Gottfried Leibniz coined the term 'theodicy' in an attempt to justify God's existence in light of the apparent imperfections of the world.

The term theodicy ( /θiːˈɒdɪsi/ from Greek theos - "god" + dike - "justice") has no universally agreed upon definition, but usually refers to an attempt to resolve the evidential problem of evil by reconciling God's traditional characteristics of omnibenevolence, omnipotence and omniscience (all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, respectively) with the occurrence of evil in the world. Although some arguments existed previously, the term 'theodicy' was coined in 1710 by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his work, Théodicée.

A variety of theodicies exist. The Augustinian theodicy suggests that evil does not exist, except as a corruption of good, and occurs because of the free will of humans and angels. According to this tradition, evil occurs as a punishment for human sin. The Irenaean theodicy proposes that human suffering exists for human development. The theory proposes that humans are created imperfect, and that moral perfection is only attainable through the experience of suffering. The Holocaust has prompted reconsiderations of theodicy in Jewish philosophy; some philosophers have proposed alternative responses to evil. Similar to a theodicy, a cosmodicy is an attempt to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe in the face of evil and suffering.

Definition[link]

A theodicy is a response to the evidential problem of evil and attempts to justify the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God in light of the occurrence of evil in the world.^[1] The evidential problem of evil argues that evil constitutes evidence against the existence of God and that, considering the occurrence of evil in the world, God's existence becomes unlikely.^[2]

There is a distinction between a theodicy and a defence. A defence is presented merely to indicate the logical possibility of the coexistence of God and evil, whereas a theodicy attempts to justify God's allowance of evil. Defences, therefore, propose solutions to the logical problem of evil, while theodicies attempt to answer the evidential problem.^[1] In the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Nick Trakakis proposed an additional three requirements which must be contained within a theodicy:

• Common sense views of the world
• Widely held historical and scientific opinion
• Plausible moral principles^[1]

History[link]

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz coined the term theodicy (as French: théodicée) in 1710 in his French work, Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil).^[3] Leibniz's Théodicée was a response to Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697/1702), written by the skeptical Protestant philosopher Pierre Bayle. Bayle saw no rational solution to the problem of evil, arguing against three attempts to solve it, and believed that since the Bible asserts the coexistence of evil and of God, that state of affairs must simply be accepted.^[4]

Voltaire critiqued Leibniz's concept of theodicy, suggesting that the massive destruction of innocent lives caused by the Lisbon earthquake demonstrated that God was not providing the "best of all possible worlds",^[5] a critique echoed by more recent philosophers in response to the multiple holocausts of the twentieth century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1914), in an article by Constantine Kempf, gives a different definition of theodicy:

Imitating the example of Leibniz other philosophers now called their treatises on the problem of evil "theodicies". As in a thorough treatment of the question the proofs both of the existence and of the attributes of God cannot be disregarded, our entire knowledge of God was gradually brought within the domain of theodicy. Thus theodicy came to be synonymous with natural theology (theologia naturalis) that is, the department of metaphysics which presents the positive proofs for the existence and attributes of God and solves the opposing difficulties. Theodicy, therefore, may be defined as the science which treats of God through the exercise of reason alone. It is a science because it systematically arranges the content of our knowledge about God and demonstrates, in the strict sense of the word, each of its propositions. But it appeals to nature as its only source of proof, whereas theology sets forth our knowledge of God as drawn from the sources of supernatural revelation.^[6]

Theodicies[link]

Augustinian theodicy[link]

Augustine of Hippo proposed a theodicy reconciling God's goodness with evil present in the world. He argued that evil does not exist in itself, but is a privation, or going wrong, of goodness. He argued that evil exists as a result of free will of either humans or angels and, as a result, all evil is either sin or the punishment of sin.^[7] Aquinas agreed with Augustine and suggested that evil must exist for the appreciation of goodness: if there is no suffering, freedom from suffering cannot be truly appreciated.^[8] Like Augustine, Aquinas believed that evil does not exist independently and can only be understood in terms of goodness, which does exist. He thus saw evil as a deviation from goodness.

