On the very idea of a theodicy

It is, mostly, an unchallenged assumption in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion that it makes sense to justify the ways of God to humankind by constructing a theodicy. I argue that this assumption is severely flawed: far from solving the ‘problem of evil’, theodicies exacerbate it. Not only do they presuppose an incoherent, anthropomorphic conception of God as a kind of invisible ‘super-person’ who inhabits the same moral universe as ordinary human beings, the attempt to turn God into such a ‘super-agent’ morally backfires as well. I propose instead that we should stop seeking a justification for the state of the world in favour of learning from Wittgenstein that the solution to the ‘problem of evil’ is seen in the ‘vanishing of the problem’, and, above all, from Kierkegaard that to have faith means to accept – not to exonerate – the way the world is in a spirit of joy