Best of all possible worlds

Best of all possible worlds is the claim, first developed by the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, that an infinitely wise, powerful, and benevolent God must have created the one world, among every world he could have made, that yields the greatest possible balance of creaturely happiness. Because God’s chief end in creating is taken to be the promotion of that happiness, whatever occurs, evil included, is held to serve it and so cannot really be an evil at all. The view is also called Optimism.

Historical Origin

Leibniz introduced the claim in his 1710 work Theodicy, or the Goodness of God, the Liberty of Man, and the Origin of Evil. The book’s title gave theology the term “theodicy”: a speculative justification of God’s ways toward the human race.¹ Leibniz reduced all moral excellence to benevolence and concluded that an infinitely benevolent, wise, and powerful God must have chosen the best possible system for producing happiness.²

The idea took root among nineteenth-century New England theologians. Jonathan Edwards, in a treatise published after his death, argued that virtue itself consists in “the love of being”; Samuel Hopkins and Nathanael Emmons adopted and developed this principle into systems of theology that, according to Charles Hodge, “for many years had great influence in this country.”³ The German theologian August Twesten restated the same logic more formally: “If the world be absolutely dependent on the most perfect Being; if it be the work of the highest love, power, and wisdom; and if it be constantly controlled and governed by God, it must be absolutely perfect.”³

Core Tenets

On this view, since all virtue reduces to benevolence and happiness is the highest good, holiness carries no value of its own beyond whatever happiness it produces.² Whatever tends to promote happiness is, by the same logic, right. Hodge summarizes where this leads: “what we call sin, if a necessary means of the greatest good, becomes virtue,” so that “there is really no sin in the universe.”² He traces this to the broader principle that it is right to do evil that good may come, and reports that the Jesuits worked the theory into a system precise enough to determine in advance when murder, perjury, and blasphemy become virtues.²

Comparison with the Reformed Baptist Confession

The confession gives a different account of creation’s purpose: God made the world “for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness,” not for the production of creaturely happiness.⁴ It gives the same answer for God’s eternal decree, made “to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness, and mercy.”⁵ A. A. Hodge draws out the reasoning behind this contrast: since God formed his purpose to create before any creature existed, the motive for creating cannot originate in a not-yet-existing creature’s happiness, and since God is infinitely worthier than the sum of his creatures, the manifestation of his own excellence is a higher end than their happiness.¹

Charles Hodge raises a further objection: to call this the best possible world is to say God could not have made a better one, which, unless the world is itself infinite, amounts to saying God is finite.³ He adds that making happiness the end of creation is unscriptural and contrary to ordinary moral judgment: holiness is instinctively recognized as a greater good than happiness, not merely a means toward it.³ Bavinck presses the same rejection in blunter terms, in the course of arguing that Reformed theology confronts the genuine harshness of a fallen world rather than smoothing it over: believers “do not scatter flowers over graves, turn death into an angel, regard sin as mere weakness, or consider this the best of possible worlds. Calvinism has no use for such drivel.”⁶

Related Doctrines

References

Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 12, “Creation of the World,” 243-45. ↩ ↩²
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), chap. X, “Creation,” 566-67. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), chap. V, “Nature and Attributes of God,” 432-34. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 4, “Of Creation,” para. 1. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 3, “Of God’s Decree,” para. 1. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Triune God and His Counsel.” ↩