The Free Will Defense — Evil Is the Price of Freedom

Why It Matters

In the last lesson we established that the problem of evil has two forms: the logical version (God and evil cannot coexist) and the evidential version (the amount of suffering in the world is evidence against God). This lesson focuses on the most important philosophical response to the logical version: the free will defense. You need to understand this argument properly, because it is serious and genuinely powerful — and because understanding it precisely will show you both where it works and where it leaves important questions unanswered.

The free will defense begins with a claim about what genuine love and relationship require. A world in which people cannot choose to do wrong is a world in which people cannot genuinely choose to do right. Genuine freedom — the kind that makes love possible, the kind that makes moral agency real — requires the ability to choose either way. A God who wants creatures capable of genuine relationship, genuine virtue, genuine love, must create creatures capable of refusing all three. And if God creates free creatures, God accepts that some of them will use their freedom badly.

This is a real argument. It explains much of the evil in the world: war, cruelty, violence, oppression. These are things human beings have chosen. The defense also explains why a world with free creatures capable of genuine love is arguably better than a world of puppets incapable of it — even counting the evil that comes with freedom. When you feel the force of this argument, you are responding to something genuine.

But the argument has limits, and you need to know them. This lesson will state the defense as clearly and charitably as possible — and then name exactly where it runs out, which is when you ask about natural evil: disease, earthquake, tsunami, cancer in a child. These are not caused by anyone's free choice. The free will defense does not explain them. This limitation is real and important. Acknowledging it honestly is part of what this module is doing.

A Story

The Conversation After Class

After the lesson on the free will defense, two students walked home together arguing about it. Priya thought the argument worked. James didn't.

'It makes sense,' Priya said. 'If you want people to be capable of real love, they have to be capable of real rejection. You can't have one without the other. God isn't being cruel — God is creating something real instead of a machine.' James was quiet for a moment. 'Okay,' he said. 'I'll give you that. That part works. But what about my cousin?'

Priya waited. 'He's nine. He has a brain tumor. Nobody chose that. His parents didn't choose it. He didn't choose it. The tumor isn't a result of anybody's free will. So what does the defense actually say about him?' Priya didn't answer right away. She had felt the argument working until that moment, and now it had hit something it couldn't explain.

'I don't know,' she said honestly. 'I think it explains something. It explains why there's moral evil — evil that people do to each other. But you're right that it doesn't explain natural evil. That's different.' James nodded. 'So it's not a complete answer.' 'No,' she said. 'I don't think it is.'

They walked in silence for a minute. Then James said: 'But here's what I'll give you. The argument shows that the existence of some evil doesn't prove there's no God. Because a God who wants genuine love would have to allow for the possibility of genuine wrong. I'll accept that. That's worth something. It just doesn't go all the way.' Priya thought that was fair.

Vocabulary

Free will defense

The philosophical argument that God permits moral evil because creating beings capable of genuine love, virtue, and relationship requires creating beings capable of choosing otherwise. Defended most rigorously by philosopher Alvin Plantinga.

Moral evil

Evil that results from the free choices of persons — war, cruelty, violence, injustice, abuse. The free will defense is specifically a response to moral evil, and it is largely persuasive for this category.

Natural evil

Suffering that is not the result of any person's choice — disease, earthquake, tsunami, cancer. Natural evil is the major limitation of the free will defense, because it cannot be explained by appeal to human freedom.

Alvin Plantinga

American philosopher (born 1932) who developed the most rigorous modern version of the free will defense. His argument convinced most philosophers that the logical problem of evil — the claim that God and evil are logically incompatible — fails. This is a significant philosophical achievement, even if it doesn't resolve the evidential problem.

Greater good

The claim that certain evils are permitted because they make possible a greater good that could not exist without them. The free will defense is a specific greater-good argument: the good of genuine freedom and love is worth the evil that comes with it.

