There is some important data which has not as yet found its way into philosophic discussions on the problem of evil. Some religious people report that suffering, instead of being contrary to the love of God, is actually a medium in and through which his love can be experienced. This looks highly paradoxical, but it will be our purpose to show that it is intelligible and that it has important consequences for philosophical discussions of the problem of evil.

The problem of evil is one of the most discussed topics in the philosophy of religion. For some time, however, there has been a need for a collection of readings that adequately represents recent and ongoing writing on the topic. This volume fills that need, offering the most up-to-date collection of recent scholarship on the problem of evil. The distinguished contributors include J.L. Mackie, Nelson Pike, Roderick M. Chisholm, Terence Penelhum, Alvin Plantinga, William L. Rowe, Stephen J. Wykstra, John Hick, (...) and Diogenes Allen. Including an introductory essay and a selected bibliography, this comprehensive and completely up-to-date collection is an invaluable guide to current scholarship in this highly debated area of the philosophy of religion. Oxford Readings in Philosophy aims to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available. (shrink)

This paper considers briefly the approach to the problem of evil by Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and John Hick and argues that none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory. The paper then develops a different strategy for dealing with the problem of evil by expounding and taking seriously three Christian claims relevant to the problem: Adam fell; natural evil entered the world as a result of Adam's fall; and after death human beings go either to heaven or hell. Properly interpreted, (...) these claims form the basis for a consistent and coherent Christian solution to the problem of evil. (shrink)

Considerable effort has been expended on constructing theodicies which try to reconcile the suffering of unwilling innocents, such as Job, with the existence and nature of God as understood in Christian theology. There is, of course, abundant reflection on the problem of evil and the story of Job in the history of Jewish thought, but this material has not been discussed much in contemporary philosophical literature. I want to take a step towards remedying this defect by examining the interpretation of (...) the story of Job and the solution to the problem of evil given by one important and influential Jewish thinker, Saadia Gaon. (shrink)

In this paper, the author argues that a second-person experience is an experience one has when one has conscious awareness of another consciously aware person. The author shows that there are some things we know in second-person experiences which are either difficult or impossible to put in propositional form at all but stories can capture them for us. An account of a second-person experience is what we typically find in narratives. The author argues that the second-person point of view has (...) a special place in some areas of philosophy, including philosophy of religion. It matters to many issues in philosophy of religion, perhaps especially to the problem of evil, that God is taken to be a person who has personal relations with created persons. The paper proceeds to show that philosophical attention to the second-person account in the biblical narrative of the book of Job illuminates the book in a new way and sheds light on the problem of evil. /// O presente artigo parte do princípio de que uma experiência na segunda-pessoa constitui a experiência que temos quando estamos conscientemente atentos à presença de outra pessoa conscientemente desperta. A autora demonstra a existência de algumas coisas que conhecemos mediante a experiência da segunda pessoa as quais são ou difíceis ou até mesmo impossíveis de colocar em forma proposicional, ainda que narrativas as possam perfeitamente captar para nós. O relato de uma experiência na segunda pessoa é precisamente aquilo que tipicamente encontramos em narrativas. A autora argumenta que o ponto de vista da segunda pessoa tem um lugar especial em algumas áreas da filosofia, incluindo a filosofia da religião. Na verdade, não deixa de ser relevante para o tratamento de muitas questões no âmbito da filosofia da religião, mas talvez de um modo muito especial no que se refere ao tratamento do problema do mal, partir do princípio de que Deus é pessoa e mantém relações de pessoa-a-pessoa com as suas criaturas pessoais. Posto isto, o artigo procede com a demonstração de que a atenção filosófica ao relato na segunda pessoa que se encontra no Livro de Job não deixa de iluminar este livro sapiencial bem como de projectar nova luz sobre o velho problema do mal. (shrink)

We argue that Michael Peterson's and William Hasker's attempts to show that God and gratuitous evil are compatible constitute miserable failures. We then sketch Peter van Inwagen's attempt to do the same and conclude that, to date, no one has shown his attempt a failure.