Irenaean theodicy[link]

Irenaeus expressed ideas which explained the existence of evil as necessary for human development. Irenaeus argued that human creation was split into two parts: humans were made first in the image, then like likeness, of God. The image of God consists of having the potential to achieve moral perfection, whereas the likeness of God is the achievement of that perfection. To achieve moral perfection, Irenaeus suggested that humans must have free will. To achieve such free will, humans must experience suffering and God must be at an epistemic distance (a distance of knowledge) from humanity. Therefore, evil exists to allow humans to develop as moral agents. ^[9] In the twentieth century, John Hick collated the ideas of Irenaeus into a distinct theodicy. He argued that the world exists as a "vale of soul-making", and that suffering and evil must therefore occur. He argued that human goodness is developed through the experience of evil and suffering.^[10]

Post-Holocaust[link]

The Holocaust performed by Nazi Germany during World War II prompted a reconsideration of theodicy in Christian and Jewish circles.^[11] French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas declared theodicy to be "blasphemous", arguing that it is the "source of all immorality".^[12] Levinas insisted that, since the Holocaust, there can be no absolute morality.

Professor of theology David R. Blumenthal, in his book Facing the Abusing God (1993), has drawn on data from the field of child abuse and proposed "worship of God through protest" (which could be characterized as misotheism) as a legitimate response of survivors of both the Holocaust and child abuse.^[13] Despite the term "abuse" being new in Jewish theology, the arguments connected to it have a long tradition in Jewish theology.^[14]

In 1998, Jewish theologian Zacahry Braiterman wrote (God) After Auschwitz, in which he coined the term anti-theodicy.^[15] In the book, Braiterman referred to a trend which he saw to be developing in post-war Europe, and defined anti-theodicy as a rejection of any meaningful relationship between God and suffering.^[16] Anti-theodicy therefore puts complete blame for evil on God, but rises from an individual's belief in God. Anti-theodicy has been likened to Job's protests in the book of Job.^[15]

Cosmodicy and anthropodicy[link]

A cosmodicy is an attempt to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe in the face of evil. Similarly, an anthropodicy attempts to justify the fundamental goodness of human nature in the face of the evils produced by humans.

Considering the relationship between theodicy and cosmodicy, Johannes van der Ven argued that the choice between theodicy and cosmodicy is a false dilemma.^[17] Philip E. Devenish proposed what he described as "a nuanced view in which theodicy and cosmodicy are rendered complementary, rather than alternative concepts".^[18] Theologian J. Matthew Ashley described the relationship between theodicy, cosmodicy and anthropodicy:

"In classical terms, this is to broach the problem of theodicy: how to think about God in the face of the presence of suffering in God's creation. After God's dethronement as the subject of history, the question rebounds to the new subject of history: the human being. As a consequence, theodicy becomes anthropodicy — justifications of our faith in humanity as the subject of history, in the face of the suffering that is so inextricably woven into the history that humanity makes."^[19]

Cosmodicy has been identified as a major theme in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.^[20]

See also[link]

• Flannery O'Connor
• Problem of evil, answers and theodicies

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Birnbaum, David (1989). God and evil: a unified theodicy/theology/philosophy. KTAV Publishing House. ISBN 978-0-88125-307-8. 
• Davis, Stephen T. (2001). Encountering evil: live options in theodicy. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-22251-2. 
• Gibbs, Robert; Wolfson, Elliot (2002). Suffering religion. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-26612-3. 
• Svendsen, Lars Fr. H.; Pierce, Kerri A. (2010). A philosophy of evil. Dalkey Archive Press. ISBN 1-56478-571-8. 
• Leibniz, Gottfried (1734). Theodicy. 
• Marty, Charles; Taliaferro (2010). Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4411-1197-5. 
• Patterson, David; Roth, John (2005). Fire in the ashes: God, evil, and the Holocaust. University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0-295-98547-3. 
• Pinnock, Sarah Katherine (2002). Beyond theodicy: Jewish and Christian continental thinkers respond to the Holocaust. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-5523-4. 
• Sharma, Arvind (2006). A primal perspective on the philosophy of religion. Springer. ISBN 978-1-4020-5013-8. 
• Stump, Eleonore (1999). Philosophy of religion: the big questions. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-20604-0. 

