One reason why skeptics don’t believe in the God of the Bible, the argument goes, is that he’s a slayer of the innocent. As one example, Exodus 12:29 reads, “The Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.” So, the question becomes, how can God be all-good and all-just when he kills innocent human beings?
I think all of us, theists and atheists alike, feel the force of this objection. After all, we can’t take an innocent human life . . . but apparently, God can.
But is this a reason to reject the God of the Bible? I answer no.
Let me start with a disclaimer: I’m not advocating for a pure voluntarism—that is, God simply wills whatever he wants without any intelligible reason. Rather, no matter what evils are found within God’s order of providence—even including the death of innocent human beings—he orders those evils to some greater good. What that good is, we might not know precisely. It might be a supernatural good, against which the loss of the temporal good of physical life pales in comparison (cf. Rom. 8:18). But we do know, even if it’s very difficult or painful to accept, that there is a greater good.
Of course, this can be hard to accept, especially for the grief-stricken and for those non-believers who hunger for justice. Someone might have a good reason for doing an unjust thing, they might argue, and it would still be unjust. But what we’re trying to show is that God can will the death of the innocent and still be an all-good and all-just God.
Let’s start with the question, “What is death?” Metaphysically speaking, death is the separation of body and soul, whether for a non-rational animal or a rational one, like us. This separation occurs, as St. Aquinas explains, when “[the body] loses that disposition by which it prepared to receive life [from the soul]” (De Anima, Art. 14, ad 20, emphasis added). In other words, there is a “cessation of the requisite dispositions” of the body and a loss of vital metabolic functioning.
Now, what is God’s causal role in all this? It’s definitely not creative, because God gives no being or actuality in death. As emphasized above, death is a loss of being, or a loss of the actuality needed for the perfection of human life. That loss of actuality is the loss of the requisite bodily dispositions and vital metabolic functions.
God’s causal role here is one of ceasing to give such actuality. We know this because, at the end of the day, God (as the primary cause) is the one who’s ultimately responsible for whatever actuality we have, be it our operations or even just our existence. He’s the one sustaining it. Aquinas puts it this way: “Every operation of a thing is traced back to [God] as its cause” (Summa Contra Gentiles 3.67). There can be no created actuality—in this case, no life—without God causing it to be.
So, where there is actuality, as is the case when a human being is alive, with his vital metabolic functions actually functioning, God is ultimately causing such actuality. Where there is no longer actuality, as is the case when a human being dies and his vital metabolic functions are no longer actually functioning, God is not causing such actuality. Rather, he wills the actuality that he had once sustained to no longer be.
That said, however, it’s true that God at one time caused the actuality, and now he does not. Death is not accidental (or at least it’s not relative to God, even if it is accidental relative to secondary causes). The divine willing that the relevant actuality for physical life no longer be given is intentional on God’s part, since the duration of the physical life, from its beginning to end, is part and parcel of God’s willed providential plan.
This intentional non-giving of the relevant actuality applies to any and all occurrences of death, whether it comes about through some secondary cause, like natural degeneration or a bullet to the head, or some accidental cause, or immediately and directly (“miraculously”), like in the case of the firstborn Egyptians. But even in this last case, it’s not as though God “slaying the Egyptians” manifested in dramatic physical fashion, like Zeus throwing a thunderbolt. Or at least it didn’t have to. God willed to stop maintaining the actuality of these Egyptians’ lives, and so they died. That’s all it took.
At this point, the skeptic might interject, “What difference does it make how God kills? The innocent person is dead either way, and that’s an injustice.” And so we come to the question that lies at the heart of our inquiry: “Is God bound in justice, to himself or to us, to give the actuality needed for a human being to continue living?” In other words, is it unjust for God to intentionally will the death of innocent human beings by no longer giving the actuality needed for the sustaining of physical life?
The objection considered here operates on the assumption that God is bound in justice to give us the actuality needed to continue living, and that it would be unjust for him to intentionally stop giving such actuality.
But I think we can challenge this assumption.
