Philosophy, Theology & Literature
on the Problem of Evil

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...

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...

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...

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...

One of the most famous speeches of all time is a sermon about hell, namely, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. Its fame is due...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is most famous for founding psychoanalysis, but he also took a keen interest in religion, particularly as it relates to man’s experience of suffering. For Freud, however,...

Hermann Cohen’s Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (published in 1919) is regarded by many as the most important work in Jewish religious and philosophical thought since Maimonides’s Guide for...

American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842–1910) is regarded as one of the founders of functional psychology, which evaluates mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to a person’s...

Josiah Royce (1855–1916) was an objective idealist philosopher and the main proponent of American idealism at the turn of the twentieth century. Royce sets out his theodicy in “The Problem...

The English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) is regarded as one of the leading Victorian poets for his innovations with prosody (the use of syllables, meter, rhyme, and the...

The German philologist, philosopher, and cultural critic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is famous for declaring that “God is dead,” an expression of the secularist consequences unleashed by the Enlightenment. Though he...

What is the problem of evil? The sterile, academic language of philosophy is often used to explain it, but one is hard-pressed to find a better description of the visceral...

The English utilitarian and Member of Parliament John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was one of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism. Though known mostly for his work in...

Man’s understanding of his origins was revolutionized with the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, by renowned English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). The...

The empiricist, atheist German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) is best known for his 1818 work, The World as Will and Representation. In it, he responds to the problem of evil by inverting...

German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) developed a system of logic around the concept of aufhebung. Aufhebung is the noun form of the German verb aufheben, which means “to keep,”...

The poetry of the esteemed English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) had been in publication for only a few years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five. Insight...

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) was one of the most influential German philosophers of the early 19th century. In “Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters,”...

The best-known theodicy based on principles of economics was written by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), an Anglican cleric and economist who made major contributions to the fields of political economy...

In 1791, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), one of the preeminent German philosophers of the Enlightenment, addressed the problem of evil in an essay titled, “On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials...

The Scottish philosopher and essayist David Hume (1711–1776) is known for his criticisms of various claims to religious knowledge, as well as for his naturalistic explanations of the origins of...

In 1756, Swiss-born philosopher and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) wrote a letter responding to Voltaire’s poem on the Lisbon earthquake—a poem in which Voltaire expressed a mix of intellectual...

The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is one of the most significant earthquakes in recorded history, killing tens of thousands in Lisbon, thousands more elsewhere in Portugal, and additional thousands in...

First published in 1733, Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man became an international best-seller, appearing in over a hundred editions in eighteen languages across Europe. Pope’s response to the problem of evil in...

The German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) authored one of the most influential works on the problem of evil: Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man,...

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) was a Huguenot (a group of persecuted French Calvinists) who wrote the massive philosophical and lexical work known in English as the Historical and Critical Dictionary. Bayle’s...

Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), a French Oratorian priest in the Catholic Church, was one of the most highly-regarded philosophers of his era. A prolific writer, Malebranche displayed a deep concern about...

Ralph Cudworth (1617–88) was an intellectual leader of the philosophical school known as Cambridge Platonism, a group of University of Cambridge theologians and Platonist philosophers who were influential during the...

Baruch Spinoza was one of the seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment. Born into the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1632, Spinoza eventually developed heterodox ideas regarding the authenticity of...

Paradise Lost is an epic poem written by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The poem dramatizes the biblical account of the fall of man, using two narrative arcs: one about...

In the excerpt below from Leviathan, the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) takes up the problem of evil, focusing his attention on the case of Job. Hobbes asserts that,...

John Calvin (1509–1564) was a French theologian, ecclesiastical statesman, and leading figure of the Protestant Reformation. His Institutes of the Christian Religion is a manual of Calvinist Protestantism, a movement which...

Martin Luther (1483–1546), the great intellectual leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, viewed human existence as a spiritual battlefield, with each person’s eternal fate hanging in the balance. To...

Thomas Kempis (1380–1471) was a German-Dutch cannon regular, a category of clerics in the Catholic Church who live together in a vow-based religious community. He is credited with authorship of...

In Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English mystic, describes a series of revelatory visions that she received from Christ after she fell deathly ill at the...

First published in 1400, The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by the famed English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. “The Pardoner’s Tale,” which appears halfway through...

Any survey of literature on the problem of evil would be remiss if it neglected to take note of the importance of liturgical writings, many of which have profoundly affected...

Can good be the cause of evil? Can the supreme good, God, be the cause of evil? In the paragraphs below, Thomas Aquinas examines these two facets of the problem...

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) was a rabbi, theologian, and physician, considered by many to be the greatest medieval Jewish thinker. Guide for the Perplexed addresses the conflicts between Judaism and the scientific...

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) is often referred to as the “Father of Scholasticism” for his use of dialectics in his theological works, a method that would later become standard practice...

On the Consolation of Philosophy was written in AD 523 during a year-long imprisonment that the Roman statesman Boethius served while awaiting trial, and ultimately execution, for the alleged crime...

Considerable obscurity remains about the person of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, author of On the Divine Names. His writings, which are our only source of information about his life, suggest that...

Written in the early 5th century AD, The City of God is a cornerstone of Christian theology, presenting human history as a spiritual war between the Earthly City (the fallen...

Lucius Lactantius was an early Christian author (240–320 AD) who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I. Lactantius’s A Treatise on the Anger of God, Addressed...

Sextus Empiricus was a Greek Pyrrhonist, a school of philosophical skepticism founded by Pyrrho in the fourth century BC. Sextus promoted a form of philosophical inquiry called the “skeptic way,”...

A central purpose of Against Heresies was to refute the heretical teachings of Gnosticism, which flourished during the early church period. Because many Gnostics held that spiritual knowledge was to...

The Encheiridion is a short manual of maxims compiled by Arrian of Nicomedia, a 2nd-century student of the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. True to the Stoic tradition, Epictetus asserts that it...

Lucretius was a Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher born around 99 BC. His best-known work, On the Nature of Things, is a six-book epic poem exploring a wide range of...

In Timaeus, Plato explains the origins of the universe as an act of creation by a powerful and benevolent creator God who formed the cosmos into a harmonious whole from...

“On Providence” is a dialogue written by Roman philosopher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–65 AD) in the last years of his life. In it, Seneca deals with the...

Prologue In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand...

The Creation of the World In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the...

The problem of divine hiddenness focuses on the issue of whether it is reasonable to believe in the existence of God in light of the ambiguity of evidence for God’s...

The problem of natural evil centers on the following question: is the existence of an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful God consistent with the enormous suffering resulting from natural disasters, diseases,...

Is it possible that the assumptions that have underpinned the evolution/creationism debate are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of reality, a misunderstanding that is in some ways shared by believers...

Did God make man with an eternal soul? If so, why? Assume that the primary purpose of man’s existence is to experience love with God. Love cannot be experienced unless...

The Advent of Time starts with one central assumption: the purpose of man’s existence is to experience love with God and with one another. What evidence is there in support...

One of the arguments advanced by some non-believers is that theists’ reliance on faith-based reasoning renders their arguments inferior to those of non-theists. The non-theist’s position, they assert, is based...

What are the prerequisites of love, and what insight, if any, do they provide into God’s nature? At least five elements must be present in order for friendship or relational...

Why does man’s reasoning ability, considerable as it is, not allow us to either prove or disprove God’s existence? Why is science, in spite of everything it has revealed about...

Fallen humanity has a tendency to conceptualize every form of existence—even the timeless existence of Adam and Eve prior to the Fall—through the narrow lens of our own present existence,...

Can the existence of an all-loving God be reconciled with the existence of a hell in which the faithless burn forever? Numerous biblical passages clearly state that the unredeemed will...

Is a mandate that someone else love you not inherently twisted? If God commands that we love him, should we not regard such a demand as a form of depravity?...

The problem of evil poses a uniquely powerful challenge to monotheistic belief, one that began to weigh heavily on me while I was serving as a military attorney in Iraq...