External links[link]

• Brown, Paterson. "Religious Morality", Mind, 1963.
• Brown, Paterson. "Religious Morality: a Reply to Flew and Campbell", Mind, 1964.
• Brown, Paterson. "God and the Good", Religious Studies, 1967.
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Theodicy
• The Polkinghorne Reader : Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning (Edited by Thomas Jay Oord) (SPCK and Templeton Foundation Press, 2010) ISBN 1-59947-315-1 and ISBN 978-0-281-06053-5

Bart D. Ehrman
Born	(1955-10-05) 5 October 1955 (age 56)
Nationality	American
Education	BA (1978), MDiv (1981), PhD (1985)
Alma mater	Moody Bible Institute Wheaton College Princeton Theological Seminary
Employer	The Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Known for	New Testament authentication, historical Jesus, lost gospels, early Christian writings, orthodox corruption of scripture.
Spouse	Sarah Beckwith
Children	Kelly and Derek
Website
www.bartdehrman.com

Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar, currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While Ehrman is a leading New Testament scholar, he has also achieved acclaim at the popular level, authoring four New York Times bestsellers. His best-known works at the popular level are Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted.^[1] Ehrman's work focuses on New Testament textual criticism and early Christianity.

Education[link]

Ehrman grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and attended Lawrence High School, where he was on the state champion debate team in 1973. He began studying the Bible and its original languages at the Moody Bible Institute and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985.

Career[link]

Ehrman became an Evangelical Christian as a teen. In his books, he recounts his youthful enthusiasm as a born-again, fundamentalist Christian, certain that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error.^[2] His desire to understand the original words of the Bible led him to the study of ancient languages and to textual criticism. His graduate studies, however, eventually convinced him that one ought to acknowledge the contradictions in the biblical manuscripts rather than attempt to harmonize or reconcile discrepancies. He remained a liberal Christian for fifteen years but later became an agnostic after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.^[2]

He was formerly the President of the Southeast Region of the Society of Biblical Literature and worked closely as an editor on a number of the Society's publications. Currently, he co-edits the series New Testament Tools and Studies. Much of Ehrman's writing concentrates on various aspects of Walter Bauer's thesis that Christianity was always diversified or at odds with itself. Ehrman is often considered a pioneer in connecting the history of the early church to textual variants within biblical manuscripts and coined the term "Proto-orthodox Christianity" to describe the Christianity that existed before theological consensus or orthodoxy was established.^[3] In his writings, Ehrman attempts to show that from the time of the Church Fathers it was those denounced as heretics (Marcion, for example) who were charged with tampering with the biblical manuscripts. Ehrman theorizes that it was actually more often the orthodox that corrupted the manuscripts, altering the text to promote particular viewpoints.

In March 2006, he joined theologian William Lane Craig in public debate on the question "Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?" on the campus of the College of the Holy Cross.^[4] In April 2008, Ehrman and evangelical New Testament scholar Daniel B. Wallace participated in a public dialogue on the textual reliability of the New Testament.^[5] In January 2009, Ehrman debated James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, an Evangelical Reformed Baptist apologist on "Did the Bible Mis-Quote Jesus?"

In 2007, he gave a speech at Stanford University in which he discussed the textual inconsistencies of the New Testament, and also took questions from the audience. He regularly conducts similar sessions through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Adventures in Ideas seminars. He has also made several guest appearances on National Public Radio (NPR) including the show Fresh Air in February 2008 to discuss his book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer and in March 2009 to discuss his book Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them).

He has authored or contributed to more than 20 books. In 2006 and 2009 he appeared on The Colbert Report, as well as The Daily Show, to promote his books Misquoting Jesus, and Jesus, Interrupted (respectively). Professional awards received include the Students' Undergraduate Teaching Award, The Ruth and Philip Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement, and The Bowman and Gordon Gray Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Works[link]

Ehrman has written widely on issues of New Testament and early Christianity at both an academic and popular level, with over twenty books including three New York Times bestsellers (Misquoting Jesus, God's Problem, and Jesus, Interrupted). Much of his work is on textual criticism and the New Testament. His first book was Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels (1987) followed by several books published by the Oxford University Press, including The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, and a new edition and translation of The Apostolic Fathers in the Loeb Classical Library series published by Harvard University Press. In God's Problem Ehrman discusses the problem of evil and suffering, the issue which he says led him to become agnostic.^[6] His book Jesus, Interrupted critically assesses the New Testament documents and early Christianity. In his book Forged which was released in 2011, he asserts that 11 or more books of the Christian New Testament were essentially politically expeditious forgeries, intended to advance various theological positions and were in fact not written by the authors traditionally ascribed to them.

