Leibniz: The Consequences of Ideas with R.C. Sproul

SPROUL: The person whose thought we’re going to examine  today is usually considered one of the most   important philosophers of the 17th century, but  the irony of that is this: by trade and by even   desire he was not, strictly speaking,  a philosopher. Philosophy was something   of an avocation for him – something he  dabbled in more or less. Nevertheless,   he made some dramatic contributions to the  history of theoretical thought. His name is   Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. And, I'll write his  name on the board because it's not one that you   automatically assume you can spell. This is a Z  by the way. L-E-I-B-N-I-Z. German philosopher,   who, like Descartes, had been educated in the  scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic   Church. One of his claims to fame historically is  that he shares the historic accolade for being the   inventor of calculus with Newton. But, he was a  first-rate, world-class mathematician. Notice that   that was also true of Descartes, and it was true  of Pascal who we will look at later – God willing.  But in any case, Leibniz is noted basically for  three things. As a mathematician he also became  

well enough known and was kind of a people person,  and was introduced into the world of diplomacy.   And, he tried very hard to heal the breach  between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.   He was a conciliatory person. And, he was looking  for ways to bring unity out of conflict. And,   that was true not only at the political realm,  or in the ecclesiastical realm but also in the   philosophical and mathematical sphere. He kept  coming back to his own mathematical paradigms   in order to find rational solutions to problems  that had become in many cases quite emotional.  And, he also had the desire as, the disciples  of Descartes did, to reconstruct theology so   that the new science, which was more and more  embracing a mechanistic view of the universe,   would not displace God. And so, he wanted to  develop a way of making God necessary to the   scientific theories of his day. Now, he didn't  embrace occasionalism as the French disciples of   Descartes did, but he developed a very elaborate  theory of metaphysics that is interesting,  

virtually no one accepts it today. But it  is interesting. It is called his system of   Monadology. That is one of the innovations for  which he is famous. The second innovation for   which he is famous is the development of what is  called, the Law of Pre-established Harmony. But,   that for which his is perhaps most  famous is for his Delicate Theodicy.  Now, I'm going to go over these quickly today  and hope that I don't cause you to swim in the   soup of confusion. I'll be very brief about this  first point, because of all of the aspects of   Leibniz's thought, the one that is most complex  and most difficult to handle in brief is his   whole system of thought called Monadology. In  his understanding of reality, he believed that   the world was made up, and all things were made  up, of tiny little units of life, or of reality,   that again, had very strange characteristics  to them. As I said, that is all I'm going to   say about it except that these individual  units or monads, about which he theorized,  

had no secondary causality between them.  They had no secondary causality between them.  Now, remember what we mean by secondary causality;  the idea that one force imparts energy or force to   something else. But these tiny little units,  of which everything is made – and each one   was kind of a microcosm of the whole universe.  And each one had a kind of ability to be alive,   or to have what he called petite perceptions. You  are a perceiving being. You think. You see. You   taste. You touch. You smell and so on. And, you  have a highly developed sense of consciousness and   your ability to think and reflect upon things.  But for Leibniz, the whole world is alive,   because the whole world is made up of these little  monads. Each monad at least has vague simple basic   perceptions of the world. So, it’s not all  that far from the American Indians' idea that   everything is alive including rocks and so on.  This is one of the things that prompted Edwards'   question later, "What do sleeping rocks dream  of?" You know, they were having their own petit   perceptions. Of course his answer was – “Nothing.” But in any case where the Monadology comes into  

our consideration of this whole question of  causality is at this point. He believes that   from all eternity God who creates everything on  the basis of these units of being called monads,   programs each one of these individual units,  with their perceptions, with their thoughts,   with whatever they had, from all eternity.  So, again though each monad does not interact   with each other monad, by imparting any  kind of secondary causality to them. But,   nevertheless, the relationships by which these  virtually infinite number of monads coalesce   and operate together and make up reality  as we see it, are all done by a sort of   computer chip that was put into each one of  them by the creator at the beginning of time.  So again, the difference between this and the  occasionalist was the occasionalists have God   intervening at every second to exercise his divine  power. And, they denied secondary causes. Well,   there’s also a kind of denial of secondary  causality here with Leibniz. And again,  

