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At first glance, the problem of evil has little place in Chinese thought.[2] At least two assumptions associated with the classical European problem of evil are foreign to a Chinese context. If we take the term “evil†in contrast to the merely “bad,†that is, if we give evil ontological status as a real force, then classical Chinese thinkers have no conception of evil, and thus no need to account for its origin. The second assumption connected to the problem of evil is God’s creation of the world ex nihilo. If God is the total and complete cause of all that exists, God must be responsible for everything, including the bad things. Without a conception of creation ex nihilo, early Chinese thinkers need not attribute evil to any divine being. Even in a European context, though, requiring a conception of evil as a positive force and the creation of the world ex nihilo defines the problem of evil too narrowly. Most thinkers in the European tradition responded to the problem of evil by denying the ontological status of evil. Those who maintained the benevolence of God denied his creation of evil by equating evil with nothingness or lack. Augustine develops this denial of evil in response to Manicheanism, and versions of his account are taken up by Descartes and Leibniz, among others. Even those who responded to the problem of evil by denying the existence of a benevolent deity tended to reduce evil from a real ontological category to a mere human label, as for example, Spinoza does. Creation ex nihilo remains more consistently central to the problem, but again seems unnecessary. Kant, for example, sees the problem of evil as arising out of the structure of rationality itself. Hellenistic philosophers raised the problem of evil more regarding God as controlling force than God as creator. Even within Europe, then, the problem of evil can be formulated without..

No other anthology effectively organizes so many previously published essays and excerpts covering such a wide range of philosphical issues on the problem of evil. Classic statements of the problem include Job, Aquinas, Hume, Dostoevsky, Camus, and Wiesel. Three versions of the problem of evil are represented: the standard Mackie and Plantinga pieces on the badly named "logical problem" (the idea that God and evil are logically incompatible), an exchange between Michael Martin and David Basinger over the "evidential problem" (the idea that God and evil are probabilistically incompatible), and two unrelated essays on what is sometimes called "the existential problem", a clever one by Hasker employing the logic of regret and a second, more religiously sensitive, one by Marilyn McCord Adams emphasizing the redemptive value of suffering as modeled in martyrdom. Three perspectives in theodicy are presented and criticized: Augustine's rejection of the claim that there is genuine evil, Hick's contention that the world is a vale of soul-making, and the process theodicist's claim that God (properly conceived) doesn't have the power to prevent evil. The last part of book is devoted to four "hot" topics: Must God create the best world He can? If the free-will defense explains moral evil, can it be extended to explain natural evil?, Must one believe in libertarian freedom in order to affirm Plantinga's free will defense?, and Are theoretical discussions of the problem of evil morally insensitive and should they give way to, say, retelling the stories of victims or working to alleviate their suffering? Peterson closes with a helpful 25-page bibliography.

Department of Philosophy Birkbeck College, University of London k.gemes@bbk.ac.uk The Problem of Evil and its Solution The problem of evil can be captured by the following four statements which taken together are inconsistent: 1) God made the world 2) God is a perfect being 3) A perfect being would not create a world containing evil 4) The world contains evil Traditional attempts to grapple with this problem typically center on rejecting (3). Thus Descartes, following Augustine, rejects (3), arguing that evil is the result of man’s exercise of his free will. However, given Descartes plausible claim that God could have created man in such a way that through exercising his free will man comes to only virtuous actions, it is not clear how the problem is solved. Descartes also repeats the Augustinian orthodoxy that though the world contains evil it does not contain it as a positive existence; evil has no real being but is simply the reflection of the inherent lack of full-being in merely finite individuals. Again, that this is a solution is open to serious doubt.

The problem of evil -- Aquinas, philosophy, and theology -- What there is -- Goodness and badness -- God the creator -- God's perfection and goodness -- The creator and evil -- Providence and grace -- The trinity and Christ -- Aquinas on god and evil.

