Red in Tooth and Claw, Part 2: Can Divine Determinism Answer the Fawn?

By Dean Meadows

In my previous blog, I argued that Molinism gives Christians real answers to animal suffering. However, Molinism is not the only view of divine foreknowledge and suffering held by Christians. Do these views provide a better solution to animal suffering in general? What about maintaining human freedom? Do they do a better job than Molinism? That will be the question I explore in the next three blogs. For this blog, I’ll explore how animal suffering is answered by divine determinism.

Defining Divine Determinism

Divine determinism is the view that God decides and brings about everything that happens. Every event was already decided by God, before the foundations of the world, and nothing comes to pass apart from his decree. From the death of the gazelle at the paws of the lion to the decision you made for breakfast, to the roll of the dice in Las Vegas, God ordained all of it

To be fair to the divine determinist, they do not say that God directly causes each event. Rather, they say that God from all eternity freely and unchangeably ordained whatever comes to pass, and that he did so in such a way that he is not the author of sin and that the liberty or contingency of second causes is established rather than taken away. So, the lion really kills the gazelle, and you really chose your breakfast, but God’s decree settles every one of those events, and none of them could have turned out differently than he decreed.

Advocates of divine determinism point to passages like Ephesians 1:4b-5, which says, “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,” and Ephesians 1:11, which says God “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Matthew 10:29 says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

Moreover, it provides answers to evil.

The greater glory answer says that in the ordination of evil, the whole range of God’s character can be seen. So, in a world with animal suffering and human suffering, along with the incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is a good that is worth the sin that made them necessary. Whatever questions may come, the divine determinist says God has good reasons we can't see. Moreover, divine determinism ensures God’s sovereignty. God is over all because he ordains all. He is not made “less than” in his nature and character by any external forces acting independently of Himself and His will.

The Big Problem

On Molinism, there are some things God could not do. He cannot make free creatures choose differently than what they would, so some worlds, while possible, would not be feasible. Thus, the skeptic’s desired world with less or no animal suffering can’t be actualized. Determinism removes that limit. On determinism, God doesn’t work through what creatures would do. He decides what they do. An argument could be something like the following:

If divine determinism is true, God can bring about any world that contains no contradiction, including every choice every creature makes. Any good God could aim at in creating either (a) exists in some contradiction-free world with no animal suffering, or (b) is good only as a response to animal suffering. A good that is good only as a response to animal suffering cannot justify bringing that suffering about.

If divine determinism is true, God could have had every good of type (a) without animal suffering. (from 1, 2)If divine determinism is true, no justifying good required animal suffering. (from 2, 3, 4) Animal suffering exists, and if divine determinism is true, God brought it about. If divine determinism is true, God brought about suffering that no justifying good required. (from 5, 6)A perfectly good being does not bring about suffering that no justifying good requires.

If divine determinism is true, God is not perfectly good. (from 7, 8) Divine determinism hands God total control. Unfortunately, it also hands the skeptic ammunition in regard to animal suffering. As the argument above shows, if God determines everything, including every choice creatures make, then the only limit on what he can do is a matter of logical consistency. If it is logically consistent, God can do it. The only goods that truly require animal suffering are goods that exist in response to the suffering of animals, like compassion, rescue, and healing. But these remedies do not justify inflicting suffering on animals. It follows then, on determinism, that no justifying good required the suffering of animals, and yet, God brought it about anyway: predation, parasites, and death.

The determinist cannot shift the blame to creaturely freedom because he has denied it, and he cannot appeal to secondary causes the way he does with human sin, because a fawn has no guilty will to carry the blame. Moreover, the determinist cannot say God was constrained by what free creatures would do because, on his view, nothing constrains God except logical contradiction. The Christian can accept line 9 because God is maximally good. So the determinist must reject one of the premises, and since line 6 is simply his own view, that leaves 1, 2, 3, and 8.

Defending the Argument

In defense of premise one, a determinist might say that logic is not the only limit on God. Additionally, God's own nature limits him too. For example, God cannot lie or do evil, so there are consistent worlds he could never make. However, this doesn't help the determinist. A world of persons who know and love God, with no fawn dying in a forest fire, is not a world God’s goodness forbids. If anything, his goodness would favor it. So, we can add “and consistent with his nature” to premise 1, and the argument is pretty much the same.

Examining premise two, one can look at it as a bold claim about every possible good, but it is closer to a matter of logic. Take any good you like, and it can exist without animal suffering or it cannot. If it can, then it falls under (a). If it can’t, then animal suffering is built into that good. And when we go looking for goods like that, what we find are responses to suffering: compassion for a hurting animal, rescuing it, healing it, or the restoring of creation. That is (b).

But someone might say creation as a whole is better because suffering is in it, the same way a shadow can make a painting more beautiful. But a shadow doesn’t feel anything. A fawn does. So the argument is the world is more beautiful because a fawn burned is to treat a living, feeling creature like a dab of paint? It’s hard to see what the fawn’s pain adds to the picture that couldn’t be added some other way.

