HKB
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Often appears with: the problem of evil and theodicy · predestination · fate, destiny, and necessity · equity, mercy, and pardon · divine grace · bayle vs theodicy
Usually: argument (1) · injustice endured (1) · detachment (1)
“Yet it is better to permit their crime than to act in a way which would render God himself blameworthy, and provide the criminals with some justification for the complaint that it was not possible for them to do better.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · observation
Leibniz replies to Bayle’s charge that God offers grace to those destined to refuse, arguing God permits resultant crime within an overall plan to preserve justice and avoid making God blameworthy.
that God could produce in each human soul all the thoughts that he approves: but this would be to act by miracles, more than his most perfectly conceived plan admits. 115. VII. 'He offers grace to people that he knows are destined not to accept it, and so destined by this refusal to make themselves more criminal than they would be if he had not offered them that grace; he assures them that it is his ardent wish that…