Theodicy Essay

The Christian faith teaches suffering is real, the moral choices we make are important, and salvation is possible through Christ. This theodicy can be considered a soul building theodicy. The story of Job in the old testament of the bible is a perfect example of how God allowed Satan to torment Job to test his goodness and see how he would endure. Job had not done anything wrong to justify his suffering but it was still allowed and justified for a higher purpose. This also speaks to why we may not

not responsible for the fall of humans. Adam and Eve made the choice to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree even though they knew they should. They had the capabilities to resist this temptation, but they allowed themselves to fall. So, Milton’s theodicy in his epic poem, Paradise Lost, brings up the question of free will, along with asserting God as being all powerful and good. Milton wanted to show that God is not responsible for the fall of humans as he gave man all the necessary tools to resist

upon self, others or nature.” Many ways used to describe the problem of evil are in the form of a theodicy. A theodicy is an “attempt to offer different answers to the problem of evil.” Two of the theodicies discussed in this paper will be the Augustinian Theodicy and the Iranaean Theodicy. Both theodicies direct their explanations toward moral evil than natural evil. First, the Augustinian theodicy and the pros and cons associated with its attempt to explain the problem of evil will be discussed

If an all-PKG being existed, then there would be no evil. There is evil. Hence, there is no God. From that argument, God would seem like he could not exist with evil. Many believe he can due to different reasons. The theodicy of free will and character building tries to show evidence about those claims. Premise 2 claiming that a PKG God could not exist with evil could be disproven. It could be due to greater good that we may not see in the present or see near us. Premise

mainstreams of Christian’s theodicy approaches, known as Free Will Defence (FWD). Secondly, John Hick’s argument which is another major types of approach, known as Soul making theodicy. Finally, John Hick’s unique theodicy, Theodicy of protest will be discussed. Free will defence Free will defence has been the most widely discussed theistic argument to logical problem of evil, which was initiated by Augustine and established

not something that destroys theistic religions. I think that the problem of evil helps theistic religions. People have made their own ideas on the problem of evil such as the Augustine Theodicy, Inenaean Theodicy, and free will defence. The problem of evil have generated many ideas, such as the Augustine Theodicy, which have shown that the problem of evil is not something that brings down theistic religions.

Two theodicies have been created with religion at the forefront in order to explain the existence of suffering within humanity and how the believers of Christianity should respond to it. It is essential to maintain religious faith in the face of suffering and with some understanding through the theodicies created by Irenaeus and St Augustine this can be done. Although, these theodicies are unable to explain the existence of suffering without heavily relying on Christianity, throughout history there

for the answer to the problem of evil and the truth of God’s existence theodicies have been created; methods to comprehend the ways of God. A strong theodicies has three concepts: (1) God is all powerful, (2) God is all loving, (3) evil exists (Elwell 414) and must be internally consistent to avoid self-contradiction. It is important because theodicies must be logically consistent and hold to a theological position; if a theodicy is logically inconsistent then the problem arises that there is no explanation

and Eve destroyed perfection. God is seen as loving and just by Augustine. God gives happiness to those who do not sin and the universe is no less perfect because there is misery for sinners as they experience a penalty for their sin. The Irenaean theodicy is named after St. Irenaeus. He started at Genesis with the quote “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” So there were two stages to creating humans. The image of God and the likeness of God. The image of God means that humans share

pointless suffering for some reason that we can't comprehend. The free will defense (FWD) maintains that God has to allow the existence of some evil in order to preserve human free will (e.g., Alvin Plantinga, Robert Adams). Finally, the soul-making theodicy (SMT) contends that God allows some evil because it builds positive character in the victims or in others which outweighs the negative value of the evil itself (e.g., John