A theodicy is a theist’s response to explain why a moral God created a world in which evil exists. These theorists try to rationalize why a morally good God created a world that contains evil and how evil can exist in God’s world. A theodicy justifies the evil in a world by describing how it is the result of some good that makes the world better than it otherwise would have been. This allows there to be a distinction between what is good and evil. A theodicy is a consistent account for why evil
existence of evil by using the principle of the free will theodicy. A free will theodicy is a response to the Argument from Evil, in which the Argument holds that God does not exist because evil exists in the world, and if evil exists in the world, then God does not exist. The theist’s and Miller’s response is a free will theodicy which argues that a world with freedom of choice, or free will, is better than a world without free will. In creating a world with free choice, the risk of evil is apparent because
experiencing a certain degree of evil first. His example of evil is the holocaust. His belief is that no one can have an opinion without experiencing the holocaust by going to the holocaust museum. Once people go through the museum and see all of the evil that the holocaust
Designed and proposed by a famous philosopher and theologian, Augustine of Hippo; The Augustinian Theodicy was designed to be a Christian theodicy responding to the Problem of Evil, with intentions of removing any links of the existence of evil and suffering from God, to reassure believers that God really is Omnibenevolent and Omniscient. The Augustinian theodicy leads people to believe that Evil is a result and consequence of human errors, linking this theory to Genesis 3, in the story of The Fall
examines the Problem of Evil, while John Hick and other philosophers propose adequate solutions to the dilemma. Throughout time philosophers have developed many theodicy to explain the “Problem of Evil” Most of which however center around the core ideas of Augustine and Ireanean theodicy which apply the ideas of “soul-making”, and “Free-Will”. This term paper will review the reasoning behind the existence of evil and God simultaneously, and apply some of the solutions developed to explain it. I
Thomas Aquinas articulated his theodicy in his major work, Summa Theologica. Aquinas seems to follow a more Augustinian theodicy in that his theodicy takes as much blame from God as possible and places the problem of evil and suffering within human sin and free will. Aquinas argues the overall goodness of God and delves deeper into the function of human sin in evil and suffering. Along those same lines, Aquinas examines the acts that God does engage in and what that means for the way that evil, suffering
This ability of portraying free-will is uncontrollable in many respects, “ This last feature of rational beings, free choice or free will, is a good. But even an omnipotent being is unable to control the exercise of the power of free choice, for a choice that was controlled would not be free”(32). It is not up to the individual to ask whether or not they can be given a free choice because then that would defeat the purpose of an individual having the ownership of free-will. Peter Van Inwagen also
Theodicy is one of the age old deep philosophical questions philosophers have been trying to answer for ages. The problem of theodicy has been stated many times, by many different people in many different ways and can be summed up as such. How can evil exist if God is good? To elaborate, how can evil and suffering exist
L. Mackie criticizes the free will defence. He complains that “It may be objected that God’s gift of freedom of to men does not mean that he cannot control their wills, but that he always refrains from controlling their wills. But why, we may ask, should God refrain from controlling evil wills?” (Mackie, Evil and Omnipotence, 311) In order to understand the reasoning behind free will, it would make more sense if we go back in history to the time when
in the world. An example of this is given by Inwagen that states: There is a mother of two infants that is single and she leaves the babies unattended and home alone for some time, for an unknown reason, another person finds the children and then condemns the mother for this action while a second person then defends the mother by saying she may have had a good reason for doing this. Presenting an option of there being a reason that could explain the entire situation is an example of a defense. The