“Theodicies and Defenses” Revisited

Many theologians and philosophers have ignored or dismissed the crucial distinction between theodicies and defenses. The distinction was and is of theological and philosophical importance not only to avoid conflating crucial issues in accounts dealing with the goodness and power of God and the reality of evil, but also to getting the challenges of evil to belief in God rightly located. This article revisits the distinction I discussed more than forty years ago in “The Use and Abuse of Theodicy.” The present article analyzes problems in the rhetoric and logic of recent works and their concerns with structural and cultural (social) evil. It focuses on major titles in philosophical theology: Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors ; Ross McCullough, Freedom and Sin ; and Karen Kilby, God, Evil and the Limits of Theology . Along the way, it seeks to clarify some issues I have taken up, especially in The Evils of Theodicy .