Does Divine Mystery Lead to Moral Paralysis? The Agency of the Spirit and the Skeptical Theist Response to the Problem of Evil (Part 4)

Second Response

The next route which may be taken by the skeptical theist is to moderate her skepticism by claiming that she does have adequate knowledge in the realm of human moral agency, but that those considerations are not adequate in the realm of divine moral agency. So she may put forward a Limited Skeptical Thesis (LST):

           LST:  We have no good reason for thinking that the goods, evils, and entailment relations between them that are applicable to human agents are representative of the goods, evils, and entailment relations between them that are applicable to divine agents. 

Trakakis and Nagasawa seem to have something like this in mind when they claim, “the skeptical theist need only hold that it is God’s purposes or intentions that often elude us. That is to say, our knowledge or understanding of God-justifying goods falls miserably short, even though our grasp of goods in general is quite adequate.”[1] The advantage of this position is that it seems to fall in line with a more common sense theistic picture of God and humanity. While human agents have moral capacities and awareness, God’s reasons and purposes are often inscrutable. Nevertheless, there lies a problem for the proponent of LST as well. Almeida and Oppy reply with the following reductio argument that emphasizes our duty not to interfere with God’s purposes:

1. We (human beings) are always (at least) morally permitted not to interfere with the purposes of God.

2. For all we can tell, there are divine purposes in allowing certain evils.

            3. (Therefore) For all we know, we are morally permitted not to interfere with those evils.[2]

While the skeptical theist may want to claim that she can be confident that God’s purposes don’t conflict with her moral obligations, as Sehon points out, “If God’s reasons are entirely unknown, then it is hard to fathom how the theist could possibly know that those reasons are not relevant to my situation.”[3] Thus it appears that the skeptical theist who endorses a bare form of LST still does not elude a problematic moral skepticism.

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[1] Nick Trakakis and Yujin Nagasawa, “Skeptical Theism and Moral Skepticism,” Ars Disputandi 4 (2004): 23.

[2] Mike Almeida and Graham Oppy, “Reply to Trakakis and Nagasawa,” Ars Disputand 5 (2005).

[3] Scott Sehon, “The Problem of Evil: Skeptical Theism Leads to Moral Paralysis,” 73.