Theodicy and modal logic. Bogusław Wolniewicz’s polemic with Bayle’s critic of theodicy

Abstract

The essay aims at presenting original ideas of Bogusław Wolniewicz in the field of modal logic, which improve the traditional theodicy, criticized by Pierre Bayle. The classical theodicy attempts to reconcile divine omnipotence and God’s goodness. According to classical theodicy both of these elements can be reconciled, because evil is not the work of God, but a work of man – freedom is in fact necessary for a man so that he could do good, but to do good, a person automatically has to be able to do the evil (understood morally, not physically). Bayle’s argument says that freedom implies the possibility of evil and it does not imply its existence, and this means that evil can be avoided even with the assumption of freedom. Wolniewicz tries to refute that argument. He quotes a little known definitions of possibility derived from the logic of Megarian. It turns out to be an inspiration for him to introduce an original definition of possibility – “what is possible = what happened or what will happen in the future.” With this interpretation of possibility classic theodicy seems to be efficient.