If there is a good God, the only way to account for evil is to trace it, ultimately, to an eternally existing evil spirit, according to some great world religions. All religions that espouse this doctrine are forms of religious dualism. The species of religious dualism that Christian theologians have traditionally been most concerned with is Manichaeism. But Manichaeism was a gnostic form of a much older dualist religion, Zoroastrianism. While the followers of Mani held that matter (darkness) comes from the evil essence, and taught that the only way to achieve salvation is through severe ascetic practices that would separate the soul (light) from the body imprisoning it, the Zoroastrians held that matter was created by God, that it is neither evil nor the source of evil, and that to reject matter and the material world is an affront to God.Footnote 1 Though the Zoroastrians were not hedonists, and though they believed that moral and spiritual goods are higher than material goods and sensuous pleasures, they did not think that it is per se wrong to enjoy sensual pleasure or the beauty of the material world.Footnote 2
We believe that Zoroastrian dualism deserves much greater attention than it typically receives: even theists who in the end reject a full-blown dualism can benefit from its study. However, two powerful families of objections have stood in the way of such study. The first includes objections that religious dualisms misunderstand the nature of God. The second includes objections that religious dualisms misunderstand the nature of evil (and, hence, of the devil). For Zoroastrianism to be given the attention it deserves and for its insights to be made more widely accessible, these objections to it must be examined and, to the extent possible, cleared away.
In this paper we will: (1) present the basic tenets of Zoroastrian dualism; (2) argue that objections to the Zoroastrian conception of God are less strong than typically imagined; (3) argue that objections to the Zoroastrian conception of the devil (and evil) are less strong than typically imagined; and (4) offer some brief concluding thoughts.
We focus on Zoroastrian dualism because we believe that it is much stronger than Manichaeism, its main competitor. But many (not all) of the defences we develop in discussing objections to Zoroastrianism are generalizable, and could be applied to kinds of religious dualism other than Zoroastrianism.
Basic tenets of Zoroastrian dualism
A deeply religious person wishes to adore only a being truly divine. That is why Plato (famously) said that the Greek poets told lies about the gods and it is also why, long before him, the prophet Elijah condemned the polytheism of the Philistines as ‘idolatrous’.
Though many know of Plato's criticism of the popular religion of his culture, and of Elijah's denunciation of the religion of the Philistines, few know that Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion, had – long before Elijah or Plato – denounced several of the ancient gods of the Indo-Iranian pantheon, deeming them unworthy of worship.Footnote 3 Indeed, he denounced them as demons in league with the supreme evil spirit, the source of all evil, Angra Mainyu.Footnote 4 He was particularly opposed to the war-god Indra because of Indra's amoral character and the violence perpetrated in his name. Zoroaster's emphasis on the goodness of the divine led him to elevate the ancient sky-god Varuna, a god of righteousness and mercy, to the rank of perfectly good creator-god; he named this god Ahura Mazda (Lord Wisdom).
Zoroaster's tendency towards dualism becomes fully developed in a ‘high theology’ that blossomed hundreds of years after his death, a theology that retained most of Zoroaster's own teachings, changing them mostly (but not wholly) through augmentation and enhanced precision of thought. This high theology was influenced by Greek and Indian philosophical speculation and methodology. Scholars do not know exactly when the high theology began to develop. But it certainly was in existence during the Sassanian dynasty (224–651 CE). Shāpūr I, the third member of the Sassanian dynasty, summoned religious thinkers and philosophers from lands as far apart as Greece and India, and had them dispute concerning which religion is true; at the end of these disputes, Shāpūr determined that the Zoroastrian priests had defeated the proponents of other religions, and decreed that a purified Zoroastrianism would be the official religion of his empire.Footnote 5 In all probability it was during the reign of the Sassanian dynasty that the Avesta (Zoroastrian Bible) and the Zand (commentary on the Avesta) were first committed to writing.Footnote 6 Only about one-quarter of that written Avesta is extant,Footnote 7 but much of the content of the lost portions can be known from summaries of them contained in the Dēnkard (Acts of Religion), a ninth-century work by various authors that incorporates a good deal of the high theology of the Sassanian period.Footnote 8 Other Pahlavi (middle Persian) works, such as the Bundahishn, are redactions of the Zand on lost Avestan texts.Footnote 9 Finally, still other ninth- and tenth-century texts were entirely new, though these works were certainly informed by the theology of the Sassanian period.
For our purposes, the most important feature of the high theology of Zoroastrianism is its consensus with regard to the attributes of the supreme lord, Ahura Mazda, and the attributes of the demon spirit Angra Mainyu. In explicating this consensus we lean heavily on the Bundahishn (Book of the Primal Creation),Footnote 10 the Dādistān-ī Dīnīk (Religious Opinions) of the ninth-century Zoroastrian high priest, Mānūśkīhar,Footnote 11 the Dīnā-ī Mainög-ī Khirad (Opinions of the Spirit of Wisdom),Footnote 12 an anonymous work of a pious Zoroastrian layman, and, above all, on the Sikand-Gümanīk Vigār (Doubt-Dispelling Explanation)Footnote 13 by a learned ninth-century philosophical layman named Mardān-farukh. Mardān-farukh's work concisely summarizes, and even expands, the logical arguments given in the Dēnkard for the rigid dualism of the Sassanian period. We also rely on the Gāthās themselves (composed by Zoroaster), which of course were the basis for the high theology.Footnote 14 Though the Dēnkard is the greatest work of Zoroastrian high theology, it is vast and chaotic, and much of it has been lost. We use it only sparingly.
