Saturday, July 4, 2009

Thoughts on transworld damnation

Craig's defense of hell seems to rely on the following proposition:
(C) A perfectly good God could choose a world where more people are saved at the cost of some people being damned to a world where all people are saved, even if it is a very small amount.
For example, maybe God has the option between only two feasible worlds, W and W2. In W, everyone is saved, but only 5 people. In W2, in contrast, 1000 people are saved, but 5 are damned. Now the question is whether God, being perfectly good, can choose to actualize W2 over W. Contrary to Craig, it doesn't seem obvious that he can choose to actualize W2 over W. For in actualizing W2, God seems to prefer quantity over quality: it doesn't matter to God that some are getting damned if it gets him a few more people in heaven. Is this really an image of a perfectly good God? I'm not sure. If I had the time, I could probably come up with a good argument by analogy to illuminate this issue. (For example, God choosing W2 over W seems sort of like a business man trading with countries who employ child labor if it means he gets more products.) However, I think there is an easier way to show that (C) is false.

We need to take seriously the idea - expressed in Scripture - that God desires everyone to be saved. Now, if (C) is true, what God truly desires is not that everyone is saved, but that a great amount of people are saved. For if God truly desires everyone to be saved, then he would actualize the world in which everyone is saved. Now there is a powerful objection to this. First, God does not desire anyone to sin, and yet he has clearly actualized a world in which there is sin. Second, if no world were feasible for God in which everyone is saved, we should not expect God to refrain from actualizing any world at all. Now these objections can be met by restating the claim that God desires everyone to be saved with the claim that (1) God desires everyone to be saved (2) God will satisfy this desire as long as it is feasible for him to do so.

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