leibniz’s tendency to respond to the problem of evil with the principle of sufficient reason should not be confused with ignorance on Leibniz’s part of the implication moral evil in the world has on divine omnipotence. He writes, ‘Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a great good; and there would be something to Robert Sleigh. ‘Leibniz’s First Theodicy,’ Nous 30, Supplement: Philosophical Perspectives 10, Metaphysics (1996), 481–499.

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correct in the actions (so, the omnipotence) of God if it were possible to do better’ (T II.8). Leibniz simply rejects the notion that the presence or amount of moral evil can implicate God morally as an efficient cause of moral evil. In the Confessions, Leibniz writes: Although God is the ground (ratio) of sins, nevertheless He is not the author of sins. The ultimate physical cause of sins, as of all created things, is in God, but the moral cause is in the sinner. I suppose this is what is meant by those who have said that the substance of the act is from God, but nevertheless not the evil aspect (C, 121). For Leibniz, since God wills antecedently the good and consequently the best, the fact that there is evil in the world leads to an all-things-considered best state of affairs, even though that state of affairs may include instances in which man’s individual actions do not conform to the moral law. The form/matter defense works cooperatively with the best of all possible worlds defense to show that God responds to the possibility of moral evil in the world with sufficient reason for the best possible outcome. God wills the whole, which is the best, but by willing the allthings-considered best leaves open the possibility that some created being will choose to act immorally. If God intervened to limit or prevent evil in the world, the result would be a world-sequence that is less than the best-of-all-possible worlds. This defense protects God’s omnipotence, then, since God is able to do what he is free to do—and God is not free to instantiate a series of events that is less than best. Although the best of all possible worlds defense and the divine duty defense work with the form/matter defense to successfully justify why there are metaphysical limitations of the created world, neither of the first two defenses are individually or jointly sufficient to alleviate the problem of divine concurrence of moral evil. As shown above, Leibniz instead relies upon the form/matter defense to defend divine omnipotence from the contention that God concurs in moral evil. In the duration of this paper, I concede that Leibniz has properly defended divine omnipotence from the problem of metaphysical evil, but will demonstrate that there remain two flaws with Leibniz’s form/matter defense of divine omnipotence. The first is that the form/ matter defense of divine omnipotence does not escape common empirical worries about the amount and strength of evil in the world, since the form/matter defense fails to account for whether God is able, and morally obligated, to limit moral evil in the world. The second, and most difficult to resolve, is that the form/matter defense creates a paradox for Leibniz’s notion of divine omnipotence, the result of which may implicate God morally for the production of human moral evil.

Problem One: The Form/Matter Defense Allows for the Possibility that God is Unable to Prevent Moral Evil The fact that there is moral evil in the world is a separate worry from whether God concurs in moral evil, and Leibniz intends for the form/matter defense to specifically target the latter. The two issues are not wholly distinct, however, if the reason that there is evil in the world (which could have otherwise been prevented) is that God concurred in it. It is appropriate, then, to assess whether the amount of evil in the world poses a difficulty for Leibniz’s form/matter defense.

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Although the form/matter defense is not particularly designed to address the problem of the amount of moral evil in the world, if it is true that God is omnipotent and only concurs in the matter of evil, then the amount of evil in this world compared to other possible worlds gives us pause. Even if God picked this series of events to obtain as the best series possible, and so had to create a metaphysically restrained and limited world, it does not follow that man would actually be immoral, nor that man would not pay proper attention to the moral order of things. Rather, man often chooses to perform evil acts. Sometimes these acts occur out of a lack of attention to what ought to be done, but just as often, it seems that people act out of immoral characters and even sometimes out of love for what is evil. The response that God concurs with the fact (matter) of evil, but not with the form of evil (sin qua sin), is insufficient to address why it is that moral evil—and even more, evil that is performed for the sake of evil—is present in the world. Further, the empirical worry over the amount of evil in the world is relevant to the form/matter defense of divine omnipotence in that it is not clear how God’s concurrence in the matter of sin (i.e., the fact of the presence of evil) can be distinct from the form of sin. If the form/matter defense is correct, then God creates a world in which moral evil is present, but is divorced from whether or not people in the world he has created will actually choose evil. But such a causal chain is semantic only, and is not found in the created order. Instead, if my added fourth type of authorship is correct, then God is the author of sin if he freely chooses not to prevent conditions under which creatures will freely elicit evil choices. So stipulated, if God creates the conditions under which evil will be present (and he does, if Leibniz is correct and God concurs in the matter of sin), and if God chooses these conditions against other possible conditions which minimize the amount or ferocity of metaphysical and moral evil, then either God is the author of sin, or he is impotent to perform alternate actions. And, if God is the author of sin, then his pure nature is compromised. Leibniz concedes this point, since if God is a cause of sin, ‘he would fail in what he owes to himself, in what he owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection’ (T II.25). On the other hand, if God is not able to perform alternate actions, then we are left with a God that is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and perhaps even omnipotent in existence, but not omnipotent in will—since God’s choices depend on the instantiation of some particular series of events rather than the series of events depending on his essence. The form/matter defense, then, results in either a qualification of divine omnipotence, or a qualification of God’s purity—neither of which is consistent with Leibniz’s notion of the divine.

