3.1.1 - The free will defence
If God prevents every harmful choice, can creatures possess morally significant freedom? Alvin Plantinga's free will defence answers Mackie's logical problem by proposing that even an omnipotent God cannot guarantee free choices that always go right. You will explain possible worlds, moral responsibility, and transworld depravity, then evaluate how well the defence addresses moral evil and whether natural evil remains a serious gap.
The problem addressed
The free will defence answers a pressure created by the problem of evil: if God is understood as omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good, why is there evil and suffering?
The defence is most naturally aimed at the logical problem of evil. The logical problem claims that belief in God and the existence of evil cannot both be true. The free will defence tries to show that there is no contradiction if God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting at least some evil.
Two distinctions matter before the defence can work.
| Distinction | Meaning | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| Moral evil | Evil or suffering caused by the choices of free agents, such as cruelty, dishonesty or violence. | The free will defence is strongest here because it links evil to creaturely misuse of freedom. |
| Natural evil | Evil or suffering caused by natural processes, such as disease, earthquakes or floods. | This creates a harder objection because it is not obviously caused by human free choice. |
| Defence | A response that aims to show that God and evil are logically compatible. | It does not need to prove God's actual reason for every instance of evil. |
| Theodicy | A fuller attempt to justify God's goodness and justice in the light of evil. | AQA places this lesson among responses to evil, but "free will defence" is narrower than a complete theodicy. |
Free will defence
The free will defence is the claim that God may allow evil because a world containing genuinely free creatures is valuable, and genuine freedom includes the possibility that creatures misuse it.
The core argument
The free will defence begins from the value of significant freedom. A choice is significantly free when the agent is not simply programmed or forced to do the right thing. The person can choose morally good actions, but can also choose wrongly.
Argument chain:
- A world with genuinely free moral agents has a distinctive value.
- Genuine moral freedom cannot be reduced to being caused or programmed always to choose the good.
- If creatures are genuinely free, it is possible that they will misuse freedom.
- Some moral evil can therefore be explained as the result of creaturely misuse of freedom rather than as something God directly wills.
- So the existence of moral evil is not automatically a logical contradiction with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good God.
This does not say that evil is good. It says that the possibility of evil may be inseparable from the valuable good of free moral agency. The defence therefore shifts the question from "Why did God create evil?" to "Could God create significantly free creatures while guaranteeing that they never misuse that freedom?"
Plantinga's version
Alvin Plantinga is the standard contemporary philosopher associated with the free will defence. AQA does not name him in this row, but his version gives students a clear scholarly form of the argument.
| Scholar/source card | Details |
|---|---|
| Scholar | Alvin Plantinga |
| Main work often associated with the argument | God, Freedom, and Evil |
| Central claim | God and moral evil are logically compatible if it is possible that significantly free creatures sometimes go wrong. |
| Key reasoning | God can create free creatures, but God cannot causally determine them always to do right while they remain significantly free. |
| Why it matters | This targets the logical problem of evil by denying that God's existence and evil are strictly inconsistent. |
| Possible challenge | It may not explain natural evil well, and it may rely on a demanding idea of libertarian freedom. |
Plantinga's important move is modest. He does not need to prove that free will is God's actual reason for every evil. He only needs to show a possible explanation that removes the alleged contradiction.
His argument also uses the idea that there may be possible worlds God cannot actualise if those worlds depend on free creatures making certain choices. This is sometimes explained through "transworld depravity": the possibility that any significantly free creature would go wrong in at least some circumstances. For A-level purposes, the key point is simpler: if a choice is genuinely free, then even an omnipotent God cannot both determine it and leave it free in the same sense.
Freedom and responsibility
The defence often uses a contrast between free persons and "robots" or automata. The point is not that machines are bad. The point is that programmed obedience is not the same as moral goodness freely chosen.
If someone is forced to tell the truth, the result may be useful, but it is not the same as honesty as a virtue. If someone is unable to be cruel because they are causally programmed never to harm, the absence of cruelty may be welcome, but it is not the same as a free moral agent choosing compassion.
