Theodicy

epistemologist, philosophical theologian, and religious pluralist (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015). Hick contributed largely to the world of theology, writing one of his more famous works, Evil and the God of Love, where the chapter Soul-Making Theodicy is included (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015). The attempt to explain the presence of evil, pain, and suffering has been asked and investigated throughout the centuries by philosophers, theologian, and layman alike. The…

God is perfect. Through Richard Swinburne’s theodicy (theodicy - an attempt to defend God's omnibenevolence in the face of evil) , one comes to find the case that initially escapes the evidential and logical problems In the logical problem of evil, it is made aware that three things must be true in the contemporary version layout for evil to exist. They are that God is all good, He is all…

and atheists agree that evil exists and the that the world is full of it. Many theist philosophers have attempted to solve the inconsistent triad by offering different solutions that seek to maintain the entirety of the triad. These solutions, or theodicies, are an attempt to show that the existence of evil does not eliminate the feasibility of God’s existence. One of the most well known solutions is that evil is due to free will. This argument states that the evil present in the world is not…

in the world, if God exists?” “How can God let the good be taken advantage of?” This is something religious scholars have discussed and studied for years. Theologians use theodicy to explain the problem of evil. How can evil exist in the world when God is all-powerful and all-good? One of those theories is the ‘Free will’ theodicy. This states that “God had to allow for the possibility that humans would do evil in order to give them Free Will.” In other words, if God made a world without evil,…

these people, is the direct opposite of God’s goodness and a world containing it is far inferior to a world that does not. This is precisely what German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz attempts to explain in his book Theodicy. In Theodicy, Leibniz claims that evil and God’s goodness are perfectly compatible with one another and a world with no evil actually has less good than a world without. This, Leibniz says, is because evil adds something that is necessary for the…

Hart’s unassuming, 100-page book humbly but forcefully reacts to the long standing philosophical and religious debate regarding the relationship between God and evil. It is important to note that he is not producing a new theodicy necessarily, but reacting to incorrect theodicy. Prompted by the 2004 tsunami that struck Asia, Hart argues, successfully, that though there is evil in the world, it is not permitted or accepted by God yet it is not necessary for God to prevent evil in order to be good…

The theistic worldview maintains that the universe was created by a perfect being who continues to actively observe it. Conversely, the atheistic worldview avows to a belief in the existence of only the materialistic world, which they contend was not created by a supernatural being. Non-believers commonly employ arguments that are grounded in the problem of evil to dispute the theist’s divine creator. The problem of evil elicits the question of how a perfect and loving God could allow evil, such…

in the world? Most importantly, why do bad things happen to good people? In our textbook it states that “when such questions are raised in connection with belief in God or gods, we may describe them as issues of theodicy, or “divine justice” (Cunningham, pg. 102) The definition for theodicy in our text explains it as being “the attempt to answer questions about the sacred arising…

religious beliefs expand upon the sociological theories. In Berger’s book, he analyzes many ideas of sociological functions of religion that are shown throughout the stories of The Righteous Sufferer, The Babylonian Theodicy, Job, and A Serious Man. Berger expands upon the idea of a theodicy that explains anomic phenomenon. He also speaks of masochism and alienation. The ideas Berger speaks of are significant because they give meaning to suffering and help to explain it. Berger’s concepts tell…

Why Does Evil Exist Throughout time philosophers have developed many theodicies to explain the “Problem of Evil,” essentially why, God, in all his capacity, would allow for evil. Most of the theodicy developed to explain this problem center on the core ideas of Augustine and Ireanean theodicy which apply the ideas of “Soul-making”, and “Free-Will”. J.L. Mackie examines the Problem of Evil, while John Hick and other philosophers propose adequate solutions to the dilemma. This term paper will…