BSA Ep. 3 - 5 Theologies of Evil: Here We Go!
⭐ This episode of Beyond Simple Answers introduces five major theologies of evil, offering a thoughtful starting point for those rethinking faith in a complex world. When suffering, injustice, and doubt challenge easy explanations, theology provides deeper frameworks for understanding evil and God’s role in it. This video explores classical approaches like Augustinian theodicy, alongside perspectives such as process theology, open theology, and liberation theology. Each framework offers a distinct way of interpreting suffering, divine power, and hope. Designed as an accessible theology primer, this episode helps viewers move beyond simplistic answers toward a more honest and nuanced faith. Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or simply curious, this introduction equips you with the theological vocabulary needed to engage one of the most challenging questions in religion: why evil exists and how faith can respond meaningfully.
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Description
⭐ This episode of Beyond Simple Answers introduces five major theologies of evil, offering a thoughtful starting point for those rethinking faith in a complex world. When suffering, injustice, and doubt challenge easy explanations, theology provides deeper frameworks for understanding evil and God’s role in it. This video explores classical approaches like Augustinian theodicy, alongside perspectives such as process theology, open theology, and liberation theology. Each framework offers a distinct way of interpreting suffering, divine power, and hope. Designed as an accessible theology primer, this episode helps viewers move beyond simplistic answers toward a more honest and nuanced faith. Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or simply curious, this introduction equips you with the theological vocabulary needed to engage one of the most challenging questions in religion: why evil exists and how faith can respond meaningfully.
Resources
📚 Check out Kristin’s book, We Mend With Gold!
Find a local bookseller: https://tinyurl.com/MendwithgoldLocal
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/MendWithGold
Generated Transcript
speaker-0 (00:02.848)
Hey, it's Scott here. One of the ways for how I learned that every explanation of evil leaves something unresolved has been by getting into the details of different theologies of evil. This Beyond Simple Answers lays out five theological models for reckoning with evil. Hopefully it's a primer for you to learn about a few different theologies of evil, or here's a word you could use at a dinner party, theodicies. I'm going to lay them out in this episode and then Chris and Greg and I are going to get into the first one.
protest theology. And then the next episode is gonna be all about how do we assess each of them as we look for a theological vision for faith when simple answers aren't enough. Plus as a bonus, you will learn why when it comes to evil, Greg is a process theologian and Kristen and I are not.
speaker-0 (01:10.51)
So just as a recap, in episode one, we talked about like, what are the simple answers that you sometimes hear for why God created that fall short? Maybe they're not given the time that's required to really do justice to them. And some of those were that God creates for God's own glory. God creates to have people that worship God. God creates out of love and for the sake of friendship. And some of the things that were brought up,
in our first episode where like, if you just say that and you look at the world around us, God can seem a little bit like self-absorbed. And I think I sense there to be a little more charity among us around, you know, just saying, hey, God creates for love and friendship, but even that one that God creates for the sake of love, God creates out of love for the sake of friendship. Yes, that's beautiful, but it doesn't necessarily take into account like the world as the way it is. Like God creates for that ends.
But the means to that end are a world of pain and suffering. And what do we do with that? Okay, there's a book that we have been reading together. So it's Daniel Migliori's Faith, Seeking, Understanding. A few of us have it with us right now. And Greg, you read everything on an ebook, so Greg does not have it. But is that true, Greg? You're gonna be like, there it is. there it is. I was right. So we're using Migliori's
speaker-1 (02:33.454)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (02:38.862)
list of ways of dealing with the problem of evil as a springboard for our conversation. He lists out maybe like five options. I'm going to kind of go through what they are and then we'll play with them a little bit. But the key word here, the listeners should know, is theodicy. We're going to be talking about the problem of theodicy. So what is theodicy? Theodicy is a theology of evil. It's like, how do you theologically reckon with the problem
that evil and suffering present to a Christian. Okay, I'm just gonna go through as fast as I can to kind of lay them out and then we can play with them, unpack them a little bit. So here we go.
you
speaker-0 (03:27.746)
So the first one I want to introduce is kind of like a framework. This is just called like the classical, the classical or the traditional understanding of theodicy. This is represented by people like Augustine or John Calvin. And the key ideas here, right, is that God has sovereign plans for the world and God executes on those plans with us in our freedom, with free creatures. Humans are the primary source of evil in the world. We're the primary cause of it. We bring it about.
but God is still able to bring good out of evil. So I wanna kind of just pause there and say there's two things that are really important to that, right? It's upholding a notion of God being sovereign or all powerful and that God is still good, right? The world is not how it should be, but God's gonna have a way of making good on this broken world or bringing out good or working towards good ends. So power, divine power and divine goodness. The next four that I'm gonna list.
are in many ways just like interactions with this classical view, like seeing its weaknesses, its shortcomings and trying to provide something that goes kind of beyond it or works in addition with it.
speaker-0 (04:45.198)
All right, so the first one, protest theodicy. Protest theodicy develops after World War II. The idea of protest theodicy is that we see evil in the world and like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, we speak out against them. But this can go to the extreme of even protesting against God for God's silence in the face of suffering. But the big idea there is that you see evil and you pro...
