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Journal articles on the topic 'Christian theodicy'
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1
Metz, Johann Baptist. "Suffering from God: Theology as Theodicy." Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 5, no. 3 (October 1992): 274–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1030570x9200500303.
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The article argues that Christian theology has avoided asking questions about suffering that appears to come from God. The mystery of God has been tamed by philosophical positions, and the Israelite sense of poverty of spirit before God needs to be recaptured. Christian hope remains tied to an apocalyptic conscience and Christians must not hurriedly bypass the slowly dying cry of Jesus.
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Chae, Hyeok-Su. "Theodicy and Its Christian Educational Application." Theology and Praxis 63 (February 28, 2019): 389–418. http://dx.doi.org/10.14387/jkspth.2019.63.389.
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FRANKLIN RAUSCH. "SUFFERING HISTORY: COMPARATIVE CHRISTIAN THEODICY IN KOREA." Acta Koreana 19, no. 1 (June 2016): 69–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.18399/acta.2016.19.1.003.
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Silverman, Eric Jason, Elizabeth Hall, Jamie Aten, Laura Shannonhouse, and Jason McMartin. "Christian Lay Theodicy and The Cancer Experience." Journal of Analytic Theology 8 (September 21, 2020): 344–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.12978/jat.2020-8.1808-65001913.
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In philosophy of religion, there are few more frequently visited topics than the problem of evil, which has attracted considerable interest since the time of Epicurus (341-270 BCE). It is well known that the problem of evil involves responding to the apparent tension between 1) belief in the existence of a good, all powerful, all knowing God and 2) the existence of evil—such as personal suffering embodied in the experience of cancer. While a great deal has been written concerning abstract philosophical theories that academics use to explain the existence of evil, much less has been written about how religious lay people make sense of evil and suffering. What explanations, meanings, and perceptions do they hold concerning the religious significance of evil? What can theologians and philosophers learn from these lay experiences? Our interdisciplinary team designed an experiment to identify the religious significance that personal suffering held for a group of religious cancer sufferers. We interviewed twenty-nine self-identified evangelical Christians who had received a cancer diagnosis at some point in their lives for our experiment. Since all interviewees identified as Christians, it was expected that they would assent to belief in a theistic God. It was also expected that each interviewee would assent the existence of evil and see their cancer experience as a dramatic and personal instance of an evil event. The explicit existential threat of cancer guarantees that the individual has much at stake in the experience. Furthermore, the pain and suffering that typically accompanies either the cancer itself or cancer treatments make it a compelling example of evil experienced in a very personal way. Finally, even when successfully treated, the ongoing threat of potentially fatal recurrence looms over the sufferer for years to come. We asked 17 questions related to the religious significance of their cancer experience in each interview and coded these interviews looking for five distinct types of explanations for/meaning of evil: trusting God in mystery, free will, moral development, spiritual growth, and growth in human relationships/community. These categories were meant to correspond loosely to five philosophical responses to the existence of evil.Our interviews included several important results. First, 79% of interviewees had at least one answer that fit into the ‘trust God in mystery’ category of responses with 48% using this category of responses as their most frequently cited theme. This result could be interpreted as a kind of generic theodical response: God has a good, but unknown reason for allowing evil/suffering. Alternatively, another possible interpretation is that at least some of these interviewees intuited something similar to skeptical theism, since it claims that if one understands the type of God proposed by theism and possesses an accurate view of human cognitive capacities, it is apparent that there is no real tension to be resolved between theism and the existence of evil. Some of our interviewees seemed to believe not only that the answer to why evil exists is mysterious, but that they simply could not have the necessary perspective to judge what kinds of purposes God might have for allowing this painful episode in their lives.While it was unsurprising that religious sufferers would find it important to trust God in ambiguous difficult circumstances, more surprisingly, we found that 52% of our respondents did not judge that their cancer experience was at all in tension with their religious beliefs. Whereas a broad range of philosophers and theologians acknowledge that there is at least an apparent conflict between the existence of a good, all-powerful God and the existence of evil, most of our interviewees did not even perceive an apparent tension between theistic beliefs and their painful cancer experiences that would be in need of additional reconciliation.There are at least two ways this result might be interpreted. First, our interviewees might hold additional beliefs that make the existence of evil easier for them to accept. After all, these interviewees were not ‘bare theists’ who held only to the existence of God, but presumably held a broad range of religious beliefs which may already serve to reconcile the existence of evil: that growing closer to God is more important than earthly life itself, that in evil in this life allows us a greater appreciation of a blessed eternity, or simply that ‘God works for our good in mysterious ways.’ Thus, a fully developed Christian worldview may already accommodate the existence of evil in a way not fully appreciated by philosophers.Another possible interpretation is that at least some of our interviewees were not adequately reflective to perceive the tension between their religious beliefs and their experience of suffering. There is at least some reason to doubt this explanation as an overarching interpretation of this result since our interviewees were generally well educated with the median participant holding at least a Bachelor’s degree, and most were ongoing participants in a cancer support group ensuring long-term ongoing engagement with their cancer experience.A final significant finding is that a high portion of our interviewees, 83% reported specific examples of beneficial personal growth—moral, spiritual, or relational— that resulted from their cancer experience. When asked about their cancer experience’s broad effect upon their lives in these areas they volunteered at least one example of a benefit they received in these areas. Depending on one’s accompanying value theory and whether such benefits might have been otherwise achieved, they might provide a morally sufficient reason for the existence of suffering. Our interviewees frequently described experiencing the kind of benefits at the heart of John Hick’s soul making theodicy and Eleonore Stump’s ‘spiritual growth’ theodicy, providing at least some corroborating evidence for such views. Experiences common to our interviewees were similar to what such theodicies would predict.
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Brewer, Keagan. "God’s Devils: Pragmatic Theodicy in Christian Responses to Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s Conquest of Jerusalem in 1187." Medieval Encounters 27, no. 2 (June 14, 2021): 125–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340098.
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Abstract This paper considers Christian responses to the problem of evil following Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s conquest of Jerusalem. Among Catholics, Audita Tremendi offered the orthodox response that God was punishing Christian sin. However, the logical conclusion of this view is that the Muslims were agents of God despite being “evil” for having captured Jerusalem from Christians. Twelfth-century theologians believed that God could use demons in the service of good. In response to 1187, while many Christians portrayed the Muslims as evil, some expressed that they were divine agents. Meanwhile, others murmured that Muslim gods (including, to some, Muḥammad) were superior to Christian ones; that the Christian god was apathetic, violent, or wicked; that the crusade of 1189–92 was against God’s will; and that crusaders were murderers. Thought-terminating clichés centring on the divine mysteries permitted the continuance of Christianity in the face of this profound theodical controversy.
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Stoeber, Michael. "Transformative suffering, destructive suffering and the question of abandoning theodicy." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 32, no. 4 (December 2003): 429–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000842980303200403.
