In a comparative study of karma theodicy and atonement theodicy, as developed by some Hindu and Christian theologians, this article argues that they present teleological visions where individuals become purged, purified, and perfected in and through their worldly suffering. A karma theodicy operates with the notion that there is some form of proportionality between past evil and present suffering, even if such correlations can only be traced by an enlightened sage or are known to the omniscient God. Christian mystics too (...) seek not so much to explain suffering as to identify suffering with the agony of Christ on the cross, and they envision such suffering as part of a unitive journey where their love of Christ is purified. In these ways, both styles of theodicy use rational resources towards the goal of explanation, while reminding their adherents that the faltering intelligibility that they seek is to be seen as an integral component of their active participation in a sense of theological mystery that enfolds, and yet transcends, their finite existences. (shrink)

The popularity of theodicy over the past several decades has given rise to a countermovement, “anti-theodicy”, which admonishes attempts at theodicy for various reasons. This paper examines one prominent anti-theodical objection: that it is hubristic, and attempts to form an approach to theodicy which evades this objection. To do so I draw from the work of Eleonore Stump, who provides a framework by which we can glean second-personal knowledge of God. From this knowledge, I argue that we can derive a (...) theodicy which does not utilise the kind of analytic theorising anti-theodicists accuse of intellectual hubris. (shrink)

Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the Cupid/psyche myth with a few twists, namely, a nonstandard narrator and the inability of Psyche’s sister, Orual, to see the palace. Both innovations lead the reader to understand better the dynamics at play in Orual’s effort to disrupt Psyche’s life with her husband/god. The inability to see, on Orual’s part, at first suggests that the nature of the story is primarily epistemological. What is it that can be reasonably known or inferred? (...) Digging deeper, however, reveals that the epistemic elements are actually penultimate, and that instead the book bolsters an ethically robust epistemology. Who we are deeply affects what we can see. Before Orual could apprehend the nature of the gods, she had to be brutally honest about who she herself was. A victim of abuse who was constantly shamed for reasons beyond her control, she is a sympathetic character in several ways, but she gradually moves from being victim to victimizer, treating others as means to ends, and, in the case of Psyche, ‘loving’ her in a way that was more hate than love. Self-knowledge was needed for Orual to apprehend the truth. She comes to realize her treatment of Bardia, Batta, Redival, and especially Psyche was not as pure and altruistic as she had thought. She had to come to terms with the ugliness within herself, and her penchant for consuming others, before she could hope to see the beauty and love of the gods for what they were. (shrink)

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) (...) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis’s small book, The Problem of Pain, first published in 1940, is essentially a theodicy, specifically, a version of soul-making theodicy. In this essay I present Lewis’s theodicy and I offer some critical comments. I conclude by asking whether his theodicy remains intact and helpful upon the death of Lewis wife, as he reflects on that in A Grief Observed. I conclude that it does.

Marilyn McCord Adams’s perspective on the intimacy with God as a way of defeating horrendous evils in the course of a human being’s existence has been met with a series of objections in contemporary scholarship. This is due to the fact that the critiques formulated have focused more on the debilitating impact of suffering on the sufferer’s body and mind, on intimacy as mere intermittent relationships between God and humans, or on what is lost or gained from the presence or (...) absence of this intimacy with the divine being. Focusing on Adams’s appeal to esthetic arguments in theodicy and on her reflection on practical issues in theology, the article presents Adams’s perspective on intimacy as a relation initiated objectively by God at the creation and at Christ’s incarnation and continued subjectively throughout history by both God and every human being. Given its combining of objective and subjective features, this kind of intimacy is not to be understood as an exclusively private relationship of each individual with God, but rather as a process of communal advancing in rehabilitation and mutual healing that is initiated in the antemortem career and fulfilled in the post-mortem existence. (shrink)

Christopher Southgate offers a remarkable evolutionary theodicy that includes six affirmations and arguments; together they form a unique and very persuasive proposal which he terms a “compound evolutionary theodicy.” Here I summarize the arguments and offer critical reflections on them for further development, with an emphasis on the ambiguity in the goodness of creation; the role of thermodynamics in evolutionary biology; the challenge of horrendous evil in nature; and the theological response to theodicy in terms of eschatology, with its own (...) severe challenge from cosmology. (shrink)

