Evil and the Evidence for God

How to reconcile the existence of evil with the belief in a benevolent God has long posed a philosophical problem to the system of Christian theism. John Hick's book, "Evil and the Love of God", is perhaps the best known work to redress this difficulty in modern terms. Sharing Hick's interest in responding to the question of evil, R. Douglas Geivett constructs his own new "theodicy for today." But Geivett departs from Hick by embracing the Augustinian tradition of free will and returning the responsibility for evil to human beings themselves. R. Douglas Geivett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, California.