Ahura Mazda
By piecing together things said in the Zoroastrian religious texts and theological writings just mentioned, a description of the most important properties of Ahura Mazda – the properties in virtue of which he is worthy of worship – can be formulated: Ahura Mazda is an uncreated and eternal spirit, who is perfectly good, perfectly wise, and all-powerful, and who created, immediately or mediately, all other good things.
Ahura Mazda is uncreated and eternal: he does not depend for his existence on any being external to himself, and he always was, is, and always will be. Whether or not the Zoroastrians meant to teach that he necessarily exists is a difficult question. The Zoroastrian Iranians, like their cousins the Hindu Indians, did not (even in their period of high theology) have an explicit modal theory, though some spoke of certain things as being impossible and others as being necessary. In any event, because they conceived of Ahura Mazda as being infinitely perfect and as being the ground and source of all other good things, it seems that if confronted with the question, they probably would have answered that the existence of Ahura Mazda does flow, so to speak, from his absolute perfection, though they never explicitly stated this.
Ahura Mazda is a spirit: he is a person, the Zoroastrians held, a substance possessed of thoughts, desires, volitions, and so on, and his personal essence, that in virtue of which he is a person, is not able to be sensed and does not causally depend on anything that is able to be.
Ahura Mazda is perfectly good. Broadly speaking, the Zoroastrians meant by this that he is possessed of every good-making property to the highest degree, including the properties of knowledge, power, life, and so on. More narrowly speaking, they meant that Ahura Mazda is benevolent, loving, truthful, just, fair, and so on. Though Zoroaster seemed to have emphasized Ahura Mazda's justice in rewarding the good and punishing the wicked (without, however, denying his benevolence and mercy), the later tradition emphasized his love more strongly: at the height of its development, Zoroastrianism taught that Ahura Mazda will eventually save all his creation. No human person will suffer forever in hell; all will, at the end of time, be reunited with Ahura Mazda and every other human being in an everlasting kingdom of love and joy. The Zoroastrian high theology even teaches that Ahura Mazda would save the devil himself, if that were possible.
Ahura Mazda is perfectly wise. He knows what was, is, and will be. He knows the inmost thoughts and motivations of human beings, and can judge hearts. He also knows the future, unlike his foe, and is certain that he will be able to defeat the devil and all the forces of evil at the end of time. But the wisdom of Ahura Mazda cannot be equated simply with knowing all things, for it is a moral attribute and, in a way, the ground of all his moral attributes. Ahura Mazda knows what is truly worthwhile both for himself and all other possible beings. He is not deluded by self-centred greed, irrational envy, or wrath.
Ahura Mazda is all-powerful: he can do whatever is absolutely possible and can accomplish, eventually, whatever he proposes to do. We will attempt to explain later what is meant by saying that Ahura Mazda can do whatever is absolutely possible. His ability to accomplish what he proposes to do will, for most believers, be of greater purport. As a number of philosophers have noted, one who believes in a good God is typically not concerned with such highly abstract questions as whether or not God can make round squares, or stones heavier than he can lift, but rather with whether or not he has the power to fulfil his loving and lovely promises. It does seem to make sense to say that no being could be divine who was absolutely powerless to effect anything, no matter how benevolent his desires, but it is less clear that it makes sense to say that a perfectly good being is not divine because he cannot do whatever it is logically possible to do, so long as he makes substantive promises and can bring about whatever he promises, such as that all his creatures will eventually be free from evil. Indeed, Ahura Mazda might seem to some to be more powerful from a religious point of view than a God who cannot help but leave a number of people in hell forever, since Ahura Mazda ardently wills to save all created persons and is eventually able to do so.
Ahura Mazda created all good things: every good substance and quality is at least ultimately traceable to him. For though rational creatures can themselves effect certain things and can freely choose to do what is right, every good substance was either directly created by Ahura Mazda, or was created by a being one of whose causal ancestors was created and given the power to create by Ahura Mazda himself. The Zoroastrians used many names to refer to Ahura Mazda, but the most important of these, the one that represented to them the very heart of his essence, was probably Spenta, which means both ‘holy’ and ‘bounteous’. The creation of good things the Zoroastrians held to perfect God himself, not in the sense that he gains any further good from creatures besides their very creation, but in the sense that in creating he actualizes or fulfils his own essence, becoming actually what he was always in his essence potentially: the father of the good creation.
But, according to the Zoroastrians, the world is not, at present, the way God intended it to be. They felt that the only way to explain this is to suppose that the world is currently assailed by an evil spirit whom God did not create but whom he will render powerless at the end of time.
Angra Mainyu
What account, then, does Zoroastrian high theology provide of the nature and attributes of Ahura Mazda's evil parallel, Angra Mainyu (‘spirit of evil’ or ‘spirit of destruction’)? Again drawing on the various Zoroastrian writings enumerated above, we can begin with the following basic description: Angra Mainyu is an uncreated and eternal spirit who is essentially evil, is possessed of great but limed knowledge, is not at all wise, has maximal destructive power, and is the ultimate source of all evil, whether moral or physical.
