Evil and the God of Love Book

Preface to the 1985 Reissue x

Preface to the 2010 Reissue xii

Foreword xv

List of Abbreviations xx

Part I Introductory

I The Problem and its Terms

1 Defining the problem 3

2 Is theodicy permissible? 6

3 The kinds of evil 12

II The Two Poles of Thought - Monism and Dualism

1 Monism and Dualism 15

2 The pure monism of Spinoza 17

3 A contemporary view of evil as illusion - Christian Science 23

4 Plato's dualism 25

5 The external dualism of J. S. Mill 27

6 The internal dualism of E. S. Brightman 30

Part II The Augustinian Type of Theodicy

III The Fountainhead: St. Augustine - Evil as privation of good stemming from misused freedom

I Evil as privatio boni

1 Augustine and Manichaeism 38

2 The Plotinian theodicy 40

3 The goodness of the created order 43

4 Man mutable because 'made out of nothing' 46

5 Evil privative and parasitic 47

6 The identity of being and goodness 49

7 The logical character of Augustine's doctrine 53

II 'The Free-Will Defence' in St. Augustine

8 Sin as the basic evil 59

9 The self-creation of evil 'ex nihilo' 62

10 Sin and predestination 64

IV The Fountainhead: St. Augustine - The principle of plenitude and the aesthetic theme

III The principle of plenitude

1 The Problem 70

2 Augustine's Neo-Platonist answer 72

3 The principle of plenitude in Plotinus 75

4 Emanation and creation 76

5 The pre-existing pattern 79

IV The aesthetic theme

6 The aesthetic theme in Augustine 82

7 Animal pain in a perfect world 85

8 Hell and the principle of moral balance 87

V Catholic Thought from Augustine to the Present Day

1 Augustine's theodicy writ large: Hugh of St. Victor 90

2 Thomas Aquinas 93

3 A contemporary Thomist presentation: Charles Journet 98

4 Journet on sin and hell 107

VI The Problem of Evil in Reformed Thought

1 Augustine and the Reformers 115

I Calvin

2 Fall and predestination in Calvin 117

3 Predestination versus theodicy 121

II Karl Barth

4 Barth's method 126

5 The 'shadowside' of creation 128

6 'Das Nichtige' 130

7 The origin of 'das Nichtige' 133

8 Criticism: (a) the origin of 'das Nichtige' 135

9 Criticism: (b) the status of 'das Nichtige' 137

VII Eighteenth-Century 'Optimism'

1 A product of the Augustinian tradition 145

2 King's 'Origin of Evil' 148

3 Leibniz's 'Theodicy' 154

4 The 'best possible world' 160

5 'Best possible' - for what purpose? 167

VII Dividing the Light from the Darkness

1 The main features of the Augustinian type of theodicy 169

I The theological themes

2 The goodness of the created universe 170

3 Human suffering as a punishment for sin 172

4 'O felix culpa…' versus eternal torment 176

II The philosophical themes

5 Evil as non-being 179

6 Metaphysical evil as fundamental 187

7 The aesthetic perfection of the universe 191

8 A basic criticism 193

Part III The Irenaean Type of Theodicy

IX Sin and the Fall according to the Hellenistic Fathers

1 The biblical basis of the fall doctrine 201

2 From Paul to Augustine 205

3 The beginnings of the Hellenistic point of view 208

4 Irenaeus 211

5 Eastern Christianity 215

X The Irenaean Type of Theodicy in Schleiermacher

1 Schleiermacher on 'original perfection' 220

2 Schleiermacher's account of sin 222

3 The relation between sin and suffering 226

4 God as ultimately ordaining sin and suffering 228

5 Schleiermacher and the instrumental view of evil 231

6 Man's beginning and end 234

XI The Two Theodicies - Contrasts and Agreements

1 The contrast between the two types of theodicy 236

2 Points of hidden agreement 238

Part IV A Theodicy for Today

XII The Starting-Point

1 The negative task of theodicy 243

2 The traditional theodicy based upon Christian myth 245

3 The 'vale of soul-making' theodicy 253

XIII Moral Evil

1 The shape of sin 262

2 The traditional free-will defence 265

3 The recent critique of the free-will defence 266

4 Divine-human personal relationship 271

5 Freedom as limited creativity 275

6 The virtual inevitability of the fall 277

7 Man created as a fallen being 280

XIV Pain

1 Pain and suffering 292

2 Physical Pain 294

3 Has pain a biological value? 297

4 Pain and the structure of the world 304

5 Animal pain 309

XV Suffering

1 Suffering as a function of meaning 318

2 Pain as a cause of suffering 319

3 A paradise without suffering? 322

4 Excessive or dysteleological suffering 327

5 The traditional answer: nature preverted by fallen angels 331

6 Soul-making and mystery 333

XVI The Kingdom of God and the Will of God

1 The infinite future good 337

2 Theodicy versus hell 341

3 The intermediate state 345

4 Some residual problems 350

5 The biblical paradox of evil 352

6 Its source in the duality of the Christian life 357

7 Its eschatological resolution 362

XVII Recent Work on the Problem of Evil 365

Index 387