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Religious responses to the problem of evil are concerned with reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. [1] [2] The problem of evil is acute for monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism whose religion is based on such a God.
But the creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both." [3] Lewis says that if the popular meanings attached to the words are the best or only possible then the problem is unanswerable. The possibility of answering it depends on understanding the words 'good,' 'almighty,' and 'happy' in a bigger sense.
If God lacks any one of these qualities – omniscience, omnipotence, or omnibenevolence – then the logical problem of evil can be resolved. Process theology and open theism are modern positions that limit God's omnipotence or omniscience (as defined in traditional theology) based on free will in others.
The Bible contains numerous examples of God inflicting evil, both in the form of moral evil resulting from "man's sinful inclinations" and the physical evil of suffering. [12] These two biblical uses of the word evil parallel the Oxford English Dictionary 's definitions of the word as (a) "morally evil" and (b) "discomfort, pain, or trouble."
Redemptive suffering is the Christian belief that human suffering, when accepted and offered up in union with the Passion of Jesus, can remit the just punishment for one's sins or for the sins of another, or for the other physical or spiritual needs of oneself or another.
As defined by Alvin Plantinga, a theodicy is "an answer to the question of why God permits evil". [3] Theodicy is defined as a theological construct that attempts to vindicate God in response to the problem of evil that appears inconsistent with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. [4] Another definition of theodicy is the ...
While he is best known for Theology of the Pain of God, [2] Kitamori was a prolific writer in many areas, not only in theology. He published forty-two books and many articles. His theme of the Pain of God remained a central idea in many of these. Theology of the Pain of God has reached a wide audience in Japan, even outside the Christian community.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "The Concept of Evil", written by philosopher Todd Calder, also says that "it seems that we cannot equate the evil of pain with the privation of pleasure or some other feeling. Pain is a distinct phenomenological experience which is positively bad and not merely not good." [1]