An American Approach to the Problem of Evil: a Study of the History of Its Development and Its Articulation as a Philosophy by William James

To examine the Puritan approach to evil is to reencounter a perennial spiritual answer to one of the most insistent problems of human existence. The experience of evil, as experience, is a markedly intense and recurring feature of man\u27s history. Peripheral in some ages, the consciousness of evil becomes a focal point in times of extreme upheaval and violence. For people living in as unsettled a world as that of the Reformation, when the very fabric of society was being torn asunder, it is not incomprehensible that they should have been struck by man\u27s alienation from what he can dream of as a perfect world. Historical events were such as to lead the majority to presume that this life, considered in itself, is unquiet, turbulent, miserable in numberless instances, and in no respect altogether happy, and that all its reputed blessings are uncertain, transient, vain, and adulterated with a mixture of many evils