Introduction
There are two broad conceptions of God in contemporary African philosophy of religion. On the one hand, there is traditional African theism that is promoted by perfect God theists, who conceive God as an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator. On the other hand, there is the limited God view promoted by philosophers, who assert that it makes sense to conceive God as a being limited in power, knowledge, and goodness given that this conception of divinity helps us resolve the problem of evil. They point out that the limitation thesis aligns better with African Traditional Religion (ATR). A number of the limited God proponents suggest that the limited God did his best at the time he created the world and that this world could not get better (see Bewaji Reference Bewaji1998; Wiredu Reference Wiredu1998; Gwara and Ogbonnaya Reference Gwara and Ogbonnaya2022; Chimakonam and Chimakonam Reference Chimakonam and Chimakonam2023). They suggest that the limited God lacks the capacity to further reduce the amount of evil in the world relative to the amount of good, having done his best at the time of creation.
This article has two basic objectives, namely: (1) show that the failure of the perfect God theists Kwame Gyekye and Ebunoluwa Oduwole to reconcile the idea of a perfect God with the reality of evil buttresses the claim of limited God theists that the limitation thesis provides a more plausible account of the reality of evil in a God-created world; and (2) argue that, contrary to the stance of the limited God proponents, Kwasi Wiredu, J.A.I. Bewaji, Jonathan O. Chimakonam, and Amara E. Chimakonam, it is possible to conceive the limited God as possessing capacities that can enable him to make the world better by reducing the amount of evil in it relative to the amount of good once the deity is projected as a sufficiently powerful, knowledgeable, and good being able to achieve further increase in power, knowledge, and goodness within the bounds of limitation.Footnote 1 In demonstrating these theses, I adopt the method of philosophical analysis.
I do not aim to demonstrate the existence of the limited God or empirically determine the amounts of goods and evils in the world. Instead, I explore the existing literature on the limited God perspective in African philosophy of religion and raise the question of whether the limited God, if he is assumed to exist, can plausibly make the world better given the magnitude of power that most limited God proponents attribute to the deity within the bounds of limitation. Elsewhere a case was made for the existence of the limited God through the rethinking of the traditional cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God (see Agada and Ikuli Reference Agada, Ikuli, Agada, Ofuasia and Ikuli2024). In this article, I engage with an entirely different kind of problem: the question of whether the limited God can do more than what most limited God proponents think he can, if he exists. Taking its cue from the literature, the article implicitly makes the fundamental assumption that the limited God exists.
Until recently, the limited God view was not widely discussed among African philosophers and religious studies scholars. The works of ATR scholars like John S. Mbiti (Reference Mbiti1969), E. Bolaji Idowu (Reference Idowu1973), E. Ikenga-Metuh (Reference Ikenga-Metuh1981), and J. Omosade Awolalu and P. Adelumo Dopamu (Reference Awolalu and Dopamu1979) entrenched a perspective that upholds perfect God theism in an African context. Kwasi Wiredu (Reference Wiredu1998) and Okot p’Bitek (Reference p’Bitek2011) are scholars who questioned perfect God theism early on. Recently, a number of African philosophers have built on the limited God view defended early on by p’Bitek and Wiredu. Philosophers like Bewaji (Reference Bewaji1998), Olusegun Oladipo (Reference Oladipo and Wiredu2004), Oladele Balogun (Reference Balogun2009), Ademola K. Fayemi (Reference Fayemi2012), Ada Agada (Reference Agada2022, Reference Agada2023, Reference Agada2024), Emmanuel Ofuasia (Reference Ofuasia2022a), Aribiah David Attoe (Reference Attoe2022a), Jonathan O. Chimakonam and Amara E. Chimakonam (Reference Agada2023), and Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues (Reference Cordeiro-Rodrigues2023) have rigorously defended the limited God perspective. These philosophers believe that the limitation thesis resolves the problem of evil that continues to pose a big challenge to traditional theism in Western analytic philosophy of religion. Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams, in particular, suggest that the limited God has done his best and cannot further reduce the evil in the world. This article contributes to debates in the literature by advancing the idea of an imperfect God who yet continues to grow in power and knowledge and is able to make the existing world a better world. It broadens the horizon of global philosophy of religion with its focus on under-explored African conceptions of God and evil.
The idea of an imperfect God with potential for growth has appeared in Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Agada (Reference Agada2024). However, the present article goes further and explores the idea in greater detail from the perspective of the philosophical current of consolationism. The position that I defend in this article is different from the positions of the limited God proponents Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams. Wiredu and Bewaji submit that evil exists necessarily and God cannot do more than he has done to reduce the evil in the world given his limitation in power and knowledge. While the Chimakonams grant the limited God more capacity than Wiredu and Bewaji, they yet assert that the limited God cannot reduce the evil in the world since he merely intervenes to guarantee the good–evil balance in the world. Thus, if goods increase in one location, the limited God intervenes by increasing evils in another location to restore the balance. What is striking is that all three limited God proponents concede vast creative powers and knowledge to the limited God within the bounds of limitation. Yet, this God is unable to reduce the evil in the world. The unique position that I articulate in this article reconciles the vast powers that the limited God wields with his agency by demonstrating the plausibility of the deity exercising the powers at his disposal to reduce the amount of evil in the world. The limited God that I present here is conceived more actively than he is presented in the existing literature. Unlike the three limited God philosophers, whose metaphysical systems do not allow them to conceive a limited God that advances incrementally in power, I draw insights from the consolationist concept of mood to show how the limited God can plausibly do more than Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams grant him.
