Theodicies can be distinguished as “hard-nosed” or “good-hearted.” Typical features of each are given. I reject the former; they set the bar too low for God. Considerable discussion is devoted to Eleonore Stump's recent Wandering in Darkness, which sets the standard for good-hearted theodicies. I then develop the notion of a “perfect creature”, a possible being indistinguishable from God except lacking aseity, and argue that God should have created only perfect creatures. Since He did not, He is not. Theodicies, therefore, (...) are in trouble if there is a best possible world and it is a perfect creature world. (shrink)

Theodicy is often rejected because a suffering person is hardly interested in abstract argu ments—even if these arguments were convincing, they might not change the suffering she is experienc ing. I propose a twofold theodicy. First, Christians are invited to promote positive apologetics—they should show the internal consistency of divine revelation, which recommends that they should alleviate suffering and promote flourishing. Second, Christians should develop negative apologetics and show the untenability of objections to the Christian view of evil (...) and suffering, including the seemingly uncontro versial objection that a world without innocent suffering would be better in terms of justice than the one we live in. My argument is that in both positive and negative apologetics believers should be guided by devotion and commitment to God. The more they love and trust God, and consequently believe what God has revealed, the more they are expected to encourage both flourishing and rational confrontation. (shrink)

Summary Mats Wahlberg argues that evolutionary theodicies fail to show how an evolutionary process was necessary in order to reach the goal God is said to have had when creating our world. The authors of this article argue that Wahlberg‘s critique fails if one takes into consideration the distinction between type- and token-values. The question that guides Wahlberg‘s discussion is whether or not unique type-values require an evolution in order to be instantiated or not. He does not, however, discuss whether (...) unique token-values require evolution. This article will address this question, and argue that the theodicies he claims to fail does not do so for the reasons put forward by Wahlberg if interpreted as focusing on token-unique values. The authors will also argue that theodicies other than those evaluated by Wahlberg succeed in identifying type-unique values that can only be brought about through evolution. (shrink)

Two general sorts of responses to the suffering caused by the 9/11 attacks are distinguishable in the statements of public officials, journalists, and citizens: one manifests a tragic sensibility, another takes the form of theodicy. Each response entails a distinctive set of expectations about the nature of political agency and solidarity in a democracy. With its claim of access to a transcendental form of truth, theodicy promises a robust sense of political solidarity and agency based on a shared (...) religious belief. Tragic modes of appeal muster their consolatory effects by appealing to intuitions or taste rather than religious belief and therefore potentially remain open to more diverse public audiences. (shrink)

Theodicy, the enterprise of searching for greater goods that might plausibly justify God’s permission of evil, is often criticized on the grounds that the project has systematically failed to unearth any such goods. But theodicists also face a deeper challenge, one that places under question the very attempt to look for any morally sufficient reasons God might have for creating a world littered with evil. This ‘anti-theodical’ view argues that theists (and non-theists) ought to reject, primarily for moral reasons, (...) the project of ‘justifying the ways of God to men’. Unfortunately, this view has not received the serious attention it deserves, particularly in analytic philosophy of religion. Taking my cues from such anti-theodicists as Kenneth Surin, D.Z. Phillips and Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, I defend several reasons for holding that the way of thinking about God and evil enshrined in theodical discourse can only add to the world’s evils, not remove or illuminate them. (shrink)

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION T JLJe1bn1z was above all things a metaphysician. That does not mean that his head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences ...

This article is a critical and appreciative interaction with Christopher Southgate's theodicy and theology of glory. I critique in particular his rejection of all dualist moves in theodicy. I question why Southgate can ascribe evil to some human actions, many of which are automatic and unconscious, but not to any other level or form of consciousness. I argue that he may rely too heavily on rational scientific categories, which are not sufficient in themselves to carry the weight of (...) key theological concepts. His use of poetry is powerful and suggestive, but in the end, he may not give it enough epistemic weight. (shrink)

Kant was engaged with the subject of theodicy throughout his career and not merely in his 1791 treatise explicitly devoted to the subject. George Huxford traces Kant’s thought on theodicy throughout his career to show not only the continuity of Kant's consideration but also his philosophical development on the subject.

Theodicy begins with the recognition that the world is not obviously under the care of a loving God with limitless power and wisdom. If it were, why would the world be burdened with its considerable amount and variety of evil? Theodicists are those who attempt to answer this question by suggesting a possible rationale for the appearance of evil in a theocentric universe. In the past theodicists have taken up the cause of theodicy in the service of piety, (...) so that God might be defended against libel from humans, particularly the accusation that God's reign lacks justice. Contemporary practitioners, who live in a world where the existence of God can no longer be presumed, tend to favour theodicy as an exercise in securing the rationality of religious belief. Their hope is that one crucial theoretical obstacle to responsible belief in God will have been eliminated, once the idea of God has been reconciled with the reality of evil. What has commonly united theodicists, at least since the Enlightenment, is that they must answer to a non–believing antagonist. Until relatively recently, theodicy has been a debate between apologists for theistic faith and their cultured detractors. (shrink)

Marilyn McCord Adams agrees with D. Z. Phillips that instrumental theodicy is a moral failure, and that sceptical theists and others are guilty of ignoring what we know now about the moral reality of horrendous evils to speculate about unknown ways these evils might be made sense of. In place of theodicy, Adams advocates ‘the logic of compensation’ for the victims of evil, a postmortem healing of divine intimacy with God. This goes so deep, she believes, that eventually (...) victims will see the horrors they suffered as points of contact with the incarnate, suffering God and cease wishing they had never suffered them. I argue Adams’s position falls foul of the very criticisms she and Phillips make against instrumental theodicy. (shrink)

Pain, suffering, death, and extinction have been intrinsic to the process of evolution by natural selection. This leads to a real problem of evolutionary theodicy, little addressed up to now in Christian theologies of creation. The problem has ontological, teleological, and soteriological aspects. The recent literature contains efforts to dismiss, disregard, or reframe the problem. The radical proposal that God has no long–term goals for creation, but merely keeps company with its unfolding, is one way forward. An alternative strategy (...) to tackle the problem of evolutionary theodicy is outlined, with an implication for environmental ethics and suggestions for further work. (shrink)

Of the many problems which evolutionary theodicy tries to address, the ones of animal suffering and extinction seem especially intractable. In this essay, I show how C. D. Broad's growing block conception of time does much to ameliorate the problems. Additionally, I suggest it leads to another way of understanding the soul. Instead of it being understood as a substance, it is seen as a history—a history which is resurrected in the end times. Correspondingly, redemption, I argue, should not (...) be seen as an event which redeems some future portion of time. God's triumph is over all of history, not just some future temporal portion. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to reconstruct Berkeley’s views on the nature of God and his Providence, as well as the way he refers to the problem of evil and justice in the world. My analysis is based on one of the early works by Berkeley, i.e. Principles of Human Knowledge. Its aim is to present Berkeley’s understanding of theodicy as different from the one suggested by Leibniz in Theodicy.

The Babylonian Theodicy. By Takayoshi Oshima. State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts, vol. 9. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2013. Pp. lxiii + 63. $39. [Distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Ind.].

SummaryHow can the immense amount of suffering and waste inherent in the evolutionary process be reconciled with the existence of a perfectly good and omnipotent God? A widely embraced proposal in the area of “evolutionary theodicy” is the so-called “Only Way”-argument. This argument contends that certain valuable goods – in particular, creaturely independence and human freedom – can only come about through a genuinely indeterministic and partly uncontrolled process of evolution. In a previous article, I have argued that the (...) “Only Way”-argument can be defeated by a “Twin Earth”-thought experiment: If God is omnipotent, he could have created – directly, without evolution – creatures that are molecule-for-molecule identical to those that he actually created through evolution. If the creatures that he actually created have freedom and independence, there is no valid reason to deny that the non-evolved “twin creatures” would also be free and independent. Recently, Eikrem and Søvik have suggested a way of blocking my Twin Earth-argument by appealing to the distinction between type-values and token-values. While ES admit that the Twin Earth-argument shows the non-necessity of evolution for the existence of certain type-goods, they argue that an evolutionary creation can be justified by appeal to valuable token-goods that could not have existed without evolution. In this article, I respond to ES’s token-goods argument by showing that it is incompatible with a basic presupposition of “Only Way” evolutionary theodicies, namely the claim that the evolutionary process is genuinely indeterministic and partly uncontrolled. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 278 - 292 Responding to Zachary Braiterman’s and Daniel Garner’s ideas on post-Holocaust religious thought, the author proposes a new model of relationships between theodicy and antitheodicy in which divine perfection is no longer privileged as the single key factor. Building on Peter Berger’s and Clifford Geertz’s treatments of the problem of evil, it is suggested that focusing on meaning-making and tradition can result in a stratified view of theodicy–antitheodicy more able (...) to engage with the dynamics of several well-known thinkers associated with religious responses to the Holocaust. (shrink)