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This paper defends the striving for a theoretical theodicy against the call of some contemporary theologians to abandon the practice altogether. Essential to the defense is a distinction I propose between the themes of "transformative suffering" and "destructive suffering." I respond especially to the views of Grace Jantzen and Kenneth Surin, suggesting how, in Christian theism, effective themes of theodicy would ground the hope for the healing and redemption of the victims of destructive suffering. In abandoning theodicy in principle, it remains unclear what would support this compassionate hope for the victims. Moreover, by maintaining the category of "destructive suffering," one secures against the danger in theodicy of demeaning or repudiating the traumatic experiences of the victims of radical evil. I go on to explore the implications of these points in seeking for effective themes of theodicy.
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Szwat-Gyłybowa, Grażyna, and Piotr Szymczak. "Kalin Yanakiev as a Writer of Apocrypha? Remarks on the Essay "Дебат върху теодицеята" ("A Debate on Theodicy")." Studia Ceranea 4 (December 30, 2014): 219–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2084-140x.04.14.
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The article engages with the philosophical and theological notion of theodicy as formulated by Kalin Yanakiev in Дебат върху теодицеята (A Debate on Theodicy), an essay which appeared in Yanakiev’s book Философски опити върху самотата и надеждата (Philosophical Essays on Solitude and Hope,2008). The article uses the category of apocryphalness to analyse the ideas sparked off in Yanakiev’s work by a passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, along with a series of Yanakiev’ s philosophical and poetic images which are interpreted in the biblical and philosophical context. The article also touches on the relationships between Yanakiev’s ideas and Orthodox Christian theodicy.
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Fettke, Steven M., and Michael L. Dusing. "A Practical Pentecostal Theodicy?" PNEUMA 38, no. 1-2 (2016): 160–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700747-03801002.
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A common critique of Pentecostalism from other Christian traditions is that Pentecostals lack an adequate response to evil and chronic and unrelieved suffering. I will propose a response to evil and suffering that is not expressed solely in repeated calls to faith or in stark black and white terms of faith versus doubt. This essay will address the role of the pentecostal faith community in its social dimension in response to suffering. I will also suggest a “practical” pentecostal theodicy, one grounded in the stories of the outpouring of the Spirit in the book of Acts and in deep pastoral concern. Finally, I will address the inscrutable activity of God, who often works ad hoc, mysteriously, variously through miracle, pentecostal pastoral concern, or deep existential encounter.
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Wielenberg, Erik J. "In Defence of C.S. Lewis' Soul-Making Theodicy: A Reply to Wolterstorff." Journal of Inklings Studies 9, no. 2 (October 2019): 192–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/ink.2019.0048.
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In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis offers a multi-pronged Christian explanation for the suffering in the world. Lewis first develops a free will theodicy, according to which much of the suffering in our world is a by-product of human free will. To account for the remaining suffering (caused by, for instance, disease and natural disasters), Lewis develops a version of the soul-making theodicy, according to which some of the suffering in the world is permitted by God as part of a divine project of improving the moral character of human beings. Nicholas Wolterstorff has recently raised some interesting challenges for Lewis's soul-making theodicy. In this essay I respond to Wolterstorff's critique by drawing not only on Lewis's broader corpus beyond The Problem of Pain but also, to a lesser extent, on the thought of two other contemporary proponents of the soul-making theodicy, John Hick and Trent Dougherty. My main goal is to make the case that Lewis's version of the soul-making theodicy has more depth and resilience than Wolterstorff's critique suggests.
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Shokhin, Vladimir K. "Philosophical Theology and Indian Versions of Theodicy." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2, no. 2 (September 23, 2010): 177–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v2i2.373.
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Comparative philosophical studies can seek to fit some Eastern patterns of thought into the general philosophical framework, or, on the contrary, to improve understanding of Western ones through the view “from abroad”. I try to hit both marks by means of establishing, firstly, the parallels between Indian versions of theodicy and the Hellenic and Christian ones, then by defining to which of five types of Western theodicy the Advaita-Vedānta and Nyāya versions belong and, thirdly, by considering the meaning of the fact that some varieties of Western theodicy, like the explanation of evil by free will and Divine dispensation aiming at the improvement of man, have Indian counterparts while others lack them. Some considerations concerning the remainders of primordial monotheisms (“an argument from theodicy”) under the thick layers of other religious world-outlooks are also offered to the reader at the end of the article.
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Bihun, Olha. "The Reconstruction of Christian Theodicy in Taras Shevchenko’s Poetry." Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, no. 6 (December 23, 2019): 161–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.18523/kmhj189062.2019-6.161-176.
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Hall, M. Elizabeth Lewis, Laura Shannonhouse, Jamie Aten, Jason McMartin, and Eric Silverman. "Theodicy or Not? Spiritual Struggles of Evangelical Cancer Survivors." Journal of Psychology and Theology 47, no. 4 (November 15, 2018): 259–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0091647118807187.
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Using Park’s meaning-making model to inform our understanding of distress in suffering, we conducted a qualitative investigation of the discrepancies experienced by evangelical Christian cancer patients between their religious global meaning and their situational meaning, and the religious beliefs invoked to resolve the discrepancy. Three primary research questions were addressed: (a) What kinds of tensions do evangelical Christians with a diagnosis of cancer experience between their religious global meaning system (i.e., beliefs) and their situational meaning, if any?; (b) Why may some experience tension while others may not?; and (c) How are tensions resolved if they arise? Twenty-nine evangelical Christians with cancer diagnoses were interviewed. Post hoc thematic analysis, informed by grounded theory was used to analyze the interviews. Roughly two-thirds of our sample denied experiencing any tension between their faith and their cancer experience. Protective factors included confidence in God and a spiritual kind of intellectual humility. Roughly one-third did indicate experiencing tension, which took the form of doubting God’s justice, love, existence, or answering of prayer. When these tensions were resolved, this resolution appeared to involve a kind of spiritual surrender, including acknowledgement of God’s control, humility before God, and relinquishing the assumption of a just world.
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Wiertel, Derek Joseph. "Classical Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering." Theological Studies 78, no. 3 (August 21, 2017): 659–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0040563917715490.
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In the Western theological tradition, nonhuman suffering was not perceived as a “live” problem until the early modern period. Constrained by classical theism, the early modern figures of René Descartes, Anne Conway, and G.W. Leibniz developed three distinct approaches to animal theodicy based upon their unique reconceptualization(s) of the world. These three approaches, (1) denial of animal suffering (Descartes); (2) cosmic fall and vale of soul-making (Conway); and (3) necessary suffering of creation (Leibniz), remain the prevailing theodical options with respect to animal suffering in contemporary theological reflection. In light of the limitations of such theodicies, an engagement with the Christian theological narrative provides a framework for revisiting classical theism in relation to animal suffering.
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Redding, Paul. "Some Metaphysical Implications of Hegel's Theodicy." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4, no. 1 (March 21, 2012): 129–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v4i1.311.
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This paper examines Hegel’s claim that philosophy “has no other object than God” as a claim about the essentiality of the idea of God to philosophy. On this idealist interpretation, even atheistic philosophies would presuppose rationally evaluable ideas of God, despite denials of the existence of anything corresponding to those ideas. This interpretation is then applied to Hegel’s version of idealism in relation to those of two predecessors, Leibniz and Kant. Hegel criticizes the idea of the Christian God present within his predecessors in terms of his own heterodox reading of the Trinity in order to resolve a paradox affecting them – the “paradox of perspectivism”.
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Tugnoli, Claudio. "Theodicy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau." European Scientific Journal, ESJ 12, no. 29 (October 31, 2016): 10. http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2016.v12n29p10.
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Throughout all of Rousseau’s works there is tension between argumentation and feeling, speculation and intuition, reason and conscience. Reason binds men when they think correctly, but divides them and opposes one to the other when they place it at the service of self-interest, of ambition and of the will to prevail. Conversely, the universality of conscience is immediate and transparent: it transmits the truth of the existence of God, of the freedom of men, of the distinction between good and evil, as well as of the universal principles that are at the roots of human action and of the virtues honoured by all human societies, despite the differences of particular legislations. Mankind possesses an innate and intuitive conscience of the fundamental principles by which its conduct must be inspired. Were we to consider human actions only according to the criterion of physical need, of causality and of movement, vices and virtues would disappear and terms like morality and honesty would have no meaning. But each one of us perceives from within that this is not the case. We feel that moral good and evil are more real than anything else, without any need whatsoever to prove it. To obey the conscience one has of good and of evil without human mediation means to reject the dogmatic formalism of religions as well as the vanity of philosophical disputes. Every human being, however, is inserted into a national community. What should the state’s attitude be vis-à-vis religion? Rousseau indicates two paths. The first consists in establishing a purely civil religion that admits only those dogmas that are truly useful to society. Rousseau highlights the contradiction of a Christian religion that, although it is the religion of peace par excellence, fuels continuing bloody clashes among men due to a dogmatic theology that is totally alien to the essence of the Gospel and extremely hazardous for the life of the State. The second path consists in allowing Christianity to retain its authentic spirit, its freedom from any material constraint, without any obligations other than those of individual conscience. The Christian religion has such a pure and noble moral that it cannot but benefit the State, as long as one does not expect to make it part of the constitution.
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Pieper, Christopher Nicolas. "Why the Hardship? Islam, Christianity, and Instrumental Affliction." Open Theology 6, no. 1 (November 9, 2020): 636–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0137.
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AbstractViewing hardship through the Western tradition of theodicy, Western theologians and philosophers sometimes approach their Muslim neighbors with questions about the Islamic perspective on suffering. But merely by asking about “suffering,” these Western friends already project a theological category foreign to most Muslims, particularly those from a non-Western background. In order for Christian and post-Christian Westerners to understand the Islamic approach to hardship, they must first learn to distinguish between affliction and suffering. This requires a careful look at the creation narratives each tradition tells: for example, does God initiate human affliction? And what does the answer to this question say about the nature of affliction, if God is also good? Answering these queries helps one to distinguish Christian and Islamic responses to catastrophe, pain, and even violence. Furthermore, examining the koranic reply may redirect Western persons to teachings within the biblical tradition, which Christians often overlook or avoid. The instrumental role of affliction is relatively unpopular in the West, but dialogue with Islam uncovers the fact that it is a concept neither alien nor unimportant to biblical teaching. In fact, God’s repurposing of affliction is vital to Christian doctrine. Dialogue with Islam may help to recover this Christian lesson.
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Sydnor, Jon Paul. "All is of God." Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology 2, no. 1 (March 26, 2018): 83–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/32682.
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This essay elaborates a constructive, comparative, nondual theodicy for the Christian tradition based on the Hindu Vai??ava tradition. According to the Indologist Henrich Zimmer, in Vai??avism everything is an emanation of Vi??u, therefore everything is of Vi??u. All apparent opposites are inherently divine and implicitly complementary. Good and bad, joy and suffering, pain and pleasure are not conflicting dualities; they are interdependent qualities that increase one another’s being. The Hindu myth of Samudra Manthan, or the Churning of the Ocean, exemplifies Vai??ava nondualism. In that story, gods and demons—seeming opposites—cooperate in order to extract the nectar of immortality from an ocean of milk. If “opposites” are interdependent, hence complementary, then they are not “opposites” but mutually amplifying contrasts. Given this phenomenology, and applying it to the Christian tradition, a benevolent God who desires full vitality for her creatures would have to create pain, suffering, darkness, and death in order to intensify their correlates. Love would demand their creation, because love would want abundant life for all. In this aesthetic theodicy, the interplay of all contrasts results from the love of a life-giving God.
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HIMMA, KENNETH EINAR. "Plantinga's version of the free-will argument: the good and evil that free beings do." Religious Studies 46, no. 1 (October 29, 2009): 21–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412509990230.
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AbstractAccording to Plantinga's version of the free-will argument (FWA), the existence of free beings in the world who, on the whole, do more good than evil is the greater moral good that cannot be secured by even an omnipotent God without allowing some evil and thereby shows the logical compatibility of God with evil. In this essay, I argue that there are good empirical and moral reasons, from the standpoint of one plausible conception of Christian ethics, to doubt that Plantinga's version of the FWA succeeds as a theodicy. In particular, I argue that, given this understanding of Christian ethics, it seems reasonable to think it false that free beings are doing more good than evil in the world. While there are surely possible worlds in which free beings do more good than evil, this material world seems clearly not one of those. Thus, while Plantinga's version might succeed as a defence against the logical problem of evil, it will neither rebut the evidential problem of evil nor, without more, ground a successful theodicy that reconciles God's existence with the evil that occurs in this world.
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SWINBURNE, RICHARD. "Response to my commentators." Religious Studies 38, no. 3 (September 2002): 301–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412502006108.
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This is my response to the critical commentaries by Hasker, McNaughton and Schellenberg on my tetralogy on Christian doctrine. I dispute the moral principles invoked by McNaughton and Schellenberg in criticism of my theodicy and theory of atonement. I claim, contrary to Hasker, that I have taken proper account of the ‘existential dimension' of Christianity. I agree that whether it is rational to pursue the Christian way depends not only on how probable it is that the Christian creed is true and so that the way leads to the Christian goals, but (in part) on how strongly one wants those goals. Hasker is correct to say that I need to give arguments in favour of the historical claims of Christianity, and I outline how I hope to do that.
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Allen, Wayne. "The Search for American Soul." Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 6, no. 1 (1994): 41–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jis199461/23.
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Culminating a process that began with modernity, Americans now face a breakdown in society's moral consensus. Questions of an ethical nature long thought settled have risen to usurp the Western tradition of moral continence. This tradition is firmly anchored in the Judeo-Christian virtues brought to America and cultivated during the Colonial period. These virtues reflected a Christian authority internalized in conscience and practiced in community. But this authority came under assault with modernity's creeping secularization. One reason for this is the rise and pervasiveness of secular social theories that have concluded in a socializing theodicy.
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Allen, Wayne. "The Search for American Soul." Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 6, no. 1 (1994): 41–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jis199461/23.
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Culminating a process that began with modernity, Americans now face a breakdown in society's moral consensus. Questions of an ethical nature long thought settled have risen to usurp the Western tradition of moral continence. This tradition is firmly anchored in the Judeo-Christian virtues brought to America and cultivated during the Colonial period. These virtues reflected a Christian authority internalized in conscience and practiced in community. But this authority came under assault with modernity's creeping secularization. One reason for this is the rise and pervasiveness of secular social theories that have concluded in a socializing theodicy.
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Stepchenkova, Valentina. "ARTISTIC THEODICY IN THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV BY F. M. DOSTOEVSKY." Проблемы исторической поэтики 19, no. 2 (May 2021): 107–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.15393/j9.art.2021.9242.
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The aim of the research study is to explain the artistic theodicy of F. M. Dostoevsky. The justification of God before the world he created, in which evil forces are allowed to act, is one of the principal themes in the novel. In those scenes of the novel that raise the theme of innocuous suffering, Dostoevsky offers to comprehend the meaning of suffering. Dostoevsky sees it as not only as a result of the influence of an evil force, but also as a path to perfection for human beings and a way to experience communication with God. Dostoevsky shows that from a Christian spiritual perception of sorrows, one can find the strength to overcome them and see the highest sacred meaning in them. This conclusion is not based on the optimistic theodicy of Leibniz, but only reveals the goodness of God, who is capable of turning the evil, which entered the world along with the Fall, into an opportunity for a person to rise to a new spiritual level. The most important argument of theodicy is love: God’s love for man and man’s capacity to love, overcoming evil. Because of the lack of love, guided only by the “Euclidean mind,” Ivan returns his “entry ticket” to harmony. The logical conclusion of the research study states that Dostoevsky’s key to theodicy and the main value in the moral self-determination of man is the belief in the immortality of the soul and the all-goodness of the Creator.
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Durbin, Sean. "Violence as Revelation." Journal of Religion and Violence 7, no. 3 (2019): 231–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jrv202031070.
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Drawing on Russell McCutcheon’s (2003) redescription of the theological category of theodicy as a socio-political rhetoric that functions to conserve social interests, this article examines the way that American Christian Zionists employ theodicies to explain historical, contemporary, and anticipated acts of violence. It argues that violence is central to Christian Zionists’ conception of God’s revelation, and thus to their identity. Rather than requiring the intellectual wrangling often associated with religious explanations for why violence is inflicted on or by a certain group of people, Christian Zionists identify acts of violence as either God’s punishment for insufficient support for Israel, or as God’s vengeance upon those who wish to harm his chosen people. In any given context, Christian Zionists draw on acts of violence to reaffirm their truth claims, and to ensure their desired social order is maintained.
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McAlister, Elizabeth. "Humanitarian Adhocracy, Transnational New Apostolic Missions, and Evangelical Anti-Dependency in a Haitian Refugee Camp." Nova Religio 16, no. 4 (February 2013): 11–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2013.16.4.11.
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This article addresses religious responses to disaster by examining how one network of conservative evangelical Christians reacted to the Haiti earthquake and the humanitarian relief that followed. The charismatic Christian New Apostolic Reformation (or Spiritual Mapping movement) is a transnational network that created the conditions for post-earthquake, internally displaced Haitians to arrive at two positions that might seem contradictory. On one hand, Pentecostal Haitian refugees used the movement’s conservative, right-wing theology to develop a punitive theodicy of the quake as God’s punishment of a sinful nation. On the other hand, rather than resign themselves to victimhood and passivity, their strict moralism allowed these evangelical refugees to formulate an uncompromising critique of the Haitian government, the United Nations peacekeeping mission, and foreign humanitarian relief. They rejected material humanitarian aid when possible and developed a stance of Christian self-sufficiency, anti-foreign-aid, and anti-dependency. They accepted visits only from American missionaries with “spiritual,” and not material, missions, and they launched their own missions to parts of Haiti unaffected by the quake.
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Vind, Ole. "- En historisk Theodice." Grundtvig-Studier 64, no. 1 (May 29, 2015): 95–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/grs.v64i1.20911.
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En historisk Theodice[A Historical Theodicy]By Ole VindGrundtvig’s first World Chronicle from 1812 (VK 1812) is noted especially for itssharp criticism of contemporary culture. It can be read as a Lutheran revivalistsermon passing judgment on great historical as well as contemporary figures who are condemned for their lack of orthodox Christian faith. Read in the light of Grundtvig’s later works, however, the book carries the seeds of that philosophy of history which from 1832 onwards became the mainstay of all his writings.Thus, in VK 1812 are found the first traces of that original vision which inChristenhedens Syvstjerne (The Seven Sisters of Christendom, Grundtvig’s greatcycle of church historical poems written 1854-55, published 1860) follows churchhistory through seven national Churches of which the future Hindu (Christian)Church is the last. Likewise, in the chronicle are found Grundtvig’s first speculations on ethnic origins, later clarified into his idea of four principal peoples in World History (i.e. the Jews, the Greeks and the Romans in antiquity and the Scandinavians in modern times).In spite of his harsh condemnation of his contemporaries, Grundtvig concludesVK 1812 optimistically, prophesying a spiritual and Christian renewalin Scandinavia through the future university in Kristiania (i.e. Oslo) in Norway(founded 1811 and opened 1813). Such a trust in learning and scholarship wascharacteristic of the European age of Enlightenment with its belief in progress. In later major works, Grundtvig expressed this attitude in an original Nordic version which also formed the basis of his thoughts about education and folk high schools.In VK 1812 Grundtvig briefly characterizes the German thinkers who werethe foundation of his philosophy of history. Even if they are all blamed fortheir lack of orthodox faith, his delineation of them is remarkably mild. Later,rather surprisingly, Grundtvig appeared to reconcile himself to a great extentwith the German “naturalists imbued with spirit”.The quite positive words about those German philosophers whom he otherwiserather criticized, presage the deep inspiration in Grundtvig’s mature worksparticularly from Herder and Fichte. An exceptional role is played to Grundtvigby Lessing who raised the principal question of Protestant religious philosophyabout the relationship between Christianity and history. Already in VK 1812,Grundtvig’s philosophy of history is also a philosophy of religion in the shapeof a historical theodicy. As in his works to come, Grundtvig’s answer to Lessing’s question is thus quite the opposite of Søren Kierkegaard’s to whom Lessing, too, meant a serious philosophical challenge.
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Von Stosch, Klaus. "God's Action in History." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7, no. 3 (September 23, 2015): 187–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v7i3.111.
