God and gratuitous evil. Unlike most theodicies since Augustine, dubbed by Little as "Greater-
Good Theodicies" since they respond to the problem of evil by affirming that all instances of evil
are actually used by God to bring about otherwise unattainable greater benefits and are thus not
really gratuitous, Little accepts the existence of gratuitous evil but denies that any contradiction
exists between the concept of an all-powerful and all-loving God and truly pointless suffering.
Briefly summarized, Littles system hinges on the claim that perfection is an incommunicable
attribute of the uncreated God which cannot be transferred to the created order without logical
contradiction; accordingly, it is logically impossible for God to create a world which, all things
considered, is any better than "very good" (Gn. 1:31) but imperfect. For the purposes of this
paper, I will assume that Littles strategy of denying the first premise in the argument from evil
if God exists, then gratuitous evil does not exist is correct and, even if his system is not at this
point sufficiently developed to reconcile Gods existence with all forms of gratuitous evil, will in
future refinements by himself or other thinkers conclusively demonstrate the falsity of the first
premise. However, my concern is to broaden the appeal of this "Creation-Order" brand of
theodicy to those who not only believe in libertarian human freedom, but also feel that the best
exegesis of Romans 9 and related texts is Gods sovereign predestination of individuals. In its
present form, Littles Creation-Order theodicy seems limited in its appeal to adherents of Jacob
Arminius view that the predestination of Romans 9 is a group or corporate affair, in which each
person freely joins the "children of the promise" through faith or the "children of the flesh"
through unbelief.
he appealed to the doctrine of scientia media, or Gods knowledge of all true counterfactuals
(including counterfactuals of creaturely freedom) in the second of three logical moments
comprising divine omniscience, which had recently been formulated by Catholic reformer Luis
de Molina (1535-1600). Moreover, Arminius application of scientia media in his Declaration
of Sentiments implied, in modern philosophical terms, that the actual world constitutes the best of
all possible worlds and that the reprobate all suffer from transworld depravity.
his 613-page Latin Concordia, treating the reconciliation of libertarian freedom with such
doctrines as divine grace, foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and reprobation, only the
113-page fourth book which lays out the three-moment scheme of Gods natural, middle, and
free knowledge and explains how scientia media serves as the basis of Gods foreknowledge of
future contingents has been translated into English. Since the entire Arminian corpus is available
in translation, however, the common practice (most often unwittingly) among philosophers of
religion in applying scientia media to issues of predestination and reprobation has been to follow
Arminius lead without considering that the Protestant reformer may not reflect his Catholic
predecessor in these areas.