Does God bring good out of evil? More specifically, does God defeat the suffering experienced by the victims of horrendous evils by making it the case that each victim's suffering contributes to some great good—a good that could not be obtained without such suffering, and that results in the victim enjoying greater total well-being than would be expected had no such evil occurred? Call the thesis that God does defeat evils in this way the defeat thesis. A commitment to the (...) defeat thesis can be discerned in many prominent treatments of God's relation to evil. But the defeat thesis is subject to the following objection: If the defeat thesis is true, so that horrendous evils ultimately lead to greater total well-being for the victims than would be expected without such evils, then it is not the case that we should hope that our loved ones escape the experience of such evils; but when we are faced with the prospect of a loved one being afflicted by some horrendous evil, we clearly should hope that our loved one does not experience the evil; so the defeat thesis must be false. In this paper, I attempt to defend the defeat thesis against this objection. I do so by contending that the norms that govern hope and other related attitudes are “non-consequentialist.” Non-consequentialist “norms of hope” hold that in some situations, one should hope (for the sake of subject S) that some event occurs even though one knows that this would lead to S having less total well-being. If the correct norms of hope are non-consequentialist, then one can appropriately and reasonably hope that some horrendous evil does not occur (and appropriately grieve if it does) even while acknowledging that if an evil occurs, God will use the evil to bring about more well-being for the victim than there otherwise would have been. (shrink)

Moral anti-theodicists have posed a consequentialist argument against the theodical enterprise: that theodicies lead to harmful consequences in reality and that this should be sufficient reason to motivate abandoning the practise of theodicising altogether. In this paper, I examine variants of this argument and discuss several prominent responses from theodicists, including the separation thesis. I argue that while these responses are effective in resisting the global conclusion by the anti-theodicist, it still leaves the theodical enterprise vulnerable to a weaker version (...) of the consequentialist critique. In response, I develop an account of ‘theodicies-of-embrace-protest’ which is able to preserve the meaningful strides made in traditional theodicies while taking seriously the criticisms of the moral anti-theodicists. I suggest that sceptical theism fits this bill. (shrink)

To most of us – believers and non-believers alike – the possibility of a perfect God co-existing with the kinds of evil that we see calls out for explanation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the belief that God must have justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see has been a perennial feature of theistic thought. Recently, however, a growing number of authors have argued that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the existence of gratuitous (...) evil. Given powerful, millenia-long sensibilities about power and love and justice, it isn’t hard to find that suggestion simply incredible. Nonetheless, in this paper I will argue that the most prominent theistic alternatives to what has seemed incredible to most of us throughout most of history are themselves patently unacceptable for the theist as well. On any of the most widely accepted accounts of how God could have justifying reasons for permitting some evils, God’s existence means that we have justifying reasons for perpetrating and allowing every evil that we see. That's hard to swallow too. If I’m right about all of this, then two competing outcomes seem to present themselves as a possible result. On the one hand, for the theist, the apparently outrageous suggestion that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with gratuitous evil no longer looks like it faces a formidable, hard-to-resist alternative. On the other hand, some like me might think that my arguments go no distance at all towards dispelling the incredibility of the gratuitous evil nouvelle vague. On this line, theism may seem now to be between the rock and the hard place: it seems hard to make sense of the existence of a perfect God whether or not He has justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see. (shrink)

RésuméDe nombreux philosophes ont soutenu que l'existence du mal gratuit est la plus sérieuse objection contre l'existence d'un Dieu absolument parfait. Je soutiens que l'idée d'un dilemme moral (ou, plus précisément, d'un dilemmetragique) peut (1) fournir une justification morale pour que Dieu permette l'existence du mal gratuit, ou (2) offrir une théodicée de la tragédie divine pour expliquer pourquoi les maux de ce monde ne sont pas nécessairement gratuits ou, s'ils le sont, pourquoi ils ne peuvent pas fournir une preuve (...) décisive permettant de rejeter l'existence d'un Dieu absolument parfait. (shrink)

Stringent non-consequentialist constraints on permitting horrendous evils pose a formidable challenge to the project of theodicy by limiting the ways in which it is permissible for God to do or allow evil for the sake of bringing about a greater good. I formulate a general and potent argument against all greater-good theodicies from the existence of robust side constraints on permitting evil. Then I contend that the argument fails. I begin by distinguishing between side constraints on doing evil and side (...) constraints on allowing evil, and then I draw on the work of David Lewis and Fiona Woollard to argue that, because of the unique ways that God is related to the world, it is plausible that God can both create and sustain our universe, despite all of its evils, without violating any of these constraints. (shrink)

I often tell my students that the only thing that is not controversial in philosophy is that everything else in it is controversial. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, it does contain a kernel of truth, as many exaggerations do: philosophy is a highly contentious discipline. So it is remarkable the extent to which there is agreement in the philosophy of religion amongst theists, agnostics, and atheists alike that John Mackie’s argument for atheism is either invalid or (...) unsound. As a result, the focus has entirely shifted from the logical problem of evil to the so-called evidential one. But I think that this is a mistake, not necessarily because I think Mackie’s argument is sound, but rather because I reject an assumption made by apparently all parties to the debate, which is that there is only one logical problem of evil. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to defend a deductive argument that God* does not exist. As far as I can tell, the basic idea of this argument is a novel one: while Mackie’s argument has a more or less consequentialist framework, mine has a deontological one. The evil of which I will speak is that of our having been thrown into the world. (shrink)

I offer part of an account of divine moral perfection. I defend the claim that moral perfection is possible, then argue that God has obligations, so that one part of his moral perfection must be perfection in meeting these. I take up objections to divine obligations, then finally offer a definition of divine deontic perfection.