The article is divided into four sections. Section 1 briefly explores African perfect God theism and provides a background for the discussion of the limited God view. Section 2 focuses on the limited God thesis and the idea that limitation imposes agentive impotence on God. In section 3, I argue from the perspective of consolationist metaphysics that an imperfect being that is yet powerful and knowledgeable enough to create the world can have inherent growth capacities that enable this being to reduce the amount of evil in the world relative to the amount of good. In section 4, I raise and meet possible objections to my limited God stance. The article focuses on issues and debates in African philosophy of religion. However, issues in Western analytic philosophy of religion will be referenced where necessary to shed light on the African contribution to global philosophy of religion. The article’s scope is restricted to African philosophy of religion rather than African religious studies, broadly construed.Footnote 2
African perfect God theism and the problem of evil
I use the term perfect God theism to indicate the conception of God as a being that possesses all omni-properties. The omni-properties include omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipresence. According to this view, God is a perfect being who can do all (logically possible) things; he creates the world and endows sentient and intelligent beings like humans with free will (see, for example, Hick Reference Hick1966; Plantinga Reference Plantinga1977; Stump Reference Stump1985; Gyekye Reference Gyekye1995; Swinburne Reference Swinburne2004; Oduwole Reference Oduwole2007). Orthodox Christianity and Islam are two religions that particularly espouse the perfect God view. This view can also be found in African Traditional Religion (ATR) (see, for, example, Danquah Reference Danquah1944; Idowu Reference Idowu1962). Most traditional theists will agree with Kwame Gyekye’s statement of perfect God theism when he writes that:
Onyame [God] is the Absolute Reality, the origin of all things, the absolute ground, the sole and whole explanation of the universe, the source of all existence… Onyame transcends time and is thus free from the limitation of time, an eternity without beginning, without an end… While containing space, Onyame is not held to be spatial. He is not bound or limited to any particular region of space. He is omnipresent (enyiasombea), all-pervading. (Gyekye Reference Gyekye1995, 70)
Gyekye (Reference Gyekye1995, 114–116) adds that the omniscient God is good and gives humans a good destiny from the beginning. This good destiny can be constrained and imperilled by the free actions and decisions taken by humans and by the malevolent operations of evil spiritual entities (Gyekye Reference Gyekye1995, 116). A God that possesses the superlative qualities and capacities mentioned by Gyekye is a perfect being. Francis O.C. Njoku FOC (2002) and Ebunoluwa O. Oduwole (Reference Oduwole2007) adopt Gyekye’s stance and assert that God is unlimited in power and knowledge and cannot do evil. Njoku does not venture into a broad discussion of the problem of evil. Gyekye and Oduwole recognise the threat to traditional theism posed by the problem of evil. Gyekye tries unsuccessfully to reconcile theological determinism and free will with the claim that while God gives humans a good destiny before they are born, it is only the broad outlines of events in people’s lives that are fixed from the beginning. For him, human actions are free; people can choose to do good or evil (Gyekye Reference Gyekye1995, 116). He observes that:
The message given to it [the soul] by the Supreme being, is a single message, but its content is many-faceted. Nkrebea (or hyēbea)…expresses a concept of destiny that is totalistic, encompassing all aspects, temporal and nontemporal, though not in detail, of an individual’s mundane existence. (Gyekye Reference Gyekye1995, 112)
He uses the terms nkrebea or hyēbea to describe the content of the God-fixed destiny. Since this destiny is a good one, from the very beginning, and it is all-encompassing, one encounters a contradiction as Gyekye, in one breath, posits rigid determinism and free will. He falls back on the idea of a vague general determinism that affects only the broad outlines of a life to accommodate individual choice. But rigid determinism cannot be true if humans are capable of freely acting in certain areas of their lives. Notwithstanding the failure to reconcile determinism and free will, Gyekye suggests that evil enters the world through human abuse of free will. But, according to Gyekye, it is not only humans who misuse free will. Lesser deities created by God also inflict evil (harm and suffering) on humans. A human being can do evil by killing his or her neighbour, for example, while a free-willing deity may decide to afflict humans with debilitating illnesses. Thus, evil for Gyekye is a broadly moral problem (see Agada Reference Agada2024). By ‘evil’, I mean moral and physical evil. While moral evil indicates harm caused by the exercise of human choice (deliberately considered actions), physical evil refers to harm caused by circumstances linked to the way the world is structured (for example, natural disasters and diseases). For Gyekye, both physical and moral evils enter the world through creatures’ abuse of free will.
Like Gyekye, Oduwole asserts that God is a perfect being (Oduwole Reference Oduwole2007, 5). Given this stance, the problem of evil rears its head, and Oduwole (Reference Oduwole2007, 12) struggles like Gyekye to find a solution. First, she asserts that evil somehow complements the good in the world and is, in fact, necessary for good to exist. For example, the bitter kola has a very disagreeable taste but brings good health (Oduwole Reference Oduwole2007, 12). Better still, a major surgery that comes with lasting physical inconvenience may be the only way to avert death. Oduwole ignores pointless evils (for example, intense animal suffering), which do not appear to be necessary for a good state of affairs to be actualised. Indeed, Oduwole’s thesis holds up poorly if one invokes the full force of the evidential problem of evil, which strongly suggests that the variety, instances, degrees, and intensity of evil in the world raise the probability that the traditional theist’s God does not exist (for detailed discussions see, for example, Rowe Reference Rowe1979; Stump Reference Stump1985; Agada Reference Agada2024). Oduwole makes three points: (1) there is evil in the world; (2) God is not the cause of evil, malevolent lesser deities are the cause of evil; (3) the evil in the world plays a role by contributing to the emergence of good. Failing to reconcile the idea of divine perfection with the reality of evil, Oduwole admits that the challenge posed by the problem of evil to traditional theism is a daunting one when she suggests that human cognitive limitation implies that what humans may regard as evil may not be evil in the eyes of God. This echoes sceptical theism, the view that, as cognitively limited humans, we are not in a position to understand why God allows evil to exist. Here, the problem for Oduwole is accounting for why an omnibenevolent God would not be compassionate enough to let his suffering creatures know his reason for allowing them to suffer. In the thought of Gyekye and Oduwole one finds strands of the free will and greater good argument in defence of perfect God theism. Both philosophers do not delve deep into a discussion of the free will and greater good argument.