Over the past thirty years, analytical philosophers of religion have confronted the problem of evil in the guise of the atheistic argument from evil against the existence of God. Many have met it from the posture of defense, constructing logically possible morally sufficient reasons for divine permission of evils from the materials of religion-neutral value-theory. At best, such defenses vindicate divine goodness along the dimension “producer of global goods,” while neglecting the religiously more relevant dimension of His goodness to individual suffering creatures. My methodological recommendation is that we Christian philosophers shift away from defense and concentrate on formulating what we really believe about the goodness of God and how He is solving the problem of evil. If successful, our accounts would not only exhibit how divine permission of evils is logically consistent with His goodness to creatures, but also advertise Him as a character worthy of worship. Failures would pinpoint more precisely where and how evil is a problem for us. I illustrate this method by examining Duns Scotus’ many-faceted conception of divine goodness and measure its power to explain the compossibility of God and evil.

P.J. McGrath has recently challenged the standard claim that to escape the problem of evil one need only alter one’s conception of God by limiting his power or his goodness. If we assume that God is infinitely good but not omnipotent, then God can scarcely be a proper object of worship. And if we assume that if God is omnipotent but limited in goodness, he becomes a moral monster. Either way evil remains a problem for theistic belief. I argue that McGrath fails to distinguish between the deductive and inductive problem of evil and between a limitation in God’s “strength” and a limitation in God’s “ability to act”, and that once these distinctions are made, his argument fails.

It is widely held that the logical problem of evil, which alleges an inconsistency between the existence of evil and that of an omnipotent and morally perfect God, has been solved. D. Z. Phillips thinks this is a mistake. In The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God, he argues that, within the generally assumed framework, “neither the proposition ’God is omnipotent’ nor the proposition ‘God is perfectly good’ can get off the ground.” Thus, the problem of evil leads to the problem of God. Phillips goes on to provide an alternative response to the problem of evil, expounded by means of his Wittgensteinian analyses of various concepts drawn from the Christian tradition. I argue that his criticisms of the traditional conception of God either fail outright or are at best inconclusive. I also point out that the religious concepts analyzed by Phillips are not and cannot be the same concepts as those employed in the Christian tradition from which they are supposedly drawn. For the concepts as traditionally employed presuppose the actual existence and activity of precisely the sort of being that, according to Phillips, “God cannot be.”.

Evil, it is often said, poses a problem for theism, the view that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, "God," for short. This problem is usually called "the problem of evil." But this is a bad name for what philosophers study under that rubric. They study what is better thought of as an argument, or a host of arguments, rather than a problem. Of course, an argument from evil against theism can be both an argument and a problem. Some people realize this for the first time when they assert an argument from evil in print and someone publishes a .reply in which numerous defects and oversights are laid bare for the public eye. And if it turns out that there is a God and He doesn't take kindly to such arguments, then an argument from evil might be a big problem, a very big problem, for one who sincerely propounds it. Typically, however, an argument from evil is not thought to be a problem for the atheist. But if not for the atheist, for whom is an argument from evil a "problem"?

The problem of horrendous evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of horrendous evils with the existence of a God that is nevertheless good to individuals. A solution to the problem along the lines of that proposed by Morilyn McCord Adams resolves the problem by appeal to various sorts of intimacy with God on the part of the participants in horrendous evils. One half of the problem concerns the victims of horrendous evils. A second half of the problem of horrendous evil is the same problem for those perpetrators of horrendous evils who also potentially have their lives defeated. The present paper argues not only that the intimacy such an overall strategy appeals to fails to solve the first half of the problem, but also that it makes no progress at all on the second half.

The existence of evil and suffering in our world seems to pose a serious challenge to belief in the existence of a perfect God. If God were all-knowing, it seems that God would know about all of the horrible things that happen in our world. If God were all-powerful, God would be able to do something about all of the evil and suffering. Furthermore, if God were morally perfect, then surely God would want to do something about it. And yet we find that our world is filled with countless instances of evil and suffering. These facts about evil and suffering seem to conflict with the orthodox theist claim that there exists a perfectly good God. The challenged posed by this apparent conflict has come to be known as the problem of evil.