Animal suffering seems to undermine several well-known traditional theistic responses to the problem(s) of evil, such as the appeal to the Fall of Humanity or to human free will. The soul-making theodicy is also inapplicable to non-human animals, if it should turn out that they do not have souls capable of being improved by suffering. Recently, however, it has been suggested by Trent Dougherty that when the soul-making theodicy is combined with the Adams-Chisholm notion of the defeat of evil and (...) other hypotheses regarding the animal afterlife, such a theodicy can overcome the challenge posed by animal suffering. We highlight problems for this strategy, showing that it ultimately keeps the fundamental reason for suffering obscure and requires the addition of several auxiliary hypotheses, thus offering no epistemic improvement over generic Skeptical Theism. We also consider the strategy in the light of a newer argument known as the Expanded Problem of Animal Suffering (EPAS), showing that this puts additional strain on Dougherty’s theodicy. (shrink)

I consider two views that combine different elements of general theistic replies to natural evil, those of Peter van Inwagen and William Hasker. I end with a Hasker-style defense – one that, unlike Hasker's, denies the existence of pointless natural evils – and some brief observations on the direction of future debate.

I examine different strategies involved in stating anti-theistic arguments from natural evil, and consider some theistic replies. There are, traditionally, two main types of arguments from natural evil: those that purport to deduce a contradiction between the existence of natural evil and the existence of God, and those that claim that the existence of certain types or quantities of natural evil significantly lowers the probability that theism is true. After considering peripheral replies, I state four prominent theistic rebutting strategies: skeptical (...) theism; Richard Swinburne's view that moral knowledge entails natural evil; the soul-making theodicy; and the natural law theodicy. (shrink)

Some have put forward a normative principle that it is immoral and highly disrespectful to create free, rational creatures (like human beings) without their prior consent. (See, for instance, Monaghan in Int J Philos Relig 88(2):181–195, 2020) If true, this principle constitutes a new argument against the existence of God since it is logically impossible to acquire the consent of someone before they are created. Thus, God’s existence is taken to be incompatible with creating any persons. I shall examine this (...) normative claim and show that it is not plausible. In the first place, it fails to meet three criteria that are commonplace to the “logical problem of evil.” In the second place, the principle has clear counterexamples that show many plausible exceptions that could justify God in creating persons. (shrink)

Hope is crucial human agency, but its fragility grounds a substantive challenge to Christian belief. It is not clear how a perfectly loving God could permit despairinducing experiences of divine silence. Drawing upon a distinctively Christian psychology of hope, this paper seeks to address this challenge. I contend that divine silence can act as a corrective to misplaced natural hopes. But there are risks in God’s choice to allow a person to lose all natural hope. Thus, if God is perfectly (...) loving, God ought to find a way to demonstrate goodness to those who are tempted by theological despair. I argue that the Church demonstrates God’s goodness through its merciful care and hope for the afflicted. The local community can act to sustain or recover a person’s capacity to remain open to the gift of hope even in the midst of divine silence. (shrink)

A common argument for atheism runs as follows: God would not create a world worse than other worlds he could have created instead. However, if God exists, he could have created a better world than this one. Therefore, God does not exist. In this paper I challenge the second premise of this argument. I argue that if God exists, our world will continue without end, with God continuing to create value-bearers, and sustaining and perfecting the value-bearers he has already created. (...) Given this, if God exists, our world—considered on the whole—is infinitely valuable. I further contend that this theistic picture makes our world's value unsurpassable. In support of this contention, I consider proposals for how infinitely valuable worlds might be improved upon, focusing on two main ways—adding value-bearers and increasing the value in present value-bearers. I argue that neither of these can improve our world. Depending on how each method is understood, either it would not improve our world, or our world is unsurpassable with respect to it. I conclude by considering the implications of my argument for the problem of evil more generally conceived. (shrink)

Moral horror is an extreme emotional response to that which violates things we regard as sacred. In Robert Merrihew Adams's view, horror is a response to badness and not to wrongness, and so one could properly regard some actions as horrible but not wrong. In contrast, I argue that horror, when directed toward actions, is only appropriate for wrong actions. The reason is that horror involves moral disgust, and agents who committed a horrible action would have self-disgust, that is, they (...) would be repulsive to themselves. I argue, with reference to killing in combat and in self-defense, that those who have done no wrong should not be in such a state. (shrink)