Problem Two: The Form/Matter Defense Creates a Paradox for Divine Omnipotence Although the problem of the presence and amount of moral evil is problematic for the form/matter defense of omnipotence, a significantly larger (and philosophically more interesting) difficulty emerges when the metaphysics of human and divine action for Leibniz are inspected. According to Leibniz’s defense, God cannot be implicated in causing evil because God only concurs in the matter of sin, rather than the form of sin. Since God must bring about this particular world order (because it is

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the best possible, in spite of its limitations), there is a necessary potential for evil in the created world, but God is not morally implicated because humans actually commit evil actions. Leibniz announces (T II.23), ‘Thence it follows that God wills antecedently the good and consequently the best. And as for evil, God wills moral evil not at all, and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely.’ To test Leibniz’s belief that God does not will the form of evil at all, we need to look at the origin of necessity and possibility for Leibniz. Divine intellect is unhindered and independent, and so it grounds all things that are necessary (including the instantiation of this particular world) as well as all other possible worlds (including other series of events that are never instantiated, but for which their possibility does not imply a contradiction). The necessity of the possibility for evil comes directly from God’s intellect, then, because (a) God creates out of moral necessity and (b) it is necessary that any creation will be metaphysically limited (even though it is the best possible). Human action, however, is not necessary. Human action is contingent, and so human action does not originate in the divine understanding. Rather, human action is grounded in the moral action of God, since God is morally obligated to create a world in which the fact of human moral evil is permitted. Both natural action (in which God actually wills what is good to obtain) and moral action (in which God permits free human action to occur) are dependent not on divine essence (or intellect) but on divine will, which is absolutely free. Leibniz contends (T I.9), ‘Actual things depend on God for their existence as well as for their actions, and depend not only on his intellect but also on his will. Their existence depends on God because as well as having been freely created by him (i.e., natural action) they are kept in existence by him. The persistence of created things doesn’t come from God’s essence, but rather from his will, because the relevant acts of God’s will are contingent.’ Since particular human actions are permitted by the divine will, and are contingent rather than necessary, they invariably result in the least amount of evil than any other possible world that God could have created. If the matter of evil is contingent, and not necessary, then freely chosen human acts are not grounded in what is essential. The contingency of human action is significant for Leibniz’s form/matter defense because it relates free human action to God’s will (which allows non-necessary states of affairs) rather than to his intellect (which instantiates necessary series of events).13 Since freely chosen human action is permitted by the divine will (which is not necessary), a paradox emerges for Leibniz’s form/matter defense of omnipotence. Leibniz contends that God only concurs in the matter of evil. This means that God only concurs in the metaphysical limit of creation and so in the necessary fact of the possibility of moral evil. The metaphysical limits and necessary possibility of moral evil, then, are necessary. Individual instances of evil—that is, particular human choices that are immoral—are ‘All action of God arises from cognition, all action arising from cognition is voluntary, all voluntary action is the cause of something good or bad.’ Andreas Blank, Leibniz: Metaphilosophy and Metaphysics 1666–1686. Munich: Philosophia Verlag GmbH. 2005, 151. 13