You are working out of a deep sense of justice that may come from God, but that can also involve some real reckoning in relationship to God. So that's protest theodicy. Next one, process theodicy. So process theodicy comes out maybe like 60s and 70s, often associated with somebody named John Cobb. Process thought, it's working out of something called process philosophy, but process theology, it's understanding the world in terms of
evolution and change. And God is always adapting to things to try to bring out the maximum amount of good. A key idea here, right, is that God works non-coercively. God truly respects the freedom that creatures have. God takes time. And we really work alongside God to try to achieve the ends that God wants. A lot of emphasis here on movement, on change, on relationship. Have you ever heard of like open theology, relational theology?
They're in the mix or branches of process theology.
speaker-1 (06:26.722)
Hey, can we just pause for one minute? Let's feel like those first two theodicies you named protest and process theology map really well with your earlier statement about you. These two key ideas, divine power, divine goodness, and those two theodicies map one to one. So protest is really protesting divine goodness saying really calling into question. Hey, God, are you truly good? I'm protesting what's happening because I think you're good, but this is throwing shade on your character.
So hence my protest and process the all the odyssey is essentially saying, God, do you have the power to change this? Because it certainly seems like you don't. And so I'm calling into question, maybe your power. So it's interesting to see how that maps a little bit to kind of these two pillars you've set up for us today.
speaker-0 (07:17.838)
Great, yeah, that's really helpful. think that like seeing that all of these, all the different theodicies we're listening are interacting in some way with these issues of divine power and divine goodness.
speaker-0 (07:36.736)
Okay, the third one is person making theodicy, typically associated with John Hick. person making theodicy is saying like, know, is evil always evil? It's asking this question of like, are limitations that creatures have, kind of a shadow side to creation. But these are the conditions for the possibility of human growth, right? This is playing into an idea of human freedom and saying God didn't create creatures that were fully perfect, but creatures that would
would mature and develop along the way. And then last one is liberation theodicy, right? Liberation theology. Liberation theology, well, I know we're gonna talk about this one for sure. In some ways kind of upholds the very, the classical ideas of goodness and power, but I'd like to, think of it as it relocates the focus to how do we respond to the problem of evil? It calls for this courageous response.
to evil in our part historically comes out of like the 60s and 70s and some of the movements for independence on developing countries. And you see this coming out of Latin America and the black power movement in the US associated with figures like Gustavo Gutierrez and James Cohn. All right, let me pause there. Comments on like, you know, how you think this connects to ideas of power and goodness and anything you think we maybe just first need to unpack a little bit more in these, this typology, these five different
understandings, ways of reckoning with evil.
speaker-2 (09:08.46)
Yeah, I think going off of what Greg was saying earlier about protest, theodicy, and challenging whether God is truly love, I actually think it is one of the ones that allows us to be faithful to this image of God as love the most because it's almost like, God, I want to trust that you are love. And what I'm seeing over here in this world does not feel like it's characterized by your love and your goodness.
But I really want to believe that you are love. And so I am bringing this to you, God, as a source of all love to make this right. So to me, it kind of resonates on that level of wanting so deeply to believe that God is truly good and God is truly love, if that makes sense.
speaker-0 (09:55.33)
Protest theology, the protest one is the most shocking to me. And at first shocking, right? Like just the way of dealing with evil is simply to protest it, particularly that it would, to the point of going like protest to the very activity or inactivity of God. But I can, see how like, and certainly this could be like, you know, protest theology could be a theology that doesn't involve God at all. Like it's like almost like,
I cease to believe in God and this is my theology, but not necessarily. and Kristen, this is where I was, I take this from what you just said, is like, there's ample room for faith, even probably super deep faith in a form of dealing with evil in a form of protest. Like, you're still, even if you're protesting what feels like God's silence, you're still doing that. You could still be doing that in relationship with God.
speaker-1 (10:48.642)
I liked that a lot because there's a way in which the, the, the biggest insults, you will, is not say anything and just give up on God. So the fact that you're protesting requires a pretty strong baseline of faith to be willing to put out that energy rather than just walk away. So I agree. It's, it's, it's rich, it's powerful. It's, it's a little shocking.
