Evolution,Suffering, and Eschatological Redemption: Sollereder,Southgate, and Russell on Theodicy

Two new books helpfully refine the position vaunted by Theistic Evolution. These two books will garner the interest especially of the proleptic school within Theistic Evolution, which affirms (1) the long history of evolution as God's creative work; (2) the Theology of the Cross wherein God shares in the sufferings and even death of all creatures, animals included; (3) Jesus’ Easter resurrection as a prolepsis of the eschatological new creation; and (4) the coincidence of creation with redemption. These two provocative new works are Bethany Sollereder's God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall, along with Christopher Southgate's Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing. This article tackles a problem surfacing in the work of both Sollereder and Southgate: when eliminating the fall, the combination of redemption and creation becomes incoherent. Robert John Russell's “fall without a fall” provides greater coherence in the proleptic version of Theistic Evolution.     

Theodicy on Trial

Philosophia - 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...     

Genetic Engineering,Virtue-First Enhancement,and Deification in Neo-Irenaean Theodicy

This article seeks to provide a unified explanation to two profound challenges to Christian belief: the existence of evil and Darwin’s theory of natural selection. It is argued that an understanding of the full implications of our evolutionary past in conjunction with the Irenaean theodicy provides us with the best answer to these challenges. The traditional Irenaean theodicy emphasizes the importance of education for soul building. Soul building can benefit from technologically enhancing the biological superstructure of our humanity. In particular, genetic engineering can enhance human virtue. The biological basis of our moral natures can be improved using genetic technologies, including (possibly) somatic and germline engineering. To plan for virtue-first enhancement—the Genetic Virtue Project, which focuses on genetic improvements to our moral natures—is of paramount importance for the neo-Irenaean theodicy.     

Creation,Redemption and Theodicy in the Work of Christopher Southgate

This paper analyzes the work of Christopher Southgate with a view toward interpreting his insights into the integrity of creation, redemption and theodicy in light of Saint Augustine's theology. Drawing on various contributions that Southgate has made, this paper seeks to establish parallels, connections and some agreement between his work and the great African bishop without papering over the obvious disagreements over the Fall, Original Sin, the premises of salvation and biblical hermeneutics.     

The Theodicy of Austin Farrer

This article seeks to place the theodicy of the Anglican theologian Austin Farrer, as expressed in Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (1962), within the context of philosophical and theological approaches to the so-called “problem of evil”. Farrer's work is initially contrasted with the theodicies of John Hick and Richard Swinburne. This comparison reveals some of the rationalist and foundationalist moral assumptions of modern philosophical theodicy of which Hick and Swinburne are representatives. By contrast, it is argued that Farrer's approach is thoroughly theological and begins not with a pre-conceived ethics, but with God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Farrer is thus deemed to have much in common with pre-Enlightenment thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas. Although Farrer's theodicy is seen to be theological (rather than a philosophical attempt at a resolution of the modern “problem of evil”), it is argued that he resists trends in recent theological approaches to theodicy that claim that God is passible (for example, the work of Jürgen Moltmann). This article defends divine impassibility and argues that, although Farrer's later “metaphysical personalism” implies that God may be personal to the point that he could be said to suffer, his Augustinian notion of the nature of evil as privatio boni strongly implies impassibility. This Farrer is seen to avoid two anthropomorphic approaches to theodicy: one that judges God by the standards of a foundational secular morality, and the other that ascribes certain “personal” emotions to the divine. This article defends Farrer's theological approach to theodicy and his emphasis on ecclesiology and soteriology. However, the lack of a convincing and thorough dogmatic theology is seen to render his theodicy uncompelling. Despite this weakness, it is argued that Farrer's work points theodicy towards a theological encounter with particular narratives of evil and suffering and away from the consideration of a single “problem of evil” by means of “rational”, philosophical enquiry.     

