De Leon, Romelie Annette R.

(2014-12210) March 17, 2017

PHLO 172 (Philosophy of Religion) First Reflection Paper

Omnibenevolence and Omniscience: A Contradiction of their Simultaneous Possession

I. Introduction

Throughout history, religion has been one of the subjects of various debates and
discussions not only in philosophy but also in other fields because of the apparent controversies
and intriguing issues surrounding the subject. Even back in the ancient Greek civilization, the
speculations concerning a Supreme Being were circulating and philosophers tried to answer such
inquiries. Fast forward thousands of years, we are still searching for answers despite the myriad
attempts to provide resolutions to our problems concerning religion and a Supreme Being.

One of the problems regarding the Supreme Being is His attributes human commonly
associate: omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence (all-pervasive/present everywhere),
omniscience (all-knowing), and omnibenevolence (all-good/perfectly good). In this paper, I aim
to discuss only two of these attributes: that of omniscience and omnibenevolence and how these
two cannot possibly co-exist with one another at the same time. Thus, I will argue here that they
contradict each other and I shall base this on the concept of sin. The paper will go as follows:
first, I shall define briefly the two attributes and present the objections against them. Next, I will
proceed to argue that the Supreme Beings all-knowingness contradicts his perfect goodness or
vice-versa based on sin (I shall discuss this later along the way). Lastly, I will summarize and
reinforce my assertion as my conclusion.

I think a disclaimer can be mentioned here. I do not claim that the arguments and claims
here are the only ones that can be said about the Supreme Being especially about the main
topic of omnibenevolence and omniscience being contradictory with each other. I am open to
have my arguments criticized and questioned so as to increase my understanding of the subject
matter. I recommend that whatever it is that I will not be able to examine and do here be done
elsewhere. I do hope as well that whatever contribution I can make in this paper has a
philosophical significance not only to the field of philosophy of religion but to the lay public too.
I also admit that this endeavor is difficult for me personally because I am a theist a Christian, to
be exact. However, I also believe that a religious affiliation is not a reason for me to not go on
questioning; hence, I will be presenting the arguments as objective as possible. I encourage
fellow believers to do the same; indeed, this is a chance wherein a believer can truly test his or
her faith and belief. In the process of questioning and reaching an answer, one must not be afraid
or hesitant in dismissing whatever it is that is included in his or her web of knowledge and
beliefs if one finds such idea contradictory/doubtful/unreasonable. Now that we have cleared this
up, we can now proceed to the discussion.

II. Omnibenevolence and Objections Against It

The term omni came from the Latin word omnis meaning all. From this, we derived
the attribute omnibenevolence the attribute of being all good or perfectly good. Thus, we have
this belief that this Supreme Being is all good at all times; without sin and without evil. It is
based on this that theists hold that God wants His creations (assuming of course that He is the
creator) to live a happy and comfortable life. It is also because of His omnibenevolence that God
at least the Christian God sent His Son to save humanity. There are a lot of things that can be
explained by arguing the omnibenevolent attribute of God.

On the contrary, people mostly atheists are questioning this attribution. They are
asserting that if God is all good, then why is there an existing evil in the world? If He has perfect
goodness, why did He allow His creation to experience horrors? Is it not a fault (and therefore
contradict His being perfect) to let evil happen even when one has the power to prevent such evil
from happening? As exhibited by Mackie (Mackie, 1955, 62) in his logical problem of evil, the
premise that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good and the premise that evil exists are
logically inconsistent; thus, one of these premises must be false. This was answered by Alvin
Plantinga (Plantinga, 1967, 117) with his free will defense. Plantinga argued that actually, the
two premises can co-exist and are not inconsistent so long as another premise is put into
conjunction with the first premise; and this premise if free will. As a result, God being
omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good while there is an existence of evil can be true through
the free will of humans. Hence, it is not God Himself that caused these evils but humans using
[or rather misusing according to van Inwagen (van Inwagen, 2006)] their free will which was
given to them by God.

For our purposes, however, we fill focus on the very basic notion of Gods being filled
with goodness. We will adopt the presupposition that God is without fault nor sin. It is crucial
this to be so so that we will not be confused along the way when I start discussing the
contradiction in the co-existence of omnibenevolence and omniscience in the Supreme Being.

III. Omniscience and Objections Against It

Now we go on to omniscience the attribute of knowledge about everything. We

associate this to the Supreme Being with the belief that this Being, alongside knowing
everything, also has foreknowledge. It is needless to say that this attribution, like that of
omnibenevolence, is questioned and debated against. For this paper, I would like to present only
two of these objections; one of which is what I will use to argue my claim.