Without digressing too much, I will briefly highlight the debate on the free will and greater good defence in the Western analytic tradition to properly contextualise the problem of evil faced by African philosophers like Gyekye and Oduwole. Obviously, the two philosophers lean on the debate. According to Alvin Plantinga (Reference Plantinga1977), belief in the existence of a perfect God is not logically incompatible with the reality of evil because evil is the consequence of human possession of free will, which God permits. This free will is a great good, the possession of which outweighs all the evils in the world. If God were to create humans in a way that they did only good, without the ability to freely choose good over evil, humans would lack free will. God grants the good of free will at the cost of the occurrence of evil. Indeed, Plantinga assumes that in any world created by God, evil will exist (for details on the idea of transworld depravity, see Plantinga Reference Plantinga1977). Swinburne (Reference Swinburne1998) refines Plantinga’s free will argument and notes that the freedom that God gives humans is an efficacious freedom that humans effectively put into action. He notes that overall a human life is good. One who does good and fails to be adequately compensated on earth will be compensated in heaven.
The element of compensation in heaven, a Christian belief, is absent in the ATR-influenced thought of Gyekye and Oduwole. If we, for the sake of argument, agree that the free will defence resolves the logical problem of evil, there is the evidential problem, which relies on the evidence of varieties, magnitudes, and instances of evil in the world to question the actual existence of a perfect God (see, for example, McCloskey Reference McCloskey1960; Rowe Reference Rowe1979). The point is that the free will and greater good defence does not make a perfect theodicy, as Gyekye and Oduwole may be inclined to think. Njoku recognises this when he invokes the inscrutability of God in his account of why evil exists in the world. He notes that God is ‘not fully comprehensible… Humans know God in an insignificantly obscure way’ (Njoku FOC 2002, 147). This stance echoes sceptical theism.Footnote 3
Limited God proponents join the fray at this juncture and pointedly assert that perfect God theists may be mistaken. They note that cultural data suggest that traditional African societies conceive God as a limited being. They contend that, going by this stance, it becomes obvious that the logical and evidential problem does not arise within African philosophy of religion and that African philosophers of religion can contribute to global debates in the field of philosophy of religion by shedding light on the nature of the limited God and how he is related to the world.
Having highlighted the failure of African perfect God theism to reconcile the notion of divine perfection with the reality of evil in the world, I will, in the next section, highlight the success of the limited God view in accounting for the reality of evil and, at the same time, identify the non-improvement stance of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams, which fails to justify the magnitude of power attributed to the limited God. Section 2 will set the stage for my demonstration of the conceivability of a limited improver-God in sections 3 and 4.
The limited God view and the question of evil
Limited God proponents believe that the logical and evidential problem is, in fact, a pseudo-problem in African philosophy of religion. They assert that the limited God view provides a more plausible account of evil than traditional theism, given the latter’s failure to reconcile divine perfection with the reality of evil in the world. They argue that once God is conceived as a limited being, the problem of evil ceases to be a problem and humans come to the realisation that they exist in an imperfect universe in which evil is part of the natural order.
In this section, I will concisely present the stances of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams while noting the success of the limitation thesis in accounting for the reality of evil with the postulation of God’s limitedness. In this section, I also highlight a problem implicit in the limited God view of the above-mentioned philosophers, which I will address more expansively in section 3. In presenting evil as a necessary part of the furniture of the world, these philosophers suggest that the limited God has done his best at creation time and that the existing world cannot be further improved by the limited God, a point that I will counter in section 3 in an exercise that distinguishes my limited God view from the perspectives of the above-mentioned philosophers. If we assume that the limited God exists and he is as powerful as the philosophers mentioned above concede that he is, then it is conceivable that the limited God has the capacity to improve the world by reducing the quantity of good in it relative to the evil in it within the bounds of limitation.
Wiredu’s thinking on God and evil is greatly influenced by ATR beliefs and traditional African cosmogony, as is the case with most African philosophers of religion. Relying on the analysis of the structure of the Akan language and linguistic phenomena like myths and proverbs, Wiredu reaches the conclusion that the Akan endorse monotheism, albeit one that is different from orthodox Christian monotheism. For Wiredu, the Akan believe in a vastly powerful, knowledgeable, and good being that designed the world. This being is not omnipotent and omniscient. It is also not omnibenevolent. Wiredu does not use the term creator to describe God to avoid attributing the power of creatio ex nihilo to the divine being. He thinks that the concept of creatio ex nihilo is a Western concept imposed on African theology, one that indicates omnipotence (Wiredu Reference Wiredu1998). He delves into an analysis of the Akan understanding of the notion of creation to buttress his view that God, in Akan traditional thought, is a limited designer of the world rather than an omnipotent creator. He notes that the Akan use the term Oboade to describe God. Oboade translates as the maker of things in English. In his words: ‘Bo means to make and ade means thing, but in Akan to boade is unambiguously instrumental; you only make something with something’ (Wiredu Reference Wiredu1998, 30). If God designs the world from materials that have always existed, one can infer that he is not the creator of everything in the universe considered as the absolute totality in which all things inhere. For Wiredu, what God does is use his vast power and knowledge to produce new, organised spaces, and the entities that populate them, from pre-existing matter. Wiredu (Reference Wiredu1998) thinks that this matter limits God in some way. The world that God produces from the imperfect primordial matter carries the imprint of this matter. The human beings that God causes to exist are imperfect, just like the God-designed world. While Wiredu does not think highly of the free will and greater good argument, he believes that human beings are rational entities that can distinguish good from evil and act in their own interests. Even if God wants to reform human beings, the latter can resist God’s good intention and choose evil. This is the case because, for Wiredu, evil is a natural part of the structure of the universe. Evil cannot be eliminated by a being that is itself limited. According to Wiredu (Reference Wiredu1998, 41):
Though in the context of cosmological reflection, they [the Akan] maintain a doctrine of unqualified omnipotence, in connection with issues having a direct bearing on the fate of humankind on this earth, such as the problem of evil, they seem to operate with a notion of the power of God implying rather less than absolute omnipotence.
