LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Necessary Suffering and Lewisian Theism

Photo by larm from unsplash

One can readily conceive of worlds of horrendous, gratuitous suffering. Moreover, such worlds seem possible. For classical theists, however, God, amongst other things, is perfectly good. So, the question arises:… Click to show full abstract

One can readily conceive of worlds of horrendous, gratuitous suffering. Moreover, such worlds seem possible. For classical theists, however, God, amongst other things, is perfectly good. So, the question arises: for classical theists are such evil worlds possible? Many classical theists have said no. This is the modal problem of evil. Herein, I discuss a related problem: the problem of evil worlds for Lewisian theism. Lewisian theism is the conjunction of Lewis’s modal realism and classical theism, and a leading Lewisian theist, Almeida, thinks that Lewisian theists should admit the existence of on-balance evil worlds. I do not. Herein, I present a dilemma for Almeida: either give up God’s sovereignty and the reductionist account of modality or make God blameworthy for evil.

Keywords: classical theists; necessary suffering; evil worlds; lewisian theism; theism; suffering lewisian

Journal Title: Sophia
Year Published: 2021

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.