The first objection is that of foreknowledge and free will and how these two are
inconsistent with each other. As what Zagzebski (Zagzebski, 2005) argued in her paper, Gods
foreknowledge dismisses the fact that as humans we have freedom to do whatever it is that we
will to do to and pushes forth the notion that His plans are already set and that we can no longer
do otherwise. We can no longer deviate from such plans or will of this Supreme Being. This
being said, our freedom and free will are put into question. Foreknowledge and free will are
incompatible with each other; one has to be true and one has to be false. However problematic
and interesting this objection seems, this is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of what this paper is
all about. The second objection is what we will be focusing on and I shall proceed to discuss it.

The second objection is concerning the notion of experiential knowledge. It is a common

idea especially to empiricists that to have knowledge, one has to experience for himself the
object of this knowledge. For example, for one to claim that he or she has full knowledge about
roller coasters, he or she needs to experience riding a roller coaster. It is not enough that he or
she knows how the roller coaster works like what are the mechanisms that enables the vehicle to
move forward, i.e. theoretical knowledge. He or she needs to experience it first hand and that
would make his or her knowledge full. In the similar way, it has been objected that there are
numerous things that are not experienced by God which means that He is not as omniscient as
we think He is.

IV. The Contradiction Between Omnibenevolence and Omniscience

This is where the critical point of this paper enters. Remember that early on, we have
discussed the notion of God being without sin therefore making Him omnibenevolent and
perfect. Also, we have discussed the presumption that God is omniscient He knows everything
including having foreknowledge.

With all these in mind, this is now the main argument: if God really is omniscient, then
we can assume that He has experiential knowledge of sin. In other words, He has experienced sin
(in a broad sense) itself. But if this is the case, then it would be contradictory and/or wrong to
attribute to Him omnibenevolence and perfection. How can this Supreme Being be
knowledgeable of sin (that presumably constitutes His omniscience) if He did not experience it
for Himself? Yet it is also the case that if He has experienced sin itself in order to justify His
omniscience, then would that not defeat the very notion of His benevolence or all goodness and
perfection? Therefore, omnibenevolence and omniscience are contradictory with each other on
the basis of sin. As a result, it would be extremely problematic if the Supreme Being possess
both of these attributes at the same time. One has to choose: is He omnibenevolent but not
omniscient? Or is He omniscient but not omnibenevolent? Perhaps we are not required to choose
between the two but then lead us to question: Is there really a God who possess these attributes
even when the possession of such would contradict each other?

(The last question, however, is beyond our purposes in this paper. We are not even
discussing the existence of God; that has been done countless of times in the past. What we have
to do now is to give a benefit of the doubt to such Supreme Beings existence then proceed to
question His attributes. And as we have seen here, both the attributes and the possession of such
are equally problematic as to the Supreme Beings existence. This is of great importance and
interest to us because throughout history, we have seen theists defend their religions to the death
even to the point of killing those who refuse to believe; and in offering questions to these theists
about the very foundations of their religious beliefs, we hope to see lessened instances of
extremism. We hope to see these theists doubt and question their own religion in light of
understanding where atheists and agnostics are coming from.)

Let us then tackle the idea that to know sin, one has to experience sin or committing a sin
and not simply know sin a priori. There are facts about sin that can only be known when sinning
has been experienced. For example, the feelings of shame, guilt, or even pleasure at times, can
only be felt when one has actually committed a sin. To experience sin is then to know sinning
and the concept of sin itself. Now, if this is so, it also adds into the picture how God cannot sin
(because we have this assumption that He is perfect and wholly good) that then puts into
question Gods omnipotence the attribute of being all powerful because He cannot sin! And if
He cannot sin, then He is not all powerful as well. But then again, for our present purposes, we
only tackled omnibenevolence and omniscience.

We already discussed the concepts of omnibenevolence and omniscience so I believe

there is no need to mention them again here as well as the apparent contradiction about them.
What can still be said here, however, is that the seemingly subtle contradiction present between
omnibenevolence and omniscience pushes us, therefore, that we question one of the most
fundamental notions of religion.

As mentioned earlier, we are perhaps not forced to pick between an omnibenevolent-but-

not-omniscient God and an omniscient-but-not-omnibenevolent God. Perhaps what we are asked
to do is to examine our ways when it comes to the treatment of these attributes as if nothing is
wrong with them; as if they are to be treated as something which should not be questioned. I am,
too, not exempted from doing so; and I believe I did just exactly that in this paper. I hope that I
was successful in presenting the arguments in the most objective way possible without my
theism affecting the way I argue and present.
Bibliography:

Mackie, J.L. 1955. Evil and Omnipotence. Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Plantinga, Alvin. 1967. God and Other Minds. New York: Cornell University Press

van Inwagen, Peter. 2006. The Problem of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Zagzebski, Linda. 2005. Omniscience, Time, and Freedom. The Blackwell Guide to the
Philosophy of Religion. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing