Evil and Suffering - Quotes Flashcards
Evil
‘a falling short in good’
- Plotinus, The Enneads
‘nothing else than corruption’
- Augustine, On the Nature of Good
‘loss of good’
- Augustine, City of God
‘the absence of good’
- Aquinas, Summa Theologica
The Logical Problem of Evil
‘Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?’
- Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
The Irenaean/Hick theodicy
developing into the likeness of God requires ‘a hazardous adventure in individual freedom’
- Hick, Evil and the God of Love
‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”’
- Genesis
The level of goodness God desires must be created ‘through a long process of creaturely experience in response to challenges’
- Hick, Evil and the God of Love
Epistemic distance
‘a certain margin of creaturely independence which is adequate for our existence as responsible persons’
- Hick, Evil and the God of Love
Natural evil
‘But you blew with your breath, and the sea covered them.’
- Exodus
Process Theology
‘God is “the fellow sufferer who understands”.’
- A.N. Whitehead
‘Good though he may be, Griffin’s God is too small.’
- John Roth, Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy
‘God creates through persuasive power’
- Suchocki
The Evidential Problem of Evil
‘every kind of moral depravity is entailed upon multitudes… through no fault of their own.’
- J.S. Mill, On Nature
William Rowe’s story of the fawn
- The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism
The Augustinian Theodicy
all of humanity was “seminally present in the loins of Adam”
- Augustine, The City of God
“All evil is either sin or the punishment for sin.”
- Augustine
“the penalty of sin corrects the dishonour of sin”
- Augustine
G. Stanley Kane - Irenaean Theodicy counters
- ‘these traits could be displayed even though there is no actual evil existing’
- humans may be ‘admitted into a state where there is neither need nor opportunity to put [developed qualities] to use’
- The Failure of the Soul Making Theodicy
D.Z. Philips - criticism of soul making theodicy
- ‘to be done for a purpose, to be planned from eternity - that is the deepest evil’
- The Concept of Prayer
It is malicious to allow a child to die from cancer just to help the parents build positive qualities like resilience
Mackie’s Free Will Defence
‘why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?’
‘there cannot be a logical impossibility in his freely choosing the good on every occasion.’
Plantinga’s rejection of Mackie’s rejection of the FWD
(response to the idea of humans always freely choosing the good)
‘it would be impossible to causally determine human actions and at the same time allow them to be morally free’
