Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy - revised

Eight prominent philosophers and theologians confront the problems posed by natural and human evil for theistic belief. Each thinker sets out his or her theodicy and its connections to current social and philosophical debates. The other contributors then offer critiques of each theodicy, to which its author subsequently responds. The result is a valuable introduction to philosophical and theological perspectives on contemporary evil and to the nature of discourse in the philosophy of religion. Extensively revised with new material, this classic volume is an invaluable introduction both to philosophical and theological perspectives on evil in the contemporary world and to the nature of discourse in philosophy of religion. The contributors of the five main essays are philosophers and theologians from the Claremont schools in California: John K. Roth, John Hick, Stephen T. Davis, David Ray Griffin, and D.Z. Phillips. Each presents his answer to the problem of evil, taking into account ethnic cleansing, political repression, social violence, new work in Holocaust studies, and other timely issues and events that bear weight on the subject of evil in the current world scene. Helpful and perceptive postscripts are also included form three scholars: John B. Cobb Jr., Marilyn McCord Adams, and Frederick Sontag.