He adds that ‘God himself comes to be thought of on the model of a father who has laid well-intentioned plans for his children which are, however, sometimes impeded not only by their refractory wills but also by the grossness of the raw materials he has to work with’ (Wiredu Reference Wiredu1998, 41). He does not engage in a metaphysical analysis of the limiting primordial matter, but he asserts that the imperfect structure of the world limits the capacity of God to effect remedial actions. Human beings are necessarily inclined towards evil even as the primordial matter exhibits its imperfect nature in the structure of things that God designs. The existing world cannot get better than it was when God designed it.
Working within the Yoruba tradition, Bewaji reaches the conclusion that God does not possess the omni-properties although he is a vastly powerful and knowledgeable being, the personal creator of the universe and everything in it. Bewaji (Reference Bewaji1998, 8) observes that:
[T]he fact that some things happen ‘behind His back’ or ‘without His direct awareness’ has been borne out in the practical aspects of creation, sustenance, and running of the universe, here, there, and everywhere, including even the domain of Olodumare (Orun or heaven). He [God] has had recourse to the use of Orunmila and Ifa, the wise ones and the means of discerning the situation of things past, present, and future.
For Bewaji, evil is a natural phenomenon of the imperfect universe; all entities are capable of expressing evil. God too is able to do evil (Bewaji Reference Bewaji1998, 11). Based on the panentheistic claim that God occasionally depends on the world and beings that he created, one can infer that Bewaji’s limited God is a Most Powerful Being. The power of this being is delineated with reference to the powers of all other entities in the universe. Unlike an All-Powerful Being that can do all logically possible things, the Most Powerful Being can only do things that other entities cannot do. He cannot do all logically possible things. In creating the world and producing the entities in it, God had done his best. He cannot do more given his limitation.Footnote 4 On the question of God not preventing evil in the world from occurring, the concept of limitation provides an answer. He does not prevent evil because he is unable to do so, evil being a necessary part of the furniture of the world. Just as good exists, so does evil exist.
The idea of evil as a necessary component of the structure of the world is further developed in the Chimakonams’ articulation of the notion of the harmony-God. They conceive God as the creator of the world, whose responsibility after creating the world consists in maintaining harmony in the world. A world that exhibits evidence of harmony is the product of the harmony-God, ‘who has the capacity for the opposing values of good and evil, and represents a being in whom both polar values complement each other’ (Chimakonam and Chimakonam Reference Chimakonam and Chimakonam2023, 334). The harmony that the Chimakonams refer to is a dialectical balance and proportionality in the quantity and types of goods and evils in the world. Thus, if a violent crime in a given location leads to the loss of three lives, a happy event, the birth of three babies, occurs in another location. If a devastating hurricane causes great suffering in City A, the harm done is balanced by excellent weather conditions in City B that leads to a great harvest that improves the economic well-being of the exact number of people harmed by the hurricane event in City A. Expectedly, a God that can bring about this intricate balancing act is vastly powerful and knowledgeable. In submitting the claim of the complementarity of good and evil, the Chimakonams, even more than Wiredu and Bewaji, lean on African holistic ontology that proposes that all things in the universe are interconnected and interdependent (see, for example, Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Agada Reference Agada2024). They infer the intricate connection of good and evil from the general theory of the interdependence of things. Accordingly, the reality of evil, considered as a blemish, indicates the imperfection, or limitation, of the creating entity, God. Divine imperfection means that God could not further improve the world after creating it. The initial fixed order of a balanced good–evil world cannot be altered to make the goods in the world exceed the evils in it.Footnote 5
The Chimakonams note that: To those who worship Him, He rewards good deeds with good, and punishes bad ones with evil. He brings the rain, but also brings the sun. He raises a forest only to blaze it down with fire. He gives a child to a mother and takes it the next day. He creates and destroys not just for the fun of it but for the overarching need to maintain the balance of good and evil… He is the harmony-God, and His ultimate concern is to balance the use of his good and evil relational capacities. (Chimakonam and Chimakonam Reference Chimakonam and Chimakonam2023, 334)
Thus, the imperfect harmony-God has inherent capacities to do evil. However, he is not a malevolent entity given that he seeks to maintain the harmony in the world to ensure the persistence of the world. The notion of harmony suggests that without this cosmic balance the world will be a worse world, or may not continue to exist. Amara Esther Chimakonam observes that ‘it might be argued that absolutely eliminating all evils would still not make the world a better place, for evil complements good… Some actions that seem to result in evil outcomes are also the same ones that would result in good outcomes’ (Chimakonam Reference Chimakonam2022, 32). It is easy to infer that the world will be worse off because the removal of the intricate balance means the obstruction of the evil-grounded possibilities that produce goods.
A legitimate question that the concept of harmonisation raises is the extent of the power of the harmony-God. Granted that this God does not possess the fullness of the omni-properties. Yet, it is not clear why he is able to reduce or increase good and evil in various locations in the world to maintain harmony while lacking the ability to make the world better overall. The Chimakonams may assert that a harmony-obsessed God will prefer a world with harmony (the good–evil balance), in which current evils are bearable, than a world without harmony, in which evils are excessive. They may suggest that the harmony-God, being limited, cannot prevent the emergence of the worse state once the good–evil balance is disturbed. Ultimately, their point is that, having done his best at creation time, the limited harmony-God cannot do more.
If limited God proponents have succeeded in exhibiting the superior explanatory power of the limitation thesis relative to the perfection thesis of Gyekye and Oduwole, the former appear to have understated the abilities of the limited God. Implicit in the broad limited God view is the belief that (the limited) God did his best at the moment of creating or designing the world,Footnote 6 as I have demonstrated with reference to Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams. However, a few limited God proponents like Fayemi and Ofuasia appear to suggest that God can do more than he has already done to reduce the suffering in the world, although they do not further pursue this line of thought. Fayemi (Reference Fayemi2012, 12) believes that the limited God bears responsibility for certain physical evils like natural disasters that inflict great harm on humans. Ofuasia is more ambiguous; he asserts that the limited God is able to act persuasively to ensure humans refrain from doing evil, although humans may decide to obey or disobey God’s directions (Ofuasia Reference Ofuasia2022a, 69). If God can persuade humans to avoid evil and humans do so in obedience to divine direction, it will appear that God is, in the process, reducing the evil in the world. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Ofuasia has not sufficiently clarified the status of persuasive divine action in relation to the reduction of the amount of evil in the world.