Now we turn to premise three: a remedy cannot justify the wound. Think about this for a second: a doctor who heals a patient does a good thing. But a doctor who infects a patient so that he can heal him does not. The healing is only good because the sickness is bad, so it cannot be the reason to cause the sickness. This is clear on determinism because the determinist’s God decrees both the wound and the cure, so there is nothing for him to respond to.

Now, look: Premise eight says a perfectly good being does not bring about suffering that no justifying good requires. Some determinists say God is not bound by our moral standards, and that the potter has rights over the clay (Romans 9:21). But premise eight is not a rule we place on God; rather, I'm appealing to the definition of “good." For instance, if being could bring about needless suffering and still be called perfectly good, then calling God good would tell us nothing about him. Scripture assumes we can recognize God’s goodness, since it commands us to imitate it: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36) and that God’s mercy is over all that he has made (Psalm 145:9).

Can Divine Determinism Hold?

If the argument is valid and sound, the divine determinist has only one way out. They have to say God was after some good that could not exist, even in principle, without animal pain and suffering. But what candidates are on the table? They could appeal to stable initial conditions and physical laws. In part 1, I said free agents need a world with stable, consistent, dependable laws of nature. But the determinist is committed to the position that God picks the laws, the initial conditions, and every outcome thereafter. Also, God is only restricted by logical consistency, and a world with no predators, or a world where animals pull back from harm without feeling pain, contains no contradiction. God wouldn’t need to worry about what a different history would lead to because he sets the choices. Appealing to stable laws doesn’t give the divine determinist an escape route. It just locks him in the room he already chose.

What about the need to show or experience God’s greater glory? Justice and mercy can only be displayed if sinners exist, but it is obvious that a fawn is not a sinner. The fawn isn't being punished, nor can the fawn be forgiven. For argument’s sake, suppose the divine determinist believes in theistic evolution. For millions of years, animals were ripping each other apart before humans existed. For what? So angels could see it? So that humans would eventually see it? Does God need to see it? No, because his nature is the same with or without a created world. And on determinism, God determines what every creature knows, so he could give angels and humans a full grasp of his glory without a single animal suffering for it.

What about an appeal to mystery? Maybe God has reasons we cannot see. After all, the Molinist appeals to the same thing. However, I would argue that the difference between the determinist and the Molinist in this regard is stark. The Molinist can say what kind of thing we cannot see: truths about what free creatures would do in other histories, truths that are tied to different natural histories and limits of God’s options. Unfortunately, the determinist’s hidden reason must be something else. It has to be a good that God, who controls every detail, could not get without animal pain. It is hard to see how the determinist could carry this burden.

Objection to Molinism

A fair objection is that I have proved too much. Animals are not free. The fawn makes no free choice, so how could truths about free choices limit God when it comes to the fawn? If they can’t, then the Molinist’s God could have made a world without animal suffering just as easily as the determinist’s, and my argument sinks both views.

The answer is that the limit never came from the animals. It comes from us. As I argued in part 1, God is aiming at a world of free persons who know and love him, and whether persons freely do so depends on the world they are placed in: its laws, its history, and its circumstances. The truths about what free creatures would do in each of those settings are not up to God. So it may be that every natural history God could have chosen without animal pain is one in which fewer people would freely come to him. It is also possible the people who exist would freely do far worse. We cannot survey those histories, so we cannot say which ones were open to God. That is where the Molinist’s mystery sits, and it is a mystery about a limit that Molinism says is real.

On determinism, there are no truths about free choices standing between God and the world he wants. God decrees the natural history, and he decrees the choices, so he could pair any history with any set of responses. He could have had the same persons, loving him just as much, in a world where no animal ever suffered. The objection lands on determinism and misses Molinism because only Molinism says there are things about creatures that God does not decide.

Conclusion

To be clear, I have not tried to show that divine determinism is false, and I have not claimed that Molinism removes every question about animal suffering. What I have argued is narrower. If God is perfectly good, there has to be a reason he could not get the good he wanted without animal suffering. Molinism says what kind of reason that would be, even if we cannot see the details: God is limited by what free creatures would do. Determinism rules that reason out, because on determinism God controls every aspect of creation and is restricted only by logic and his own good nature. Thus, if God is hindered by nothing else, and animal suffering exists anyway, then the determinist owes us a good that even a God who decides everything could not have without it. Stable laws, greater glory, and mystery do not supply one.

Until one is found, divine determinism leaves the fawn without an answer. That matters for apologetics. When a skeptic raises animal suffering, the determinist is left saying that God decreed it for a reason he cannot name. The Molinist can say that God did not want the suffering for its own sake, that he permits it because of a real limit set by creaturely freedom, and that he has promised to set creation free from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:21). In the next blog, I’ll ask whether another model of divine foreknowledge does any better.