We set up these descriptors so they parallel those used in connection with Ahura Mazda. But we must begin our discussion of the attributes of Angra Mainyu by noting an important asymmetry in the sense in which the two ‘spirits’ exist. The more subtle of the Zoroastrian thinkers held that, though the devil is real, he is not exactly a being. The devil is not, of course, nothing, but he does not have the full-fledged being of God and his creation. There are principles of being or realities that are not beings.
Some philosophers would regard this as incoherent, but the great Indian philosopher Śaṅkara held that ajñāna, the principle of obscuration which conceals the light of Brahman and creates the illusion of the world of change and diversity, is neither a being nor a non-being, neither existing nor not-existing.Footnote 15 Aquinas held the same doctrine with respect to prime matter.Footnote 16 Karl Barth held that demons are the issue of the ‘nothingness’ that threatens God's creation, and that is neither a mere absence or privation of being, nor a fully fledged being itself.Footnote 17 He held that the doctrine that the devils are fallen angels was ‘one of the bad dreams of the older dogmatics’,Footnote 18 and did not hide in terror from the accusation that his doctrine could be labelled a form of ‘dualism’.Footnote 19
Many thinkers have believed in the reality of ‘entities’ that do not exist (e.g. prime matter, universals, negations, etc.), and so the teaching of the great Zoroastrian thinkers that the devil, while real, does not exist, need not be interpreted to mean that they denied the principle of the excluded middle; it could rather be taken to mean that they denied that ‘being’ is univocal. Nonetheless, there is something about their insistence that the devil does not really or truly exist, which shows that they, like Augustine, understood evil as being primarily destructive and negative in nature. They disagreed with Augustine, however, in holding that evil not only has a ‘positive’ aspect as being the contrary opposite of good, but also has an essence and an efficient causal power.
This elusive yet intriguing doctrine – that the devil, though real, is not strictly speaking a being – deserves much further study. As we will see, at least some of the major objections to religious dualisms appear to be predicated on the belief that dualist thinkers assert the existence of an essentially evil being, the devil. But if the philosophical Zoroastrians did not assert the existence of an essentially evil being, then the wind immediately goes out of the sails of most of the objections to their version of dualism. At the same time, though, it becomes more difficult to make the case that Zoroastrian dualism is fundamentally inconsistent with an Abrahamic monotheism. (For some the consistency of the religious traditions would be welcome; for others, not.)
Angra Mainyu is uncreated – his existence, insofar as he exists, does not depend on anything else. And he is eternal. However, this does not necessarily mean that he will be present to the material world so long as the material world exists. For while Ahura Mazda is manifest in the material world through creation, Angra Mainyu has no corresponding material. Angra Mainyu subsists in this world, living parasitically, as it were, inside the people who harbour him through their own wickedness. In opting for evil, wicked human beings opt to provide haven for Angra Mainyu.
Angra Mainyu is essentially evil: his motivations are all entirely evil. He is motivated by a hatred of what is good and he has an ardent desire to destroy it. For the Zoroastrians, an essentially evil being must be spiritual. Now it is true that the Zoroastrians spoke of beasts of prey (which have no spiritual element) as evil since such beasts survive by killing other animals in cruel ways. But they held that such beings are perversions of good species of animal who were not originally created to survive by cruel killing. The devil is wholly the cause of such perversions of good species of animal since animals do not have free will and cannot co-operate in their own corruption, and these species will be returned to their original purity at the end of time when the devil is defeated.
Angra Mainyu has limited knowledge: though he knows more than any human being, he does not know everything, as Ahura Mazda does. He certainly does know much about the structure of the world Ahura Mazda created; enough, indeed, to know how to damage it greatly, but he does not know the future and cannot read all the thoughts and desires of human beings. The great plans of Ahura Mazda are closed to him, and he is unable to foresee much that Ahura Mazda will do to defeat him in the end. Angra Mainyu is not at all wise: he has no understanding of what he or anyone else ought to pursue. All of his desires and motivations are irrational and wrong – they bring not only ruin to others but to himself as well. Thus, the great knowledge the devil has does not include a knowledge of what is really valuable or worthwhile.
Angra Mainyu has maximal destructive power: he has unsurpassable power to destroy; indeed, he is the very root of all destruction. But he cannot unmake the very essences of Ahura Mazda's creatures; those essences are beyond his grasp. Further, though he can corrupt and rip things apart, he cannot destroy matter itself or the soul. He can introduce disease into living organisms and ultimately cause their death by separating their souls from their bodies, he can cause them great pain, and he can warp the desires of human beings, turning them from good to evil. He can pervert non-human animals (he does this by altering their material constitution and their instincts). But the souls of humans he is unable to destroy, and the Zoroastrians believed that all humans will eventually see through the lies Angra Mainyu has used to seduce them and will turn away from evil. At this point Angra Mainyu will be rendered inert: he will be unable to destroy. The more mythical texts say that his head will be cut off; the less mythical texts simply say that he will in the end become completely powerless. The most subtle of the Zoroastrians held that, though the devil is a spiritual reality, his ‘faculties’ are really distinct from his ‘substance’ and will be separated from him at the end of time by his own ‘children’, the demons, thus rendering him ‘dead’ though not unreal.
Angra Mainyu is the ultimate source of all evil: the moral and physical evil in this world can ultimately be traced to him. All death and disease in the world not caused by the free actions of humans are caused directly by him, or by the demons he has spawned, or by his corruption of good non-rational creatures of Ahura Mazda. And bad free actions of humans are in some sense due to the devil's temptations.
