The Problem of Evil: A Reader

Introduction. Responding to Evils.

How to Use this Book.

Beginnings.

1 Plato, Timaeus.

2 Lucretius , On the Nature of the Universe.

3 Ovid, Phaethon.

4 Seneca, “On Providence”.

5 Epictetus, Encheiridion.

6 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heretics.

7 Sextus Empiricus, “God”.

8 Plotinus, “Providence: First Treatise”.

9 Lactantius, The Wrath of God.

10 Augustine, City of God.

11 Pseudo-Dionysius, On the Divine Names and Mystical Theology.

12 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy.

Before Theodicy.

13 Anselm of Canterbury, On the Fall of the Devil.

14 Hildegard of Bingen, To the Congregation of Nuns.

15 Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed.

16 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.

17 Three liturgies: Stabat mater, a fifteenth-century Sarum, and Dies irae.

18 Meister Eckhart, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.

19 Geoffrey Chaucer, “Patient Griselda”.

20 Julian of Norwich, Showings.

21 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

22 Martin Luther, Prefaces to Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalter.

23 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion: John Calvin.

24 John Donne, Batter my hear, three-personed God.

The Rise of Theodicy.

25 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.

26 John Milton, Paradise Lost.

27 Baruch Spinoza, Ethics.

28 Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe.

29 Anne Conway, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.

30 Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion.

31 Pierre Bayle, “Manichees”;Note D.

32 G. W. Leibnitz, Theodicy.

33 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man.

34 Voltaire, “The Lisbon Earthquake: An Inquiry into the Maxim, ‘Whatever us, is right”.

35 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Letter from J.-J. Rosseau to Mr. de Voltaire, August 18, 1756”.

36 David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.

37 Immanuel Kant, On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy.

Beyond Optimism.

38 Thomas Robert Malhus, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

39 F. W. Schelling, “Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedomand Related Matters”.

40 John Keats, To George & Georgiana Keats, 14 February-8 May 1819.

41 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophical History of the World.

42 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Tragic”.

43 The World as Will and Representation: Arthur Schopenhauer.

44 Charles Darwin, to Asa Gray, 22 May 1860.

45 John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.

46 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

47 Freidrich Neitsche, On the Genealogy of Morality.

48 Gerald Manley Hopkins, “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord”.

49 Josiah Royce, “The Problem of Job”.

The 20th Century.

50 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

51 W. E. B. DuBois, A Litany at Atlanta.

52 Thomas Hardy, Before Life and After.

53 Hermann Cohen, The Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism.

54 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion.

55 Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics.

56 W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts.

57 C. S. Lewis, Animal Pain.

58 Simone Weil, The Love of God and Affliction".

59 C. G. Jung, Aion The Serenity Prayer.

60 Karl Barth, God and Nothingness.

61 John Hick, The 'Vale of Soul-Making' Theodicy.

62 William Jones, Is God a White Racist?.

63 Dorothee Soelle, A Critique of Christian Masochism.

64 Emmanuel Levinas, Useless suffering.

65 Nel Noddings, Women and Evil.

Index.

Scripture Index.