Key Theodicy Related Texts (From Theses)

Key Theodicy Related Texts (From Theses)

Revised November 1, 2021, reformatting due to Blogger template updates

I have summarized theodicy material from various posts with new book cover graphics to create something different. I actually discovered in the process that 'The Many Faces of Evil' is now back in print in a new version and ordered it from Amazon.

It actually was out of print during my MPhil/PhD theses work and I had a photo copy. That was not good to work with as a primary source for a PhD thesis. The books are not ordered in any way... 

PLANTINGA, ALVIN C. (1977)(2002) God, Freedom, and Evil, Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 

Plantinga successfully demonstrates that a free will defence is logical and reasonable. Plantinga (1977)(2002: 28). He speculates that the price of God creating a universe with significantly free creatures is that wrong actions will inevitably occur leading to the problem of evil. Plantinga (1977)(2002: 30). Plantinga’s free will approach is not primarily theological as is Augustine’s and therefore offers a different but somewhat related perspective. 

The question does arise if Plantinga has really successfully answered the objection of theistic critics such as Feinberg, and atheists such as J.L. Mackie on why God could not simply create human beings who were significantly free and never committed wrong actions. 

I reason in my PhD and on my website work that God could have created significantly free human beings, or at least human-like creatures that only committed right actions. Perhaps God desired to create human beings that would ultimately possess a greater spiritual maturity than Adam and Eve prior to the fall because those restored in Christ would have experienced sin, the problem of evil, death and the atoning work and resurrection of Christ. 

Quite possibly restored human beings would ultimately be more spiritually mature and valuable to God than persons that never knew what it was like to disobey God and experience evil. I would also point out that Biblically speaking the angels that did not fall would seemingly be significantly free and have not committed wrong actions.

BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

This was very helpful to me in working through material that was primarily within the Philosophy/ Philosophy of Religion discipline, while working within Wales' Religion and Theology departments. My theses were as much Philosophy of Religion as Theology.   

KANT, IMMANUEL (1781)(1787)(1929)(2006) Critique of Pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, London, Macmillan.

KANT, IMMANUEL (1788)(1997) Critique of Practical Reason, Translated by Mary Gregor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 

KANT, IMMANUEL (1788)(1898)(2006) The Critique of Practical Reason, Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, London, Longmans, Green, and Co. 

Kantian philosophy originates from philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). It would take years of research to become a scholar of Kant, it is complex material. In his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, 

Kant provides the idea that persons can only have a priori knowledge of space and time by the use of forms of the mind, which are imposed by human experience. 

With the Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, he noted that a priori knowledge originates independently of senses and experience. In the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781 and revised in 1787, Kant explains that the forms of appearance from which sensations can be understood are not themselves the empirical sensations. 

Human experience will determine the method and forms by which particular things are understood by what Kant calls pure intuition. Concerning human experience, Kant reasoned categories are applied to objects not because the objects make the categories possible, but rather because categories themselves provide and constitute necessary conditions for the representation for all possible objects of experience. 

Therefore any human understanding of metaphysical reality would not be comprehended by empirical knowledge in a posteriori sense. Kant reasons objects that were present in empirical human experience were in the phenomena realm, while objects outside were the noumena realm. 

He writes that the contingent things experienced by persons are phenomena. These are things that could be experienced empirically and would be reasonably accepted as reality. The noumena realm was not available to empirical senses. 

Kant explains in a follow up work entitled The Critique of Practical Reason from 1788, that the noumena is the theoretical department of knowledge denied, while the phenomena is one’s own empirical consciousness. All positive speculative knowledge should be disclaimed for the noumena realm according to Kantian thought. Kant concludes 

The Critique of Practical Reason by noting that the phenomena realm is the external realm where consciousness has existence. The noumena realm is invisible and has true infinity where Kant believes one can reason that contingent personality is dependent on the universal and necessary connection to the invisible world. 

FRAME, JOHN M. (2002) The Doctrine of God, P and R Publishing, Phillipsburg, New Jersey. 

PHILLIPS, D.Z. (2005) The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, Fortress Press, Minneapolis. 

The late D. Z. Phillips was what I found to be an intelligent and interesting, educated, critic of traditional Christianity, although he did not change my Reformed views on God's omnipotence, for example. I was required by my PhD examiners to focus on more of this philosopher's work for my PhD revisions. 

Phillips argued God was not omnipotent because he could ride a physical bike as was discussed in one of the archived posts that also had an audio version. I agree with Phillips that it is not illogical for God as spirit to ride a physical bike. 