One possible route touches on the reason we die at all, whether through natural or unnatural means. As Aquinas reminds us, death is a form of punishment. Throughout his corpus, when the topic of God inflicting death comes up, Aquinas argues that the punishment for original sin takes the form of death, and so God can justly inflict death on humans. Here’s one example:
Now the withdrawal of original justice has the character of punishment, even as the withdrawal of grace has. Consequently, death and all consequent bodily defects are punishments of original sin. And although the defects are not intended by the sinner, nevertheless they are ordered according to the justice of God who inflicts them as punishments (Summa Theologiae I-II: 85:5).
This may be a hard pill to swallow, but it makes sense in light of Christian doctrine. The innocent Egyptian firstborn were afflicted with original sin (see Rom. 5) and thus “deserving,” along with the rest of humanity, of the punishment of death. Even now, when we have baptism to infuse sanctifying grace within us, which removes “original sin” in the sense of removing the condition of the soul lacking sanctifying grace, we still experience the consequences of original sin, one of which is death. Baptism opens up heaven for us after we die, but thanks to original sin, we still must die.
But maybe it’s the Christian doctrine that’s wrong. After all, the skeptic doesn’t believe in the God of the Bible, so he doesn’t have to be bound to God’s rules. Maybe we shouldn’t believe that God can slay the innocent, period, regardless of whether death can be thought of as a punishment or not.
As much as this line of thinking resonates with most people’s intuitions, I don’t think it’s sound. And here’s the reason why: physical life is a gift. God is not obligated it to give it. And so if God’s not bound to give us the actuality needed for physical life to begin with, then it seems he’s not bound to continue giving such actuality. The life God gives us is like the dessert a mother gives her child: eventually, she will cease giving it (for a good reason, we assume), even if the child would rather continue eating ice cream forever.
But the skeptic might counter, “The gift of human life is different from dessert. Physical life is part and parcel of existing as a human being. If God gave it, wouldn’t it be unfair for God to go back on his agreement and take it away?”
Well, here is where the physical nature of a human being comes into play. God made us out of matter, which is susceptible to corruption and death. This is why Aquinas argues that in one sense, death is “natural to man” (ST I-II:85:6). And God cannot be bound in justice (or bound to his wisdom) to preserve man from what is natural to him.
Given that God’s intentional non-giving of actuality needed for the continued sustenance of physical life (a divine non-upholding) is consistent with the nature of a human being (as a corruptible being), such cessation of giving the relevant actuality is not a violation of what is due to a human being, and thereby not an injustice, and consistent with God’s goodness.
Perhaps someone might counter that this line of reasoning works only for death through natural degeneration or some other natural cause within this world. It might be argued that the potential we have to lose physical life by virtue of our matter fits only with those things that can naturally bring about the cessation of vital metabolic functions. Miraculously ceasing to give the actuality needed for physical life, so it seems, is not consistent with such potential.
But even death brought about through natural causation, whether natural degeneration or accidental causes, is ultimately subject to God’s providence, the divinely willed plan that includes the limited duration of a corruptible being’s physical life and the means by which such life will be brought to an end. As Aquinas writes, “life is God’s gift to man, and is subject to his power, who kills and makes to live. . . . It belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life” (ST II-II:64:5).
If God can will that the effect of death be brought about through particular causes, then he can also will, given his omnipotence, that the effect be brought about without such causes. Just as he willed the effect of Jesus’ conception within the womb of Mary without the cause of the sexual act, or, to parallel more precisely our current issue, the effect of a fire that keeps burning while causing no heat in the case of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dan. 3).
We can summarize our argument as follows:
P1: God can justly will whatever effect is consistent with human nature.
P2: Death is an effect that is consistent with human nature.
C: Therefore, God can justly will the death of a human being.
Given that the effect of death is consistent with human nature, we can answer our above question in the affirmative: God can justly will the death of an innocent human being, regardless of whether death is considered as punishment or not.
And so, to sum it all up, although the death of the innocent Egyptian firstborn might provide an emotional roadblock to belief in the God of the Bible, it ought not be an intellectual obstacle to such belief.