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The explication of the Christian hope of resurrection requires Christianity to spell out the way in which God actually deals in the world. Only if we succeed, with regard to past, present, and future, in making the talk of God’s special action in history plausible, are we able to reasonably assert essential Christian beliefs. Yet due to past horrors, present ongoing suffering, and a future that promises of little else, it is precisely this talk that has become doubtful. This article tries to describe God’s action as a process enabling freedom and love in order to develop a theodicy-sensitive speech about God’s action.
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Schärtl, Thomas. "The Challenge of Theodicy and the Divine Access to the Universe." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1, no. 1 (March 21, 2009): 121–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v1i1.333.
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Any new attempt to cope with the problem of theodicy is forced to reinterpret and remodify the classic set of divine attributes. Classical monotheism, at least in the Christian or Islamic tradition, emphasizes the concept of God as a personal, almighty being who is in a completely free relation to the world. However, even within Christianity we find other tendencies which might help us to rewrite the idea that God has some sort of libertarian and unrestricted access to the world. The following article raises the question whether God, as an absolute being, can influence the course of the world directly. The answer to this question has an enormous impact on the problem of theodicy: If God’s non-intervention is based on God’s essence (rather than any form of initial self-restriction), then God cannot be held directly responsible for not performing direct acts of intervention.
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Martemianov, Kirill A. "N.A. Berdyaev and M. Scheler: Philosophical and Anthropological Approaches to the Problem of Theodicy." Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences 63, no. 8 (December 1, 2020): 143–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.30727/0235-1188-2020-63-8-143-159.
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The article considers the approaches to theodicy’s problem of Russian and German philosophers with clear religious orientation: Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev and Max Scheler. However, for more explicit insight into our topic we found, the article provides the general overview of theodicy tradition (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz). Standpoints of these thinkers living in different epochs are linked by the steady belief in a reasonability of the world created by God. The main obstacle to acceptance of this argumentation is the problem of evil’s existence. The way of thinking that has the goal to demonstrate the world’s perfectness presumes either necessity of evil as a mean (for good’s revealing) or the evil’s insignificance or even its illusiveness, which is the result of “too human” perspective. Such ways of thought have become impossible since the second half of 19th century, when the concrete person’s experience (not a separated from it thought) had been recognized as a main source of philosophy. In Russian culture, this attitude became widespread after F.M. Dostoevsky, in German culture – after F. Nietzsche. Berdyaev and Scheler inherit the impulse of their thought. Distinctive feature of religious philosophies of Berdyaev and Scheler (compared to early Christian and Western philosophical and theological traditions) is conceptualization of the assertion of God’s need in human being, for God is in the process of becoming, is in the inner move toward full self-realization. And human being, who is capable to adopt or to reject the God’s “call,” is the crucial stage of God’s formation. For this tradition of theodicy, exactly human creative act and the direction of this act have the main role in world history.
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Macallan, Brian C. "Getting off the Omnibus: Rejecting Free Will and Soul-Making Responses to the Problem of Evil." Open Theology 6, no. 1 (January 30, 2020): 35–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0005.
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AbstractThe nature of suffering and the problem of evil have been perennial issues for many of the world’s religious traditions. Each in their own way has sought to address this problem, whether driven by the all too present reality of suffering or from philosophical and religious curiosities. The Christian tradition has offered numerous and diverse responses to the problem of evil. The free-will response to the problem of evil, with its roots in Augustine, has dominated the landscape in its attempt to justify evil and suffering as a result of the greater good of having free will. John Hick offers a ‘soul-making’ response to the problem of evil as an alternative to the free will response. Neither is effective in dealing with two key issues that underpin both responses – omnipotence and omniscience. In what follows I will contrast a process theological response to the problem of evil and suffering, and how it is better placed in dealing with both omnipotence and omniscience. By refashioning God as neither all-knowing nor all-powerful, process theodicy moves beyond the dead ends of both the free will and soul-making theodicy. Indeed, a process theodicy enables us to dismount the omnibus in search of a more holistic, and realistic, alternative to dealing with the problem of evil and suffering.
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Layantara, Jessica Novia. "Kritik terhadap Teologi Proses dan Pembelaan terhadap Pandangan “Greater Good” dalam Menanggapi Masalah Kejahatan." Veritas : Jurnal Teologi dan Pelayanan 16, no. 2 (December 1, 2017): 155–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.36421/veritas.v16i2.16.
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Selama berabad-abad, para teolog Kristen mencoba menanggapi pergumulan filosofis mengenai masalah kejahatan. Bapa-bapa Gereja dan tokoh-tokoh reformasi di masa lalu telah mencoba menanggapi permasalahan ini dengan argumen kebaikan yang lebih tinggi (greater good). Tetapi solusi-solusi semacam itu ditolak mentah-mentah setelah peristiwa Holocaust (Auschwitz), yang merupakan peristiwa kejahatan sangat dahsyat dan mengakibatkan penderitaan banyak sekali orang. Solusi tradisional dianggap sudah tidak relevan dalam menanggapi masalah kejahatan. Teologi proses kemudian mencoba menanggapi masalah ini dengan cara mereduksi atribut-atribut Allah. Tujuan karya tulis ini adalah untuk mengkritik pandangan kontemporer khususnya teologi proses dalam menanggapi masalah kejahatan, dan juga membela pandangan greater good sebagai solusi yang masih tetap dapat dipertahankan walaupun dengan beberapa penyesuaian.
Kata-kata kunci: Teodisi, Soft-determinism, Kompatibilisme, Kedaulatan Allah, Masalah Kejahatan, Holocaust, Auschwitz, Teologi Proses, Pembelaan Kehendak Bebas, Teodisi Pembentukan Jiwa, Greater Good Theodicy, John Calvin, John Feinberg
English:
Throughout the ages Christian theologians have attempted to understand, from a philosophical vantagepoint, the problem of evil. The Church Fathers as well as theologians during the era of the Reformation have offered a solution that argues from the basis of the greater good. However, solutions of that nature seem to ring hollow when one considers the magnitude and scope of the Holocaust (Auschwitz). In light of that historical reality traditional solutions to the problem of evil seem inadequate. Process theology attempts to overcome the impasse by restricting the attributes of God. The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate contemporary solutions to the problem of evil, especially process theology, as inadequate solutions. Further, to argue for the traditional positional argument of the greater good as offering a tenable solution.
Keywords: Theodicy, Soft-determinism, Compatibilism, Sovereignty of God, Problem of Evil, Holocaust, Auschwitz, Process Theology, Free Will Defense, Soul-shaping Theodicy, Greater Good Theodicy, John Calvin, John Feinberg
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Perkins, Anna Kasafi. "Oh, Sufferah Children of Jah: Unpacking the Rastafarian Rejection of Traditional Theodicies." Open Theology 6, no. 1 (September 4, 2020): 520–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2020-0134.
