Virtue Defense

According to the Virtue Defense, evil and suffering allows for the existence of various virtues, like forgiveness and charity.

Does the Virtue Defense avoid anthropomorphism? Does it account for all of the evil and suffering in our experience?

Let’s take a closer look at how this defense is supposed to work. The general idea is that certain virtues, or admirable traits of character, require evil and suffering. We can’t forgive people, for example, if we don’t think they’ve done something wrong. We can’t be charitable if nobody needs anything. We can’t be courageous if we’ve never afraid. Granting this, some people think that God is justified in allowing us to suffer in the ways necessary for us to exhibit those virtues. The defense would be diagrammed like this:

1. God would permit the types of evil and suffering necessary for certain virtues in the world.

2. Any world with the virtues dependent upon evil and suffering is better than any world without those virtues.

3. God had a choice between making an all-good world in which we didn’t have the virtues dependent upon evil and suffering, and creating a world with evil and suffering in which we did have those virtues.

4. God can’t give us the virtues requiring evil and suffering without permitting evil and suffering.

4

B |

2 + 3

A |

1

Notice how this defense depends upon the claim that there is something God can’t do - specifically, God can’t give us the virtues requiring evil and suffering without permitting evil and suffering. If we think that God, being omnipotent, is able to do absolutely everything, any limitation on God’s abilities will be anthropomorphic; although we humans are restricted with respect to what we can do, God, presumably, is not.

But is this right? Can God do absolutely anything? This is difficult question, and we might not need to answer it because we have two more defenses to go. If one of them is successful without relying upon the claim that there are certain things that God can’t do then we won’t need to bother with this issue. So let’s reserve judgment about the Virtue Defense, at least for now, and turn to the Free Will Defense.