No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Atheists have argued that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. They claim that (1) it would be wrong for a person to allow evil which one could prevent, and (2) because God is omnipotent, He could prevent evil. So, (3) since evil does exist, a perfectly good and omnipotent God does not exist. This is the oldest and most pressing attack on theism, and theists have developed a variety of defensive responses to this argument. In this paper I propose to outline a strategy which appears to have escaped recent attention, and to compare this strategy with two more widely discussed types of theodicy.
page 257 note 1 Brody, Baruch A., Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice–Hall,1974), p. 8.Google Scholar
page 257 note 2 Plantinga, Alvin, ‘The Free Will Defense’, in Brody, Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 186–200.Google Scholar
page 257 note 3 Pike, Nelson, ‘Over-Power and God's Responsibility for Sin’, in Freddoso, Alfred J. (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame, Ind.: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), p. 31.Google Scholar
page 258 note 1 Cf. Hick, John, Evil and the God of Love, revised edition (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978).Google Scholar
page 258 note 2 These responses and other philosophical issues involved in the defence of optimism are discussed in Ormsby, Eric L., Theodicy in Islamic Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 259 note 1 E.g. Brody, Baruch, ‘Morality and Religion Reconsidered’, in Brody, Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 592–603.Google ScholarQuinn, Philip L., Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 259 note 2 Cf. Watt, W. M., Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962), pp. 82–90;Google Scholar also Fakhry, Majid, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 204–5.Google Scholar
page 259 note 3 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1969).Google ScholarBrunner, Emil, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1952).Google Scholar Cited in Kane, G. Stanley, ‘The Concept of Divine Goodness and the Problem of Evil’, Religious Studies, XI (1975), 49–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 260 note 1 ‘John of Damascus: A Dialogue between a Saracen and a Christian’ in Seale, M. S., Qurدan and Bible (London: Croom Helm, 1978), p. 65.Google Scholar
page 261 note 1 al–Ashدari, Abu al–Hasan, in Williams, John Alden (ed.), Themes of Islamic Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 169.Google Scholar
page 261 note 2 This claim is controversial. Some hold that God commanded Abraham to perform an immoral action. Cf. Quinn, , Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, pp. 12–16.Google Scholar Kant held that Abraham had reason to judge that he was mistaken in his belief that God had ordered him to kill his son. Although nearly all exegetes of the Qurدan claim that God did command the sacrifice of Ishmael, in the Qurدan itself it is stated only that Abraham dreamt that God ordered him to kill his son, not that God did order the sacrifice.
page 261 note 3 Rawls, John, A Theory of justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 114–117.Google Scholar
page 262 note 1 Ibid. p. 115.
page 262 note 2 Ibid. p. 11.
page 262 note 3 A similar objection has been raised against divine command theories. It is asked, ‘If goodness is due to following divine commands, but it is senseless to speak of God following his own commands, then isn't it senseless to speak of God's goodness?’ Quinn's reply is that God's goodness is not due to following divine command, but that in other respects it is analogous to human goodness. Cf. Quinn, , Divine Commands and Moral Requirements, pp. 130–64.Google Scholar
page 263 note 1 Kane, , ‘The Concept of Divine Goodness and the Problem of Evil’, p. 52.Google Scholar
page 264 note 1 John Hick has responded to this charge and others in the second edition of his Evil and the God of Love(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978). An assessment of his responses is beyond the scope of this paper.
page 265 note 1 Cf. Schwarz, M., ‘“Acquisition” (Kasb) in Early Kalam’, in Stern, S. M., Hourani, Albert and Brown, Vivian (eds.), Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), pp. 355–87.Google Scholar
page 266 note 1 On analogical predication in Qurدanic exegesis see al–Tabataba՟i, Allamah al–Sayyid Muhammad Husayn, Al–Mizan, trans. Rizvi, Sayyid Saeed Akhtar (Tehran: World Organization for Islamic Services, 1982), Vol. 4, pp. 133–42.Google Scholar
You have
Access