While I agree with the broad limitation thesis of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams, I go further still and assert that the sort of power they attribute to the limited God grants the deity, if he is assumed to exist, the capacity to do more by reducing the evil in the world. This claim sets my limited God view apart from the limited God views highlighted in this section. Ofuasia and Fayemi suggest that God can improve the world, but they do not pursue the matter further. In the next section, I will specifically argue that a limited God can be conceived as having enough power to intervene in the affairs of the world after creation to reduce the amount of evil in it. I will present my case from the perspective of consolationist metaphysics.
Can a limited God reduce the amount of evil in the world?
The thesis of limitation is presented by Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams in a way that suggests that the limited God cannot reduce the amount of evil in the world relative to the quantity of evil, that he cannot further improve the world. As already noted in section 2, Wiredu believes that God cannot do more than he has done on account of the necessity of physical and moral evil. One can infer this belief from the thought of the Chimakonams. The belief is implicit in Bewaji’s thought. Within the Chimakonams’ conceptual scheme, in particular, God has no obligation to reduce the amount of evil in the world. Instead, his task is maintaining the balance of good and evil in the world, such that if he does some absolute good in one location he restores the disturbed good–evil balance by doing some evil in another location. The rationale for this balancing act, as pointed out in the previous section, is the prevention of an eventual worse worldly state of affairs. One can infer from the stance of the Chimakonams that God does not reduce the amount of evil in the world.
In this section, I will show how a limited God, if we assume that he exists, can wield the power that he has to reduce the evil in the world and make it better. Note that the point about reducing evil is different from preventing the occurrence of evil in the world. Since evil happens necessarily as part of the structure of the world, the limited God cannot, ultimately, prevent the phenomenon of evil or eliminate it. His knowledge is not of the superlative kind that can predict the coming into being of all evils ahead of their occurrence, although he is well aware that the world he was creating in the beginning would be an imperfect world marred by evil. Here, I am asserting the capacity of a limited God to establish a cosmic order that depicts him not as a harmony-God but as a consolation God; that is, a God that tilts the good–evil balance in the world in favour of good.
The consolationist perspective
The philosophy of consolationism is a current in contemporary African philosophical thought that explores metaphysical, theological, ethical, and existentialist questions from a uniquely African perspective (see Agada Reference Agada2024). My focus in this section is the theological dimension of consolationism. Consolationism makes the basic claim that the universe exhibits the character of imperfection and incompleteness because it is animated by mood, a ubiquitous principle that expresses itself as yearning. Given the essence of mood as yearning, this eternally existing principle is imperfect and incomplete. Mood is the fundamental principle in the consolationist universe. It is posited as the first event in the universe and predates God. It animates the universe and constitutes the essence of all things. It is not a being (an entity); it is rather a principle, the source of being that entities actualise in varying degrees of completeness. In consolationist metaphysics, God is conceived as a being constituted by mood. Traditional theists like Gyekye, Oduwole, and Njoku assert that God created the world ex nihilo. According to them, nothing existed before God willed the world into being. In the consolationist perspective, God post-dates a pre-existing material, that is, mood. This principle has always existed and encompasses the universe as its animating principle. God emerges spontaneously in the mood-animated universe as the highest embodiment of mood. God is the first being in this universe, an entity that maximally embodies mood. This means that God is the entity most animated by mood. He manipulates this principle to acquire vast powers and knowledge. Yet, his capacities do not reach the levels of omnipotence and omniscience since mood-determined limitation defines his being. The uniqueness of God is his status as the first being endowed with will and intelligence in a mood-animated universe, an uncreated being that emerges spontaneously. I will shed more light on the creative capacity of this limited God in subsequent paragraphs.
The choice of the metaphysics of mood as a philosophical framework that can show how a limited God, if he exists, is able to improve the world follows from the capacity of this metaphysical framework to directly address two issues that the frameworks of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams overlook. (1) The concept of mood allows me to determine the possible qualities of the fundamental stuff of the universe that limits everything in the universe, including God. Thus, the concept of mood sheds light on the concept of necessity that limited God proponents invoke to account for the world’s imperfection. Wiredu does mention primordial matter as the universal limiting principle, but he does not explain the nature of this matter, nor does he show how it limits entities. I go further and explain how this stuff expresses itself as yearning, which makes it possible for the limited God to incrementally progress in power and improve the world. (2) The concept of mood accounts for the claim that the limited God, if he exists, is part of an interconnected and relational universe in which he intervenes to reduce the quantity of evil relative to the quantity of good in the world. Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams leverage Afro-relationality in claiming that evil is a necessary part of the furniture of the world (Bewaji Reference Bewaji1998; Wiredu Reference Wiredu1998) and serves as a complement of good (Chimakonam and Chimakonam Reference Chimakonam and Chimakonam2023). Positing the idea of mood accounts for the interconnectedness of all things in the universe since mood supplies the quality (yearning) that connects and inter-connects all things. Positing mood enables me to articulate a unique limited God view that presents the deity as an entity that acts in a way that justifies the powers that most limited God proponents grant to the deity. My limited God view, relying on the metaphysical framework of mood, asserts that the limited God can further improve the world after creating it.
At this juncture, a crucial question that one may entertain from an objector is the plausibility, justifiability, or even the truth of the concept of mood. The concept of mood belongs to a speculative metaphysical framework that now exists in the African theoretical philosophy literature (see Ibanga Reference Ibanga2022; Attoe Reference Attoe2022b; Ofuasia Reference Ofuasia and Agada2022b; Cordeiro-Rodrigues Reference Cordeiro-Rodrigues2023; Agada Reference Agada2024). It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the question of whether the concept is true or false. Instead, my aim in this article is to show how the concept of mood can justify the claim that the limited God, if he is assumed to exist, is powerful enough to reduce the evil in the world. Elsewhere, I anchored the plausibility of the concept of mood on its ability to account for, and reinforce, Afro-relationality, a widely held view among African philosophers. The concept of vital force is often proposed to account for Afro-relationality, the view that all things in the universe are interconnected and interdependent, from God who occupies the highest place in the hierarchy of being to seemingly inanimate things like rivers and rocks (see, for example, Attoe Reference Attoe2022a; Molefe and Maraganedzha Reference Molefe and Maraganedzha2023). If all things are interconnected and interrelated despite their discrete existence, there must be a principle that accounts for the connection. In the literature, this principle is often identified as the vital force, an immaterial stuff that animates everything in the universe (see, for example, Tempels Reference Tempels1959). However, the presentation of the vital force as immaterial raises the problem of how an immaterial thing can underlie physical entities. Consolationist metaphysics responds to this problem with the presentation of mood as a fundamental principle that exhibits itself as a mind–matter event, that which has both material and mentalistic/immaterial properties.
Accordingly, it is able to underlie both physical and immaterial entities. Thus, like the concept of vital force, the concept of mood answers the question of how things can be interconnected and interrelated. Not only does the metaphysical framework of mood explain how God, a mood-animated entity, is a part of the interconnected universe but it also establishes two points that set my limited God view apart from the view of other limited God proponents. First, the framework posits mood as a universal limiting principle that renders God a limited entity. Second, it defines the essence of mood as yearning and permits a conception of the deity as a being that increases incrementally in capacity within the bounds of limitation. Elsewhere, I have argued that God has an obligation to intervene in the affairs of the world to reduce evil (Agada Reference Agada2023). This article is different since it uniquely engages with the capacity of the limited God, if he exists, to reduce the quantity of evil in the world relative to the quantity of good. In this article, for the first time, I critically explore the idea of a mood-animated God who increases incrementally in power and is able to improve the world.
It must be noted that I do not set out to demonstrate the existence of the limited God, nor do I aim to empirically show how the quantity of good in the world exceeds the quantity of evil. Rather, I aim to demonstrate the plausibility of the claim that if a limited God exists, an assumption that stands out in the literature, he can be conceived as having sufficient power to improve the world after creating it.
As suggested earlier, mood is a fundamental principle that is posited as having always existed as yearning or becoming. Given its nature as yearning, the universe that it animates is a universe of yearning. This universe is one in the constant process of becoming. Specifically:
Mood is the most fundamental essence or feature of reality. This means that it is, such that existence cannot be conceived without it. It is what is most real, present everywhere and in all beings, directing conscious and unconscious behaviour in animate and inanimate things. According to this hypothesis, and I present it as a metaphysical speculation rather than scientific certainty, the building block of things is an event in which materiality and immateriality are implicated as moments of this fundamental reality. Mood is thus a prototype of body as well as mind. The mental and the bodily coexist in this essence as moments of reality that continually transgress their borders to constitute a dynamic unity. (Agada Reference Agada2022, 67)
It is noted further that:
[Mood] expresses itself in all things as yearning. Given its yearning essence, mood is incomplete and imperfect. Whatever it animates exhibits incompleteness. Accordingly, God is imperfect, for he is animated by mood. He is a consolation God… Just as the universe yearns in perpetuity for completeness without ever reaching this state, so does God yearn for perfection without ever attaining the omni-properties. He is called a consolation God because, notwithstanding his lack of the omni-properties, he is sufficiently powerful and knowledgeable to create an imperfect world. (Agada Reference Agada2024, 15–16)
Unpacking the above quotes will show how a limited God, conceived within the framework of consolationist metaphysics, can reduce the evil in the world after creating it, contra the stance of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams. I emphasised earlier that in the consolationist system, mood is posited to account for Afro-relationality and the imperfect character of the world. The assumption that it exists is the starting point of the demonstration of the capacity of the limited consolation God to reduce the evil in the world and improve it. If mood is constant becoming and, thus, incompleteness, if it constitutes all things, then an existing limited God must exhibit the imperfect character of mood. Since yearning indicates a lack, mood is itself incomplete and imperfect. Whatever it animates exhibits the quality of incompleteness. Moral and physical evils are dimensions of cosmic incompleteness.
The universe of mood ‘is an imperfectly realised form and cannot evolve an all-knowing, all-powerful God’ (Agada Reference Agada2022, 112). The God described in consolationist metaphysics is a consolation God who wields great powers and is capable of growth. He is capable of growth because, as a being constituted by mood, he actualises his yearning for perfection, the attainment of the omni-properties, in degrees within the bounds of limitation. As he increases in power, he effects remedial actions in the world that he could not have effected in the beginning. Entities in a mood-animated universe are active in proportion to the power and knowledge that they possess. Just as a human being increases their capacity to effect remedial actions in the world as they grow in knowledge and power, despite their finiteness, so does the limited God increase his remedial capacities as he grows in knowledge and power within the bounds of limitation. The uniqueness of the improver-God lies in his capacity to continually sustain the process of growth. In section 4, I will respond to the possible objection that the limited improver-God can deteriorate in knowledge and power.
This limited God is powerful because he is able to manipulate the fundamental principle of the universe after mastering its secrets. He is knowledgeable because he not only masters the secret of mood but also directs the course of mood and manipulates it to create worlds and give form to the universe.
God, the highest embodiment of mood, yearns for perfection, as I have persistently stressed. The goal of perfection is indicated by the yearning that defines mood; yet this goal cannot be reached since yearning embodies limitation. In other words, mood is a fundamental limiting principle. God yearns for the omni-properties but cannot attain them given that he is mood-animated and mood-determined. The divine consolation lies in God’s possession of sufficient power and knowledge that enable him to know how to create worlds and actually create them. The divine power and knowledge are vast even when they do not belong in the order of omnipotence and omniscience. His vast knowledge makes him a glorious being. The divine consolation also extends to his capacity to increase his power and knowledge within the confines of limitation. I use the term ‘consolation’ to underline the emergence and persistence of a state, or states, of affairs that is not ideal but yet serves the purpose of advancing, in various degrees, the objectives of yearning entities. What provides consolation, or that which is a consolation, is a compensation for the impossibility of the ideal condition.
While the consolation God is indeed a limited deity, he is yet a very powerful and knowledgeable being that understands the secrets of mood well enough to create a mood-animated world and increase his power and knowledge. Since this God is benevolent, he has the motivation to reduce the amount of evil in the world. Given that his power increases as he strives for perfection within the bounds of limitation, he is able to intervene in the affairs of the world and tilt the good–evil balance in favour of good. That is, he is capable of reducing the amount of evil in a specific location in the world without effecting a corresponding reduction in the amount of good in a different location. By acting as a consolation God rather than as a harmony-God, the limited God makes the world better post-creation. While the notion of consolation rules out perfection, it marks yearning as the search for a better state of affairs. The consolation God is not powerful and knowledgeable enough to bring about an ideal state of affairs for creatures. But his expandable power and knowledge, within the bounds of universal limitation, are sufficient to bring about a better state of affairs that compensates for the impossibility of the ideal or perfect state of affairs. The betterment of the world consists in the consolation God increasing the amount of goods without proportionately increasing the amount of evils (or reducing the amount of evils without proportionately reducing the amount of goods). With the unpacking of the concept of mood and the presentation of the limited God as a consolation God, it becomes clear why the iterations of the limited God view presented by Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams cannot claim that the limited God is able to further improve the world post-creation. The restriction of divine agency in the thought of these philosophers is loosened in the consolationist framework that presents a less rigidly determined universe in which entities are capable of growth. The capacity for growth is proportional to the powers that entities wield. Since the powers of the limited consolation God are vast, he continually grows within the bounds of limitation and effects remedial actions in the world, being a benevolent entity. Accordingly, he does not have to impotently look at the world that he created, as Wiredu and Bewaji’s metaphysical framework implies. He also does not merely sustain the good–evil balance in the world, as the Chimakonams assert. Instead, he exercises the powers at his disposal by either increasing goods in the world without increasing evils or decreasing evils in the world without decreasing goods.
Objections and replies
A possible objection could go like this: if the limited (consolation) God is an entity that improves the world, there is more reason to doubt the existence of this God relative to a limited God that cannot or does not improve the world. The objector will point out that I set out to demonstrate that the reality of evil in the world makes it more likely that God, if he exists, is a limited being rather than a perfect entity. The rationale of this objection is that it is not obvious that the world is improving. If the existing world shows no sign of improvement, then the limited improver-God is unlikely to exist, Accordingly, the non-improvement version of the limited God view advanced by Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams is more plausible. In responding to this objection, it is necessary to very briefly restate the limited God thesis that I have articulated in this article. Since mood is posited as perpetual becoming, the rigid determinism implicit in the systems of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams is absent in the consolationist system. Thus, the consolation God, who is constituted by mood, is capable of advancing progressively in power, knowledge, and goodness within the bounds of limitation. It seems more likely that the world is improving instead of it not improving. When we look around us, there is prima facie evidence that the world is not deteriorating or stagnating and that the quantity of goods in the world may exceed, even if slightly, the quantity of evils. It must be noted once again that the claim that there is no evidence that goods exceed evils in the world is an empirical statement whose confirmation or refutation will require painstaking empirical investigations that are beyond the scope of this work.
Nevertheless, it is plausible that most people, or, at least, a small majority, will acknowledge that on the whole there are, at the very least, slightly more good things happening to them than bad things. Philosophers of religion like Plantinga (Reference Plantinga1977) and Swinburne (Reference Swinburne1998) have argued that on balance the lives that we live are good, with the evil we encounter necessary conditions of the goods we have. While articulating his free will and greater good theodicy, Swinburne describes an interesting thought experiment to buttress his view that there are reasons to believe that we value the world the way it is because life itself is objectively good, such that it can be argued that the goods in the world outweigh the evils. He invites us to imagine that we possess a machine with a button that we can press to become unconscious whenever we feel pain or boredom (considered as an evil). The period of unconsciousness may last for one hour or two hours, during which we also act as if we are conscious. This means that when we regain consciousness, we can recall what happened in our moments of unconsciousness. We can keep pressing the button until we find those states of unconsciousness that we consider pleasant. However, pressing the button will reduce the actual periods of consciousness in our lives given that actual periods lost in our moments of unconsciousness cannot be recovered (Swinburne Reference Swinburne1998, 246).
According to Swinburne, most people will refrain from pressing the button frequently because they value their status as consciously existing beings, which makes a case for life being objectively good regardless of the evils that we encounter. We are unlikely to consider the condition of existing as conscious entities intrinsically good if the quantity of evils in the world exceeds the quantity of goods. Without delving into an elaborate discussion of Swinburne’s theodicy, the point he seeks to make is that our personal experiences give us cause to rationally believe that goods (in particular the great good of a morally active free will) outweigh the evils in the world.
It seems to me that if there are more evils than goods in the world, human life will be so intolerable that more people will opt for suicide (cf. Swinburne Reference Swinburne1998, 247). This view, of course, does not discountenance the reality of a great deal of evil in the world. One can adopt a less sunny view of life and charge that I have underestimated the reality of evil; one may point out the staggering levels of poverty and violence, for example, in the world. Yet, it does not seem to be the case that vast swathes of humanity are dying from starvation even as one can assert that governments, charities, non-governmental organisations, and individuals around the world, as instruments of a powerful and benevolent creator-deity, are working to reduce poverty, bring down the level of global violence, and give cause for millions to have hope in the future. This hope itself can contribute to individuals’ positive assessment of subjective well-being.
