Theodicy

The term theodicy comes from the Greek (theós, "god") and (dík , "justice"), meaning literally "the justice of God," although a more appropriate phrase may be "to justify God" or "the justification of God". The term was coined in 1710 by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in a work entitled Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal ("Theodicic Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Free will of man, and the Origin of Evil"). The purpose of the essay was to show that the evil in the world does not conflict with the goodness of God, and that notwithstanding its many evils, the world is the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz wrote his Théodicée as a criticism of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, which had been written not long before; in this, Bayle, a well-known sceptic, had argued that the sufferings experienced in this earthly life prove that God could not be good and omnipotent.

Klappentext

The term theodicy comes from the Greek e (theós, "god") and d (díke, "justice"), meaning literally "the justice of God," although a more appropriate phrase may be "to justify God" or "the justification of God". The term was coined in 1710 by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in a work entitled Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal ("Theodicic Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Free will of man, and the Origin of Evil"). The purpose of the essay was to show that the evil in the world does not conflict with the goodness of God, and that notwithstanding its many evils, the world is the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz wrote his Théodicée as a criticism of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, which had been written not long before; in this, Bayle, a well-known sceptic, had argued that the sufferings experienced in this earthly life prove that God could not be good and omnipotent.