Father Frank's Rant...The Best World

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 303 14 May 2008

Best of All Possible Worlds

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. A current play about an imaginary trial of the betrayer of Christ. Rats! Won’t see it, as it is booked up. Yet the subject stimulates. How could Judas defend himself?

First, he could blame the Father. If God had foreseen Judas’ betrayal, it was impossible he did not betray. On the contrary, it was a necessary occurrence. No one is bound to act impossibly, so Judas did not sin.

Hmmm…God foresaw the evil deed but did not force Judas to commit it. It was his voluntary action. The villain might of course insist that God’s prior knowledge had forced him. But does any knowledge force or necessitate? I know now Saddam was hanged but surely my knowledge is not the cause of that hanging. And I know I am now typing Rant 303 but my knowing it isn’t the cause of it. Rather, my willing is. Why should future knowledge be different from past or present? I once predicted Bush will attack Iran. If he does, will it be the priest’s fault?

The wily Judas could point out that omniscience is one thing, omnipotence another. God instantiates both. As all-powerful and all-provident, he must carry the can. Not only does he know the future, he is also in some sense his author. How could the Creator be so cruel as to prepare such awful destiny for Iscariot? He was after all one of the twelve apostles. One of the closest followers of the Messiah. Yet God has doomed Judas to betrayal. He cannot escape the blame. The Almighty too should stand in the dock.

Now, imagine Judas, instead of committing suicide, had prayed to God from the bottom of his heart: ‘Change my fate, O Adonai, I beg you!’ Alas, changing the past is deemed logically impossible. For the Deity, too. Because even God is bound by the law of contradiction. Well, at least according to St Thomas Aquinas. St Peter Damian held the contrary but he is an odd man out amongst theologians. Not even the Omnipotent can break the shackles of logic. Tough.

But consider an alternative scenario. Years before Judas met Jesus, a prophet, say St John the Baptist, might have told him the future. Then Judas could have made his prayer all right. God through an angel might have replied: ‘If you want to renounce your destiny, it can be arranged. You will be unknown but happy.’

Judas doesn’t like it. ‘Must I forsake being an apostle? An exalted leader of the universal religion? I still desire that.

‘No, Judas, God knows the whole nexus of events. If you follow Jesus, your future cannot be altered.’ Whereupon Judas, unwilling to resign himself to obscurity, chooses fame – or rather, infamy - and stoically embraces his fate.

On this account, God’s wisdom is awesome. He has got Judas to submit to his providential plan. Now Iscariot can only blame himself for his lot, not anyone else. Only a nagging doubt. What about God’s supreme goodness? Another key divine attribute. Couldn’t the benevolent Supreme Being have given Judas a different willing?

This would run to 100.000 words if the priest hazarded into the labyrinth of free will and grace. Mercifully, G.W. Leibniz suggests a compendious, if baffling, solution.

The angel takes us on a magical journey. To the immense palace of all human destinies, of which he is the custodian. Like on a screen, its galleries show the representation of both what happens and what is possible. ‘Before God created this world, he reviewed in his infinite mind all possibilities. These possible worlds are all here on show, as if contained in God’s mind. I will show you a possible world where Judas – not the actual, historical Judas, as his identity is tied to his actual life – is a holy and wonderful saint, who eventually dies a martyr for his beloved Jesus. In another world, he is a tinker. In another, a wealthy merchant. Still in another, a gladiator. In sum, all sorts of Judases, in an infinity of combinations.’

‘Observe how this palace forms a pyramid’ the angel says. ‘Behold also how gorgeous the galleries become as we look higher and higher, towards the top. It is because the worlds displayed get better and better. Contrariwise, you cannot see the pyramid’s bottom. Because it is infinite, as there is no end to less perfect possibilities. Now look at the top. How beautiful! It shows the best of all worlds. It is our world, our actual reality, which God has chosen to create. Look and see how Judas takes the thirty pieces of silver. Watch how he betrays Jesus with a kiss and how, overcome by remorse, kills himself. If the Almighty had placed here a virtuous and pious Judas, it would not be this world, our world. And yet it flows from God’s nature that he chose to create our world, which is at the pyramid’s top because it is the best. Had he acted otherwise, God would have contradicted his own wisdom. Understand now that God has not created Judas wicked. The traitor was traitor from all eternity, of own free will. God only allowed his possible existence actuality. In his infinite wisdom, God saw how Judas’ sin entered into the reasons for this world. His voluntary crime was instrumental in man’s redemption. Providence, you see?’

So, that’s it. Our world is the best. Not only Judases, but also floods, earthquakes, AIDS, Satan, Jack the Ripper, Stalin and Tony Blair are only occasional blips in an otherwise wondrous state of affairs. Things couldn’t be better. Huh! Do you buy it?

King Alphonse X of Castille did not. Speaking of the cumbrous Ptolemaic system, he said that if God had consulted him before creation, he could have given him some good advice. Had Alphonse predicted Kepler and Newton’s discoveries, however, he might have eaten his words…

Sentimentalists will always chafe at Leibniz’s optimistic philosophy. But, unless one falls back on mystery – and my friend Iskander would excoriate me for that – that great German’s argument seems to me almost irresistible.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli