The Enlightenment taught us to think of the cosmos as a vast machine if it is so, and if it is designed and maintained by God, why doesn’t it always bring about goodness and justice, but often chaos and evil? The problem of human suffering tends to provoke a negative response to the theist’s portrait of reality. Today, Christianity must contend with a different set of assumptions. Once, pagan philosophers looked askance at Christianity’s affirmation of the body and material creation the idea that base physical matter could be brought into union with the Absolute was repugnant to them. Different generations find different doctrines more troublesome. In the long history of Christianity, theodicy is comparatively young. David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
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