Theodicy in a sentence

On the question of the absolute or relative form of the issue of theodicy prevailing in biblical theology as such, the prevailing account is predominantly in the relative form of theodicy in general.

The soul-making theodicy John Hick used the term "soul-making" in his theodicy Evil and the God of Love to describe the kind of spiritual development that he believes justifies the existence of evil.

While a successful philosophical theodicy has not been achieved in his time, added Kant, there is no basis for a successful anti-theodicy either.

Everything is up in the air, and we have no theodicy to sustain us.

As a consequence, theodicy becomes anthropodicy — justifications of our faith in humanity as the subject of history, in the face of the suffering that is so inextricably woven into the history that humanity makes.

As an alternative to theodicy, a defence has been proposed by the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga (1932- ), which is limited to showing the logical possibility of God's existence.

A theodicy of good fortune seeks to justify the good fortune of people in society; Weber believed that those who are successful are not satisfied unless they can justify why they deserve to be successful.

Christian alternatives to theodicy A number of Christian writers oppose theodicies.

Definition and etymology As defined by Alvin Plantinga, theodicy is the "answer to the question of why God permits evil".

For example, Wendy Farley believes that “a desire for justice” and “anger and pity at suffering” should replace “theodicy’s cool justifications of evil”.

For Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in an attempt to justify God's existence in light of the apparent imperfections of the world.

From this line of thought one may conclude that, as these conclusions violate our basic moral intuitions, no greater good theodicy is true, and God does not exist.

German philosopher Max Weber (1864-1920) saw theodicy as a social problem, based on the human need to explain puzzling aspects of the world.

He believed that humans could not accept that anything in the world was meaningless and saw theodicy as an assertion that the cosmos has meaning and order, despite evidence to the contrary.

However, she endorses theodicy discussions in which people ponder God, evil, and suffering from a practical faith perspective.

Human beings are troubled, he says, with the question of theodicy – the question of how the extraordinary power of a divine god may be reconciled with the imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over.

In Hick's approach, this form of theodicy argues that evil does not exist except as a privation —or corruption of—goodness, and therefore God did not create evil.

Martin finds this theodicy in George Schlesinger, Religion and Scientific Method (Springer Science & Business Media, 2012) and judges it unsatisfactory.

Marty & Taliaferro 2010, p. 17 Braiterman wrote that an anti-theodicy rejects the idea that there is a meaningful relationship between God and evil or that God could be justified for the experience of evil.

Morality Another general criticism is that though a theodicy may harmonize God with the existence of evil, it does so at the cost of nullifying morality.