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AbstractThe article maintains that the theological perspectives of RastafarI continue to be under-researched in the Caribbean context with perhaps more attention being paid to their contributions to the racial, musical and linguistic traditions of the region. In particular, Rasta theodicies are not as clearly articulated as other elements of its belief system even as it is recognised that RastafarI mansions and individual members do not hold homogenous beliefs about many things. The discussion takes as its starting point two prior reflections, “Just Desert or Just Deserts?: God and Suffering in these Perilous Days” (Perkins 2016) and “The Wages of (Sin) is Babylon: Rasta Versus Christian Religious Perspectives of Sin” (Perkins 2012); the former reflection highlights the insufficiency of traditional theodicy to answer the question: “if God is good, why does evil exist?” No one answer can sufficiently do justice to the many dimensions of the question. In that regard, Perkins (2016) argues for attention to the important “answer” that the radical suffering perspective offers to the discussion (Sarah Anderson Rajarigam (2004) too emphasises divine suffering or theopathos, as the response to radical suffering. She frames theopathos not just as an option within theodicy but as an alternative to theodicy, which she derides as “the spoilt child of enlightenment that self-destructively craves for theoretical and philosophical remedies for radical human suffering” (27).). Perkins (2012) explicates a particular Rasta understanding of sin and evil, which are important elements of any theodicy. For Rasta, sin is tri-dimensional – personal, inherited and corporate. Sin in its corporate or social dimension is the most salient as it is moral evil – a rejection of Jah’s will – which leads to the oppression of Jah’s people.
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Vilkova, Evgeniya. "American Theodicy: The Content and Origins of the Apologia of David Bentley Hart." Philosophy. Journal of the Higher School of Economics IV, no. 4 (December 30, 2020): 35–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/2587-8719-2020-4-35-49.
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This paper attempts to examine an unconventional solution to the problem of theodicy proposed by the modern Orthodox theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart. The purpose of the study is to provide insights into Hart's interpretation of the issue of theodicy. The paper discusses David Hart's counterarguments regarding the most popular current-day trends in understanding the problems of theodicy in the Western world, which, in his opinion, do not provide a response to anyone inquiring about God, but only serve as further grounds for atheistic attacks on Christianity. Particular attention is paid to the positive side of the theologian's teachings, which is a daring attempt to provide a response to atheism without resorting to the rational arguments of classical theodicies. The scientific value of this work lies in identifying the conceptual parallels of David Hart's apologetic views, which enables a conclusion to be drawn about the possible Russian footprint in the philosophy of the Orthodox American. This is of particular interest in terms of the further study of the influence of Russian religious philosophy on the establishment of modern English-speaking Christian philosophers and theologians. The study employed the historical and philosophical methods of scientific knowledge, along with the so-called philosophical hermeneutics method, which enabled the philosophy of David Hart to be analyzed as a phenomenon existing in the context of modern culture and the deep meaning of his texts and relation between the principles of his philosophical system to be revealed.
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Chester, David K., and Angus M. Duncan. "The Bible, theodicy and Christian responses to historic and contemporary earthquakes and volcanic eruptions." Environmental Hazards 8, no. 4 (December 1, 2009): 304–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.3763/ehaz.2009.0025.
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PINCHES, CHARLES. "CHRISTIAN PACIFISM AND THEODICY: THE FREE WILL DEFENSE IN THE THOUGHT OF JOHNH. YODER." Modern Theology 5, no. 3 (April 1989): 239–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.1989.tb00193.x.
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Cane, Anthony. "Ontology, Theodicy and Idiom ? The Challenge of Nietzschean Tragedy to Christian Writing on Evil." New Blackfriars 77, no. 901 (February 1996): 84–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-2005.1996.tb01530.x.
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류헌조. "A Study on the Relevance of Christian Eschatology as the Final Apologetics to Theodicy Question: With a Focus on Robert John Russell’s Eschatological Theodicy." Korean Jounal of Systematic Theology ll, no. 57 (December 2019): 97–128. http://dx.doi.org/10.21650/ksst..57.201912.97.
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Lockley, Philip. "Histories of Heterodoxy: Shifting Approaches to a Millenarian Tradition in Modern Church History." Studies in Church History 49 (2013): 377–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400002242.
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In 1956, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge published a work chronicling a subject billed as ‘an unrecorded chapter of Church history’. The author was an elderly Anglican clergyman, George Balleine. The book was Past Finding Out: The Tragic Story of Joanna Southcott and her Successors.Before Balleine, the early nineteenth-century figure of Joanna Southcott, and her eventually global religious movement, had garnered scant mainstream attention. The most extensive work was Ronald Matthews’s rudimentary analysis of Southcott and five other ‘English Messiahs’ in a 1936 contribution to the psychology of religion. Southcott had not, in fact, claimed to be a messiah herself; rather, she was the prophet of a coming messiah named ‘Shiloh’. Southcott’s followers (variously labelled ‘Southcottians’, ‘Christian Israelites’ ‘Jezreelites’, among other names) believed that she and certain later figures were inspired by God to signal the imminence of the Christian millennium. Claimants to be the actual Shiloh messiah occasionally featured within this particular tradition of biblical interpretation, inspiration and theodicy. The splinter-prone movement spread through Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America, and retained a few thousand members in the twentieth century.
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Ermishin, Oleg T. "Priest, Philosopher, and Theologian Pavel Florensky in the Perception of Generations (in the Russian Emigration and Russia)." Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences 64, no. 3 (August 2, 2021): 116–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.30727/0235-1188-2021-64-3-116-136.
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The article discusses some works on priest Pavel Florensky’s philosophical and theological legacy of the 1930s–2020s. The author of the article has examined changes in the perception of Florensky and his ideas among Russian émigré philosophers as well as in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The difference in such assessments is clearly visible in two reviews of 1930 of the priest’s book called The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. The review written by G.V. Florovsky has a critical bias, while that of V.N. Ilyin is very positive. We find a more comprehensive expression of Ilyin’s attitude to Florensky in the article Father Pavel Florensky. The Silenced Great Miracle of Twentieth Century Science (1969). The works published in the Russian emigration are characterized by subjectivity due to lack of sources, as most of Florensky’s works remained unpublished. In Soviet Russia, one of the most famous works about Florensky was S.S. Khoruzhy’s book named Florensky’s World View (1999). In this book, Father Pavel’s worldview was reconstructed from the perspective of “existential” experience. S.M. Polovinkin gave another, “personalistic” interpretation in his book Christian Personalism of Priest Pavel Florensky (2015). Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev) was the first to highlight the significance of anthropodicy and its connection with theodicy in his work Theodicy and Anthropodicy in Priest Pavel Florensky’s Works (1998). He presented Florensky’s worldview as a system of concrete metaphysics, combining theodicy and anthropodicy. Moreover, he refuted the popular misconception of Florensky’s philosophy as “the allunity metaphysics.” Further, Hegumen Andronik wrote a fundamental work on Florensky’s life and works that he named The Way to God (2012–2020). The present article states that Hegumen Andronik’s work trailed the path to objective research, overcoming the inertia of thought that arose from bias and lack of sources.
