Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 21:2 (Fall 2024)
Article: Must God Choose The Best?
Author: William Lane Craig

Must God Choose The Best?

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig serves as visiting scholar of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and professor of philosophy at Houston Christian University.

For 14 years, Bob Stewart organized Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forums, bringing together leading scholars from the evangelical and skeptical academy to dialogue on significant areas of disagreement. The Greer-Heard Forums demonstrated both Dr. Stewart’s commitment to atheist-Christian conversation and his confidence in Christianity’s ability to hold its own in the marketplace of ideas. Dr. William Lane Craig participated in several of these Forums, most memorably in the 2014 Greer-Heard debate on “God & Cosmology,” interacting with the atheistic astronomer Sean Carroll in a vigorous and engaging exchange of ideas!

In honor of Dr. Stewart’s Greer-Heard legacy of dialogue and academic excellence, Dr. Craig tackles a contemporary atheistic attack against the coherence of Christian theism.

Introduction

Christians believe that God is both free and morally perfect. But some contemporary philosophers have argued that God’s freedom and God’s moral perfection are logically incompatible and that therefore a logical incoherence exists at the very heart of traditional theism.1 It would follow that God, as traditionally conceived, does not exist. Thus, addressing this challenge is of paramount importance.

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Alleged Incoherence Of Divine Freedom And Perfection

The objection takes the form of a dilemma for traditional theism: either there is a best possible world or there is not. If there is a best possible world, then God, being morally perfect, must choose it. But then God is not free to refrain from bringing about such a world. On the other hand, if there is no best possible world, then for any world that God might choose, there is always a better world that He could have chosen instead. But then it is possible for someone to be better than God is, since he could have chosen to bring about a better world than God did. Therefore, God is not morally perfect. Thus, we must reject either God’s freedom or God’s moral perfection.

We may formulate the basic objection as follows:2

1. Either there is a best possible world or there is an infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds.
2. If there is a best possible world, then God is not free to refrain from choosing that world.
3. If there is an infinite hierarchy of ever better worlds, then God is not perfectly good.
4. Therefore, either God is not free, or God is not perfectly good.

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