The Nov. 24 edition of The Living Church is available online to registered subscribers.
In the cover essay, Daniel Muth reflects on five books that address the classic theological question of theodicy:
If God is good, how can there be evil? To many a modern mind, it is the great atheist “gotcha!” And certain presentations of the problem accordingly slouch toward the silly — the notion that a good and omnipotent deity must adjust weather patterns and tectonic plate shifts to account for human demographics, reassign viral and pathogenic physiology to ensure disease only afflicts the wicked, and, of course, make sure the bad guys’ guns don’t work. Serious objections are another matter. One cannot but grieve along with Charles Darwin at the loss of his beloved daughter, and consequent loss of Christian faith, which his scientific work had never even seriously shaken. The cry of souls in distress rings throughout Scripture — from Abraham’s pleas on behalf of Sodom, to Job on the dung heap, through most of the psalms, to Christ on the cross.
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Features
Life in a Fallen World: New Books on Evil
Review by Daniel Muth
If God, Why Evil? by Norman L. Geisler
Creation Untamed by Terence E. Fretheim
What Shall We Say? by Thomas G. Long
Getting Real About God, Suffering, Sin and Evil by Jill L. McNish
In Adam’s Fall by Ian A. McFarland
Books
Everyday Idolatry | Review by Jonathan Kanary
Strange Gods by Elizabeth Scalia
Cultures
Breaking Not So Bad by George Sumner
Catholic Voices
Moral, Theological, and Practical Concerns
by Daniel A. Westberg
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