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Kovalev, A. A. "Sextus Empiricus and Aurelius Augustinus: on the genesis of the medieval concept of the nature of evil." Ekonomicheskie i sotsial’no-gumanitarnye issledovaniya, no. 2(30) (June 2021): 175–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.24151/2409-1073-2021-2-175-184.
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The purpose of the article is to study the genesis of the medieval concept of evil, for which the analysis and comparison of the views of Augustine the Blessed as one of the founders and the greatest representative of scholasticism and Sextus Empiricus as a prominent representative of skepticism, whose views have been fruitfully used by Christian theologians as a set of ideas subject to reasonable criticism, have been carried out. Augustine substantiated his understanding of the phenomenon of evil and his own theodicy, refuting the views of Sextus Empiricus and thinkers who had worked in similar intellectual traditions. The skeptics’ arguments deserve attention to this day, providing the foundation for the intellectual justification of deism and atheism.
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COUENHOVEN, JESSE. "Augustine's rejection of the free-will defence: an overview of the late Augustine's theodicy." Religious Studies 43, no. 3 (August 14, 2007): 279–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034412507009018.
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AbstractAugustine is commonly considered the greatest early proponent of what we call the free-will defence, but this idea is deeply misleading, as Augustine grew increasingly dissatisfied with the view from an early point in his career, and his later explorations of the implications of his doctrines of sin and grace led him to reject free-will theodicies altogether. As a compatibilist, however, he continued to reject the idea that God is responsible for the advent of evil. His alternative was his often misunderstood claim that the primal sin had a ‘deficient’ cause, together with a version of what Alvin Plantinga has nominated the ‘felix culpa’ approach. Thus, Augustine was actually the free-will defence's first major Christian detractor, and by the end of his career he had become its greatest critic.
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Whitney, Barry. "Comptes rendus / Review of books: Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 31, no. 3-4 (September 2002): 472–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000842980203100349.
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Stroumsa, Sarah. "The Signs of Prophecy: the Emergence And Early Development of a Theme in Arabic Theological Literature." Harvard Theological Review 78, no. 1-2 (April 1985): 101–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017816000027401.
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In the ongoing scholarly search for the roots of Islamic theology, students of Kalām are entrenched in two main camps: those who see early Islamic theology as a product of the encounter with Christian theology, and those who, without denying certain influences, emphasize the independence of Muslim thought and regard Kalām as a genuine, original reflection of the inner development of Islam. Until now, the arguments of one group of scholars have done little to convince the other. Indeed the scarcity of sources from the formative period of Kalām renders any evidence inconclusive. Yet it is not only the paucity of material, but the very nature of the question, which makes a definite answer practically impossible. For it can always be argued that interest in questions such as God's unity, theodicy, and anthropomorphism might appear within any monotheistic system. Thus, although Islamic theology can often be shown to be strikingly similar to Christian theology of an earlier period, it is often easier to speak about parallels than about sources.
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Watson, Simon R. "God in Creation: A Consideration of Natural Selection as the Sacrificial Means of a Free Creation." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 48, no. 2 (June 2019): 216–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0008429819830356.
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If the Christian God is creator of all things and revealed in Christ to be costly love, then how can divine agency in creation be understood in light of scientific discoveries revealing that biological warfare undergirds Darwinian evolution by natural selection? To explore this challenge, I look to Philip Hefner’s teleonomic axiom as a measure for divine agency in the fulfillment and survival of natural structures and processes. Drawing on this criterion and the feminist writing of Judith Plaskow, I conclude that Hefner’s attempt to understand divine immanence using the metaphor of sacrifice with John Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy can support a risky model for the human as made in God’s image by justifying the instrumental subjugation and exploitation of creaturely life and specifically women. Considering the God crucified in Christ, I recommend the metaphor of a fallen creation to acknowledge the inexplicable and unacceptable magnitude of harm suffered by individual creatures.
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Demichelis, Marco. "Islamic Liberation Theology. An Inter-Religious Reflection between Gustavo Gutierrez, Farīd Esack and Ḥamīd Dabāšī." Oriente Moderno 94, no. 1 (July 2, 2014): 125–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22138617-12340042.
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In the published text by Ḥamīd Dabāšī, Islamic liberation theology, there is no mention within it of the essay by Farīd Esack, Qurʾān, liberation and pluralism, published in 1997, and after reading both introductions. Perhaps it will be helpful to better recognize the relationship between these two authors, and those who have gone before them (Ašgar ʿAlī Engineer and Šabbir Aḫtar), concerning Islamic Liberation Theology and Theodicy, not only in connection to their thinking and methodological approach, which emerges as being very different, but with respect to the historical events that are affecting the Islamic Middle East in recent years. The hermeneutic and theological approach of F. Esack, the South African citizen, contrasts markedly with the political Šīʿah terminology and methodology, used by Ḥ. Dabāšī, who is a US citizen of Iranian origin. However, their use of similar sources, including such Christian liberation theology authors as Gustavo Gutierrez, allows them to promote a study which is capable of reinterpreting contemporary Islamic theodicy against the background of the recent Middle East uprisings. The analysis to which I am particular attracted concerns the relationship between two reinterpretations of the takfīr concept and the plural identification of the Arab-Islamic holy prophecy, described as advocating religious pluralism. The deconstruction, leading from a purely theological analysis of the takfīr and the interpretation of a plural Islam, is not openly tolerant, but is able to consider a more shared concept of Truth, and could be politically contemplated by a faith approach which remains Islamic-oriented whilst not being culturally tied to the Western world. The balance of political Islam through a faith still acknowledging the transcendent and acting as the backer of human freedom continues to be sought by theorists but is not appreciated by the most uncompromising Muslims believers.
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Gould, Graham. "Childhood in Eastern Patristic Thought: Some Problems of Theology and Theological Anthropology." Studies in Church History 31 (1994): 39–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s042420840001278x.
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The writings of the Early Church concerning childhood are not extensive, but in the works of a number of Eastern Christian authors of the second to fourth centuries it is possible to discern some ideas about childhood which raise important problems of Christian theology and theological anthropology. The theological problem is that of the question posed for theodicy by the sufferings and deaths of infants. It is harder to give a brief definition of the anthropological problem, but it is important to do so because to define the problem as the Eastern Fathers saw it is also to identify the set of conceptual tools—the anthropological paradigm—which they used to answer it. These are not, naturally, the concepts of modern anthropology and psychology. Applied to patristic thought, these terms usually refer to speculations about the composition and functioning of the human person or the human soul which belong to a discourse which is recognizably philosophical and metaphysical—by which is meant that it is (though influenced by other sources, such as the Bible) the discourse of a tradition descending ultimately from the anthropological terminology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Patristic anthropology seeks to account for the history and experiences of the human person as a created being—fhe experience of sin and mortality in the present life, but also of eternal salvation and advancement to perfection in the image of God.
