Christian
theologians and Christian philosophers have offered sufficient, reasonable, and
philosophically sophisticated rebuttals to the problem of evil i.e. rebuttals
to why God allows evil, pain, and suffering. Defense and theodicies constitute
these rebuttals. One such theodicy is the Felix
Culpa theodicy.
Felix
Culpa (O Happy Fault or Oh Blessed Sin) is a Latin expression
used by the pre-medieval theologian Augustine when he said, “O happy fault that
merited such and so great a Redeemer.” This he said in the context of man’s
fall and the original sin.
Two
terms should be primarily defined in this context: Infralapsarianism and Supralapsarianism.
These terms are associated with God’s decrees of the fall of man and the salvation
plan of the Cross.
To
state more precisely, which of these decrees preceded the other? Did God decree
the fall of man logically prior to
the salvation plan?
Supralapsarians
claim that God decreed the salvation plan logically prior to the fall.
Infralapsarians argue that the fall was logically prior to the salvation plan. (Felix
Culpa theodicy is a derivative of Supralapsarianism.) This is an ongoing debate
between the Supras and the Infras in the Christian community.
Although
Infralapsarians assert that the fall was logically prior to the salvation plan,
this cannot be construed as God being ignorant of the fall or as a lapse in
God’s knowledge.
William
Lane Craig’s explanation about infra and supra is a must-read, “The question is
– does God decree the cross in order to rectify the fall, or does he decree the
fall in order to bring about the cross? Which one is logically prior? Normally,
I think most of us would think that the reason God decrees the cross is to
solve this problem. God knows from the moment he creates human beings – he
knows they will fall into sin – so he has predestined before the foundations of
the world that he will send his Son to die to rectify that problem. That is
Infralapsarianism. Supralapsarianism is different. It says God, in the council
halls of eternity, says The greatest good that I could bring about would be
sending my Son to die for humanity and redeeming this people for myself through
Him. The cross is such a great good that this is my first desire. How am I
going to bring about the cross? I need to have them fall. Otherwise I don’t
have anything to redeem them from. Having decided to do the cross, he now
decrees the fall in that light. You see the difference? It is just a different
logical order. But both of the views affirm that God always foreknows what will
happen. It is just a matter of which one has priority in his motivations.”1
The Incarnation & The Atonement Are The
Greatest Goods: Alvin Plantinga, while postulating the theodicy of Felix
Culpa, asserts that the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ and HIS Atoning death
(Atonement) on the Cross as the greatest goods, by far. He adds that the
Incarnation and the Atonement as tremendous goods, better than any combination
of other goods or any combination of evils (horrendous evils included).2
Plantinga
then postulates the Value Hypothesis
about goodness, which states that
every possible way that things could have been that includes Incarnation and
Atonement is better than any possible way things could have been without
Incarnation and Atonement.
Fall Of Man Is A Necessary Condition: Now
imagine this scenario. God’s desire is to create a magnificent world. But,
given the value hypothesis, that level of value is achieved only when
Incarnation and Atonement are present in the world. For incarnation and
atonement to be present, the fall of man is a necessary condition (cf.
Supralapsarianism).
Plantinga
writes[Emphasis Mine]:3
I believe that any world with
incarnation and atonement is a better world than any without it--or at any rate
better than any world in which God does nothing comparable to incarnation and
atonement...So consider the splendid and gracious marvel of incarnation and
atonement. I believe that the great goodness of this state of affairs, like
that of the divine existence itself, makes its value incommensurable with the
value of states of affairs involving creaturely good and bad. Thus the value of
incarnation and atonement cannot be matched by any aggregate of creaturely goods.
No matter how many excellent creatures there are in a world, no matter how rich
and beautiful and sinless their lives, the aggregated value of their lives
would not match that of incarnation and atonement; any world with incarnation
and atonement would be better yet. And no matter how much evil, how much sin
and suffering a world contains, the aggregated badness would be outweighed by
the goodness of incarnation and atonement, outweighed in such a way that the
world in question is very good. In this sense, therefore, any world with incarnation and atonement is of infinite value by virtue
of containing two goods of infinite value: the existence of God and incarnation
and atonement...
When
human beings sin, there would be evil and suffering. Moreover, only if human
beings sin would there be a need for incarnation and atonement.
God Created Our World With The Incarnation &
The Atonement: So Plantinga concludes one very good reason for God to allow
evil to exist is to create a world with incarnation and atonement, which are
the greatest goods even better than any combination of evil. This then entails
the necessity of sin whose natural and logical corollary is evil.
Supralapsarians Win: This
theodicy also paves way for the Supralapsarians to win the battle against the
Infralapsarians. The Felix Culpa theodicy necessitates God’s decree of the
Incarnation and the Atonement to be logically prior to God’s decree of the fall
of man. It is only by virtue of the incarnation and the atonement that the fall
of man was necessitated. Plantinga writes:4
And as a bonus, we get a clear
resolution of the supra/infra debate: the Supras are right. God's fundamental
and first intention is to actualize an extremely good possible world, one whose
value exceeds; but all those worlds contain Incarnation and Atonement and hence
also sin and evil; so the decree to provide incarnation and atonement and hence
salvation is prior to the decree to permit fall into sin. The priority in
question isn't temporal, and isn't exactly logical either; it is a matter,
rather, of ultimate aim as opposed to proximate aim. God's ultimate aim, here,
is to create a world of a certain level of value. That aim requires that he aim
to create a world in which there is Incarnation and Atonement--which, in turn, requires
that there be sin and evil. So there is a clear sense in which the decree to
provide salvation precedes the decree to permit sin; but there is no comparable
sense in which the decree to permit sin precedes the decree to permit evil.
Coming back to the Felix Culpa
theodicy, Plantinga evaluates his theodicy against common objections such as:
(1) Why God permits so much evil, and why God permits suffering? (2) Why is
there so much sin and suffering? (3) God’s actualization of a world with
incarnation and atonement requires suffering and evil on the part of HIS
creatures, and a good deal of innocent suffering and evil (cosmic
Munchausen-by-Proxy syndrome); is this fair and right?
Answers to these objections are
outside the scope of this article. However, if you are interested in learning
more, then please read Plantinga’s answer to these objections in his article
cited in the endnotes.5
Endnotes:
1https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-1/s1-the-doctrine-of-man/the-doctrine-of-man-part-8/
2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le4C8QuUsMs&ab_channel=CenterforPhilosophyofReligion
3https://andrewmbailey.com/ap/FelixCulpa.pdf
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
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