ABSTRACT
Theodicy (from the Greek theos [God] and dike [justice]) is the justification of the ways and actions of God in the world, especially in connection with the problem of evil. While the problem of evil has a long history, it can be simply stated: How can the existence of evil in the world be reconciled with the belief in an allgood and all-powerful God? Either God is all good, but not powerful enough to rectify evil, or he is all powerful, but not beneficent enough to will to rectify it. Within Western Christianity, the predominant defense of God against these objections comes from Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430). Augustine defined evil as the privation of good rather than an independent substance, and he argued that evil was necessary to achieve a greater good of moral virtue and divine justice. However, the term “theodicy” first appeared in the title of a book by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), in which he defended God’s perfect goodness against the objections of Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). Leibniz’s famous defense employed a best-of-all-possible-worlds argument that, like Augustine’s, made evil a component of the world that was necessary to achieve a greater good. The problem of evil is only a specific example of an underlying difficulty that is relevant to the interaction of science and religion and that concerns God’s actions in the world more generally. It begins with observing certain features of the world or particular theories of nature that seem inconsistent with a particular concept of God. These concepts of nature give rise to questions of how God can be at work in the world in a manner implied by the particular theory.
