Quotes About Theodicy

All suffering is suffering. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as "the sum of the world's suffering," an abstraction of the philosophers. There are simply individual people who hurt. And who wonder why God permits it.

The believer has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.

One question such events provoke is "What kind of God allows this to happen?" Another question we might ask is, "What kind of creatures are human beings that we should cause and allow this to happen?

Dostoyevsky, who was a believer, wrote that the "death of a single infant calls into question the existence of God."1

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?

You ask why God permits evil", Pawel said. "I do not know the answer to this. There are arguments one could make to explain it, but they always lack something—something elusive that may be far beyond our ability to comprehend. Would we misinterpret it, even if we could see? All attempts to understand evil fail in the end.

Whenever anyone tells you that coronavirus means that God is calling people–perhaps you!–to repent, tell them to read Job. The whole point is that that is not the point.

If the garden story comes after the seventh day when "everything is good," how does one account for an evil talking snake, the need for a wall around the garden, two ignorant naked people that don't know Good from evil, and this statement from God, "it's not good that the man [the adam] is alone"? How can "it" be "not good," if God has already declared everything good and finished?