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not necessary, according to Leibniz. (If particular human evil actions were necessary, then they would be attributable to divine essence—but God’s essence cannot ground moral evil, according to Leibniz notion of divine nature.) Individual instances of human evil are, then, contingent on the permission of God through God’s permissive moral will (which is not necessary). If instances of human evil are contingent, and not necessary, it seems that the amount or severity of particular instances of human moral evil could be limited by a being who is itself wholly unconstrained by any other thing. Even more, if instances of human evil are contingent on God’s will (which is not necessary), the result is that human evil depends upon divine concurrence for its actuality, and not just for its possibility. We know from Leibniz that the divine concurrence of the possibility for evil is necessary. However, if human evil is contingent upon God’s absolutely free (and non-necessary) will, then human evil appears to depend upon divine concurrence for its instance, since individual instantiations of evil are permitted by God, instead of necessary components of the world. And, devastatingly, if human evil depends upon the permission of a divine being not just for its possibility (which is necessary), but for its instance (which is contingent), the end result is that God does not just concur in the matter of evil—i.e., that there is a possibility for evil—but God concurs in the form of evil as well.

A Possible Solution It should be said that the paradox is fairly debilitating to Leibniz’s defense of omnipotence, since the only two results that emerge from the paradox are that God is omnipotent, but unable to choose alternate actions; or that God can choose alternate actions, but is unable to prevent the amount of moral evil. Either result, of course, undermines divine potency. Leibniz’s commitment to the distinction between divine concurrence of form and matter must only be abandoned, however, if Leibniz must rely upon 1.) the notion of evil as privation and 2.) the duality between productive and permissive willing. Although both are long-standing notions for many thinkers, and are especially held dear by Christian thinkers, the result of taking an Augustinian notion of ‘evil’ is that Leibniz struggles to articulate how a potential for evil becomes actual without implicating the divine as an efficient cause of moral evil. Further, Leibniz’s form/ matter defense struggles on the basis of its insistence that God produces through his consequent will what is best and nothing other while at the same time God can permit what seemingly is not the best (i.e., a tremendous amount of moral evil). Leibniz could instead employ an equally historic distinction that would have less damaging results to the concept of divine omnipotence—that between potenta absoluta (absolute power) and potenta ordinate (ordained power). The distinction between potenta absoluta and potenta ordinate is prevalent in the works of other medieval and early modern theologians14 largely because it distinguishes between divine ability absolutely and what God has in fact done. There is a general universal 14

This distinction is found, for example, in Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, John Major, and Johann Eck.

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law, and there is a natural, social and moral order to the world that is ordained by God. The key difference, however, between divine ability understood on the basis of this distinction and that employed by Leibniz is that the potenta absoluta and potenta ordinate do not depend on the natural, social and moral order being structured absolutely. There might be a supposed necessary law, but what occurs in each possible world is contingent, since there are exceptions to how elements in the natural, social and moral order can work. The upshot is that divine omnipotence is never undermined by an occurrence of evil in this particular world (nor, incidentally, is the order of things upset by miracles). God in fact instantiates an order of things that does not in fact encroach upon his own freedom nor on his ability. God’s ordinate power has led to a world in which God does not restrict the actions of his agential creatures. If God must restrict human freedom, such a restriction is the exception towards his own purposes, then, and not the rule, because the order of the created world is that humans can freely choose their own actions. That does mean that God must concur with the fact of evil. Some agents will use their freedom to turn away from what ought to be done—and their evil is not a simple lack of attention to what they ought to do. But, similarly, even immoral human choices do not impede nor constrain divine ability absolutely. Rather, God’s ordained power results in a freely chosen moral order, and human evil is consistent with his freely chosen creation—one in which divine omnipotence understood absolutely, is not impeded. Of the three Leibnizian defenses of divine omnipotence, then, the form/matter defense is mired by difficulties posed by the presence of moral evil in the world. For theists like Leibniz who consider the production of the best states of affairs by an omnipotent creating God to be consistent with God’s permission of human moral evil, the form/matter defense should be abandoned, as it results in the assassination of either God’s moral perfection or God’s omnipotence in will. The effect, while wholly unsatisfactory, may not be necessary. Different results can be achieved if one alters his commitment either to a notion of ‘evil’ as a privation of good, or to his distinction between the productive and permissive will of God. Regardless of the changes that might be made, as it stands on its own, the form/matter defense of divine omnipotence largely fails to satisfy the problems produced when juxtaposed against the presence of human moral evil.