Objections to the Zoroastrian concept of God
We cannot emphasize too strongly that the attributes of Ahura Mazda are the qualities in virtue of which he was deemed worthy of worship. We think that the reasons Zoroaster had for supposing that Indra is not divine, and for elevating Varuna to the rank of the supreme God, can be used to ground a plausible general definition of what it is to be God:
If a person is worthy of worship, it would be rational to love that person for the person's own sake not only more than any other being, including one's self, but even more than all other lesser good beings combined. This formal definition of God does not flesh out the attributes a being must have in order to be worthy of worship, though it does imply that such a being must be good. The problem with definitions that do flesh out these attributes is that they often simply beg the question against those who have a slightly different conception of what it is to be God. Perhaps some divine-making attributes are perspicuous, but it does not follow that all of them are.
Given this general understanding of what it is to be God, what are the major objections to the specifically Zoroastrian conception of God?
Objection from divine power
One of the most common objections to religious dualism of any sort is that it puts intolerable limits on divine power, limits so great that no rational person could regard such a supposedly divine being as God. More specifically:
(1) Zoroastrianism holds that the being who is supremely perfect and worthy of worship is not all-powerful. (Ahura Mazda cannot prevent the devil [or the evil principle] from attacking his [or its] creation either by changing his [its] nature or by annihilating him [it].)
(2) But any being who is supremely perfect and worthy of worship is all-powerful.
So,
(3) Zoroastrianism is false.
The ninth-century Zoroastrian apologist, Mardān-farukh, was aware of this objection to Zoroastrian dualism (or something similar to it) since it was insisted on by the Muslim critics of dualism. His response to it is as follows:
The omnipotence of Ohrmazd [middle Persian for ‘Ahura Mazda’] affects all that which can be and which is determined. As for what cannot be, there is no question of being able or not able to do it. Were I to say that Ohrmazd the Creator had the power to restrain Ahriman [middle Persian for Angra Mainyu] from the wickedness which is his constant nature (this would mean that) it is possible to turn that devilish nature into a divine one, and the divine into a devilish; and that darkness can be made light, and light darkness. Those who say that essence itself can be changed, know nothing of essence, and account wolf and reptile as beneficent.Footnote 20
Mardān-farukh is here appealing to an axiom accepted by many non-dualistic monotheists. One might state the axiom this way: Power respects what is possible. So an all-powerful being will be able to do whatever is intrinsically possible but not what is intrinsically impossible. It is contradictory to hold that anyone can do or make what it is intrinsically impossible to do or make. But one might accept this axiom and still object to Mardān-farukh by insisting that an all-powerful being could destroy any being he wanted to, including any being whose existence is not dependent on him.
One way to respond on behalf of the Zoroastrian is to note that this line of attack supposes that all non-contradictory states of affairs are absolutely possible, where by ‘absolutely possible’ is meant ‘actual in at least one possible world’. Though many would hold that this is the correct notion of what is absolutely possible, and that an omnipotent being could bring about any non-contradictory state of affairs, others would hold that, though a state of affair's being logically contradictory is a bar to its being absolutely possible, it is not the only bar. In other words, some would say that there are certain non-contradictory states of affairs that are, nevertheless, absolutely impossible, since they violate some synthetic necessary truth.
Many philosophers before the time of Hume held there are synthetic necessary truths, and that the following are absolutely impossible states of affairs, not because they are logically contradictory, but because they violate a synthetic necessary truth:
(a) A thought's existing without any thinker who has it.
(b) A morally indifferent act of hating God.
(c) A body's being in two places at once.
(d) A body's being red all over and green all over at the same time.
(e) Something's coming to be without any cause.
The above seem to us to be examples of states of affairs one might reasonably take to be absolutely impossible, even though none of them involves an explicit contradiction. They go against the natures of things. For instance, one might think it is part of the nature of a thought to be a quality and that qualities, by their nature, must exist in a substance. At any rate, many philosophers have taken it to be a necessary truth that thoughts are qualities; and if thoughts are necessarily qualities then, of course, they must be qualities of something. The point, however, is that it does not seem to be an analytic truth that thoughts are qualities, and if that is true, then it doesn't seem to be an analytic truth that thoughts must exist in a thinker.
If (a)–(e) might reasonably be taken to be examples of absolutely impossible states of affairs, we fail to see why the following could not also be taken to be an example of one:
(f) An uncreated being's being destroyed.
Why might one reasonably take (f) to be an example of an impossible state of affairs? Presumably because an uncreated being exists without any dependence on anything else. Assuming this is so, one might think that nothing could rob such a being of its existence – in other words, the very nature of such a being makes it invulnerable to corruption or annihilation. The Christian tradition has, in fact, supposed that this is true of God himself, but has denied that any other being could be similarly uncreated and so independent. But the point we wish to make here is just this: if it is reasonable to suppose that (f) is absolutely impossible, then it does not seem correct to hold that the being the Zoroastrians worship as God is not omnipotent, since even an omnipotent being cannot bring about the absolutely impossible. (It might be objected that only God could be an uncreated being, but that is simply a different objection to Zoroastrianism than the one we are at present concerned with.)
