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Theodicies & Messy Desks
Hugh Hunter on the Infinite Problem of Goods & Evil
When I teach the philosophy of theodicies, I always make sure to introduce Hunter's rule of theodicies: Don't open with 'em. Like a slowly building joke, a theodicy is all about the journey. Skip the intricate architecture of assumptions, and the whole thing collapses into un-persuasive glibness. That's because a theodicy is an answer to a problem, specifically to some version of the Problem of Evil, and if you don't define the problem, your answer won't make any sense.
The Problem of Evil can be captured, I think, in three assumptions. It is a problem because the assumptions seem inconsistent, and yet we Christians believe all three.
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Hugh Hunter (Ph.D.) is a philosopher living in Ottawa.
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