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Theism And The Problem Of Evil: A Critical Study
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1.6 LITERATURE REVIEW
Some material used in this study will be summarized as follow:
Greater Good Defence: John Hick: The Philosophical Journey New York Mc Graw-Hill 2003.
Greater
Good Defence: The view that when God initially created humanity there
was still some work to be done in making us a complete product. However,
this remaining work could not be accomplished by God alone, we have to
contribute to the process using the Greater Good Defence that argues
that even God himself could not achieve certain result without allowing
us to struggle against evil and to endure suffering.
St. Augustine, The Confessions Chicago: William Peston, Britannica Great Book; 1944.
Augustine
was born in August, in Northern Africa, the son of a pagan father and a
Christian mother by name, Monica; after receiving a good education in
Tahie Rhetoric, Augustine a young man a dissipated habit at that time
taught in cartage and Rome.
He was baptized at the age of 37 in 387 A.D. and died as a Bishop of Hippo. Before his conversion, he lived a very bad life.
However,
Augustine’s confession was centred on the problem of evil for him, he
still has difficulty in thinking of God as a spiritual being and also
could not find a clear explanation without complication of the cause of
evil. Evil the origin of which he was trying to find is not a substance,
because if it were a substance, it would be good. For either it would
be an incorruptible substance of the supreme order of goodness, or it
would be corruptible unless it was good. From this nothing can be
completely or absolutely be evil since evil is a privation of being and
no being can be completely deprived of being in all aspect and still
exist.
To Augustine, all that God have made is good, and there are no
substance whatsoever that were not made by God. And because God did not
make them all equal, each single thing is good and collectively they
are very good, for God made the whole creation very good. In finding an
explanation of the problem of evil with the Platonist books Augustine
realized that evil is a perversion of the will not. A substance as the
Manicheans claimed that God was a substance that could suffer evil.
Readings in Religion and Philosophy Teradia Press, Benin City 2006
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The presence of evil in a world said to be created by a “Being†who is not only omnipotent, omniscience and perfectly good is problematic. It is a problem that has perturbed man for ages and coupled with various natural disaster still make the concept problematic one. How can there be a loving God, all-powerful and all-knowing God and still face the problem of evil, if really he is perfectly good and created everything then where does evil originated from?Atheist or agnostics base th ... Continue reading---
