چکیده:
This article studies the problem of evil in Abrahamic religions and philosophical traditions, and tries to restate their solutions in a contemporary language. The author aims at affirming traditional Abrahamic approaches to theodicy that preserve divine omnipotence, benevolence, and omniscience, but without denying the reality of evil.
خلاصه ماشینی:
My few modest conclusions add nothing new to the long history of theodicy, but attempt rather to state these conclusions in a contemporary language that makes sense to me existentially, and which I hope will make sense to others, as I continue to face the iniquity of evil in my own life and choices, in the structures of sin and evil worked into the very fabric of modern life,2 and occasionally in what I can only describe as direct demonic attempts on the part of warped "personal" spiritual entities to disrupt genuine unity, destroy what is good, distort what is true, and pervert what is beautiful.
Thus, the via negativa or the apophatic ways to God are the appropriate starting points in the Abrahamic religious traditions for any robust theologies of God and God’s creative act when attempting to address the enormously problematic phenomenon we call evil.
Of course the central challenge for the Abrahamic religions is to reconcile the belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God with the "existence" of evil.
One contemporary Christian theologian of high repute formulates this in this way: "God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind [God’s own] actual decisions" (Pope Benedict XVI 2006, §6).