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Evil and the Problem of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

George D. Chryssides
George D. Chryssides
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Plymouth Polytechnic
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Extract

The purpose of this article is to develop a solution to the problem of evil within the context of a ‘revisionist' concept of God. The traditional approach to the problem of evil has been to assume one particular model of God, and then to ascertain how evil can be reconciled with that model. I hope to demonstrate that this is a mistake. What needs to be done, rather, is to acknowledge the existence of evil, and to ask whether this problem is generated by a faulty model of God. What I shall contend is that it is the traditional concept of God which generates this area of philosophical and theological perplexity, not the nature and function of evil. In particular, I shall attempt to show that the problem admits of a much more acceptable solution if the Christian believer abandons the notion of God as ‘a person’ or a disembodied agent, and conceives of God in a less overtly ‘personalistic’ manner.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 467 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

page 467 note 1 This was first read as a paper at the Assembly of the World's Religions, New Jersey, 1985Google Scholar, and appears by kind permission of the organizers, to whom the author wishes to express his thanks.

page 467 note 2 Chryssides, George D., ‘God and the Tao’, Religious Studies, XIX (1983), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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page 471 note 1 Phillips, D. Z. has already ably argued this point in his chapter entitled ‘Superstition and Petitionary Prayer’, in The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 112–30.Google Scholar

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