From Leibniz's time until the mid-1970s, the word ‘theodicy’ was used to describe attempts to explain God's permission of evil. Since the mid-1970s, however, it has taken on a more refined sense among philosophers of religion – a change that can be attributed to Alvin Plantinga's book God, Freedom and Evil. In this work, Plantinga distinguishes between two types of explanations of evil that theists might construct. The first type is offered in response to arguments that the coexistence of (...) God and evil is impossible. Explanations of this sort, which Plantinga calls ‘defences’, need only show the logical compatibility of God and evil. The second type aims to provide plausible and perhaps even likely-to-be-true explanations of evil, explanations which show that the existence of evil is not unlikely given the existence of God. Plantinga labelled explanations of this latter sort ‘theodicies’. His distinction has left a lasting mark on the field, and in the contemporary literature philosophers of religion use the term ‘theodicy’ in this narrower sense, and it is in this sense that it will be addressed in this article. The article discusses the punishment theodicy, the natural consequence theodicy, the free-will theodicy, the natural-law theodicy, soul-making theodicies, and theodicies of animal suffering. (shrink)

Theodicy needs to show, for all actual evils e, that 1) in allowing e, a God would bring about a necessary condition of a good g not achievable in any other morally permissible way, 2) if e occurs, g occurs, 3) it is morally permissible for God to allow e, and 4) g is at least as good as e is bad. This article contributes to a full-scale theodicy by showing that A being of use (e.g., by suffering) (...) to B is a great good for A, and that in consequence, if 1) and 2) are satisfied, 3) and 4) are also likely to be satisfied. (shrink)

Our aim here is to show that an enigmatic text of Avicenna's Glosses, devoted to the problem of evil, takes on its full meaning in the light of the last chapter of the Šifā ' on De generatione et corruptione. We will see how Avicenna, deepening and developing a cosmological argument already present in the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on the De generatione, ends up building most of his theodicy on the relative incommensurability of the different celestial periods. (...) All the problem of divine Justice is thus reinterpreted in terms of opposition between discrete and continuous. Finally we will show the importance that this development of Avicenna had in Western Christendom in the 14th century, and the complex relationship which Leibniz has with it in his recently edited reflections on the Great Year. (shrink)

Theodicy wrestles with suffering and pain, while seeking to understand God's engagement with these realities. Cancer raises similar questions, while focusing on specific aspects of those questions. Cancer appears to challenge many aspects of Christian doctrine, in particular issues regarding the origin of sin, Christology, and ultimately ones doctrine of God. This article explores how my own personal diagnosis of colon cancer has led to an exploration and re-evaluation of these traditional doctrines and their relevance for my own faith (...) journey. The realities of cancer, and random cell mutation as an evolutionary driver, appear to call into question traditional understandings of the origin of suffering and sin, and, I would argue, the very role of Jesus. A process theology that redefines core features of the nature of God is proposed as one way of addressing these doctrines and their impact for faith. These features will note the limited nature of God with regard to power and knowledge as well as the nature of a God who truly risks. (shrink)

Theodicy and Toleration Seem at first glance to be an unlikely pair of topics to treat in a single paper. Toleration usually means putting up with beliefs or actions with which one disagrees, and it is practiced because the beliefs or actions in question are not disagreeable enough to justify interference. It is usually taken to be a topic for moral and political philosophy. Theodicy, on the other hand, is the attempt to solve the problem of evil; that (...) is, to explain the origin of suffering and sin in a way that does not make God a moral cause of those evils.1 While theodicy concerns the notions of good and evil, and could therefore be considered a moral topic, historical and contemporary discussions of it have .. (shrink)

In June 2022, Christopher Southgate delivered the Boyle Lecture for that year at St Mary-le-Bow, in the City of London, on the theme of evolutionary theodicy. This article contains the text of the short talk and vote of thanks delivered in response that evening.

There have been various strands of theodicy in Christian tradition—that evil is simply the absence of good, that evil was caused by the Fall of Adam or of the angels, that human free will requires the possibility of moral evil, and that evil is needed to promote the growth of souls. The first strand is worthless, and the value of the second has been exaggerated; but the other two strands are important.

