We need not review in detail here the various Hindu
and Buddhist answers to the question of how one may escape
sam:sa ̄ra. These answers constitute the core teachings of their
traditions. They range from Hinduism’s stress on the pro-
found recognition that one’s soul (a ̄tman) is identical with
Being-itself (brahman), and hence basically unaffected by the
flux of becoming, to Buddhism’s opposing insistence that
there is no eternal soul capable of being affected by sam:sa ̄ra
(the doctrine of ana ̄tman). Despite the enormous differences
between these teachings, they have much in common: suffer-
ing is viewed as endemic to the world process, and the goal
is extrication from this process. Suffering is not a reason for
praising or blaming God. The legacy of karman thus colors
Indian thought from beginning to end, from its conception
of the problem of suffering to that problem’s resolution.
Within this intellectual context, theodicy in its classic sense
finds little room for development.
CONCLUSION. Along with the corrosive effect of modern sci-
entific knowledge, the problem of innocent suffering poses
one of the greatest challenges to ethical monotheism in our
day. In the wake of the mass suffering of this epoch, some
have rejected such monotheism, agreeing with the remark by
Stendahl that “the only excuse for God is that he does not
exist.” Others have been drawn to various dissolutions of the
theodicy problem, ranging from the Eastern stress on karman
to an extreme fideism that abandons the insistence on God’s
justice.
Before rejecting ethical monotheism or the theodicies it
has stimulated, however, it is worth keeping in mind that
both spring from a profound moral intentionality. Ethical
monotheism expresses the conviction that a supreme power
guides reality and that this power is characterized by righ-
teousness and love. Theodicy is the effort to sustain this con-
viction in the face of innocent suffering. Theodicy, therefore,
is often less an effort to provide an account of the immediate
facts of experience than an expression of hope and confi-
dence that despite worldly reverses or human resistance,
goodness and righteousness will triumph. Theodicy may not
violate the requirements of logic, nor may it ignore the expe-
rienced reality of suffering. Theodicy’s deepest impulse,
however, is not to report the bitter facts of life but to over-
come and transform them.
This essentially moral motivation should be kept in
mind as we evaluate theodicies and their alternatives. Various
dissolutions of the theodicy problem, from denials of God’s
power or justice to denials of the reality of suffering, may
seem intellectually satisfying, but they may have moral impli-
cations we hesitate to accept. Theodicies, too, are subject to
a moral test. If some older theodicies, such as reliance on the
harsh idea of original sin, are no longer widely held, this may
reflect their moral inadequacy. Conversely, theodicies that
still attract attention are those that draw upon and deepen
our moral self-understanding. The idea that God is commit-
ted to the perilous enterprise of creating free, mature human
beings exemplifies this approach. This theodicy draws on
certain aspects of our deepest moral experience—for exam-
ple, the experienced relationship between parents and chil-
dren—and uses these to illuminate the relationship between
God and his creatures. Unless this ultimate moral basis and
intention is kept in mind, neither theodicy’s purpose nor its
persistence will be well understood.SEE ALSO Afterlife; Evil; Free Will and Predestination;
Holocaust, The, article on Jewish Theological Responses;
Karman; L ̄ıla ̄; Sam:sa ̄ra; Suffering.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Useful surveys of classic Western philosophical and theological
discussions of theodicy can be found in John Hick’s Evil and
the God of Love, 2d ed. (London, 1977), S. Paul Schilling’s
God and Human Anguish (Nashville, 1977), and David Ray
Griffin’s God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Philadel-
phia, 1976).
Some of the most important classic discussions of this problem in-
clude Augustine’s treatment of the issue in his Confessions,
bk. 7, chaps. 3–5 and 12–16, in his Enchridion, chaps. 3–5,
and in The City of God, bk. 11, chaps. 16–18, and bk. 12,
chaps. 1–9. Thomas Aquinas has a very similar discussion in
his Summa theologiae, first part, questions 47–49, as does
John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. 1,
chaps. 1–5 and 14–18, bk. 2, chaps. 1–5, and bk. 3, chaps.
21–25. The great medieval Jewish philosopher Mosheh ben
Maimon (Maimonides) also advances a theodicy in his Guide
of the Perplexed, pt. 3, chaps. 11 and 12, which relies heavily
on the connection between wrongdoing and suffering.
Modern philosophical discussion of theodicy has its start with
Leibniz’s Essais de théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de
l’homme, et l’origine du mal (1710), translated by E. M. Hug-
gard as Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom
of Man, and the Origin of Evil (London, 1952). On the other
side, penetrating criticisms of theism and theodicy are of-
fered by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion (1779) and by John Stuart Mill in his Three Essays
on Religion (1874).
In this century, debate in this area has been especially vigorous.
Important theological discussions include Nels Ferré’s Evil
and the Christian Faith (New York, 1947), Austin Farrer’s
Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (Garden City, N. Y., 1961),
and the works by Hick, Schilling, and Griffin mentioned
above. A critique of these and other efforts at theodicy is of-
fered by Edward H. Madden and Peter H. Hare in their Evil
and the Concept of God (Springfield, Ill., 1968).
Influential criticisms of theism and the free-will theodicy have
been advanced by Antony Flew in his essays “Theology and
Falsification” and “Divine Omnipotence and Human Free-
dom,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by An-
tony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre (London, 1955), and by
J. L. Mackie in his article “Evil and Omnipotence,” Mind,
n. s. 64 (1955): 200–212. This last essay is reprinted along
with rejoinders by Nelson Pike and Ninian Smart in God and
Evil (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1964), edited by Pike. Re-
sponding to these discussions, Alvin Plantinga provides a
powerful defense of theodicy in general and of the free-will
theodicy in particular in his God and Other Minds (Ithaca,
N. Y., 1967), chaps. 5 and 6, and in his God, Freedom and
Evil (London, 1975).9120 THEODICY