Theodicy

A theodicy is a theory about why an omnipotent God allows evil to exist in the world. In other words, a theodicy contains speculations about God's actual purposes in allowing evil to exist in the world. A theodicy is required to explain how an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God can have allowed terrible evil to occur, as these three attributes appear to be in opposition to each other. A theodicy is not required if God is not held to be either omnipotent, or omniscient, or omnibenevolent.

In order to be a successful theodicy, the purposes stated must be wholly consistent with the notion that God is all-loving, if at the same time also all-knowing and all-powerful. So what is called for is an explanation of the purposes that a loving God with such power and knowledge might have in permitting evil to exist. Many proposed theodicies exist; none is accepted by every faith; none, in fact, is accepted by all members of any one given faith.

Theodicy is unnecessary if one rejects the view that God is omnipotent. Process theologians, for example, reject the notion that God is omnipotent, and modern day Jewish rabbis such as Harold Kushner. Milton Steiberg, and William E. Kaufman also reject this claim about God.

The word is taken from the title of a work that supplied one theodicy, namely that this is [The Best of All Possible Worlds]?: the Theodicee? by Gottfried Leibniz.

See also the problem of evil.