There may be wars, starvation, and mass murders in many parts of the world, but this condition does not exist at uniform levels of intensity in most parts of the world. It does not appear to be the case that the number of children and adults who die from starvation equals or exceeds the number of children and adults who have access to food. Scientific progress is making life better for humankind even as the benefits of science appear to outweigh its dangers (e.g., the production of weapons of mass destruction that threaten human existence). We can go on and on. Most people will readily agree that the quality of life today is better than what it was a thousand years ago in terms of the enjoyment of good health, access to technology, longevity, and so on. My point is that the claim that the world is improving, that there are more goods in the world than evils, is more plausible than the claim that it is deteriorating or stagnating. The objector may quickly assert that the progress in the world is not necessarily the handiwork of the limited consolation God. Again, I respond that the bone of contention at this juncture is the plausibility of the view that the existing world shows signs of improvement, which lends support to my improvement version of the limited God contra the non-improvement version. I will address the issue of whether the improvement in the world can be attributed to the limited God in a later paragraph.
Concerning the objection that it is not clear that the limited consolation God exists, I must point out an important motivation for proposing an improver-God, the consolation God, contra the harmony-God, for example. The limited God proponents I discussed in section 2 concede that God is a vastly powerful entity without adequately justifying the powers that he has. They describe a God who does not appear to possess the capacity that they attribute to him. I set out to show that the God described in the limited God literature can be conceived as an entity that wields the power attributed to him by improving the world. The question of the actual existence of the limited (consolation) God is very much secondary to the demonstration of the conceivability of the limited (consolation) God improving the world, if he is assumed to exist. I showed in section 3 that improvement is conceivable once we pivot from the rigidly deterministic metaphysical frameworks of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams to the consolationist framework. I responded earlier that asserting the improvability of the world does not lead one to the conclusion that the limited (consolation) God does not exist since the claim that there is improvement in the world is more plausible than the non-improvement claim.
The objector may point out that even if there is improvement in the world, it is not clear that the assumed improvement is attributable to the limited God. Now, I started my defence of the improvement thesis with the fundamental assumption that the limited God exists and wields vast powers, including the powers of a creator-deity. There is a way of arguing for the rationality of the belief that the improvement in the world is caused by the limited consolation God. If one accepts that the improver-God is as powerful as the limited God proponents present him, the deity can be conceived as the intelligent mind directing the progress in the world. He controls the actions of human beings and directs the course of history in the exercise of his powers. Note that, in the literature, this limited God is presented as the creator, or designer, of the world. Since he is vastly, but not perfectly, powerful, he aligns events across the world, in all epochs, in a way that translates to the progress we see in the world. Since he is vastly, but not perfectly, knowledgeable, he can predict positive outcomes for humankind and the world and exercise the power that he possesses in bringing about a great number of these positive outcomes. Or, at the very least, he will ensure that the actualised positive outcomes exceed the negative outcomes, even if marginally. This feat is enough to make a better world. Since he is vastly, but not perfectly, benevolent, he has a moral interest in actualising the positive outcomes for the good of creatures. He pursues this moral interest by deploying the power and knowledge that he possesses to direct the course of history. Still, it is possible for the sceptic to continue to sustain doubt about the limited God being the cause of the improvement in the world. Yet, it seems clear that if the limited consolation God exists, he can be conceived as a world improver.
The objector may persist and wonder why the consolation God cannot materialise physically and be seen reducing the evils in the world. After all, the powers attributed to him appear sufficient to bring about his materialisation. I respond that the consolation God may have a good reason for not materialising physically. It may be that it is unworthy of divine majesty for the creator of the world to mingle physically with creatures and oversee their daily actions.
The objector may wonder why the consolation God has to intervene to reduce evil in the world given that he is ab initio limited. The objector may point out that the existing world, with all its features, may be the best possible world that a limited God can create. As I have previously suggested, this objection may apply to the limited God of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams but not the consolation God. The existing world is not the best possible world given its imperfection and the limited status of its creator. Additionally, the consolation God is not a static entity in terms of growth potentials. Since he can acquire more powers and knowledge within the bounds of limitation (analogous to how the remedial capacities of a human agent enlarge with the acquisition of additional powers and knowledge), the world he created in the beginning is not his best world. A mood-animated world is in the process of becoming; that is, it can be bettered although not perfectible. However, a fuller discussion of the applicability of the idea of the best possible world to the African limited God view is beyond the scope of this work.
One may ask whether the consolation God’s capacity for growth entails his capacity for deterioration. If yes, there is the possibility of a worse world instead of a better world. The point is that as God deteriorates in power and knowledge, his capacity to reduce evil diminishes. I respond that God becomes incrementally powerful but not powerless. Note that he is a being that began to exist and was not created by any entity. As I have previously stressed, mood is not an entity but an animating principle. God, however, is an entity, whose nature is informed by mood, precisely the reason for divine limitation. His spontaneous emergence as the first being in the universe, one vastly powerful and knowledgeable, indicates an inherent capacity for self-perpetuation. An intelligent agent that began to exist uncreated possesses the power and knowledge required to perpetuate itself forever and continually improve within the bounds of limitation.
Conclusion
In this article, I highlighted the failure of perfect God theists to reconcile the idea of a perfect God with the reality of evil, which motivates limited God proponents to advance the claim that the limited God view better accounts for the reality of evil. I identified the non-improvement claim of Wiredu, Bewaji, and the Chimakonams as untenable from the perspective of consolationist metaphysics. Implicit in this claim is the belief that the limited God did his best at creation time and cannot do more to reduce the amount of evil in the world. I argued that it is possible to conceive the limited God as a being that yearns for perfection in an incomplete universe. I asserted that such a God is properly a consolation God who is powerful and knowledgeable enough to improve himself within the bounds of limitation and reduce the amount of evil in the world. A future work will explore in detail the question of whether the existing world is the best possible world that a limited God can create.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
Financial support
This research received no external funding.
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