Abstract
Theodicy is the religious response to the problem of pain and suffering. It has been defined by John Hick as ‘an attempt to reconcile the unlimited goodness of an all-powerful God with the reality of evil’.1 In such a view the function of the theodicist is to show that these attributes of the Divine are consistent with the reality and experience of evil. In this regard theodicy is usually considered a defensive affair: the role of the theodicist is to defend religious beliefs against those who argue they are contradictory or implausible in the face of evil. The theodicist usually responds to attacks pertaining to evil that are raised against religious beliefs by the atheologian or religious sceptic. This fact about theodicy has led many to perceive theodicy as an exclusively defensive activity.
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Notes
John Hick, ‘The Problem of Evil’ in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1967) p. 136.
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) pp. 28–9.
J. B. Sykes (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 7th edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) p. 1109.
R. Z. Friedman, ‘Evil and moral agency’, Philosophy of Religion, vol. XXIV (1988) p. 7.
The most specific systematisation of theodical themes that I have come across is that by Arthur L. Herman, in The Problem of Evil in Indian Thought (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), especially pp. 79–80.
H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) p. 8.
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Henry D. Aiken (ed.) (New York: Hafner, 1948) pp. 77–8.
John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Macmillan, 1966) p. 343.
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Fathers of the English Dominican Province (tr.) (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947) pt. I, Q. xxii, art. 2.
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© 1992 Michael Stoeber
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Stoeber, M. (1992). Defining Theodicy. In: Evil and the Mystics’ God. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12653-8_2
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