LAUSR

Contemporary theological responses to evil take place in a context that has been dominated by philosophical efforts to explain how God can be thought of as both all-powerful and good. The development of analytical philosophical theology has sought to draw more explicitly from theological resources in thinking about evil. Throughout these efforts by both philosophers and philosophical theologians to account for the existence of evil, the predominant response has been to justify evil as necessary for human, and creaturely, freedom. Alvin Plantinga’s shift from a free-will theodicy to a free-will defense and John Hick’s soul-making theodicy still relied upon a free-will justification of evil. However, recent challenges to the appropriateness and adequacy of theodicies have arisen. Basically, these challenges find that theodicies are limited to intellectual efforts and do little to deal with evil, or even distract from efforts to overcome evil. Many of the following essays explicitly or implicitly express this criticism of theodicies limited to intellectual attempts to explain evil that do little to overcome the suffering that results from evil. Some of the essays develop suggestions for new ideas about how God overcomes suffering and evil, and others suggest divine and creaturely cooperation in overcoming evil. Other essays illustrate utilizing the resources of various religious traditions. These developments of challenging intellectual explanations and utilizing theological resources have resulted in a complex diversity of approaches to the problem of evil.