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The alleged contradictions of the problem of evil depend upon the meaning assigned to the terms involved, therefore "the most common way to resolve the problem of evil is by qualifying, redefining or supplementing one or more of the major terms." [44] Plantinga offers a free will defense instead of a theodicy. [41]
Since the early Reformation period, the devil has been imagined as an increasingly powerful entity, with not only a lack of goodness but also a conscious will against God, his word, and his creation. Simultaneously, some reformists have interpreted the devil as a mere metaphor for humans' inclination to sin — thereby downgrading his importance.
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."
This verse, as with Matthew 5:37, is vague on evil. It could be interpreted as a reference to the Evil One, i.e. Satan, the general evil of the world, as translated by the KJV, or the evil of specific individuals, as is translated by the WEB. The third interpretation is the one held by most modern scholars.
The rabbis usually interpreted the word satan lacking the article ha-as it is used in the Tanakh as referring strictly to human adversaries. [49] Nonetheless, the word satan has occasionally been metaphorically applied to evil influences, [50] such as the Jewish exegesis of the yetzer hara ("evil inclination") mentioned in Genesis 6:5. [51] [52]
The other, enkrateia ', was a word coined during the time of Aristotle, to mean "control over oneself", or "self-discipline". Enkrateia appears three times in the Bible, where it was translated as "temperance" in the King James translation. [citation needed] The modern meaning of temperance has evolved since its first usage.
Christian ethics, also referred to as moral theology, was a branch of theology for most of its history. [3]: 15 Becoming a separate field of study, it was separated from theology during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Enlightenment and, according to Christian ethicist Waldo Beach, for most 21st-century scholars it has become a "discipline of reflection and analysis that lies between ...
The problem of evil is generally formulated in two forms: the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. The logical form of the argument tries to show a logical impossibility in the coexistence of a god and evil, [ 2 ] [ 10 ] while the evidential form tries to show that given the evil in the world, it is improbable that there ...