Theodicy

Theodicy is a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotent in view of the existence of evil. In its most common form, is the attempt to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil. Theodicy attempts to reconcile the traditional divine characteristics of omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience with the occurrence of evil or suffering in the world. Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy provides a framework which claims to make God's existence probable.

In Christian tradition “If God cannot prevent evil, God is not omnipotent; if God can prevent evil but does not, God is not benevolent.”  If the reasoning is valid, it would follow that God is not all-powerful or all-good. Christians theology accepts that evil exists, but denies the validity of the argument.

Traditionally theology distinguishes three kinds of evil: moral evil or sin, the evil originated by human beings; pain and suffering as experienced by human beings; physical evil, such as floods, tornados, earthquakes, and the imperfections of creatures.

Theology has a ready answer for the first two kinds of evil. Sin is a consequence of free will; the flip side of sin is virtue, also a consequence of free will. Christian theology provides a good accounting of human pain and suffering. To the extent that pain and suffering are caused by war, injustice, and other forms of human wrongdoing, they are also a consequence of free will; people choose to inflict harm on one another. On the flip side are good deeds by which people choose to alleviate human suffering.

What about earthquakes, storms, floods, droughts, and other physical catastrophes? Physical events are built into the structure of the world itself.Since the seventeenth century, humans have known that the processes by which galaxies, and stars come into existence, the planet are formed, the continents move, the weather and the change of seasons, and floods and earthquake occur are natural processes, not events specifically designed by God for punishing and rewarding humans. Some are outcomes of the laws of physics, not the design of a fearsome God. If God is the designer of life, whence the lion’s cruelty, the snakes poison, and the parasites that secure their existence only by destroying their hosts?