putting back all power to God, but it’s not that  God is intervening every second along the way. But   this was his form of scientific predestination.  Not a blind determinism of blind impersonal   forces, but a theological predestination that’s  built into everything that takes place in the   universe. So, that the universe for him is not  a mechanical system. It’s a theological system.   Again, he’s trying to rescue God from  being displaced by physical science.  Now, it’s the third item that I am most interested  in speaking about today, with respect to Leibniz.   Because, Leibniz produces for us one of the  most famous theological theodicies of all time.   The term theodicy is a term that’s made  up of two roots. There is the Greek word:   theos – which means God, from which we get the  word theology. And the word dikaios or dikaiosune;   which is the word for just-ness or righteousness  in Greek. And so, a theodicy is an intellectual   attempt to justify God. Or to state it in another  way, a theodicy is a justification of God. Well,  

why would God ever need to be justified? Well,  the big problem in theology and in philosophy,   is the problem of evil. If one is going to  affirm the existence of God and attribute to   that God who is the creator of all  things, the attribute of goodness,   then the basic question is: "How can a good  God have a world where evil exists?" If God   is perfect why is his handiwork so imperfect?  Now, I think we’ve all wrestled at some time over   the question of the origin of evil. Where did  evil come from? How did evil begin in history?  I remember as a brand-new Christian I hadn't  thought about that at all, and one day I was   playing ping-pong in the basement of the freshman  dormitory. As I was playing, my mind was engrossed   in the ping-pong game, and all at once it hit  me like a tone of bricks – "You believe in God,   but there is so much evil in the world.  There is so much wrong in the world. How   could that happen? How could a good God  allow bad things to co-exist with him?"  So, as soon as you raise that question about  evil, if you affirm the existence of God,  

you are now faced with the question  of justifying a good God for creating   universe that is fallen. Some have called this  the Achilles' heel of the Christian faith and   the most difficult theological problem we face. Alright, well let's look at how Leibniz approached   this question in brief. First of all, in his  approach to the question, he made a distinction   among three distinct types of evil. First of all,  there is what he called metaphysical evil. And,   I'll give a definition of that. Metaphysical  evil is something akin to the way Plato thought.   Metaphysical evil means some imperfection of  being in the universe. Metaphysical evil would   be the lack of pure perfect being that is basic  to anything that is finite. Only an infinite   being has metaphysical perfection according  to the philosophers. Anything that’s finite,   anything that’s changing, anything that’s in a  state of flux, anything that has the category that  

we've talked about many times already of becoming,  is not as high a level of being as pure being,   or as Supreme Being. So, that only pure being  or Supreme Being (eternal perfect being), would   be perfectly metaphysically good. And,  anything again, that is changing, finite,   derived, dependent, or contingent and  so on, would be a lower level of being,   so it is called metaphysical ‘evil.’ Now, I'm  going to put quotes around that word evil, because   what that means simply is that it is imperfect.  It is less in the fullness of being than God.  Now, the second kind of evil that Leibniz  delineated was what he calls physical evil. Now,   what he means by physical evil is disease, natural  catastrophes or calamities like earthquakes,   fires, floods, volcanic eruptions; all of those  things by which nature can wreak havoc on the   inhabited people of this world. Those are called  by him, physical evil. They bring harm physically  

to us and to the world. So, that’s physical evil. And, the third category, and again I'm going to   put quotes around the word ‘evil.’ And, the  third category is the category of moral evil.   Now, remember when we started this, and we said  if God is good, how could he create a world   where there is so much evil. Usually, what we’re  thinking about when we think about evil there; is   we're thinking about moral evil. But we also worry  about those catastrophic events that take place   in this world that insurance companies are still  fond of describing as ‘acts of God’ – the flood,   the tornado, the earthquake, and so on, that bring  unbelievable misery and pain to the world. And so,   you also (even if we didn't have such a thing as  moral evil among ourselves) we would still ask the   question about God's character about creating  a universe where all these bad things happen.  Remember this was one of the basic questions  that the disciples came to Jesus about during   his earthly ministry, when the word had come out  about the temple that had been under construction   and fell on these innocent people. And then that  Pilate had mingled the blood of the sacrifices of  

