Theodicy
[2] The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in 1710 in his work Théodicée, though numerous attempts to resolve the problem of evil had previously been proposed.
[10]: 44 Philosopher John Kekes says the effect of evil must include actual harm that "interferes with the functioning of a person as a full-fledged agent".
[14] John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz define good and evil in terms of pleasure and pain.
"[22] The Judaic view, while acknowledging the difference between the human and divine perspective of evil, is rooted in the nature of creation itself and the limitation inherent in matter's capacity to be perfected; the action of free will includes the potential for perfection from individual effort and leaves the responsibility for evil in human hands.
[23]: 70 As Swinburne notes: "[It is] deeply central to the whole tradition of Christian (and other western) religion that God is loving toward his creation and that involves him behaving in morally good ways toward it.
[27] Leibniz's Théodicée was a response to skeptical Protestant philosopher Pierre Bayle, who wrote in his work Dictionnaire Historique et Critique that, after rejecting three attempts to solve it, he saw no rational solution to the problem of evil.
Bayle argued that, because the Bible asserts the coexistence of God and evil, this state of affairs must simply be accepted.
The book of Job corrects the rigid and overly simplistic doctrine of retribution in attributing suffering to sin and punishment.
Some scholars interpret God's response as an admission of failure on his part, but he goes on to say he has the power and in his own timing will bring justice in the end.
[40]: Chapter 3:Psalm 77 For Christians, the Scriptures assure them that the allowance of evil is for a good purpose based on relationship with God.
God has the right to allow such evils to occur, so long as the 'goods' are facilitated and the 'evils' are limited and compensated in the way that various other Christian doctrines (of human free will, life after death, the end of the world, etc.)
[46]: 178–79 The Protestant and Calvinist reading of Augustinian theodicy, as promoted primarily by John Hick, is based on the writings of Augustine of Hippo, a Christian philosopher and theologian who lived from AD 354 to 430.
[55][56] Irenaeus (died c. 202), born in the early 2nd century, expressed ideas which explained the existence of evil as necessary for human development.
He argued that the world exists as a "vale of soul-making" (a phrase that he drew from John Keats), and that suffering and evil must therefore occur.
[58] According to the strong version of Compensation Theodicy advanced by Seyyed Jaaber Mousavirad, there are two elements that, when considered together, can solve the problem of evil: Given the strong version of this theodicy, if evils will be compensated, the existence of some good is enough to justify them, even though there will be no resulting greater good in this world.
[60] Michael Martin summarizes what he calls "relatively minor" theodicies:[61] A defence has been proposed by the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga, which is focused on showing the logical possibility of God's existence.
[64] Ash'ari theologians argued that ordinary moral judgments stem from emotion and social convention, which are inadequate to either condemn or justify divine actions.
[citation needed] Since God's wisdom is not considered to focus on choosing between good and evil, it is concerned with putting things in their proper place.
[64] They argued that the divine act of creation is good despite existence of suffering, because it allows humans a compensation of greater reward in the afterlife.
"[71] Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, who represented the mainstream Sunni view, challenged Ibn Sina's analysis and argued that it merely sidesteps the real problem of evil, which is rooted in the human experience of suffering in a world that contains more pain than pleasure.
[77] Other prominent voices in the Jewish tradition include the Nobel prize winning author Elie Wiesel and Richard L. Rubinstein in his book The Cunning of History.
[78] Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Rebbe of Chabad Lubavitch, sought to elucidate how faith (or trust, emunah) in God defines the full, transcendental preconditions of anti-theodicy.
Endorsing the attitude of "holy protest" found in the stories of Job and Jeremiah, but also in those of Abraham (Genesis 18) and Moses (Exodus 33), Rabbi Schneerson argued that a phenomenology of protest, when carried through to its logical limits, reveals a profound conviction in cosmic justice such as is first found in Abraham's question: "Will the Judge of the whole earth not do justice?"
Without resorting to transcendental authority, purely by observation, Arendt arrives at a conclusion similar to Augustine's theodicy: She ascribes Adolf Eichmann's evil actions to a lack of empathic imagination and to the thoughtlessness of his conformity to norms of careerism within the Third Reich.
Arendt did not intend to propose "the banality of evil" as a technical term or fixed nomination by which to describe the void of empathic imagination she observed--it just happened to be a phrase within her description that was appropriated by the reviewing press and by other scholarly responsa.
[85] For example, Wendy Farley believes that "a desire for justice" and "anger and pity at suffering" should replace "theodicy's cool justifications of evil".
Hart's refusal to concede that theodicy has any positive capacity to explain the purpose of evil is in line with many Greek church fathers.
[95][96] Mary Baker Eddy and Mark Twain had some contrasting views on theodicy and suffering, which are well-described by Stephen Gottschalk.
[103] In his recent book, Evil, Sin and Christian Theism (2022), Andrew Loke develops a Big Picture free-will defense argument arguing that God's justification for allowing suffering is not mainly based on an argument from future benefits but on the very nature of love which involves "allowing humans to exercise their free will in morally significant ways.
[108] Philip E. Devenish proposed what he described as "a nuanced view in which theodicy and cosmodicy are rendered complementary, rather than alternative concepts".