Guided Teaching

Alvin Plantinga's version of the free will defense goes like this. God is omnipotent — able to do anything logically possible. But 'creating free creatures who never do wrong' may not be logically possible. If God creates a creature with genuine libertarian free will — the ability to choose either way — then whether that creature chooses well or badly is not in God's control. God could have created creatures that always choose well, but those would not be free creatures; they would be very sophisticated puppets. Genuine freedom is incompatible with guaranteed good choices. Therefore, a God who creates free creatures cannot guarantee they will not choose evil.

This argument succeeds against the logical problem of evil. It shows that there is no logical contradiction in a good God permitting evil — because creating a world with free creatures who sometimes choose badly is logically consistent with being all-powerful and all-good. Plantinga's argument convinced the majority of philosophers who engaged with it, including several who had been skeptical of religious belief. That is significant.

But note carefully what the argument establishes and what it doesn't. It establishes that God and evil are not logically incompatible. It does not establish that God is good or that suffering is justified. And it does not explain natural evil. Priya and James identified this correctly: the free will defense explains why moral evil — evil that people do to each other — is compatible with God's existence. It says nothing about why a child gets cancer.

The free will defense also faces a secondary challenge even within the moral evil category. Why, if God is omnipotent, couldn't God have created free creatures who predictably chose good — not because they were forced to, but because they were made with stronger inclinations toward the good? And why does God allow the consequences of free choices to fall so heavily on people who didn't make those choices? When an abuser destroys a child's life, the child did not exercise freedom badly — the abuser did. The victim's suffering is not the price of the victim's freedom.

A third challenge: the free will defense, even if successful, doesn't tell us what to say to someone who is suffering. It is a philosophical argument about logical possibility. The person whose child has cancer does not need to know that God and evil are logically compatible. They need something else — something this argument cannot provide. Acknowledging this is not a weakness in the argument; it is honesty about what arguments can and cannot do.

So where does this leave us? The free will defense is a genuine philosophical achievement. It answers the logical problem of evil. It explains moral evil in a way that many people find convincing. And it establishes that religious belief in the face of suffering is not irrational. But it leaves the evidential problem standing — especially for natural evil — and it provides no comfort in the face of actual suffering. The next lesson looks at the soul-making defense, which tries to address some of what the free will defense leaves open.

For Discussion

1. 1.State the free will defense in your own words. What is its central claim?
2. 2.What did Alvin Plantinga show, and why was his argument philosophically significant?
3. 3.Why does the free will defense explain moral evil but not natural evil? Can you give examples of each?
4. 4.Priya and James both found something the defense couldn't explain. What was it, and do you agree that it is a real limitation?
5. 5.Is a world with free creatures who sometimes choose badly better than a world with no freedom? How would you argue this?
6. 6.Why doesn't the free will defense explain why innocent victims bear the cost of other people's free choices?
7. 7.What does the free will defense establish that is philosophically valuable, even granting its limitations?
8. 8.If you were trying to defend religious belief against the problem of evil, would you use the free will defense? What would you add to it?

Practice

Steel-Manning the Free Will Defense

1. 1.Write the free will defense as a formal argument with numbered premises: (1) God wants to create beings capable of genuine love and virtue. (2) Genuine love and virtue require genuine freedom. (3) Genuine freedom requires the ability to choose wrong. (4) Therefore... complete the argument.
2. 2.Now write down the strongest objection to the argument that you can construct — not a weak version, but the strongest possible version. What is the hardest case against it?
3. 3.Write a one-paragraph assessment: does the free will defense succeed? In what cases? Where does it fail?
4. 4.Specifically address James's case: a nine-year-old with a brain tumor. Does the free will defense say anything helpful about that case? Be honest.
5. 5.Keep this assessment. When you encounter the soul-making defense in the next lesson, ask whether it fills in what the free will defense left empty.

Memory Questions

1. 1.What is the free will defense in its simplest form?
2. 2.What is the difference between moral evil and natural evil?
3. 3.What did Alvin Plantinga argue, and why was it philosophically significant?
4. 4.What is the major limitation of the free will defense?
5. 5.Why is it not logically possible for God to create free creatures who are guaranteed to always choose good?
6. 6.What can the free will defense not address, and why does that matter?