From your reading this week, please summarize the main difference in monotheistic religions and Eastern religions concerning ‘theodicy’?
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| Livingston’s chapter, he focuses on Theodicy: “Justifying the ways of God” in the face of the chaos and evil in the world, and he hints that theologians and philosophers have wrestled with justifying God’s goodness and omnipotence in the face of suffering and evil in the world. Epicurus (Epikouros) above, a Greek non-Christian philosopher, captures the contradictions and ironies in this wrestling. Other ancient religions, Zoroastrinianism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism, answered the core question of why evil exists including it in creation, evil as a natural condition of earthly life, along with a promise of an eventual cosmic victory of Light over Darkness. This theme of the need for world redemption is also found in Christianity and Islam. For Hinduism, the laws of cause and effect explain how karma(and suffering) accumulate, but no one gets off the hook or can put the blame elsewhere. Each soul embodied in human form has consciousness, freedom, and responsibility. The Hindu deities and gurus can provide some relief through prayer and religious counsel, but when things get out of balance, the individual has responsibility for restoring balance and rescuing oneself from evil consequences, and the recommended course of action is fulfilling the dharma of one’s social and family responsibilities, even if that entails performing “evil” caste duties such as killing others if you are a soldier or accumulating defilement if you are a street sweeper or funeral conductor. Buddhism has the same terms of cause and effect and karmain the swirl of samsara as THE essential human problem (dukkaor suffering); we all suffer from it unless we find enlightenment and release through following the Eightfold Path.1) From your reading this week, please summarize the main difference in monotheistic religions and Eastern religions concerning ‘theodicy’? Which theodicy do you find most meaningful to you? Why?2) What answers to the monotheistic approach does the Book of Job provide? Is Job’s suffering justified? Is Elie Wiesel’s suffering in NIGHT justified? |
| Encountering Evil3) Which of the views on the causes and effects of evil works bestfor you? Is evil essentially a deity/cosmogony problem or a humanproblem? Are natural disasters (floods, famines, volcano eruptions,earthquakes, Tsunamis, tornados, extreme weather events) andhuman-caused disasters (wars, genocides, famines, climate change,hunger, distribution of resources) also a God-problem? In otherwords, what does the sacred, the Creator, the Creation have tosay about major causes of large-scale human suffering? Is suchsuffering inevitable? Preventable? How does this discussionimpact religious world view? |
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