The critic of Zoroastrianism would perhaps reply that the very notion of the absolutely impossible we have been using should be abandoned as the criterion of omnipotence. In other words, instead of supposing that an omnipotent being can bring about every state of affairs that does not violate any purportedly necessary synthetic truth, one should suppose that an omnipotent being can bring about every logically possible state of affairs, where a logically possible state of affairs is simply a state of affairs that entails no logical contradiction. Since an uncreated being's being destroyed does not involve any logical contradiction, it follows from this definition of omnipotence that an omnipotent being could bring it about that any uncreated being, simply insofar as it is uncreated (i.e. not dependent for its existence on anything else), cease to exist, so long, that is, as such an uncreated being does not have some other feature that would make it logically impossible for it to cease to exist (i.e. that it is not only an uncreated being but a necessary one).
Why think, though, that the correct definition of an omnipotent being is ‘a being that can bring about any logically possible state of affairs’? We suppose the best reason is just this: an omnipotent being is, surely, a being that can bring about whatever is absolutely possible, and the best way to delimit the absolutely possible is solely by reference to the non-contradictory. If one starts to delimit it not only by reference to what is not logically contradictory but also by reference to certain purportedly necessary synthetic truths, then the only criterion one will have for what is absolutely possible will ultimately reduce to one's own subjective intuitions about what is or is not absolutely possible.
To illustrate this, consider a person who held that (a)–(e) are absolutely impossible but who rejected the claim that (f) is absolutely impossible. Could one convict such a person of being logically inconsistent or even of being irrational in some way short of being logically inconsistent? It is hard to see how. But then it is hard to see how one could convict a person of being logically inconsistent or irrational if she accepted (a)–(d) as being absolutely impossible, but rejected (e), and so on.
As plausible as this way of conceiving of omnipotence is, it is seriously problematic. To illustrate, consider the following proposition:
O Any divine being (any being worthy of worship) is omnipotent.
No matter how one defines ‘omnipotent’ it seems clear that O is not an analytic truth. But the person who objects to Zoroastrianism based on the argument from divine power must hold that O is a necessary truth. So, the person who rejects Zoroastrianism based on the argument from divine power has to hold both that there are no non-analytic necessary truths (since we are delimiting the absolutely possible solely by reference to the non-contradictory), and that at least one non-analytic truth, namely ‘Any divine being is omnipotent’, is necessary. This will not do. Nor will it do for the upholder of the argument from divine power to suggest that the concept ‘God’ includes the concept ‘omnipotent’, for that will beg the question against anyone who believes in a God who is not omnipotent, or not omnipotent in the sense of being able to bring about any logically possible state of affairs. One can define terms any way one wants but that will not answer difficult philosophical questions. For instance, one cannot prove that everything that comes to be has a cause by simply defining ‘what comes to be’ as an ‘effect’; to argue this way against Kant or Hume will produce a Pyrrhic victory.
The moral of this is just that substantive claims about what properties are or are not divine-making must ultimately rest on intuitions concerning what properties it would be valuable to have. The Zoroastrians clearly privilege God's goodness over his power and sovereignty, and hence, while not denying that God has great power, are at least implicitly forced to deny that he has the power to bring about every logically possible state of affairs. That is something many non-dualistic monotheists find simply intolerable, and so (at least in the eyes of the Zoroastrian) they limit God's goodness in order to privilege his power and sovereignty.
This does not mean, however, that at the end of the day all the Zoroastrian can do in response to objections to his understanding of divine power is dig in his heels with respect to his non-negotiable intuitions concerning divine-making properties. For he could appropriate Suarez's theory of the nature of action as further support for his insistence that God could not destroy, by fiat, an uncreated being. Suarez held that all action is ordered to the production of something and is only destructive per accidens. Further, when God creates, according to Suarez, he instils being into that which did not exist before, and he continues to sustain a being he has created by the very same act with which he first created it. The preservation of a thing is nothing but its continued creation. God could not, even if he willed to, annihilate anything by an action; he could only do it by ceasing to sustain it in being.Footnote 21 So not even God could destroy something he did not create. It seems to us that a Zoroastrian could make use of Suarez's doctrine to provide a reason for thinking that (f) is absolutely impossible.
The first objection to Zoroastrianism, the objection from divine power, does not seem to us to be restricted to the version of Zoroastrianism that holds that the devil really exists. For whether the devil really exists or not, there is, on any Zoroastrian view, fundamental evil in the world that God cannot eradicate by fiat – either the devil, or an evil principle of being or reality. (Of course many non-dualist monotheists hold that God cannot, by an exercise of his power, eradicate moral evil.) However, all of the subsequent objections we will consider are best regarded as objections to the version of Zoroastrianism that holds that the devil does really exist. For, as will become evident, if they are taken to be objections to a Zoroastrianism that holds the devil does not exist, they can all too easily be refuted.
Objection from divine creativity
In our discussion of objections to the Zoroastrian conception of God we have thus far focused on the concern that Zoroastrianism puts intolerable limits on God's power. A related (but clearly distinct) objection holds that Zoroastrianism gives things other than God too much power and independence. The objection may be stated thus:
(1) Zoroastrians hold that the supremely perfect being who is worthy of worship did not create everything other than himself.
(2) Any being who is supremely perfect and worthy of worship is a being who created everything other than himself.
So,
(3) Zoroastrianism is false.
At least in certain writings (from the period of their high theology), Zoroastrians seem to deny (1); that is, they seem to affirm that Ahura Mazda did create every being, even though he did not create Angra Mainyu and the demons. So if one focuses on a Zoroastrianism that holds the devil does not really exist, the objection at issue can be dispatched quickly.