In 1999 Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium was released as a study on the historical Jesus. Ehrman argues that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, and that his apocalyptic beliefs are recorded in the earliest Christian documents: the Gospel of Mark and the authentic Pauline epistles. The earliest Christians believed Jesus would soon return, and their beliefs are echoed in the earliest Christian writings. In this, Ehrman follows the dominant scholarly consensus among secular scholars since Albert Schweitzer advanced a version of that thesis in 1905. In his foreword to the book, Ehrman notes that there are many popular books for the layman advancing various minority theories, such as Jesus as a wisdom-sage, shaman, magician, or even founder of a mushroom cult, but few popular books for laymen advancing the dominant scholarly consensus. This book was intended to correct that gap.

Much of Ehrman's writing has concentrated on various aspects of Walter Bauer's thesis that Christianity was always diversified or at odds with itself. Ehrman is often considered a pioneer in connecting the history of the early church to textual variants within biblical manuscripts and in coining such terms as "Proto-orthodox Christianity."^[3] Ehrman brought this counter-traditional thesis, and textual criticism in general, to the lay public through his popular-level work, Misquoting Jesus.

In 2012, Ehrman published Did Jesus Exist? defending the thesis that Jesus of Nazareth existed in contrast to the mythicist theory that Jesus is an entirely mythical or fictitious being woven whole-cloth out of legendary material. He states he expects the book to be criticized both by some atheists as well as fundamentalist Christians. His expectations were fulfilled when, in April 2012, Richard Carrier published a comprehensive criticism of the book, particularly questioning both Ehrman's facts and methodology.^[7] Ehrman replied to Carrier's criticisms on his website, primarily defending himself against Carrier's allegations of factual errors^[8]

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Terry Eagleton holding one of his books after a talk in Mechanics' Institute, Manchester in 2008

Terence Francis Eagleton FBA (born 22 February 1943, Salford) is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics.^[1][2] Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the Lancaster University, and as a former Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Formerly Eagleton was Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford (1992–2001) and John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester until 2008. In the Fall 2009 semester, Dr Eagleton returned to the University of Notre Dame as a Distinguished Visitor in the Department of English.^[3]

He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983);^[4] The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996).

Professor Eagleton delivered Yale University's 2008 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in March 2010, titled The God Debate.^[5] He gave the 2010 Richard Price Memorial Lecture at the historically radical Newington Green Unitarian Church, speaking on "The New Atheism and the War on Terror".^[6]

Early years[link]

Eagleton grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic family in Salford, England, with roots in County Galway. His mother's side of the family had strong republican sympathies. He served as an altar boy at a local Carmelite convent where he was responsible for escorting novice nuns taking their vows, a role referred to in the title of his memoir The Gatekeeper.^[7]

Education and academia[link]

He was educated at De La Salle College, a Roman Catholic grammar school in Salford. He later attended Trinity College, Cambridge,^[8] where he earned both his M.A. and Ph.D..

He became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Having spent some years at Oxford at Wadham College, Linacre College and St Catherine's College, he was John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester until he was forcibly retired in 2008.^[9]

Career[link]

At Cambridge, Eagleton was a student of the left-wing literary critic Raymond Williams. He began his literary studies with the 19th and 20th centuries, then conformed to the stringent academic Marxism of the 1970s. He then published an attack on his mentor Williams's relation to the Marxist tradition in the pages of the New Left Review, in the mode of the French critic Louis Althusser. During the 1960s, he became involved with the left-wing Catholic group Slant, authoring a number of theological articles (including A Marxist Interpretation of Benediction), as well as a book Towards a New Left Theology. His most recent publications suggest a renewed interest in theological themes. Another significant theoretical influence on Eagleton is psychoanalysis. He has been an advocate of Slavoj Žižek's work.^{[citation needed]}

Published thought[link]

Theory[link]

Literary Theory: an Introduction (1983, revised 1996), probably his best-known work, traces the history of the study of texts, from the Romantics of the nineteenth century to the postmodernists of the later twentieth century. Eagleton's thought remains firmly rooted in the Marxist tradition; he has also produced critical work on such more recent modes of thought as structuralism, Lacanian analysis, and deconstruction. As his memoir The Gatekeeper demonstrates, Eagleton's Marxism is far from a merely theoretical pursuit. He was active in both the International Socialists and Workers' Socialist League whilst in Oxford. He continues to provide political commentary for publications such as the New Statesman, Red Pepper and The Guardian.^{[citation needed]}

After Theory (2003) represents a kind of about-face: an indictment of current cultural and literary theory, and what Eagleton regards as the bastardisation of both. He does not, however, conclude that the interdisciplinary study of literature and culture that comprises Theory is without merit. In fact, Eagleton argues that such a merging is effective in opening cultural study to a wider range of significant topics. His indictment instead centers on "relativism"—theorists' and postmodernity's rejection of absolutes. He concludes that an absolute does exist: Every person lives in a body that cannot be owned because nothing was done to acquire it, and nothing (besides suicide) can be done to be rid of it. Our bodies and their subsequent deaths provide the absolute around which humankind can focus its actions.