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Blowers, Paul M. "Prefiguration, Apocalypse, Tragedy: Three Trajectories of Patristic Interpretation of the Adamic Fall." Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 29, no. 4 (August 27, 2020): 407–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1063851220951906.
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This essay examines three major (and to some degree overlapping) trajectories of patristic interpretation of the Adamic Fall in Genesis 3, all of which have considerable representation in early Christian writers. Following on the Pauline treatment of Adam especially in Romans 5, a first interpretive trajectory sketches the Fall principally as a prefigurative event, a lapse that, modeled in the protoplasts Adam and Eve, human beings have continued to imitate and prolong transgenerationally. A second whole interpretive approach interprets it as an “apocalyptic” event within the larger divine economy, taking account of questions of theodicy and divine wisdom, of how allegedly perfect creatures could fall in the first place, and of the ontological and moral repercussions of the Fall for the human race. Still a third trajectory enhances the “dramatic” dimension of the Fall and plays up the features of tragedy which characterize the protoplasts’ fateful miscalculation and the divine intervention to save the day. This essay seeks to demonstrate the interpretive latitude within all three trajectories, which, though not necessarily exhaustive, are certainly representative in late ancient and early medieval Christianity.
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Dergacheva, Irina. "PRECEDENTIAL INTERTEXT IN THE POEM “THE GRAND INQUISITOR”." Проблемы исторической поэтики 19, no. 2 (May 2021): 125–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.15393/j9.art.2021.9622.
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The poem "The Grand Inquisitor" is part of the novel "The Brothers Karamazov," written by Ivan Karamazov about Christian freedom of will and told by him to his brother Alyosha, who rightly perceived it as an Orthodox theodicy. The article presents an intertextual analysis of the precedent texts used by F. M. Dostoevsky in the poem "The Grand Inquisitor". In particular, the meanings of direct quotations from the New Testament, especially its last book, the Revelation of John the Theologian, and the translated apocrypha "The Walking of the Virgin in Torment" are interpreted; medieval Western European mysteries in the paraphrase of V. Hugo; poetic quotations from the works of A. S. Pushkin, V. A. Zhukovsky, F. I. Tyutchev, which linked together the axiological concepts of the narrative text. Appeals to the precedent texts of world literature contribute to the disclosure of the multifaceted symbolism of the poem, which glorifies the spiritual freedom of humanity as an act of faith, and help to generalize and deepen its axiological discourse. The author analyzes the speech and behavioral tactics of the Grand Inquisitor, based on the substitution of concepts characteristic of the techniques of "black rhetoric". In contrast to the Grand Inquisitor's distortion of cause-and-effect relations and the concepts of good and evil, and his denial of the idea of Christian freedom, direct and indirect quoting of texts that have become part of the heritage of world culture creates a text rich in axiological meanings, designed to influence the spiritual space of the reader, enriching it and orienting it to the correct understanding of eternal truths.
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Clooney, Francis X. "Evil and the Mystics’ God: Toward a Mystical Theodicy by Michael Stoeber, and: Theo-monistic Mysticism: A Hindu-Christian Comparison by Michael Stoeber." Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 59, no. 4 (1995): 662–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tho.1995.0011.
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Nosachev, Pavel. "Theology of Supernatural." Religions 11, no. 12 (December 4, 2020): 650. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel11120650.
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The main research issues of the article are the determination of the genesis of theology created in Supernatural and the understanding of ways in which this show transforms a traditional Christian theological narrative. The methodological framework of the article, on the one hand, is the theory of the occulture (C. Partridge), and on the other, the narrative theory proposed in U. Eco’s semiotic model. C. Partridge successfully described modern religious popular culture as a coexistence of abstract Eastern good (the idea of the transcendent Absolute, self-spirituality) and Western personified evil. The ideal confirmation of this thesis is Supernatural, since it was the bricolage game with images of Christian evil that became the cornerstone of its popularity. In the 15 seasons of its existence, Supernatural, conceived as a story of two evil-hunting brothers wrapped in a collection of urban legends, has turned into a global panorama of world demonology while touching on the nature of evil, the world order, theodicy, the image of God, etc. In fact, this show creates a new demonology, angelology, and eschatology. The article states that the narrative topics of Supernatural are based on two themes, i.e., the theology of the spiritual war of the third wave of charismatic Protestantism and the occult outlooks derived from Emmanuel Swedenborg’s system. The main topic of this article is the role of monotheistic mythology in Supernatural. The author concludes that the case of Supernatural shows how the classical monotheistic narrative, in its orthodox and heterodox formats, is hugely attractive for the modern audience. A wide distribution of the occulture that has become a basis of modern mass culture and easily combines, by virtue of historical specifics of its genesis, with monotheism makes the classical monotheistic mythology more flexible and capable of meeting the audience’s different demands.
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Diamantides, Marinos. "Law and compassion: between ethics and economy, philosophical speculation and arche-ology." International Journal of Law in Context 13, no. 2 (May 12, 2017): 197–211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s174455231700012x.
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AbstractThis paper examines the relationship between law and compassion from the perspective of two diverse scholars. For philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, rejecting the ideahomo homini lupus,there can simply be no organised societybutfor a primordial, unauthorised, human vocation for compassion (egoism and violence, for him, are nothing but attempts to repress this). Levinas, however, must be understood, as speaking of compassion not in the usual sense, that is as involving a human capacity for, and cultures of, empathy; he defines it, rather, in phenomenological terms, as an irreducible excess of affectivity for the ultimately meaningless suffering of another, beyond all theodicy and causality, whom one is ethically commanded to offer succour to as if s/he is a ‘higher’ and absolutely unique Other, prior to any comparison and judgment. General legal principles and rigorous rules, Natural Justice and positive law are equally ‘born’ of such an-archic, individuated, compassion for which one can only retroactively account. Justice is ‘born’ as one attempts to justify to third parties why one's care benefits some but not others; the paper argues that this perspective is preferable to prioritising empathic compassion over law for it binds compassion with responsibility. Turning to Giorgio Agamben, the role of compassion takes on a darker character; his historicised investigations of the ‘Western-Christian’ paradigm shows how the Greek and Roman legal principles ofepieikeiaandaequitasmerged with the Christian postulates of God-dictated philanthropy and ‘divine economy’ (Gr:oikonomia), leading to – instead of ethical anarchy followed by with infinite responsibility (Levinas) –anomie,legal exceptionalism and social control via patronage and other biopolitical practices to spectacles of compassion. This suggests that what Levinas calls ‘ethical anarchy’ has been captured by economic rationality and endless processes of anomic management that are equally free of ethical constraints as they are from legal and political decision. With reference to contemporary examples from the ‘law and emotion’ debates, medical laws and humanitarianism, the paper asks the reader to ponder upon the importance, if any, of Levinas's thesis in a world where the expediency of managerial rationality, the secular heir of divineoikonomia,prevails over moral, legal and political principle.