This paper summarizes a version of the argument from evil for atheism and then assesses several theodicies, including those that appeal to punishment, evil as a necessary counterpart for good, free will, natural evil as natural consequence, natural law, higher-order goods, and the conjunctive "Big Reason" including all the above and more beside.

Indian theistic solution to the problem of evil – or universal injustice – is an off‐shoot of the logical theism of Nyāya and philosophical theologies of Vedānta thought. Their respective teleo‐cosmologies embed an ontology of divine creation, sustention and periodic dissolution of our world. An N‐factor is introduced governing the moral sphere, namely, the principle of karma. The presence of karma (admitting freely‐will choices) potentiates individuals’ actions, good and bad; this then mitigates the need to seek justification for God allowing (...) horrendous amounts of suffering to occur. God cannot be held morally responsible for the evil in the world, because he depends on the laws of karma toward maintaining just order. Hence, it is consistent within Hindu philosophy to hold both that there is evil qua karma in our world and there exists an omnipotent God. The role assumed by karma theory is a unique feature of Indian theodicy (theistic and nontheistic). (shrink)

‘Simulation Hypotheses’ are imaginative scenarios that are typically employed in philosophy to speculate on how likely it is that we are currently living within a simulated universe as well as on our possibility for ever discerning whether we do in fact inhabit one. These philosophical questions in particular overshadowed other aspects and potential uses of simulation hypotheses, some of which are foregrounded in this article. More specifically, “A Theodicy for Artificial Universes” focuses on the moral implications of simulation hypotheses (...) with the objective of speculatively answering questions concerning computer simulations such as: If we are indeed living in a computer simulation, what might be its purpose? What aspirations and values could be inferentially attributed to its alleged creators? And would living in a simulated universe affect the value and meaning we attribute to our existence? (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged among those philosophers and theologians who have given the matter much thought that the fact of animal suffering challenges Theism in a distinctive way. Standard attempts to reconcile human suffering with a perfectly powerful and benevolent deity don’t seem to apply easily to the case of animals. Animals can hardly be said to deserve their suffering or be morally improved by it, nor is it generally supposed that animals will be compensated for their pain in an (...) afterlife. On the face of it, then, animal pain appears to be a bothersome evil still left over when all the theodicy work is done. I would like to consider some of the attempts to deal with animal suffering in theodicy, showing why each ultimately fails. Rather than attempting to provide the successful theodicy myself, I will try to show what the theodicies reveal about the relationship between Theism and moral attitudes toward animals. (shrink)

Edward Nieznański developed two logical systems to deal with the problem of evil and to refute religious determinism. However, when formalized in first-order modal logic, two axioms of each system contradict one another, revealing that there is an underlying minimal set of axioms enough to settle the questions. In this article, we develop this minimal system, called N3, which is based on Nieznański’s contribution. The purpose of N3 is to solve the logical problem of evil through the defeat of a (...) version of religious determinism. On the one hand, these questions are also addressed by Nieznański’s systems, but, on the other hand, they are obtained in N3 with fewer assumptions. Our approach can be considered a case of logic of religion, that is, of logic applied to religious discourse, as proposed by Józef Maria Bocheński; in this particular case, it is a discourse in theodicy, which is situated in the context of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The word “theodicy” comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and justice (diké). Although coined by Leibniz, the attempt it represents is far older. In the Jewish tradition, it stretches to the beginning—that is to the stories of Genesis with their attempts to explain how evil could exist in a world created by God. God, after each creative act, sees that his creations are “good.” Women, however, bear their children in pain (Gn 3:16) and the ground, sprouting “thorns (...) and thistles,” can at times appears “cursed” to the farmer (Gn 3:18). How do we explain this? How is it compatible with God’s justice? Is it, in fact, possible to “justify God’s ways to man”? Beginning with Genesis’s account of man’s disobedience, there is a whole tradition of efforts to answer this question. It includes Isaiah’s notion of the “suffering servant”—the person who suffers for the sins of others—and the Maccabean notion of the “martyr”—the innocent and just sufferer who serves as a witness for the truth. As the philosopher, Hans Jonas, observes, the “event of Auschwitz” marks an important challenge to this tradition. “Auschwitz” names not just the setting in which over a million Jews, Gypsies and Poles perished. It also signifies the dehumanization of its victims. In the “factory-like working of its machine” for extermination, even the gesture of martyrdom and witness was not left to the dying. In Jonas’s words, “Not fidelity or infidelity, belief or unbelief, not guilt or punishment, not trial, witness and messianic hope, nay, not even strength or weakness, heroism or cowardice, defiance or submission had a place there. .... Of all this, Auschwitz, which also devoured the infants and babes, knew.. (shrink)

