Ex-Voto Publishing
By the global argument from evil, I understand the following argument (or any argument sufficiently similar to it that the two arguments stand or fall together): We find vast amounts of truly horrendous evil in the world; if there were a God, we should not find vast amounts of horrendous evil in the world; there […]
Peter van Inwagen, “The Global Argument from Evil” Read More »
This essay is a contribution to theodicy—the justifying of God’s ways to humankind—in the face of the many evils of our world. But it is offered as a modest contribution to such a project, in fact, a very modest contribution. One kind of evil consists of the personal evils that occur in a life which
Paul Helm, “God’s Providence Takes No Risks” Read More »
Open theism is a view of the divine nature and the God-world relationship that arises out of what may be called the free will tradition of Christian thought. Although this theology of openness is not new in most respects compared to traditional Christian theism, it contains particular emphases and several new elements that together render
John Sanders, “God, Evil, and Relational Risk” Read More »
What Is “Naturalism”? Let’s start in by talking about “naturalism,” for this is a word with many meanings. When I was a child, it meant nudism, going around without your clothes on. With some regret, this is not the topic of this essay, for it is rather with notions of naturalism that have to do
Michael Ruse, “Naturalism, Evil, and God” Read More »
Why do bad things happen to good people? If God really loves us, why doesn’t he stop the bad things that befall us? How can I serve or even worship a God who rewards my faithfulness with affliction? Most of us have probably asked these questions at some time or other. In fact, these are
John Fienberg, “The Religious Problem of Evil” Read More »
Strategically placed at the core of the problem of evil—of how suffering, dysfunction, the unnecessary triviality of unrewarding experiences, and discord can exist in the presence of a God who has perfect power, knowledge, and goodness—lies an understanding of what God is able to do and in fact does. Because God has the power both
Reichenbach, “Evil, Omnipotence, & Process Thought” Read More »
This is a [treatment of] the theoretical problem of evil as it appears in the Western philosophical and theological traditions.… [It is] written from the perspective of the “process” philosophical and theological thought inspired primarily by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne… [C]ertain assumptions about the nature of God’s power that made the problem so
David Ray Griffin, A Process Theodicy Read More »
Christians believe that God is effectively dealing with the problem of evil through the cross—primarily the cross of Christ and secondarily their own. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus follows the prediction of his own martyrdom (Luke 9:22) with a charge to his disciples: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself
Marilyn McCord Adams, “Redemptive Suffering” Read More »
I wish to address what is sometimes termed the “existential” form of the problem of evil—the form in which theism is questioned and/or rejected on the basis of moral protest, indignation and outrage at the evils of this world. In the first section of this chapter I shall ask the reader to participate in a
Hasker, “On Regretting the Evils of This World” Read More »
For several decades, discussions of the “inductive” or “probabilistic” or “evidential” argument from evil have been major fare in philosophy of religion. The target of this type of argument is standard theism—the view that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being who created the world. Of course, theistic religions call this being “God.”
M. Peterson, “The Evidential Argument from Evil” Read More »