Matheson Russell on evil and the free-will defence

The problem of evil: is the free-will defence a failure?

A lecture delivered by Dr Matheson Russell, my good friend.

Here he is on the right enjoying a red wine.

Paul Morgan, author of "The Pelagius Book"

Author Paul Morgan produced a novel in 2005 entitled "The Pelagius Book" which is an imaginary reconstruction of the observations of Pelagius' disciple Celestius. In an interview, Morgan gave a very interesting account of why Pelagius had attracted him - and Augustine revolted him:

The Augustinian line was that Christianity and the way the church would develop - and we should remember that the Christian church, which would inherit the mantle of Rome in providing a framework for how people saw the world, saw society, saw themselves socially and psychologically, for the Augustinians over large parts of the Empire, this was dominated by a really quite savage fatalism. They use the word 'grace' and really you know, we can't control our own destinies ultimately, and who knows, it's all a mystery and only God can tell. And really that's a huge absolution of responsibility, personal responsibility. There was a really quite fundamentalist attitude towards the Bible. They were extremely strong on original sin and the shamefulness of the body, but also very distrustful of the intellect as well. So I mean really, you had it pretty tough with the Augustinians, because they were against the body, but they were against the mind as well. In fact, there's some passage by Augustine where he says, 'We should be wary of drawing empirical conclusions from the evidence of our senses because they're rooted in the sinful bodily organs of sense, which can't be trusted.' I mean, you can't win with this guy...

Pelagius was almost certainly trained as a lawyer and you can see this in his words. One of the very fascinating fragments of his writings, or writing about him that does survive is fascinatingly a part of his trial for heresy, where he actually takes apart the argument for original sin in just a few sentences, on almost purely logical grounds. He just says, 'Look, God created us and gave us free will. Why would he give us free will and the capacity to be good and then at the same time not give us the ability to do it?' He almost has an 18th century view of the beauty of the logic and rationality of the world, and he sees us in the same way that God's giving free will to humans is part of this. So why would he snatch it away a few seconds after giving it to us? He isn't saying that we can't do evil, do profound evil, but it's our choice that if you want to do something terribly bad...you do it because you take it upon yourself, you don't do it because of some kind of strain of genetic sin that was passed down to you.

Morgan is asking the right questions, though of course he sees things through a very contemporary lens. He criticises Augustinianism for its fatalism, and for its failure to believe in the goodness of the creation. He condemns it for its immorality - for resigning itself to human evil and depending on a divine solution from outside rather than a human one from the inside. It IS a rejoinder to a kind of contemporary scientific fatalism of the genes - that strain of thought which reduces all human choices to genetics (or, in sociology, to environmental factors).

Problem is, of course, he doesn't really understand Augustine (...so he has no chance with Calvin or Edwards!)