上帝与恶的悖论——斯温伯恩神正论述评

面对上帝与恶的悖论,斯温伯恩积极回应,用逻辑有效性重释上帝的本质,用自由意志为道德的恶辩护,用有用性为自然的恶辩护。但上帝与恶的悖论本来就无法化解,斯温伯恩的努力最终归于失败。     

The Problem of Theodicy and Religious Response to Cancer

The authors studied the religious response to cancer in a group of hematology/ oncology-clinic patients. Method: Patients (N = 45) were surveyed with a self-report questionnaire. Five items were designed to reflect the five major categories of theodicy or modes of reconciling suffering with a morally good God. Results: Of the 45 patients, in response to their illness, 67% (N = 30) increased amount of prayer, 51% (N = 23) gained faith, and 16% (N = 7) increased the frequency of church attendance. The majority of patients across all levels of religious belief endorse a theodicy that claims God has a reason for their suffering, but this reason cannot be explained or understood. Conclusions: Religious cancer patients intensify their religious belief and practice in response to their illness. Despite the elusiveness of an explanation for their suffering in religious terms, patients remain confident in their faith.     

God, Tragedy, and the Near-Death Experience: Evaluating Kushner's Perspectives on Theodicy

This article evaluates Harold Kushner's original and reconstructed perspectives on God and the theodicic problem on the basis of research on the near-death experience (NDE) and related phenomena. In response to a personal tragedy, Kushner reconstructed his thinking about God and tragedy from his original Causation-Power perspective to an Inspiration-Love perspective. The Causation-Power perspective posits that God causes human events and that tragic events do not actually contradict God's purpose or will, although tragic events may result from the human freedom to disobey God and suffer punitive consequences. In the Inspiration-Love perspective, human freedom expands to mean that God does not cause all events: God does not cause tragedy, suffers with the sufferer, and can intervene against tragic events only by inspiring people to cope with tragedy and care for others. Although the research findings are consistent with Kushner's emphasis on love and inspiration, the theme of divine power and purpose is also evident. Hence, Kushner should not have rejected entirely his early (Causation-Power) perspective. Identified in the research are forms of inspiration that Kushner did not take into account in his reconstructed (Inspiration-Love) view. The Causation-Power and Inspiration-Love perspectives seem incompatible and neither alone solves the theodicic problem. Nonetheless, they do complement one another; a resolution would permit an integrative understanding of God and tragedy.     

Moral Evil,Freedom and the Goodness of God: Why Kant Abandoned Theodicy

Kant proclaimed that all theodicies must fail in ‘On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy’, but it is mysterious why he did so since he had developed a theodicy of his own during the critical period. In this paper, I offer an explanation of why Kant thought theodicies necessarily fail. In his theodicy, as well as in some of his works in ethics, Kant explained moral evil as resulting from unavoidable limitations in human beings. God could not create finite beings without such limitations and so could not have created humans that were not prone to committing immoral acts. However, the work of Carl Christian Eberhard Schmid showed Kant that given his own beliefs about freedom and the nature of responsibility one could not account for moral evil in this way without tacitly denying that human beings were responsible for their actions. This result is significant not only because it explains an otherwise puzzling shift in Kant's philosophy of religion, but also because it shows that the theodicy essay provides powerful evidence that Kant's thinking about moral evil and freedom underwent fundamental shifts between early works such as the Groundwork and later works like the Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason.     

Charles Seymour,A Theodicy of Hell (Studies in Philosophy and Religion,Vol. 20)

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

Against Theodicy: A Response to Peter Forrest

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.     

Measuring Theodicy: Individual Differences in the Perception of Divine Intervention

The attribution of control to God may have particularly interesting psychological properties. Theodicy refers to the perception of God controlling history—even the minutiae of daily events. The current study examines the psychometric properties of a new instrument, the Theodicy Scale. Results support the reliability of the brief scale when administered to college students, and some evidence is provided suggesting construct validation. Theodicy appears to represent a unitary construct and scores vary independent of social desirability bias. The absence of a relationship between Theodicy scores and simulated medical advice raises questions to be addressed in future research.     

Doing Theodicy: An Empirical Study of a Women's Prayer Group

The study of a weekly women's prayer group in a small northern English town discusses how participants resolve tensions which may arise from unanswered prayer. The most important mechanism in that process is the informal ‘chatting’ which precedes the period of formal prayer. The author concludes that women actively conduct a ‘ritual of theodicy’ to rescue their worldview from chaos. The participants maintain that they are directed by God's wisdom, not by their own actions.