Skip to main content

Theodicy

Theodicy means vindication of God. It is to answer the question why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the evidential problem of evil by attempting "to make the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil or suffering in this world."

Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy attempts to provide a framework where God's existence is also plausible. The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in 1710 in his work Théodecée, through various responses to the problem of evil that had been previously proposed. The British philosopher John Hick traced the history of moral theodicy in his 1966 work, Evil and the Love of God, identifying three major traditions:
  1. the Plotinian theodicy, named after Plotinus;
  2. the Augustinian theodicy, which Hick based on the writings of St Augustine of Hippo;
  3. the Iranaean theodicy, which Hick developed, based on the thinking of St Iranaeus.

The problem was also analyzed by pre-modern theologians and philosophers in the Islamic world.  German philosopher Max Weber (1864-1920) saw theodicy as a social problem, based on the human need to explain puzzling aspects of the world. Sociologist Peter L. Berger (1929-2017) argued that religion arose out of a need for a social order and an "implicit theodicy of all social order" developed to sustain it. 

Following the Holocaust, a number of Jewish theologians developed a new response to the problem of evil, sonetimes called anti-theodicy, which maintains that God cannot be meaningfully justified. As an alternative to theodicy, a defense has been proposed by the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, which is focused on showing the logical possibility of God's existence. Platinga's version of the free-will defense argued that the coexistence of God and evil is not logically impossible, and that free-will further explains the existence of evil without threatening the existence of God.

Similar to a theodicy, a cosmodicy attempts to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe, and an anthropodicy attempts to justify the goodness of humanity.

x----x

This post is sponsored by Red Ribbon Bakeshop.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Joint Meetings of the Australian Parliament

 A joint meeting of the Australian Parliament is a convening of members of the Senate and House of Representatives sitting together as a single legislative body. Australia has a bicameral federal Parliament, consisting of the Senate and House of Representatives. Subject to the Constitution of Australia, each House has its own rules, standing orders and procedures, its own presiding officer, and meets separately, at dates and times it alone decides. However, there are some occasions when the two Houses have come together as a single body. Unlike the Opening of Parliament which is officially made by the Governor-General at the Senate premises, the joint sessions are held at the House of Representatives chamber. The reasons of joint meetings have included: To resolve deadlocks between the Houses following the trigger of a double dissolution To fill casual vacancies in the representation of the territories in the Senate A special commemorative joint sitting to Celebrate the Centenary o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage

 Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage or the Virgin of Antipolo is a seventeenth century Roman Catholic wooden image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as venerated in the Philippines. This Black Madonna is enshrined in Antipolo Cathedral in the Sierra Madre mountains east of Metro Manila. The image was brought to the country by Governor-General Juan Niño de Tabora from Mexico via the galleon El Almirante  in 1626. His safe voyage across the Pacific Ocean was attributed to the image, which was then given the title "Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage." It was substantiated later by six other successful voyages of the Manila-Acapulco Galleons witb the image aboard as its patroness. Pope Pius XI issued a Pontifical decree to crown the image in 1925. The statue is one of the most celebrated Marian images in the Philippines, having mentioned by national martyr Jose Rizal in his writings. From May to July each year, the image attracts millions of pilgrims from all over the country and abroad. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Create a Richly Imagined World

For someone who likes fantasy and sci-fi fiction, most of the time, a lot of people ask me about how to create a richly imagined world. Fantasy and sci-fi elements rest heavily on how an author weave the setting and the world in which the heroes dwell in, and it helps to make the novel to be imagined vividly in the readers' minds. A convincing world should be relatable, something that we can associate ourselves with. For us to be associated with a world an author created in his mind, and wrote on the pages of a book, this world has to be close to the real thing. It has to be systematic, real and alive, and very convincing. A real world has certain elements, and an author must consider them in writing a vividly imagined world: Cartography - a fantasy or sci-fi world depend heavily on geography and maps, especially if the plot requires war and the belligerents occupy so much space in the plot. A convincing world has the world separated in territories, and every part of the...
Post a Comment
Read more