Abstract

Shakespeare’s King Lear is routinely construed as a place without God: critics reason that no good god would allow the presence of grave moral evils such as the torturous blinding of Gloucester. Using Plantinga’s free will defense, I argue that if Shakespeare’s characters enjoy significant freedom in the moral choices they make, then claims that Lear represents Shakespeare’s demonstration of God’s nonexistence are false. Plantinga’s concept of transworld depravity illustrates the vexing problem of moral evil, while it also opens the possibility of God’s existence in a world actualized, for good or ill, by the free exercise of human freedom.

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