A collection of moral anti-theodicy’s accusations revolve around theodicy’s being either covertly or overtly consequentialist or instrumentalist in its moral reasoning. This is more obvious in the case of the soul-making theodicy. This theodicy says that the end, of having a morally and spiritually virtuous soul, justifies the means, of living in a world of pain and suffering. Whilst it might be difficult to see at the time, in the final analysis we would judge the benefit to be worth the cost.
It’s for this reason that theodicy appeals to examples such as going to the dentist. This is a clear case where the end, of good dental health, justifies the means, of temporary discomfort in the dentist’s chair. Extrapolating from this case, we infer that many if not all instances of suffering might be nothing more than a short-term investment for a longer-term gain.
Consequentialism
According to theodicy, all evils are capable of being justified on consequentialist grounds. As long as the consequence is worth the cost, and as long as the consequence is realised, then there is no problem. Theodicy tells us that God has a plan, that the consequence of that plan is worth the cost, and therefore God will achieve His plan by any means necessary.
There is a problem here, though, because we would not normally endorse such an unrestricted consequentialism, and it’s particularly unusual for theists to do so. Are there no limits on what can be permitted in order to reach our goal?
Instrumentalism
Some of the costs that are required for this goal involve the suffering of others. This raises another problem: The suffering of others becomes useful for us. It helps us to achieve our goal, because our goal is to become better people and the suffering of others helps to make us better people.
If all that really matters is that we achieve our goal of moral and spiritual virtue, and that goal is to be achieved by any means necessary, then it seems, paradoxically, that we should want others to suffer so that we have more raw material for our soul-making. We should be disappointed to live in a world with less suffering, because it gives us less opportunity for growth.
Our own suffering might be something we can bring ourselves to sign-off on, on consequentialist grounds, as being a cost that is worth bearing for the greater benefits that come from it. But can we see the suffering of others in the same way? To do so would involve, as D. Z. Phillips said:
‘…the objectionable instrumentalism in which the sufferings of others are treated as an opportunity for me to be shown at my best. Ironically, if I think of their sufferings in this way, I am shown at my worst.’
D. Z. Phillips, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God
The morally problematic status of theodicy is shown in this way. There is something wrong in seeing the suffering of others as being, ultimately, a good thing, because it is instrumentally useful for me and my purposes.
Can their suffering be made good on the grounds that it is useful for me? It misses the point to say so. Their suffering harms them, not me; or at least if it harms me then it does so only indirectly and I cannot lay claim to it. I am not the victim of their suffering. But if I am not the victim of their suffering, and their suffering is helping me achieve my purposes, then the cost is theirs but the benefit is mine. And so there can be no untainted benefit for me if that benefit only comes at the cost of someone else’s harm. My gains are made ill-gotten by this, and if I am virtuous I would understand that ill-gotten gains are not gains at all.
Unrestricted
Many of us who are not totally unrestricted consequentialists would think there is something wrong with God achieving His plan by any means necessary. There ought to be limits on what can be justified by a consequentialist cost-benefit analysis.
Ordinarily these limits are determined by questions of justice, by questions about what is right and not only about what is good. It might be ‘good’ if you can save a town from a riot and all the destruction that follows, but it is not ‘right’ to do so by convicting someone you know to be innocent. We should not convict innocent people even if the consequences are better. Possibly, we should not convict innocent people especially when the consequences would be better by doing so, if, by that, we are using the innocent person for our own benefit; because there is something unjust about convicting an innocent person, but there is something more unjust about profiting from it and considering ourselves righteous and justified for doing so.
Does God acknowledge these right-based limits? Are God’s means to the ends of soul-making restricted in any way? It’s difficult to see how, given the range and extent of suffering and injustice that is already seen as part of the soul-making plan. We might ask: if these are within the restrictions, what is left without?!
Perhaps we are not in a position to know what sort of restrictions God is operating under, but we could at least settle on a compromise that, even if God’s means-ends reasoning is restricted in some way (that we can’t see), the moral objection to theodicy is that it is not restricted enough. Some things happen that ought not to happen and cannot be made good by a consequentialist appeal to the end justifying the means. There ought to be restrictions on using the violation of innocent children as a character-building exercise, for example. Even if good characters were built that way, it wouldn’t be right to do so.
The case is clearer with the morally impossible. It is difficult to see how the concept could be compatible with an unrestricted consequentialism. The identification of something that ‘categorically ought not to be’ does not come with the caveat ‘unless you can get something really good out of it’. Child abuse, genocide, and slavery are natural examples here. It doesn’t matter how much good comes of these things, that good can’t make them right.
Imagine someone justifying genocide on the basis of the genetic improvements to the future human race, or of having extra living space. Imagine! ‘But aren’t these good consequences?’, they might say. That is hardly the point. ‘But what if these good consequences outweighed the costs, in the long run?’ Would that make a difference? Does the wrongness of genocide hinge upon the question of whether or not it works out for the best in the end? How could it?
It is truer to say it is wrong regardless of the long-term consequences, not made wrong because the consequences happened to be bad, and certainly not made right because the consequences happened to be good.
‘But what if God knows these good consequences outweigh the costs?’ That doesn’t change the nature of the consequentialist justification. If we find it objectionable as such, regardless of the outcome, without knowledge of the outcome, why would it be any different with knowledge of the outcome? Unless we abandon our objection to an unrestricted consequentialism, God’s knowledge doesn’t change anything. Our rejection of a consequentialist justification wasn’t conditional on it having bad consequences, or good consequences, and so how could it make any difference to know which it is?
Dilemma
To escape the moral problems of instrumentalism and consequentialism, theodicy would have to show either that its means-ends reasoning is in some way sufficiently restricted in terms of what is right, or else it does not, in fact, depend on a means-ends reasoning at all.
The first route will come up against the problem of all currently-known evil and suffering being, as it stands, fair game for means-ends justification, which certainly seems to be very unrestricted indeed. We can at least say this is not nearly restricted enough, which is much the same problem: it’s not right, even if it were good.
The second route would abandon the central pivot point around which all the heavy lifting of theodicy turns. If this evil and suffering does not serve a purpose, then what is the point of it?
Theodicy, especially in its soul-making form, is forced to commit to a too-unrestricted consequentialism and cannot help but slide into an objectionable instrumentalism. It inherits the moral problems of both.
Read more: The Problem of Evil as an Ethical Problem
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