But even a Zoroastrian who holds that the devil does actually exist could reasonably challenge premise (2) of the objection. Suppose that there exists a spirit who is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful (in the sense explained above), who created everything else that exists save the essentially evil spirit and his spawn, and who is able, eventually, to deliver all his children from the clutches of evil forever. Is it really the case that the proper response to this situation would be ‘God does not exist’? It is hard to conceive that a being would be unworthy of worship simply because it did not create the essence of evil. Indeed, it might easily seem that no being who created the essence of evil, or who intentionally produced any sort of evil, could be worthy of worship.
These considerations lead us to the most powerful objections to Zoroastrianism, objections that seek to show that it is simply incoherent to suppose that there could be any essentially evil being.
Objections to the Zoroastrian concept of the devil
Objection from the transcendentality of goodness
Consider, to begin, the doctrine that everything is good insofar as it is. Hereafter we shall refer to this as the DTG, for ‘doctrine of the transcendentality of goodness’. If the DTG is true, then dualism, since it teaches that there is a being (or at least a reality) that is essentially evil, is incoherent – or at least, so the objector contends.
The DTG may be traced to ancient Greek philosophy, but it was defended with great force by many early Christian thinkers, and is particularly associated with Augustine. Insofar as it rests on the idea that all existents (including beings, but also ‘principles of being’ and ‘realities’) other than God were created by God, it begs the question against dualism. However, Augustine and other Christian thinkers attempted to support the DTG without appealing to non-dualistic monotheism. Thus, Aquinas argued that everything is good insofar as it is;Footnote 22 he held that evil, though real in some sense, is not a being but rather is the lack of a good due to a thing, along with the disorder and vitiation that flows from that lack.Footnote 23
We might formalize the objection at issue as follows:
(1) Whatever perfects a thing according to its nature is good for that thing.
(2) Existence itself fundamentally perfects the nature of anything.
(3) If existence itself is fundamentally good for a thing then everything is good insofar as it exists.
(4) Zoroastrian dualism teaches that there exists an essentially evil being.
(5) An essentially evil being is not in any way good.
So,
(6) Zoroastrian dualism is incoherent.
Premise (3) of this argument is open to the objection that it does not distinguish between what is good for a thing, and what is good as such. It may be good for anything that it exists; but it does not follow from that that it is good, as such, that that thing exist. If a thing is essentially evil, as the Zoroastrians hold the devil is, then it seems it is not good, as such, that the devil exists, even if it is good for the devil that he exists. There may be ways, of course, for the defender of the DTG to reply. Aquinas would answer it by saying that what makes it bad that something of a certain sort exists could only be that that thing is destructive of other beings that have ‘more being’ than it does.Footnote 24 While this answer of Aquinas has some force, it takes work to cash out the idea that some things have more being than other things (even though such an idea is typical of much ancient thought).
One could criticize the argument by questioning whether existence is truly perfective for an essentially evil being, thus attacking premise (2). Some thinkers – Richard Swinburne is an exampleFootnote 25 – argue for ‘annihilationism’ on the grounds that existence is not a good for an irredeemably evil being. Along this line it might be emphasized that there are lots of things that appear to be not only not good, but positively bad. In the physical realm, pain would appear to be an example of this. And in the spiritual or moral realm there also seem to be positive evils – for example, hatred and cruelty.Footnote 26 Indeed, it has seemed to many that the main difficulty with the DTG is that there are lots of things that are positively bad.
Of course, premise (4) would be denied by one who embraces a version of Zoroastrianism emphasizing that the devil, though real, does not properly speaking exist. From this vantage point Zoroastrianism becomes quite congenial to the notion that extant evil, if not the ultimate principle of evil, is a disorder and vitiation of an essentially good being, a disorder that necessarily flows from the privation of certain goods natural to such a being.
And finally, premise (5) might be attacked on the grounds that the fact (supposing it is a fact) that the devil is good insofar as he exists does not preclude the devil from being essentially evil, because the devil hates the good. Just as we do not require that an all-powerful being must be able to square circles, or create a stone heavier than it can lift, we should not require that an essentially evil being lack ‘existential goodness’.
But it is possible to reject the DTG, and still find the concept of an essentially evil being unintelligible or impossible. None of the remaining objections to the Zoroastrian conception of evil relies on or entails the DTG.
Objection from the desirability of the good
This objection is based on the Aristotelian notion that the good is that which is desirable:
(1) The good is that which is desirable.
(2) If the good is that which is desirable then no-one can hate what is good because it is good.
(3) If no-one can hate what is good because it is good then an essentially evil being cannot exist.
So,
(4) An essentially evil being cannot exist.
Of course, the conclusion of this argument would be acceptable to the Zoroastrian ‘high theologians’ who held that the devil does not really exist.
Premise (3) of this argument is highly dubitable. Evil persons may fail to apprehend the good for what it is. The Zoroastrian devil is blind to goodness, does not truly see it. If he did see it he would love it – or, at least, be able to love it. As far as we can see there is nothing explicitly contradictory about a being who hates goodness because he is blind to its attractiveness. It might be objected that if the devil is blind to goodness, he cannot hate it, any more than a slug could. The answer to this is that the devil knows that God is motivated by love, kindness, justice, mercy, etc. – indeed, by all kinds of good motives. But the devil does not see their goodness, their desirability – he does not see why anyone would be motivated by motives that are truly good motives.
