Ex-Voto Publishing
1 The Issue: The specific question assigned to us for discussion is this: Grounds for belief in God aside, do the evils in our world make atheistic belief more reasonable than theistic belief? The initial clause in this question is important. For it is one thing to argue that the evils in our world provide […]
Rowe, “Evil Is Evidence against Theistic Belief” Read More »
In a widely discussed piece entitled “Evil and Omnipotence” John Mackie repeats this claim: “I think, however, that a more telling criticism can be made by way of the traditional problem of evil. Here it can be shown, not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational, that the several parts
Alvin Plantinga, “Does the Theist Contradict Himself?” Read More »
The traditional arguments for the existence of God have been fairly thoroughly criticized by philosophers. But the theologian can, if he wishes, accept this criticism. He can admit that no rational proof of God’s existence is possible. And he can still retain all that is essential to his position, by holding that God’s existence is
J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence” Read More »
Levinas’s approach to the problem of evil is to discount the traditional view of theodicy which serves to ‘justify’ or rationalize the evil and suffering that are inflicted on others. Certainly we could agree that the wanton destruction of life is evil. But Levinas’s work helps us to see evil in a different light. For
Emmanuel Levinas, “Useless Suffering” Read More »
Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003) was a German Lutheran activist, theologian, and academic. Her most well-known work on the problem of pain is Suffering, in which she develops a theology of the cross involving three distinct dimensions of affliction. The first dimension is physical pain. Sölle regards physical suffering to be the least consequential of the three
Dorothee Sölle, Suffering Read More »
In Evil and the God of Love, English academic and philosopher of religion John Hick (1922–2012) differentiates between two problems of evil—the “mystery” of evil that is “encountered and lived through” by sufferers, and the intellectual problem of evil: “It is true that the intellectual problem, which invites rational reflection, is distinct from the experienced
John Hick, “The ‘Vale of Soul-Making’ Theodicy” Read More »
Karl Barth was preoccupied with the question of theodicy, probably more so than is readily apparent in his works. Among other things, his concern shows in the fact that he dedicated a highly idiosyncratic treatise to the problem of evil that deviates significantly from the theological tradition and is still worth contemplating today. The treatise
Karl Barth, “God and Nothingness” Read More »
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) is regarded as the founder of analytical psychology. In his 1951 book, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, Jung employs the methodology of analytical psychology to give insight into the possible psychological bases of one of the oldest and most well-known responses to the problem of evil:
Simone Weil (1909–1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. Her essay “The Love of God and Affliction” is in essence a meditation on the cross. The “affliction” of which Weil writes (malheur in French) is suffering characterized by doom, horror, and a sense of inescapability and powerlessness. This form of suffering, moreover, is often
Simone Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction” Read More »
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was an English medievalist and Anglican lay theologian whose religious writings drew heavily from Augustinian thought. Though a devout believer in Christ, in The Problem of Pain Lewis flatly rejected orthodox Christian doctrine concerning the origin of suffering in the natural world: “The origin of animal suffering could be traced, by earlier
C. S. Lewis, “Animal Pain” Read More »