the worshipers with the blood of the sacrifice in  a slaughter that we hear of only in that instance   in the New Testament. And, basically the question  that the disciples are raising is: "How could God   allow these things to happen?" Here these people  are minding their own business walking down the   street, and all of the sudden this temple falls  over and crushes them to death. It was a physical   accident. Nobody intended for the temple to fall,  or the tower to fall. It was an act of nature,   or of physical consequences where nobody  pushed the tower over on top of these people.  So, how can a good God allow Vesuvius  to erupt and bury the city of Pompeii   in volcanic ash? Where is God in all of  this? Of course, Jesus answers the question:   "Unless you repent you shall all likewise perish."  Because, following the Old Testament, the presence   of physical evil – the presence of death, the  presence of disease, the presence of conflict   in the creation is all tied into the moral evil of  human beings that is part of the consequences of   the fall. But that’s another approach. Because, if  we say that we still have to ask: "Where does this   come from?" Where does the moral evil come from? Well, the way that Leibniz approached this – as  

I said – was first he distinguished among the  three different types of evil, and then tried   to posit a relationship between each one of  these. That is to say (again, he still has his   Monadology theory) is that moral evil flows out  of physical evil. And, physical evil and moral   evil both flow out of metaphysical evil. That  is to say, they are necessary consequences of   a metaphysical imperfect creation. That is, since  we are finite, out of our finitude comes physical   weaknesses and out of both our finite status and  our physical weaknesses come our moral failures.  And then he went on to say that God is absolved in  all of this because when God created the universe,   he had virtually (I say virtually) infinite  number of possible worlds he could of created.   I say virtually because there’s one kind  of world even God could not have created.  

God would not have been able to create  a metaphysically perfect God. Because,   for God to be able to create a metaphysically  perfect God, he would have to create another   God. But even God can't create another God.  Why not? Because the second God would still   be a creature. Because, the second God would be  dependent on the first God for its very existence.   So, that you can't have God creating another  God. All God can create are creatures. That’s   the nature of creation. So God cannot impart to  his creature his own self-existent eternal being.  Now, with that given, and if God is going  to create, he knows at the beginning that he   can't create another God, so he can create various  different types of universes. And, he has again,   a virtually infinite number of types of finite  universes he creates. God being good is naturally   going to create the best model that he could  possibly create. Because, if he has the option of   creating model A or model B, and model A is more  perfect than model B – or to put it the other way,   model B is more imperfect (or evil) than model A,  God would not be good to choose the second model.  

And if he were really good, he would choose the  first model. And so, obviously being all wise   and all righteous, God selected the best world he  could possibly create – an ideal world as it were.  Now, you have probably heard the expression:  "We're living in the best of all possible worlds."   That sentiment, that idea – the best of  all possible worlds, finds its roots in   this theodicy of Leibniz. Now, you've also  probably heard of Voltaire’s famous little work:   Candide. Many of you had to read it when  you were in college. It tells the story of   this Doctor Pangloss who seems to be a bumbling  idiot because he naively assumes that he is living   in a world that is the best of all possible  worlds. And, this was written after a major   calamity beset Europe – the Lisbon earthquake  of that time which was more devastating than   the San Francisco earthquake in our own day. And  again, people, because of the devastation of the   Lisbon earthquake, were asking this question  afresh: "Where’s God in all of this? How could   God allow this to happen?" And, Voltaire  cynically looked at the work of Leibniz,  

and says that he’s an idiot. Doctor Pangloss  here, walking around with his head in the clouds   thinking that this is the best of all possible  worlds. And, that even though we’re not gods,   we can conceive of a much better world than  we’re presently living in. And, not only that,   the Scriptures themselves talk about a  world that will be better in the renovation.  See, that’s the fatal problem from the Christian  perspective of this theodicy, is that it’s on a   collision course with the Biblical story of  creation, and of fall, and of renovation. The   New Testament (or the Old Testament) does not  look at moral evil as a necessary consequence   of finitude. That's the critical point, because in  our modern day, there are many, many theologians   and physiologists who eliminate responsibility  of real moral evil saying that we just do   what comes naturally; that sin is a necessary  consequence of being a finite creature. We are   human after all. To err is human – to forgive is  divine. And so, from a Christian viewpoint, this   attempt to justify God fails because it first  of all doesn't justify God, and second of all  

doesn't square at all with the view of moral  evil that we find in classical Christianity.