ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the theodicies which are of undoubted aid in the theoretical analysis of the twin phenomena of radical evil/radical good. A weighty and comprehensive difficulty faced by different rationalist theodicies is linked to the question of the divine responsibility, more precisely, the divine blameworthiness and culpability. For a theodicean apologist like David Birnbaum, the evil of evil gets "justified" in and through such considerations as the divine freedom, God's purposes and goals, and most especially through the gift of freedom to human beings, without which they could never realize their highest potential. Radical evil is never a calculating vice of God; the nature of the divine/human relationship is what occasions evil. In a monist frame of reference any claim that evil "has to be there" is completely powerless to offset the responsibility of God respecting the presence of evil.