Some Zoroastrians would say that the devil does see what is good, but they would nevertheless reject (2), suggesting it is possible in some way to see the goodness or desirability of a thing and yet want to destroy it. Think of those who delight in corrupting the innocent. The most depraved humans seem to love to torture and kill what is good because it is good; they take pleasure in debasing and dehumanizing others. One might say this is all based on a confusion in the mind of the wicked, because no-one knowingly does evil. But this is at least not analytically true, or if it is, it is trivially true – ‘good’ is defined in such a way that the claim becomes analytic. At any rate, some Zoroastrian texts hold that it is of the essence of the devil to see a thing's goodness and yet desire to destroy it: the devil loves evil because it is evil, and hates good because it is good, and this is what is evil about the devil.Footnote 27
Objection from wicked persons' ordination to good
Many think that the wicked degrade or debase themselves by doing wicked acts: wicked persons decrease in value in virtue of their wicked acts, in a way that those who suffer from natural evils do not. One might accept this, but put forward the following argument:
(1) The devil degrades himself by doing wicked acts.
(2) If the devil degrades himself by doing wicked acts, then the devil harms his soul by doing wicked acts.
(3) If the devil harms his soul by doing wicked acts, then the devil is by nature ordered to the good.
(4) If the devil is by nature ordered to the good, then the devil is not essentially wicked, and the concept of an essentially evil being is unintelligible.
So,
(5) The devil is not essentially wicked, and the concept of an essentially evil being is unintelligible.
This argument may, indeed, show that if one relies on Aristotle's teleological moral theory to unpack the intuition that by acting wickedly the wicked ‘harm their souls’, one will be forced to the conclusion that the concept of an essentially wicked being is contradictory. But by understanding this intuition in a Kantian, not an Aristotelian way, one might take issue with premise (3). Kant's doctrine of the unconditional goodness of the good will can be used to support the intuition that the wicked lose value by their wicked acts in a way that does not entail that the idea of an essentially evil will is incoherent or contradictory, as follows (we preface numerals with a ‘Z’ to indicate a response on behalf of Zoroastrianism):
(Z-1) A good will, and only a good will, is unconditionally good.
(Z-2) If (1), then a bad will and only a bad will is unconditionally bad.
(Z-3) If a bad will and only a bad will is unconditionally bad, then: if it is possible that there exists a being who is always bent on evil-doing (i.e. a being with a thoroughly evil will), then it is possible that there exists a being that is essentially evil.
(Z-4) If it is possible that there exists a being that is essentially evil, then it is possible that there exists a being that harms its soul by acting in accordance with its nature.
(Z-5) If it is possible that there exists a being that harms its soul by acting in accordance with its nature, then it is false that: if the wicked harm their souls by doing wicked acts, then the wicked are by nature ordered to the good [in other words, premise (3) of the argument above is false].
So,
(Z-6) If it is possible that there exists a being who is always bent on evil-doing (i.e. a being with a thoroughly evil will), then it is false that: if the wicked harm their souls by doing wicked acts, then the wicked are by nature ordered to the good [in other words, premise (3) of the argument above is false].
Premise (Z-4) does seem consonant with the Zoroastrian view. The Zoroastrians held that the devil, in ‘creating’ the demons, made himself worse.Footnote 28 They held this in part because the demons are the beings which, at the end of time, will turn against him and thus utterly frustrate his attempt to fulfil his nature.Footnote 29 But one can also understand the idea that the devil made himself worse by creating the demons in light of the fundamental teaching of Zoroastrian dualism: good and evil are both, in some sense, real and are contradictory opposites with opposite qualities. Goodness is truly valuable,Footnote 30 and the increase of it is good in itself and good for the good being (God) who increased it in creating, and fulfilled His own good nature.Footnote 31 But if evil is really evil (truly undesirable), then the devil, in fulfilling his nature in making evil beings and states of affairs, cannot in any way perfect himself. It is bad for an evil being to fulfil its nature. It is bad for anything to do what is bad, whether doing what is bad fulfils its nature or not.
With these observations in mind, we are positioned not only to affirm (Z-4), but also to press another criticism of the initial argument concerning wicked persons' ordination to the good, the argument to which (Z-1)–(Z-6) was a response. The Zoroastrian might grant that the devil is by nature ordered to the good, but still affirm that the devil is essentially evil. In other words, the Zoroastrian might argue against step (4) of the original argument. The general idea behind such a move is intuitively very attractive: given the nature of the good, given the fact that goodness is truly valuable, and evil truly undesirable, everything is ordered to the good. Everything ought to be good. But not all things are as they ought to be. The devil ought to be good, but is not. And his failure to be good is so radical, his hatred of the good so profound and so fixed, that we rightly regard him as essentially evil.
Objection from the nature of the cause of evil
The last objection runs as follows:
(1) Wicked persons freely cause their own evil in the libertarian sense of ‘freely causing’.
(2) An essentially evil being could not cause its own evil in the libertarian sense of ‘freely causing’.
So,
(3) An essentially evil being could not really be wicked or morally evil.
(4) If (3), then the concept of an essentially wicked or morally evil being is unintelligible, and an essentially evil being cannot exist.
So,
(5) The concept of an essentially wicked or morally evil being is unintelligible, and an essentially evil being cannot exist.
