ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the plan of God and our knowledge (or ignorance) of that plan. The chapter begins by exploring van Inwagen’s view that nothing that has no point for a human being can be a part of God’s plan. This view is compared to Calvin’s view that God’s providence is all-encompassing in that God decrees every particular thing for ends that encompass everything that happens.
The chapter discusses the three arguments that van Inwagen provides for his view, drawn from natural indeterminism, the free will of rational creatures, and the initial state of the world.
It is responded on Calvin’s behalf that, firstly, the fact that an event has no assignable physical cause does not mean that it does not have a divine cause; secondly, that van Inwagen is wrong to think that human beings lose their freedom of choice if God decrees that they behave in a certain way; and, thirdly, van Inwagen’s hypothesis that there were alternative initial arrangements of particles any of which would have served equally well God’s purpose for creation is wrong.
The chapter goes on to argue in the spirit of Calvin that we might combine a ‘no-risk’ view of providence with an emphasis on our epistemic situation’s being such that we can understand very little of the providential order. It is argued that in order for the culpability of God for evil to be raised, we should need to know under what descriptions evils are permitted by God. We are ignorant of these descriptions, however, attention is also drawn to the particular class of cases, where those suffering say that the particular evils that befell them were good things.
The chapter concludes by identifying three types of limitation of knowledge that deprive us of the ability to make judgements concerning the evils in the world: we are ignorant of facts that God knows, of God’s purposes, and of moral considerations.