But he reasons God is therefore not omnipotent as God cannot ride a bike. In a sense God as spirit could move the bike as if it was being ridden by a person and it could be considered ridden, although strictly speaking he would not be sitting on it and riding it. 

This first suggestion would not satisfy many critics, but may satisfy some theists in particular. I can see the point that some may suggest, that it would be illogical for a being of spirit only to do anything physical. But in regard to God I lean away from this view because of my suggestions and because it appears to limit God from logically acting in the physical universe which the infinite, omnipotent God should be able to do and did in Scripture.

I therefore offer the suggestion in agreement with John Frame (I read Frame after I had come to the similar conclusion) that God could remain as spirit in nature only and yet still temporarily take some type of physical form to ride the bike/do a physical action (Phillips suggests bicycle and not Frame). 

This would not be the same as my other suggestion of Christ riding the bike, which could also be accomplished, as Christ has both the eternal nature of God in spirit and has taken human nature in the incarnation, although the two natures do not mix. 

At the same time I can grant Frame the point that God's omnipotence should not be challenged by the physical finite actions that God does not by nature do. He is correct that it is not a weakness. God is in fact beyond physical limitations.

HICK, JOHN (1970) Evil and The God of Love, London, The Fontana Library. 

Hick rejects Augustinian and Calvinistic views on theodicy, and instead supports what he views as the Irenean position. Hick (1970: 221). Hick also rejects conservative Christian doctrines and instead favours the idea of universalism. Hick (1970: 172). Hick (1970: 381). 

He reasons that human beings were made immature and capable of committing wrong human actions in order that God eventually can bring all persons to the creator through soul-making. Hick (1970: 292). 

I can deduce that some type of soul-making is used by God in the development of believers, but without the atoning work of Christ and resurrection within a Christian tradition we do not have a revealed divine means of salvation and are left to speculate on how God should or could save persons, as Hick speculates. 

By the way, I just noticed, sad to read Professor Hick passed away in February at the age of 90.

CALVIN, JOHN (1543)(1996) The Bondage and Liberation of the Will, Translated by G.I. Davies, Grand Rapids, Baker Book House. 

Technically not a text directly concerned with theodicy or with the problem with evil, but the text is concerned with concepts of free will and determinism which are connected to modern concepts of compatibilism and incompatibilism. 

The text would be very historically influential in the development of Reformed Biblical concepts of compatibilism/soft-determinism. I found it very useful and it guided me as did Feinberg's book.

He wrote in 1543 in The Bondage and Liberation of the Will. 'If freedom is opposed to coercion, I both acknowledge and consistently maintain that choice is free and I hold anyone who thinks otherwise to be a heretic. If, I say, it were called free in this sense of not being coerced nor forcibly moved by an external impulse, but moving of its own accord, I have no objection.' Calvin (1543)(1996: 68).

FEINBERG, JOHN S. (1994) The Many Faces of Evil, Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing House. 

Within this text Feinberg presents a defence which could be labeled a sovereignty theodicy. My personal sovereignty theodicy is embedded within my MPhil and more so my PhD and is somewhat similar to Feinberg’s work. 

As well as presenting his own perspective Feinberg does a thorough job of reviewing various theistic and atheistic concepts on the problem of evil. He reasons that God does not presently eliminate the problem of evil because to do so would violate divine plans and human development. Feinberg (1994: 130). His work influenced my own significantly in regard to the development of concepts on compatibilism, incompatibilism, and theodicy.  

AUGUSTINE (388-395)(1964) On Free Choice of the Will, Translated by Anna S. Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff, Upper Saddle River, N.J., Prentice Hall.

Within On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine presents his free will theodicy, theodicy being an explanation for the problem of evil in a theistic universe. Augustine was somewhat influential on Alvin C. Plantinga’s free will defence in the 1970’s. Plantinga (1977)(2002: 26).

Augustine reasons that God is not the cause of evil, but rather human beings create the problem when they choose to follow their own temporal ways rather than God’s. Augustine (388-395)(1964: 3). A possible problem with Augustine’s view is that he blames the problem of evil on human choice but at the same time places a heavy emphasis on God’s sovereignty in creation. 

Augustine’s view on human free will appears libertarian while, as John Feinberg points out, Augustine’s concept of God’s sovereignty would seemingly require some form of determinism. Feinberg (1994: 98).