The existence of evil is compatible with the existence of God, most theists would claim, because evil either results from the activities of free agents, or it contributes in some way toward their moral development. According to the ‘free-will defence’, evil and suffering are necessary consequences of free-will. Proponents of the ‘soul-making argument’—a theodicy with a different emphasis—argue that a universe which is imperfect will nurture a whole range of virtues in a way impossible either in a perfect world, (...) or in a totally evil one. The pain of animals is widely thought to constitute a major difficulty for both of these accounts, for if we ask whether the only evils present in the world result directly from the free actions of created agents, or contribute in some way to ‘soul-making’ of such agents, we are bound to admit that, on the face of it, much animal pain does not. (shrink)

We develop and knit together several theodicies in order to find a more complete picture of why certain forms of animal suffering might be permitted by a perfect being. We focus on an especially potent form of the problem of evil, which arises from considering why a perfectly good, wise, and powerful God might use evolutionary mechanisms that predictably result in so much animal suffering and loss of life. There are many existing theodicies on the market, and although they offer (...) helpful resources, we combine and further develop several proposals to produce a composite theodicy that avoids certain shortcomings of the individual theodicies. An important element of our project is locating a role for randomness in cosmic and biological evolution. In particular, we show how randomness might enhance or enable certain goods, including everlasting goods, at the risk of temporary evils. (shrink)

Although Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, Alvin Plantinga has developed a theodicy that is fundamentally Arminian rather than Calvinistic. Anthony Flew, although the son of an Arminian Christian minister, regards the Arminian view of ‘free will’ to be both unacceptable on its own terms and incompatible with classical Christian theism. In this paper I hope to disentangle some of the involved controversy regarding theodicy which has developed between Plantinga and Flew, and between Flew and myself. The major (...) portion of this paper is devoted to showing that Plantinga's theodicy contains some serious flaws and undesirable implications. (shrink)

Several recent critiques of theodicy have incorporated some form of moral objection to the theodical enterprise, in which the critic argues that one ought not to engage in the practice of theodicy. In defending theodical practice against the moral critique, Atle O. Søvik argues that the moral critique (1) begs the question against theodicy, and (2) misapprehends the implications of the claim that it is inappropriate to espouse a theodicy in certain situations. In this paper I (...) suggest some sympathetic emendations for Søvik's theodical apologetic, but I argue against Søvik's claim that the moral critique of theodicy is altogether irrelevant. (shrink)

Malebranche's Theodicy ANDREW G. BLACK LEIBNIZ'S SOLUTION tO the problem of evil, his theodicy, might be regarded as a paradigm of philosophical theology. Its pattern, as with so much of Leibniz's philosophy, is reconciliation of deep metaphysical truth with recalcitrant ap- pearance. Thus, a theodicy is not just any solution to the problem; strictly speaking it is a vindication of divine providence in the face of the challenge posed by apparent imperfections of all kinds in creation.' The (...) preeminence of Leibniz's theodicy as a modern solution to the problem of evil has helped to obscure distinguished contributions from among his contemporaries. Not least among these is that made by Nicolas Malebranche, a philosopher having much in common with Leibniz . ~ Malebranche shows a deep concern for the problem of evil throughout his philosophical writings, though nowhere more so than in his Treatise on Nature and Grace, a a book written in response to the Jansenist4 challenge to orthodox In addition to an entire and substantial book, the Theodicy , a number of Leibniz's essays contain versions of his theodicy. See, for example, articles 1- 7 of the Discourse on Metaphysics; also "A Vindication of God's Justice Reconciled with his.. (shrink)

The term theodicy was coined by the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and is inherent in the question of how evil can exist if an intrinsically good God guides everything. The publication of this oeuvre initiated intense philosophical and theological discourse in the subsequent centuries, during which many issues that bare upon human well-being were articulated. Also, Leibniz’s rational approach to the relationship between God and evil raised a number of issues related to the topic of belief. This topic (...) has entangled discourses on theodicy with a long-lasting debate on beliefs, which goes back to Antiquity. Recently, a paradigm-shift shed new light on the understanding of belief. Science has begun to address the neurophysiological mechanisms of the processes that underpin belief formation, modulation, and change. The term credition was coined in order to capture and reflect this new and innovative understanding of the fluidity of beliefs and believing. This paper presents various features of a pattern of interrelationships between well-being, theodicy, and credition. (shrink)