Again, we focus on responses that would work for Zoroastrians who hold that the devil does really exist (because otherwise the argument is too easy to counter). Conceivably, such an individual might reject premise (2), by holding that the devil always freely, in the libertarian sense, chooses what is evil. It would seem very difficult, though, to explain why the devil always wills what is evil if he could will what is good (possibly the Zoroastrian could say that the devil became hardened in evil, so while he initially possessed fully libertarian freedom, he has ‘chosen’ his way out of it).Footnote 32 And it might be problematic to maintain that the devil is essentially evil if he is always able to choose the good. But it is not necessary to reject (2) in order to dispatch the objection at issue. For premise (1) is seriously problematic.
Many people might want to reject premise (1) because they deny the existence of libertarian freedom. Theists generally embrace such freedom, however, and reasonably so, on our view. But in response to premise (1) a Zoroastrian might, without rejecting entirely the reality of libertarian freedom or the necessity of supposing that human beings have this sort of freedom as a necessary condition for their having duties,Footnote 33 question the assumption that a being could be held to be the cause of its moral evil only if it causes that evil with libertarian freedom. For it does seem plausible to think that an intrinsically evil substance would be more truly the cause of its evil actions than one that is not since such a substance is evil by nature. Leibniz has pointed out the force of this intuition by noting that, if one insists on a ‘liberty of indifference’ as a necessary ground for holding a person to be worthy of praise, one will be forced to hold, as a consequence, that the better a person's character is, the less worthy of praise she is.Footnote 34
We think there is a great deal of force to Leibniz's position, and it seems, at any rate, that a Christian who holds that God is worthy of praise and yet holds (along with most of the Christian tradition) that God is not only essentially but perfectly goodFootnote 35 and so cannot sin, will be forced to agree with Leibniz that a person who performed a morally good action need not have had the ability to have done otherwise in order to be credited, in a deep sense, with the goodness of that action. By parity of reasoning, then, we wish to suggest that, just as a perfectly good person may reasonably be held to be, in the deepest sense, the cause of his good actions, so too an essentially evil person may reasonably be held to be, in the deepest sense, the cause of his evil actions. Perhaps the devil does not cause his evil actions in the libertarian sense; but that may in the end matter no more than the fact that God cannot make a square circle.
Concluding thoughts
Where does all this leave us?
We think it is fair to conclude on the basis of arguments above that the best-known objections to Zoroastrian dualism (which are mostly, but not entirely, objections to the version of Zoroastrianism that claims the devil really exists) do not succeed. Of course it does not follow from this that some version of Zoroastrian dualism is true. One would not want to settle on that conclusion without pondering positive arguments for the doctrine and considering objections to it that go beyond the scope of the objections we have engaged in this paper.
We also think it should be evident that Zoroastrian dualism encompasses a wealth of insights that may be appropriated even by those who in the end reject the doctrine as a whole. Consider, for instance, a few specific Zoroastrian insights that the preceding discussion has underscored.
Zoroastrian dualism sees matter as essentially good: matter and the material world were created by God. This is a useful corrective to a Manichaean spirituality that sees matter as evil in some respect. Furthermore, Zoroastrian dualism reminds us of the fact (we take it to be a fact) that evil is essentially moral and spiritual, not physical. The devil's foothold in the world is in the souls of human beings, on the Zoroastrian view; if humans drive him away the devil will cease entirely to be manifested in the world. This is a helpful corrective to the contemporary notion that the most significant evils are physical. Further still, Zoroastrian dualism reminds us that evil is something other than a mere lack or imperfection: evil has some positive quality. Now even Augustine and Aquinas taught this (in a different way from the Zoroastrians); but it is easy to forget that they did, given some accounts of what it means to say evil is a privation. Finally, and most importantly, is the Zoroastrian commitment to the thesis that no attribute of God's is more important than his goodness. The dualist's great devotion to the goodness of God and zeal to defend that goodness as constituting what is most godlike in God can serve as a warning to theists not to sacrifice God's goodness at the altar of his sovereignty and power, and not to make God into a utilitarian.
The dialectic in which the Zoroastrian dualists engaged includes various insights beyond those we have highlighted in this paper, insights of particular interest to Western philosophers of religion. That should not be surprising, given the fact that the Zoroastrians' interests anticipate, or parallel, interests of contemporary philosophers.
For example, in defending their understanding of evil the Zoroastrians raised objections to the accounts of the nature and origin of evil put forward by adherents of non-dualistic monotheistic traditions, objections that adumbrate many of the criticisms present day atheists have raised against such accounts. Thus, in opposition to the view that the finitude and freedom of finite rational creatures can explain the origin of moral evil, Zoroastrian theologians argued that, though the finitude of the rational creature explains the possibility of its sinning, it cannot explain the actuality of its sinning.Footnote 36 The possibility could not have become an actuality without an arch-fiend, an ultimate cause of evil that, as already actually evil, could turn the possibility into an actuality. Again, the Zoroastrians argued that if God is omniscient, then he would have known, for instance, that if he created Lucifer, Lucifer would fall; but knowing that and being good, he surely would not have created Lucifer.Footnote 37 There are, of course, answers to all these arguments, and the Zoroastrians considered some of them. But the point here is that the Zoroastrians engaged in a dialectic that intertwines with the dialectic of contemporary philosophy of religion.
And Christian philosophers might reflect not only on parallels between the dialectic of Zoroastrianism and that of contemporary philosophy, but also on theological parallels – fascinating similarities – between Zoroastrian dualism and Christianity.
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8.44, RSV)
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1.5, RSV)