Religion and Football[link]

In October 2006, Eagleton produced a critique of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion in the London Review of Books. Eagleton begins by questioning Dawkins's methodology and understanding: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology". Eagleton further writes, "Nor does [Dawkins] understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us."^[10] He concludes by suggesting Dawkins has not been attacking organised faith so much as a sort of rhetorical straw man: "Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals."^[10]

Although many of his texts include aspects of philosophical debate, Eagleton himself states, "Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a philosopher, a fact which I am sure some of my reviewers will point out in any case."^[11]

During the 2010 Football World Cup, Eagleton described the mass following of football as an impediment to political change. He wrote in The Guardian, "for the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham." Eagleton concluded: "Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey."^[12]

Terry Lectures[link]

In April 2008 Eagleton delivered Yale University's Terry Lectures with the title of his subject being, Faith and Fundamentalism: Is belief in Richard Dawkins necessary for salvation? constituting a continuation of the critique he had begun in The London Review of Books. Introducing his first lecture with an admission of ignorance of both theology and science Eagleton goes on to affirm, "All I can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens -- a couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the solitary signifier Ditchkins -- is talking out of the back of his neck."^[13][14]

Eagleton's Terry lectures were published in 2009, in Reason, Faith, and Revolution.

Criticism of Martin and Kingsley Amis[link]

In late 2007, a critique of Martin Amis included in the introduction to a 2007 edition of Eagleton's book Ideology was widely reprinted in the British press. In it, Eagleton took issue with Amis' widely-quoted writings on "Islamism", directing particular attention to one specific passage:

What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children...It’s a huge dereliction on their part

Eagleton criticised Amis for the passage, and expressed surprise as to its source, stating: "[these are] not the ramblings of a British National Party thug ... but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." Eagleton drew a connection between Amis and his father (the novelist Kingsley Amis). The younger writer, Eagleton went on to write, had learnt more from his father — whom Eagleton described as "a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals" and "reactionary" — than merely "how to turn a shapely phrase". Eagleton went on to argue that "there is something rather stomach-churning at the sight of those such as Amis and his political allies, champions of a civilisation that for centuries has wreaked untold carnage throughout the world, shrieking for illegal measures when they find themselves for the first time on the sticky end of the same treatment".^[15]

The essay became a cause célèbre in British literary circles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for The Independent, wrote an editorial about the affair; Amis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton "an ideological relict" who would be "unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx".^[16] Amis said that the view Eagleton attributed to him as his considered opinion was in fact his spoken description of a tempting urge, in relation to the need to "raise the price" of terrorist actions.

Eagleton's personal comments on Amis' father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, prompted a further response from Kingsley's widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard wrote to The Daily Telegraph, noting that for a supposed "anti-semitic homophobe", it was peculiar that the only guests at the Howard-Amis nuptials should have been either Jewish or gay.^[17] As Howard explained, "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual." In a later interview, Howard added: 'I have never even heard of this man Eagleton. But he seems to be a rather lethal combination of a Roman Catholic and a Marxist ... He strikes me as like a spitting cobra: if you get within his range he'll unleash some poison.' ^[18]

Eagleton defended his comments about Martin and Kingsley Amis by article in The Guardian, claiming that the main bone of contention — the substance of Amis' remarks and views — had been lost amid the media furore.^[15]

Critical reactions[link]

William Deresiewicz wrote of After Theory, Eagleton's book, as follows:

"[I]s it that hard to explain what Eagleton's up to? The prolificness, the self-plagiarism, the snappy, highly consumable prose and, of course, the sales figures: Eagleton wishes for capitalism's demise, but as long as it's here, he plans to do as well as he can out of it. Someone who owns three homes shouldn't be preaching self-sacrifice, and someone whose careerism at Oxbridge was legendary shouldn't be telling interviewers of his longstanding regret at having turned down a job at the Open University."^[19]

Novelist and critic David Lodge, writing in the May 2004 New York Review of Books on Theory and After Theory, concluded:

