Theodicy
Theodicy

Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-11-13

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13:

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"Theodicy" is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz published in 1710, whose optimistic approach to the problem of evil is thought to have inspired Voltaire's "Candide". Much of the work consists of a response to the ideas of the French philosopher Pierre Bayle, with whom Leibniz carried on a debate for many years. The "Theodicy" tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws. Leibniz distinguishes three forms of evil: moral, physical, and metaphysical. Moral evil is sin, physical evil is pain, and metaphysical evil is limitation. God permits moral and physical evil for the sake of greater goods, and metaphysical evil is unavoidable since any created universe must necessarily fall short of God's absolute perfection.

Theodicy of Love
Theodicy of Love

Author: John C. Peckham

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 149341576X

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If God is all powerful and entirely good and loving, why is there so much evil in the world? Based on a close canonical reading of Scripture, this book offers a new approach to the challenge of reconciling the Christian confession of a loving God with the realities of suffering and evil. John Peckham offers a constructive proposal for a theodicy of love that upholds both the sovereignty of God and human freedom, showing that Scripture points toward a framework for thinking about God's love in relation to the world.

Pathways in Theodicy
Pathways in Theodicy

Author: Mark S. M. Scott

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1451469802

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Why does God permit evil and suffering? This question, known as the problem of evil in theological and philosophical circles, has perennially vexed Christian theology. Academic studies on the problem of evil, however, have failed to move the conversation forward in recent years. In this volume, designed for students and scholars alike, Mark S. M. Scott traces the major models and motifs in Christian explanations for evil (called theodicies) and argues for a thorough rethinking of the problem of evil and theodicy based on distinctly Christian theological criteria and resources.

Theological Theodicy
Theological Theodicy

Author: Daniel Castelo

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2012-06-01

Total Pages: 77

ISBN-13: 1621893138

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The question of God's relationship to evil is a long-running one in the history of Christianity, and the term often deployed for this task has been theodicy. The way theodicy has historically been pursued, however, has been problematic on a number of counts. Most significantly, these efforts have generally been insufficiently theological. This work hopes to subvert and reconfigure the theodical task in a way that can be accessible to nonspecialists. Overall, the book hopes to cast the "god" of theodicy as the triune God of Christian confession, a move that shapes and alters distinctly all that follows in what has traditionally been considered a philosophical matter.

The Book of Theodicy
The Book of Theodicy

Author: Ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi Saadiah

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 9780300037432

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Born in Egypt in 882, Saadiah Gaon was the first systematic philosopher of Judaism, the father of both scientific biblical exegesis and Jewish philosophic philosophy. In this book, L.E. Goodman presents the first English translation of Saadiah's important Book of Theodicy, a commentary on the Book of Job. Goodman's translation preserves Saadiah's penetrating naturalism, tenacity of theme and argument, and sensitivity to the nuances of poetic language.

Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil
Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil

Author: Jill Graper Hernandez

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-05

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 131730733X

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Early Modern Women and the Problem of Evil examines the concept of theodicy—the attempt to reconcile divine perfection with the existence of evil—through the lens of early modern female scholars. This timely volume knits together the perennial problem of defining evil with current scholarly interest in women’s roles in the evolution of religious philosophy. Accessible for those without a background in philosophy or theology, Jill Graper Hernandez’s text will be of interest to upper-level undergraduates as well as graduate students and researchers.

Satan and the Problem of Evil
Satan and the Problem of Evil

Author: Gregory A. Boyd

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2001-10-08

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780830815500

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Gregory Boyd seeks to defend his scripturally grounded trinitarian warfare theod-icy with rigorous philosophical reflection and insights from human experience and scientific discovery.

Theodicy in the World of the Bible
Theodicy in the World of the Bible

Author: Antii Laato

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-08

Total Pages: 884

ISBN-13: 9047402626

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Is it justice when deities allow righteous human beings to suffer? This question has occupied the minds of theologians and philosophers for many centuries and is still hotly disputed. All kinds of argument have been developed to exonerate the 'good God' of any guilt in this respect. Since Leibniz it has become customary to describe such attempts as 'theodicy', the justification of God. In modern philosophical debate this use of 'theodicy' has been questioned. However, this volume shows that it is still a workable term for a concept that originated much earlier than is commonly realised. Experts from many disciplines follow the emergence of the theodicy problem from ancient Near Eastern texts of the second millennium BCE through biblical literature, from both Old and New Testament, intertestamental writings including Qumran, Philo Judaeus and rabbinic Judaism.

Kant and Theodicy
Kant and Theodicy

Author: George Huxford

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-02-19

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1498597246

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In Kant and Theodicy: A Search for an Answer to the Problem of Evil, George Huxford proves that Kant’s engagement with theodicy was career-long and not confined to his short 1791 treatise that dealt explicitly with the subject. Huxford treats Kant’s developing thought on theodicy in three periods: pre-Critical (exploration), early-Critical (transition), and late-Critical (conclusion). Illustrating the advantage of approaching Kant through this framework, Huxford argues that Kant’s stance developed through his career into his own unique authentic theodicy; Kant rejected philosophical theodicies based on theoretical/speculative reason but advanced authentic theodicy grounded in practical reason, finding a middle ground between philosophical theodicy and fideism, both of which he rejected. Nevertheless, Huxford concludes that Kant’s authentic theodicy fails because it fails to meet his own definition of a theodicy.

Non-identity Theodicy
Non-identity Theodicy

Author: Vince R. Vitale

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0198864221

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Questions as personal as those about suffering require a very personal response. However, the most popular responses to the problem of evil revolve around abstract discussions of greater goods, maximization of value, and best possible worlds, depicting God as at best an impartial bureaucrat and at worst a utility fanatic, rather than as a loving parent concerned first and foremost for his children. Vince R. Vitale develops Non-Identity Theodicy as an original response to the problem of evil. He begins by recognizing that horrendous evils pose distinctive challenges for belief in God. The book constructs an ethical framework for theodicy by sketching four cases of human action where horrendous evils are either caused, permitted, or risked, either for pure benefit or for harm avoidance. This framework is then brought to bear on the project of theodicy. The initial conclusions drawn impugn the dominant structural approach of depicting God as causing or permitting horrors in individual lives for the sake of some merely pure benefit. This approach is insensitive to relevant asymmetries in the justificatory demands made by horrendous and non-horrendous evil and in the justificatory work done by averting harm and bestowing pure benefit. Vitale then critiques theodicies that depict God as permitting or risking horrors in order to avert greater harm. The second half of this book develops a theodicy that falls outside of the proposed taxonomy. Non-Identity Theodicy suggests that God allows evil because it is a necessary condition of creating individual people whom he desires to love. This approach to theodicy is unique because the justifying good recommended is neither harm-aversion nor pure benefit. It is not a good that betters the lives of individual human persons--for they would not exist otherwise, but it is the individual human persons themselves.