Quotes About Theodicy

It is worth remembering that if God created the world and all things in it, he created smallpox, plague, and filariasis.

Thus do the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it--the only satisfactory theodicy!

Job presses his point that it is bad policy for God's most faithful people to suffer (theologically counterintuitive).7 Caught on the horns of this dilemma, what is a God to do? This is what the book is going to sort out. Because the book is about God, the teaching that it offers is valuable to all of us. It does not tell us why Job or any of us suffer, but it does tell us a bit about how we should think about God when we are suffering. This is what we really needed to know anyway.

THERE IS GOOD REASON why Christian theologians consider theodicy the unsolvable theological issue. The reason is this: It is unsolvable.

would come to me and ask me how the Lord could allow such a thing. I felt like asking them what the Lord would have to do to tell us He didn't allow something.

In fact, even Aquinas dissolved the fatal problem of natural, physical evil by tinkering with God's omnipotence. As Baron von Hugel noted, Aquinas said that the Divine Omnipotence must not be taken as the power to effect any imaginable thing, but only to effect what is within the nature of things.

But even so, one can just as well hold God responsible for the existence of the devil as for the evil he personifies.

Epicurus old questions are yet unanswered. 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? Cleanthes

if God is all-powerful and God is all-good, then why do terrible things happen to good people?

I should not be surprised, said Mr. Graham, that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurus

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children.

God is all powerful. God is good. Evil exists. You can reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three.

This book is about the problem of evil, but not quite in the traditional sense, since I see it as our problem, not God's. It

Now she was smiling. "And while you're at it," she said, "here's another one for you. Theodicy. That's another word Leibniz used. As long as you have the dictionary out, you might as well look 'em both up." She sipped her tea. "He wrote a whole book about it, as a matter of fact.

I had thought about Alban for a while. "Why," I had then asked, "if your god can pull out a man's eyes, didn't he just save Alban's life?" "Because God chose not to, of course!" Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.

But I can't understand a Yahweh , or a God , who could be all-powerful and all knowing and would allow the Nazi death camps and schizophrenia .

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

If there is a "problem of evil", there is also a "problem of good.

Fifty million people die every year, six thousand die every hour, and over one hundred people die every minute. But when thousands of people die in the same place and at the same time, we are more likely to wonder why God would allow such a thing to happen.

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of Man.

Erigena's argument holds the key to a theological justification (in other words, a theodicy) of shit.

A merda é um problema teológico mais difícil que o mal. Deus ofereceu a liberdade ao homem e,portanto, pode admitir-se que ele não é responsável pelos crimes da humanidade. Mas a existência de merda incube inteiramente àquele que criou o homem, e só a ele.