Some of Theory's achievements are genuine and permanent additions to knowledge, or intellectual self-knowledge. Eagleton is quite right to assert that we can never go back to a state of pre-Theory innocence about the transparency of language or the ideological neutrality of interpretation ... But like all fashions it was bound to have a limited life of novelty and vitality, and we are now living through its decadence without any clear indication of what will supersede it. Theory has, in short, become boringly predictable to many people who were once enthusiastic about it, and that After Theory is most interesting when its focus is furthest from its nominal subject is perhaps evidence that Terry Eagleton is now bored by it too.^[20]

Publications[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Terry Eagleton

• "High Priest of Lit Crit", The Guardian February 2, 2002 – profile on the publication of his memoir, The Gatekeeper
• Some articles by Eagleton from the London Review of Books
• Article on socialism
• "The roots of terror"
• Terry Eagleton at Contemporary Writers
• Tim Adams, "The Armchair Revolutionary" (interview), The Observer, 16 December 2007
• Dawkins/Eagleton knol by Klaus Rohde
• Jonathan Derbyshire, "The Task of the Critic: Terry Eagleton in Dialogue" (interview), New Statesman, March 11, 2010
• Terry Eagleton, "In Praise of Marx" (article), The Chronicle Review, April 10, 2011

John Harwood Hick

Born	(1922-01-20)20 January 1922 Yorkshire, England
Died	9 February 2012(2012-02-09) (aged 90)[1] Birmingham, England[2]
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of religion, theology
Influenced by St Augustine, Origen, Irenaeus, St Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, John Baillie, Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Hume, St Irenaeus

Professor John Harwood Hick (20 January 1922 – 9 February 2012) was a philosopher of religion and theologian. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.^[3]

Life[link]

John Hick was born on 20 January 1922 to a middle class family in Scarborough, England. He developed an interest in philosophy and religion in his teens, being encouraged by his uncle, who was an author and teacher at the University of Manchester. Hick initially pursued a law degree at the University of Hull, but converted to Evangelical Christianity from the fundamentalist Christian beliefs with which he was raised, and decided to change his career and enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1941.

During his studies he became liable for military service in World War II, but, as a conscientious objector on moral grounds, enrolled in the Friends' Ambulance Unit.

After the war, he returned to Edinburgh and became attracted to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and began to question his fundamentalism. In 1948 he completed his MA thesis, which formed the basis of his book Faith and Knowledge.^[3] He went on to complete a D. Phil at Oriel College, Oxford University in 1950^[4] and a DLitt from Edinburgh in 1975.^[5] In 1953 he married Joan Hazel Bowers, and the couple had three children. After many years as a member of the United Reformed Church, in October 2009 he was accepted into membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. He died in 2012.^[6][7]

Career[link]

Hick's academic positions included Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University, California; H.G. Wood Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham; and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham.^[8] While at the University of Birmingham Hick played important roles in a number of organizations centered around community relations. Non-Christian communities, mostly Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh, had begun to form in this central England community as immigration from the Caribbean Islands and Indian subcontinent increased. Due to the influx of peoples with different religious traditions, organizations focused on integrating the community became necessary. During his fifteen years at the University of Birmingham, Hick became a founder, as well as the first chair, for the group All Faiths for One Race (AFFOR); he served as a chair on the Religious and Cultural Panel, which was a division of the Birmingham Community Relations Committee; and he also chaired the coordinating committee for a 1944 conference convened under the new Education Act with the aim of creating a new syllabus for religious instruction in city schools.^[9]

He also held teaching positions at Cornell University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Cambridge University.^[10] During his teaching stay at Princeton Seminary, Hick began to depart from his conservative religious standings as he began to question "whether belief in the Incarnation required one to believe in the literal historicity of the Virgin Birth".^[11] This questioning would open the door for further examination of his own Christology, which would contribute to Hick's understanding of religious pluralism. He was the Vice-President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, and Vice-President of The World Congress of Faiths.^[12]

Hick delivered the 1986-87 Gifford lectures^[12] and in 1991 was awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Religion.^[13]

Hick was twice the subject of heresy proceedings. In 1961 or 1962, he was asked whether he took exception to anything in the Westminster Confession of 1647 and answered that several points were open to question. Because of this, some of the local ministers appealed against his reception into the Presbytery. Their appeal was sustained by the Synod. A year later, a counter-appeal was sustained by the Judicial Committee of the General Assembly, and Hick became a member of the Presbytery (see Christian heresy in the 20th century).

