Suffering, Guilt—and Divine Injustice? The Nature and Forms of Evil in Their Bearing on the Problem of Theodicy

Abstract

The so-called problem of evil rests upon the apparent incompatibility of three fundamental hypotheses: God exists; God is inclusively omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good; and evil exists. Most apologetic responses to the problem (resulting either in a full-fledged theodicy or a mere defence of God) focus upon the second premise in relation to the third, and the same essentially goes for attempts at proving the insolubility of the problem or at least the actual failure of theodicies and/or defences so far. By contrast, the present article concentrates on the third premise alone and thus aims, first and foremost, at a comprehensive account of (a) the nature and (b) the fundamental types of evil—here with a special emphasis on what ( pace Leibniz) is tentatively dubbed “eschatological evil.” In conclusion, the article expands on the previous analysis by (c) highlighting some of its major—and in fact devastating—implications regarding the possibility of a philosophical theodicy and/or defence. As a corollary, a brief case will be made for a theological—or, more precisely, Christian—view of the problem. I will argue, in particular, that Christians have good reasons to adopt a genuinely agnostic stance toward all purported solutions to the problem of evil, a stance culminating in what has aptly been called “epistemic humility.”