Monthly Archives: April 2026

When Evil is Good

Freewill, Moral philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Retributive punishment

Many bibilica;l passages tell us that the suffering of Christ saved humanity from the punishment deserved for our sins. For instance, Peter 2:24

“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. ‘By His stripes you are healed’”

How does the pain of Christ’s suffering reconcile God with humanity. Is God pleased with suffering? An authority no less than Aquinas III. 48 2 tells us that God was not pleased with the sufferings of Christ. Rather God is pleased with the great Charity of Chirst by his suffering the pain deserved for our sins. But what is it for Christ to show charity by suffering? Charity or love is willing the good of the other. It seems Christ willed immense suffering as the good for humanity. Now immense suffering is evil. So, it seems that Christ willed an evil as a good for humanity.

How can an evil be a good? An evil is a good if it ought to be. How can an evil be be something which ought to be? An evil ought to be when it is willed to be by violating a moral law. See Review of My Moral Harm Concept. Violations of moral laws create ad hoc specific moral prescriptions that some harm ought to be done. These ad hoc norms make human morality inconsistent and because of the immense amount of immorality place humanity under a moral burden that much suffering ought to be. Retributive punishment removes only a few of these ad hoc norms. So, our retributive punishments improve morality only marginally. Our efforts leave morality on the whole requiring that evil ought to be. Now ultimately evil is what ought not be. So, our current morality specifies that we ought not be. According to our current morality, if everything becomes as it ought to be, humanity ought not be.

Now, using certain theological assumptions, Christ’s suffering sufficed to satisfy every violation induced ad hoc norm obligating some harm; all of them past, present and future. This creates a new moral order for a reality when all is as it ought to be. That moral order will be fully compatible with “Do good, avoid evil.” There will be no violations to induce requirements for evil as retribution. However, it will still be a moral order for free choice because its subjects will have the free will of obedience. See Obedience vs. Autonomy

Obedience vs. Autonomy

Freewill, Realism vs. anti-realism

If there is no God whom we can obey, then life is meaningless. Why?

That for which we are free, is that which gives life meaning.1

However, if we determine that for which we are free, that which we determine cannot give life meaning. We cannot specify that which gives life meaning. Meaning must be set for us by something outside ourselves.

It is the autonomy of reason which sabotages the goals reason gives as goals for use of rational freewill. With rational freewill we have a reason for what we choose. Our autonomous reason answers only to itself as what is a proper use of reason. Hence, what reason determines to be correct is not something external to us.

To make my case I will consider only rational free will, at its best. There are three types of rational freewill. The freewill of desire, the freewill of righteousness and the freewil of love. For additional clarification of my terminology, see Agency, Ordinary Free Will, & Free Will of Love .

At its best the freewill of desire is for happiness. Of course, happiness is a poor candidate for the purpose of human existence. It is not clear what constitutes happiness and few if any attain happiness which then passes away with them. But here the point is that human reason is used to specify what happiness would be. Any candidate for happiness needs to be justified by reason.

The freewill of righteousness is the freedom to choose what is right because it is right. At its best what the freewill of righteousness is for is a good will – a will which chooses what is right because it is right. A good will cannot be what we live for. The philosopher Kant admitted that a person with a good will could be ineffective in accomplishing much good and be unhappy. But here the point is that we determine what a makes a will good because ultimately we determine what is right. Any claim that something is a duty must be acceptable to reason.

The freewill of love is to will the good of the other for the sake of the other. At its best the freewill of love is for the good of all. The freewill of love seems not to be self-centered. It might seem that the good of the others sets that for which we are free. However, choice of the good for others which is mistaken is not the freewill of love at its best. We need to use human reason to evaluate what is good for all the others. Now, in fact, programs for universal human good are usually miserable projects – for dystopias which would pass away. But here the point is that human reason is the arbitrator of what the freewill of love is for.

So, understanding the goals of rational freewill at its best, cannot show us the meaning of human life. What can? Obedience: Willing the will of the another simply because the other wills it.

Obedience is a type of freedom. For one can obey or not obey. However, it is not really a type of freewill because the will is given up. There is no act of the will of willing not to will. Becoming perfectly in harmony with what another will is allowing it to happen. In any event, the type of obedience I am writing about is not rational freewill. No reason is given to justify the choice, Indeed, finding a reason for willing as another wills would destroy what occurs as obedience. So, the obedience of an unwilling slave is not the obedience I am writing about. the unwilling slave has a reason for obeying; he does not want to be whipped. However, using our reason to lay out what is a good for a human life, does not preclude that which reason characterizes as a good for human life. It can be a goal for human life if we let the reality reason characterizes lead us regardless of the reason for it.

For the most part, this type of obedience is not valuable. We want our little children to grow to act on their own. So, we consider freedom to obey only at its best if we want to consider what it is for as giving a meaning to human life

At its best freedom of obedience is for what a perfectly good being wills. In other words freedom of obedience at its best willing what God wills. So, from this standpoint, the meaning of life is what God wills

  1. The claim is that the purpose of one of the ways in which we are free provides the purpose of our lives, if anything provides a purpose.