Hick's philosophy[link]

Robert Smid states that Hick is regularly cited as "one of the most – if not simply the most – significant philosopher of religion in the twentieth century".^[14] Keith Ward once described him as "the greatest living philosopher of global religion."^[15] He is best known for his advocacy of religious pluralism,^[3] which is radically different from the traditional Christian teachings that he held when he was younger.^[5] Perhaps because of his heavy involvement with the inter-faith groups mentioned above under the "Career" heading and his interaction with people of non-Christian faiths through those groups, Hick began to move toward his pluralistic outlook on religion. He notes in both "More Than One Way?" and "God and the Universe of Faiths" that, as he came to know these people who belonged to non-Christian faiths, he saw in them the same values and moral actions that he recognized in fellow Christians. This observation led him to begin questioning how a completely loving God could possibly sentence non-Christians who clearly espouse values that are revered in Christianity to an eternity in hell. Hick then began to attempt to uncover the means by which all those devoted to a theistic religion might receive salvation.

Hick has notably been criticized by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who currently holds the position of Pope), when he was head of the Holy Office. Ratzinger had examined the works of several theologians accused of relativism, such as Jacques Dupuis and Roger Haight, and found that many, if not all, were philosophically inspired by Hick. Therefore, the declaration Dominus Iesus was seen by many at the time as a condemnation of Hick's ideas and theories.

Kantian influences[link]

Having begun his career as an evangelical, he moved towards pluralism as a way of reconciling God’s love with the facts of cultural and religious diversity. He is primarily influenced by Immanuel Kant in this regard, who argued that human minds obscure actual reality in favor of comprehension (see Kant's theory of perception). According to Richard Peters, for Hick, "[the] construal of the relationship of the human mind to God...is much like the relationship that Kant supposed exists between the human mind and the world".^[3]

It isn't fair to say that Hick is strictly Kantian, however. Peters notes "the divide between the 'noumenal' and 'phenomenal' realms (so far as nature is concerned) is not nearly so severe for Hick as it was for Kant".^[3] Hick also declares that the Divine Being is what he calls 'transcategorial'. We can experience God through categories, but God Himself obscures them by his very nature.

Pluralism[link]

In light of his Kantian influences, Hick claims that knowledge of the Real (his generic term for Transcendent Reality) can only be known as it is being perceived. For that reason, absolute truth claims about God (to use Christian language) are really truth claims about perceptions of God; that is, claims about the phenomenal God and not the noumenal God. Furthermore, because all knowledge is rooted in experience, which is then perceived and interpreted into human categories of conception, cultural and historical contexts which inevitably influence human perception are necessarily components of knowledge of the Real. This means that knowledge of God and religious truth claims pertaining thereof are culturally and historically influenced; and for that reason should not be considered absolute. This is a significant aspect of Hick's argument against Christian exclusivism, which holds that although other religions might contain partial goodness and truth, salvation is provided only in Jesus Christ, and the complete truth of God is contained only in Christianity.

Perhaps the simplest manner in which to understand Hick's theory of pluralism of religions is to share the comparison he makes between his own understanding of religion and the Copernican view of our solar system. Before Copernicus disseminated his views of the solar centered universe, the Ptolemaic system ruled in which the stars were painted in the sky, and the sun rose and set around the earth. In short, the rest of the universe existed for and was centered around our little planet. On the other hand, Copernicus asserted that the earth, and other planets as well, circled the sun, which in fact, did not move, but only appeared to move due to the revolution of our planet. Copernicus introduced our world to the understanding that other planets took similar paths around the sun; while each path differed, all served the same purpose and generated the same result: every planet makes a full path around our central star. Rotation of a planet about its axis creates day and night for that planet, just as day and night occur on earth. Although the time frames for a full trip around the sun and for a full day-night cycle differs on a planet-by-planet basis, the concept remains constant throughout our solar system.

