Reviews for God, Evil, and Design: An Introduction to the Philosophical Issues

The average rating for God, Evil, and Design: An Introduction to the Philosophical Issues based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-26 00:00:00 Patrick Warthen Adams' proposal is interesting, but ultimately I'm afraid it strays too far from the biblical witness for me to endorse. Her proposal is that God's goodness so defeats evil in the end that each person will be grateful to God for their life. The thing that distinguishes her is that this is not a "greater good" theodicy, because she maintains there is an unbroachable (for humans) metaphysical gap between God and creation; a scale of value necessary for "greater good" language simply cannot be employed to make sense of suffering because that would put us and God on the same moral plane. The purchase of such a position is that God really is powerful enough to conquer evil in a final way. But I think this account fails on two fronts. First, she claims that the problem of evil is that we are human. We suffer and are defiled because we straddle a metaphysical gap ourselves. We are not of a single kind (think Leviticus). Ultimately, I'm not satisfied by an account of suffering/evil that says our problem is we're human. It simply can't be that we have to overcome our creaturely status to overcome suffering. Second, because God and humans are not on the same moral plane, she says God does not forgive us for sins. We can't offend a God we do not share a horizon with (even if that God reaches out to us). This just unravels too much of scripture's plot for me to endorse. She's got some provocative thoughts in here though, and approaches the topic with both pastoral sensibilities and mental rigor.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-19 00:00:00 Robert Haines Excellent in challenging modern analytic philosophy of religion in its tendency to sideline particular theological traditions. For too long philosophy of religion has tried to appeal to "all reasonable people" when it comes to dealing with the problem of evil. Adams is adamant that the Christian theological tradition (particularly the Trinity and Incarnation) is justified in playing on its own turf, offering rich explanations for why God allows evil and what He has done about it. Religion-neutral values are no longer the king of the hill when it comes to talking about evil. However, her argument that because horrendous evils happen to particular people, God must be good to those individuals by guaranteeing them blissful postmortem existence is theologically problematic. Universalism is always dubious; the biblical witness maintains a tension between all being saved and few being saved. Christians must uphold that tension. She also relies too heavily on philosophical speculation in why God must guarantee such victims/perpetrators, perhaps causing her to sideline that theological tension more than is called for. Otherwise, a very helpful and insightful work.