Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60107. Theodicy is the technical name for the attempt to defend the goodness and power of God in a world that contains suffering. The word was coined by Gottfried Leibniz in 1710, from the Greek theos and dike, God and justice, and it means something like the justification of God. That phrase should make…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60006. The problem of evil is the objection I take most seriously, and the one I am slowest to answer quickly. It is the argument that if God is entirely good and entirely powerful, then the suffering in this world should not exist, and since it plainly does, one of those attributes has to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 6011. Does God cause suffering, or does He only allow it? I have stood at enough hospital beds and gravesides to know this is never an academic question. How you answer it shapes whether you can trust God on the worst day of your life. If He directly causes every agony, He begins to…