Theodicy and the Bible

Theodicy, in its most common form, is the attempt to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. Theodicy attempts to resolve the evidential problem of evil by reconciling the traditional divine characteristics of omnibenevolence and omnipotence, in either their absolute or relative form, with the occurrence of evil or suffering in the world. “Writings and discourses on theodicy by Jews, Greeks, Christians, and Eastern religions have graced our planet for thousands of years,” and "debates about theodicy continue among believers and unbelievers alike".

Theodicy is an "intensely urgent" and "constant concern" of "the entire Bible". Relating theodicy and the Bible is crucial to understanding Abrahamic theodicy because the Bible "has been, both in theory and in fact, the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world". The Bible raises the issue of theodicy by its portrayals of God as inflicting evil and by its accounts of people who question God's goodness by their angry indictments. However, the Bible "contains no comprehensive theodicy".

"The most common theodicy is the free will theodicy." It lays the blame for all moral evil and some natural evil on humanity's misuse of its free will. This article shows that the free will theodicy interacts with the Bible at its core: what Jesus and Paul say about the freedom of the will and with what kind of freedom of the will God endowed humanity at the Creation.

The Bible contains numerous examples of God inflicting evil, both in the form of "moral evil" resulting from "man's sinful inclinations" and the "physical evil" of suffering. These two biblical uses of the word evil parallel the Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of the word as (a) "morally evil" and (b) "discomfort, pain, or trouble." The Bible sometimes portrays God as inflicting evil in the generic sense

In other cases, the word "evil" refers to suffering. Suffering results from either (a) "‘moral' evil, due to human volition" or (b) "‘physical' evil, directly due to nature." The Bible portrays God as inflicting evil in both senses because its writers "regarded God as the ultimate Cause of evil." The Bible contains examples of suffering caused by nature that are attributed to God, as well as examples of suffering caused by humans that are attributed to God.

Barry Whitney gives the reason why a theodicy is important for those who believe in the biblical God when he observes that "it is the believer in God, more so than the skeptic, who is forced to come to terms with the problem of evil."

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