Offering an original perspective on the central project of Descartes' Meditations, this book argues that Descartes' free will theodicy is crucial to his refutation of skepticism. A common thread runs through Descartes' radical First Meditation doubts, his Fourth Meditation discussion of error, and his pious reconciliation of providence and freedom: each involves a clash of perspectives-thinking of God seems to force conclusions diametrically opposed to those we reach when thinking only of ourselves. Descartes fears that a skeptic could exploit (...) this clash of perspectives to argue that Reason is not trustworthy because self-contradictory. To refute the skeptic and vindicate the consistency of Reason, it is not enough for Descartes to demonstrate that our Creator is perfect; he must also show that our errors cannot prove God's imperfection. To do this, Descartes invokes the idea that we err freely. However, prospects initially seem dim for this free will theodicy, because Descartes appears to lack any consistent or coherent understanding of human freedom. In an extremely in-depth analysis spanning four chapters, Ragland argues that despite initial appearances, Descartes consistently offered a coherent understanding of human freedom: for Descartes, freedom is most fundamentally the ability to do the right thing. Since we often do wrong, actual humans must therefore be able to do otherwise-our actions cannot be causally determined by God or our psychology. But freedom is in principle compatible with determinism: while leaving us free, God could have determined us to always do the good. Though this conception of freedom is both consistent and suitable to Descartes' purposes, when he attempts to reconcile it with divine providence, Descartes's strategy fails, running afoul of his infamous doctrine that God created the eternal truths. (shrink)

This book is the result of a conference that addressed two pressing issues for christianity in the modern world.

The literature on the problem of evil does not draw enough upon the relevant debates in (meta)ethics, and ethical theorists (broadly understood) can engage with the problem of evil as a way of inquiry in their field. I review how the problem of evil is essentially formed based on (evaluative and deontic) ethical judgments, and how responses to it, either theistic or atheistic, are mainly based on the relevant ethical judgments. Meanwhile, though contemporary debates in metaphysics and epistemology have influenced (...) the literature on the problem of evil, the same does not hold true for ethics. This suggests that there are ways to engage with the problem of evil as doing axiology or ethical theory more generally, which may be fruitful regardless of their being theodicy. I end by briefly discussing an example focused on the idea of moral progress. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a discussion of chapter 3 of Adrian Moore’s The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics, which is titled “Leibniz: Metaphysics in the Service of Theodicy.” Here Moore discusses the philosophy of Leibniz and comes to a damning conclusion. My main aim is to suggest that such a conclusion might be a little premature. I begin by outlining Moore’s discussion of Leibniz and then raise some problems for the objections that Moore presents. I follow this by raising (...) a Moore-inspired problem of my own and offer a possible response. The response is based on a little-known essay of Leibniz’s called “Leibniz’s Philosophical Dream” and leads me to consider Leibniz’s deepest motivations for engaging in philosophical reflection. (shrink)

In responding to Peter Forrest’s defence of ‘tough-minded theodicy’, I point to some problematic features of theodicies of this sort, in particular their commitment to an anthropomorphic conception of God which tends to assimilate the Creator to the creaturely and so diminishes the otherness and mystery of God. This remains the case, I argue, even granted Forrest’s view that God may have a very different kind of morality from the one we mortals are subject to.

From a theoretical standpoint, the problem of human suffering can be understood as one formulation of the classical problem of evil, which calls into question the compatibility of the existence of a perfect God with the extent to which human beings suffer. Philosophical responses to this problem have traditionally been posed in the form of theodicies, or justifications of the divine. In this article, I argue that the theodical approach in analytic philosophy of religion exhibits both morally and epistemically harmful (...) tendencies and that philosophers would do better to shift their perspective from the hypothetical “God’s-eye view” to the standpoint of those who actually suffer. By focusing less on defending the epistemic rationality of religious belief and more on the therapeutic effectiveness of particular imaginings of God with respect to suffering, we can recover, (re)construct, and/or (re)appropriate more virtuous approaches to the individual and collective struggle with the life of faith in the face of suffering. (shrink)