others, who will develop his or her tastes for music, good literature, and so on. And in
like manner, God will graciously love any creature he might choose to create, not just the
best possible creatures. But that does not rule out God's having a preference for creating
creatures who will strive not only to have a good life but also to lead a good life,
creatures who will in their own way freely develop themselves into “children of God.”
Indeed, although God's gracious love extends to every possible creature, it would be odd
to suggest that, therefore, he could have no preference for creating a world with such
creatures over a world in which creatures use their freedom to abuse others, use their
talents to turn good into evil, and devote their lives to selfish ends. Surely, God's
graciously loving all possible creatures is not inconsistent with his having a preference to
create a world with creatures who will use their freedom to pursue the best kind of human
life. How could he not have such a preference? Furthermore, if God had no such
end p.
preference, his gracious love for creatures would give him no reason to select any
particular possible world for creation. For his gracious love for each and every creature
fails to provide a reason to create one creature rather than another, or to create the
creatures in one possible world rather than those in another. So, if God is not reduced to
playing dice with respect to selecting a world to create, there must be some basis for his
selection over and beyond his gracious love for all creatures regardless of merit. And that
basis, given God's nature as an absolutely perfect being, would seem to be to do always
what is best and wisest to be done. And surely the best and wisest for God to do is to
create the best world he can. Doing so seems to be entirely consistent with God's gracious
love of all creatures regardless of their merit.
Adams, however, rejects this view, a view that sees God's gracious love of creatures
without respect to merit as entirely consistent with his having an all-things-considered
preference to create the best world he can. After noting that divine grace is love that is
not dependent on the merit of the person loved, Adams proceeds to draw the conclusion
that although God would be free to create the best creatures, he cannot have as his reason
for choosing to create them the fact that they are the best possible creatures: “God's
graciousness in creating does not imply that the creatures He has chosen to create must be
less excellent than the best possible. It implies, rather, that even if they are the best
possible creatures, that is not the ground for His choosing them. And it implies that there
is nothing in God's nature or character which would require Him to act on the principle of
choosing the best possible creatures to be the object of His creative powers” (1972, 324).
By my lights, God's disposition to love independent of the merits of the persons loved
carries no implication as to what God's reason for creating a particular world may be,
other than that his reason cannot be that he loves the beings in this world more (or less)
than the beings in other worlds. And, of course, having an all-things-considered
preference for creating the best world need not be rooted in a greater love for beings who
are better than other beings. God's grace does rule out choosing to create the best world
because he loves its inhabitants more than the inhabitants of some lesser world. But it
does not rule out God's choosing to create the best world so long as he does not love its
inhabitants more than he loves the inhabitants of lesser worlds. Adams must be supposing
that if God's reason for creating one world rather than another is the fact that the creatures