Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom in Paradise Lost

William Blake, Original Plate for The Tyger

Illustrating Blake's Query About Evil and the Creator

(Image from Wikipedia)

An analogy whose details I do not recall has recently been made on the Milton List to illustrate divine foreknowledge and human freedom. In this sort of analogy, a person from an elevated position, say a hill, sees that two free agents driving automobiles, for example, are traveling from opposite directions around a blind curve and are certain to collide.

Such a person foresees but bears no responsibility for the collision.

I think that Diane McColley was referring to an analogy of this sort in a recent post on the Milton List:

"Some will say ... [that Milton's Adam and Eve] had to fail ... [God's test] because God foresaw that they would, but divine foresight is not cause, as William Kolbrener has just explained."

I don't actually recall Professor Kolbrener's explanation, but let's assume this sort of analogy anyway.

If we also assume that divine foreknowledge of free acts is possible (e.g., through some sort of Molinist supercomprehension), then let's imagine two possible cases:

1. An omniscient but powerless non-creator foreknows the free acts of creatures that will choose evil over good with the consequence that the cosmos will become permeated with evil.

2. An omniscient and all-powerful creator creates the cosmos and foreknows the free acts of creatures that will choose evil over good with the consequence that the cosmos will become permeated with evil.

In the first case, the analogy to the person on the hill works.

Just as a person from an elevated position can see that two free agents driving automobiles and traveling from opposite directions around a blind curve are certain to collide, so an omniscient but powerless non-creator can foreknow the free acts of creatures that will choose evil over good with the consequence that the cosmos will become permeated with evil.

In the second case, I'm uncertain whether or not the analogy works.

Even if we assume -- as we have assumed -- that the omniscient and all-powerful creator's foreknowledge is not causation, this creator's role as omniscient, all-powerful creator raises the issue of his (or her) responsibility for creating a cosmos despite foreknowing that it will become permeated by evil.

Such a creator had best have a pretty good reason for creating the cosmos.

Milton embeds a free-will defense within his larger theodicy and seems to assume that this resolves the issue of God's responsibility, but that doesn't seem quite sufficient to allow God "to wash his hands" of the consequences (as someone on the Milton List has noted).

A further step is needed, namely, an argument that the cosmos is worth creating despite the evil that will come to permeate it -- for example, that the amount of evil does not cross the equivalent of a "Van Inwagen line," a threshold whose crossing would result in an amount of evil sufficient to disqualify the cosmos from being created.

For Milton's theodicy to work, it has to show that God has a pretty good reason for creating the cosmos despite the evil that will result. (For that matter, he would also need to have a pretty good reason for creating Satan and his cohorts.)

Does Milton's God offer such a reason anywhere in Paradise Lost? Does Milton offer one anywhere in his extensive writings?