This gives the free will defence its appeal:
| AO1 content | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Free will allows morally responsible action. | Creatures, not God, can be blamed for some moral evil. |
| Moral goodness chosen freely has a value that programmed behaviour lacks. | God may have a reason to create free agents rather than automata. |
| Freedom includes the possibility of misuse. | A world with free agents may contain moral evil without contradiction. |
But the same point also creates a tension. If God knew the risks of freedom, critics can ask whether the value of freedom is enough to justify the amount and seriousness of suffering that follows from it. This moves the debate toward evidential questions: even if evil and God are logically compatible, does the actual scale of evil make God's existence less plausible?
Mackie's challenge
J. L. Mackie gives a sharp objection to free will responses. He argues that if God is omnipotent, God could have created people who always freely choose the good. If it is possible for a person to choose good freely on one occasion, why could God not create people who freely choose good on every occasion?
The challenge can be set out like this:
- Free choice and choosing the good are not obvious opposites.
- Humans sometimes freely choose good actions.
- So, perhaps it is possible for humans always to freely choose good actions.
- An omnipotent and perfectly good God should create that better world.
- Therefore, the free will defence has not fully protected belief in God from the problem of evil.
Plantinga's reply is that Mackie assumes too quickly that every possible description of a good world is a world God can actualise. If God makes a creature significantly free, then what that creature freely does is not simply up to God. To cause the creature always to choose rightly would remove the kind of freedom being defended.
The AO2 issue is finely balanced. Mackie's challenge is powerful because it asks why freedom must include actual wrongdoing rather than only the possibility of wrongdoing. Plantinga's response is powerful because it insists that omnipotence does not include doing what is logically contradictory, such as determining a choice while also leaving it significantly free.
The natural evil pressure
The most serious limitation of the free will defence is natural evil. Human freedom can explain why a person lies, steals or murders. It does not obviously explain why a child suffers from disease or why an earthquake kills people.
There are three possible responses, each with a cost.
| Response | How it might help | Cost or weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Limit the defence to moral evil | This keeps the argument precise and strong. | It leaves much suffering unexplained. |
| Say natural evil creates a stable world in which free choices matter | A predictable natural order may be needed for meaningful action and responsibility. | This starts to move beyond the narrow free will defence into broader theodicy. |
| Suggest non-human free agents could be responsible for natural evil | This preserves a free-will structure for natural evil. | It is speculative and not required by the AQA wording. |
A careful judgement is that the free will defence is strongest as an answer to the logical problem of moral evil. It is weaker as a complete answer to the evidential problem or to apparently pointless natural suffering.
The free will defence can show why moral evil may be compatible with God, but it does not automatically explain every kind or amount of suffering.
AO1 to AO2 bridge
A strong paragraph on the free will defence should not merely say "free will is good". It should show how the defence answers a precise version of the problem of evil, then judge how far that answer succeeds.
| AO1 knowledge | AO2 judgement it can support | Objection that tests it | Possible response |
|---|---|---|---|
| The defence says genuine freedom includes the possibility of wrongdoing. | This can defeat the claim that God and moral evil are logically inconsistent. | Mackie asks why God could not create people who always freely choose good. | Plantinga replies that God cannot determine significantly free actions without removing significant freedom. |
| Plantinga's version only needs logical possibility, not a full explanation of every evil. | This makes it a modest but effective answer to the logical problem. | The actual amount of suffering may still count against God's existence. | That is an evidential objection, so it needs a further argument beyond strict logical contradiction. |
| The defence fits moral evil better than natural evil. | A limited judgement is stronger than claiming the defence solves the entire problem. | Natural disasters and diseases are not obvious products of human free choice. | The defence may need support from other responses, but those belong to the wider evil-and-suffering cluster. |
A concise evaluation might say: the free will defence is persuasive against the logical problem of moral evil because it shows that God and evil are not plainly contradictory. However, it is less persuasive as a complete response to evil and suffering because natural evil and the scale of suffering are not easily explained by human freedom.
Synoptic link: this lesson prepares the C1 evil-and-suffering cluster. It links backwards to natural and moral evil and the logical/evidential problem, and forwards to the AQA comparative lesson on the strengths and weaknesses of each response.