Problems with Compensation: Gleeson on Marilyn McCord Adams on Evil
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Problems with Compensation: Gleeson on Marilyn McCord Adams on Evil Joshua C. Thurow 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract According to the most recent articulation of her view, Marilyn Adams’s reply to the problem of horrendous evils states that God offers compensation to those who experience horrendous evils. This compensation includes the good of the incarnation of God and the good of identification with God in virtue of suffering horrendous evils. Andrew Gleeson has raised a series of objections to Adams’s recent articulation. I argue that all of Gleeson’s arguments fail or fail to pose a distinct challenge. I then present a different challenge: that her view provides insufficient compensation for horrendous evils. I conclude by suggesting a development of her view. Keywords Problem of evil . Horrendous evils . Marilyn Adams . Compensation
Marilyn Adams responds to the problem of horrendous evil by developing a set of models in which God is good to human beings who have participated in horrendous evils (Adams 1999). A horrendous evil is an evil, the participation in which gives one prima facie reason to doubt whether one’s life could (given the evil is in it) be a great good to one on the whole (Adams 1999, p. 26).1 God can be good to horrendous evil (hereafter, HE) participants by defeating those evils—i.e. by making the participant’s overall life good in such a way that the HEs they have participated in are organically united with the God-given goods, resulting in the participant being content with their life having included the HEs. The HEs are made meaningful, by being incorporated organically into a meaningful life. The HEs in such a life are not meaningless negative blips; the God-given goods enable one to make sense of those HEs. Adams develops a
1 According to Adams, one can participate in a horrendous evil by suffering it or by doing it. The lives of those who have perpetrated horrendous evils are also prima facie not a great good to them on the whole. God can defeat their involvement in horrendous evils as well, although that defeat will of course look different than the defeat of horrendous evils that one has suffered. This paper, following Gleeson, focuses on the latter.
* Joshua C. Thurow [email protected]
1
University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249, USA
J. C. Thurow
set of models in which God defeats HEs. She argues that on any of these models, God’s existence is compatible with HEs and, for all we can tell, one of these models is true. So, for all we know, God’s existence is compatible with horrendous evil. Thus, the problem of horrendous evil—the attempt to show that God’s existence is not compatible with horrendous evils—fails. Although she has presented several models in which God defeats HEs, we will focus on the one that has received the most attention.2 On this model, God defeats HEs by becoming incarnate and himself suffering horrendous evils. God thereby honors and loves humanity in solidarity, and the honor from an incommensurably great bei
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