Similarly, Hick draws the metaphor that the Ptolemaic view of religion would be that Christianity is the only way to true salvation and knowledge of the one true God. Ptolemaic Christianity would assert that everything exists and all of history has played out in specific patterns for the glory of the Christian God, and that there is no other possible path that will lead to salvation. Hick appears as Copernicus, offering the belief that perhaps all theistic religions are focused toward the one true God and simply take different paths to achieve the same goal.^[16]

A speaker on religious pluralism, Keith E. Johnson, compares Hick's pluralistic theology to a tale of three blind men attempting to describe an elephant, one touching the leg, the second touching the trunk, the third feeling the elephant's side. Each man describes the elephant differently, and, although each is accurate, each is also convinced of their own correctness and the mistakenness of the other two.^[17]

Robert Smid states that Hick believes that the tenets of Christianity are "no longer feasible in the present age, and must be effectively 'lowered'".^[14]

Moreover, Mark Mann notes that Hick argues that there have been people throughout history "who have been exemplars of the Real".^[18][19]

Hick's position is “not an exclusively Christian inclusivism [like that of Karl Rahner and his ‘Anonymous Christian’], but a plurality of mutually inclusive inclusivism.” ^[20] Hick contends that the diverse religious expressions (religions) are the result of diverse historically and culturally influenced responses to diverse perceptions of the Real. He states that "the different religious traditions, with their complex internal differentiations, have developed to meet the needs of the range of mentalities expressed in the different human cultures." ^[21]

Hick's Christology[link]

This section requires expansion.

In his "God and the Universe of Faiths", Hick attempts to pinpoint the essence of Christianity. He first cites the Sermon on the Mount as being the basic Christian teaching, as it provides a practical way of living out the Christian faith. He says that "christian essence is not to be found in beliefs about God...but in living as the disciples who in his name feed the hungry, heal the sick and create justice in the world."^[22] However, all of the teachings, including the Sermon on the Mount, that form what Hick calls the essence of Christianity, flow directly from Jesus' ministry. In turn, this means that the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus form the permanent basis of the Christian tradition. Hick continues in this work to examine the manner in which the deification of Jesus took place in corporate Christianity following his crucifixion and questions whether or not Jesus actually thought of himself as the Messiah and the literal Son of God.

In several places (e.g. his contributions to The Metaphor of God Incarnate, and his book The Myth of God Incarnate) Hick proposes a reinterpretation of traditional Christology—particularly the doctrine of the Incarnation. Hick contends "that the historical Jesus of Nazareth did not teach or apparently believe that he was God, or God the Son, Second Person of a Holy Trinity, incarnate, or the son of God in a unique sense."^[23] It is for that reason, and perhaps for the sake of religious pluralism and peace, Hick proposes a metaphorical approach to incarnation. That is, Jesus (for example) was not literally God in the flesh (incarnate), but was metaphorically speaking, the presence of God. "Jesus was so open to divine inspiriation, so responsive to the divine spirit, so obedient to God's will, that God was able to act on earth in and through him. This, I (Hick) believe, is the true Christian doctrine of the incarnation." ^[24] Hick believes that a metaphorical view of the incarnation avoids the need for faulty Christian paradoxes such as the duality of Christ (fully God and fully human) and even the Trinity (God is simultaneously one and three).

Neither the intense christological debates of the centuries leading up to the Council of Chalcedon, nor the renewed christological debates of the 19th and 20th Centuries, have succeeded in squaring the circle by making intelligible the claim that one who was genuinely and unambiguously a man was also genuinely and unambiguously God.^[25]

Problem of evil[link]

Hick has identified with a branch of theodicy that he calls "Irenaean theodicy" or the "Soul-Making Defense".^[26] A simplification of this view states that suffering exists as a means of spiritual development. In other words, God allows suffering so that human souls might grow or develop towards maturation. For Hick, God is ultimately responsible for pain and suffering, but such things are not truly bad. Perhaps with a greater degree of perception, one can see that the "evil" we experience through suffering is not ultimately evil but good, as such is used to "make our souls" better.

Major works[link]

^[27]

• Faith and Knowledge, (1st ed. 1957, 2nd ed. 1966)
• The Many Faced Argument with Arthur C. McGill (1967, 2009).
• Evil and the God of Love, (reissued 2007)
• Death and the Eternal Life (1st ed. 1976)
• An Interpretation of Religion: human responses to the transcendent (reissued 2004)
• The Metaphor of God Incarnate (2nd ed. 2005)
• (Editor) The Myth of God Incarnate (1977)
• (Editor with Paul F. Knitter) The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (1987)
• Philosophy of Religion (4th ed. 1990)
• The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience and the Transcendent (2006)

See also[link]

• Christian universalism
• Religious pluralism
• Eschatological verification
• Immanuel Kant

Footnotes and references[link]