Philosopher Stephen Maitzen has called this the " Heaven Swamps Everything " theodicy, and argues that it is false because it conflates compensation and justification.

Professor Sarah Iles Johnston argues that ancient civilizations, such as the ancient Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians held polytheistic beliefs that may have enabled them to deal with the concept of theodicy differently.

This form of theodicy argues that evil does not exist except as a privation-or corruption of-goodness, and therefore God did not create evil.

Soirées de St. Pétersbourg (" The Saint Petersburg Dialogues ", 1821 ) is a theodicy in the form of a Platonic dialogue, in which Maistre argues that evil exists because of its place in the divine plan, according to which the blood sacrifice of innocents returns men to God, via the expiation of the sins of the guilty ; Maistre saw this is a law of human history, as indubitable as it is mysterious.

He believed that humans could not accept that anything in the world was meaningless and saw theodicy as an assertion that the cosmos has meaning and order, despite evidence to the contrary.

Richard Swinburne maintains that it does not make sense to assume there are greater goods that justify the evil's presence in the world unless we know what they are — without knowledge of what the greater goods could be, one cannot have a successful theodicy.

Other philosophers have suggested that theodicy is a modern discipline because deities in the ancient world were often imperfect.

Dr Philip Irving Mitchell of the Dallas Baptist University notes that some philosophers have cast the pursuit of theodicy as a modern one, as earlier scholars used the problem of evil to support the existence of one particular god over another, explain wisdom, or explain a conversion, rather than to justify God's goodness.

These early religions may have avoided the question of theodicy by endowing their deities with the same flaws and jealousies that plagued humanity.

Several Jewish writers have dealt with the issue of theodicy: whether and how God is all-powerful and all-good, given the existence of evil in the world, particularly the Holocaust.

Critics have questioned his theodicy, his halakhic rulings, and actions as spiritual leader of Shas.

Since many of the philosophical concepts, such as his view of theodicy and the relationship between philosophy and religion, are relevant beyond strictly Jewish theology, it has been the work most commonly associated with Maimonides in the non-Jewish world and it is known to have influenced several major non-Jewish philosophers.

The book, published in 1710, introduced the term theodicy, and its optimistic approach to the problem of evil is thought to have inspired Candide ( albeit satirically ).

This experience inspired the text, which reflects on how evil can exist in a world governed by God ( the problem of theodicy ), and how happiness can be attainable amidst fickle fortune, while also considering the nature of happiness and God.

In all literary versions, however, the myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world.

A theodicy, on the other hand, is more ambitious, since it attempts to provide a plausible justification — a morally sufficient reason — for the existence of evil and thereby rebut the " evidential " argument from evil.

Distinctive of the soul-making theodicy is the claim that evil and suffering are necessary for spiritual growth.

A third problem attending this theodicy is that the qualities developed through experience with evil seem to be useful precisely because they are useful in overcoming evil.

Another general criticism is that though a theodicy may harmonize God with the existence of evil, it does so at the cost of nullifying morality.

St Augustine of Hippo ( 354 AD – 430 ) in his Augustinian theodicy focuses on the Genesis story that essentially dictates that God created the world and that it was good ; evil is merely a consequence of the fall of man ( The story of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve disobeyed God and caused inherent sin for man ).

A theodicy ( from Greek theos " god " + dike " justice ") is an attempt to resolve the evidential problem of evil by reconciling the traditional divine characteristics of omnibenevolence, omnipotence and omniscience with the occurrence of evil or suffering in the world.

Unlike a defence, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy provides a framework which claims to make God's existence probable.

A theodicy is a response to the evidential problem of evil, the challenge that the occurrence of evil in the world counts as evidence against the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity, making God's existence unlikely.

As a response to the problem of evil, a theodicy is distinct from a defence.

A theodicy seeks to show that it is reasonable to believe in God despite evidence of evil in the world and offers a framework which can account for why evil exists.

A theodicy is often based on a prior natural theology, which attempts to prove the existence of God, and seeks to demonstrate that God's existence remains probable after the problem of evil is posed by giving a justification for God's permitting evil to happen.

In The Catholic Encyclopedia ( 1914 ), Constantine Kempf argued that, following Leibniz's work, philosophers called their works on the problem of evil ' theodicies ', and philosophy about God was brought under the discipline of theodicy.

Evil entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve and the theodicy casts the existence of evil as a just punishment for this original sin.

Paley's benevolent God acted in nature though uniform and universal laws, not arbitrary miracles or changes of laws, and this use of secondary laws provided a theodicy explaining the problem of evil by separating nature from direct divine action, drawing directly on the ideas of Thomas Malthus.

The concept of " work ethic " is attached to the theodicy of fortune ; thus, because of the Protestant " work ethic ," there was a contribution of higher class outcomes and more education amongst Protestants.

This doctrine was the source of great controversy because it was seen by the so-called anti-Calvinists to limit man's free will in regard to faith and salvation, and to present a dilemma in terms of theodicy.

According to Reinhold F. Glei, it is settled that the argument of theodicy is from an academic source which is not only not epicurean, but even anti-epicurean.

There is this ethical part of religion, including "( 1 ) soteriology and ( 2 ) theodicy.

Another example of how this belief of religious theodicy influences class, is that those of lower status, the poor, cling to deep religiousness and faith as a way to comfort themselves and provide hope for a more prosperous future, whilst those of higher status cling to the sacraments or actions which prove their right of possessing greater wealth.

In Hesiod, the story of Prometheus ( and, by extension, of Pandora ) serves to reinforce the theodicy of Zeus: he is a wise and just ruler of the universe, while Prometheus is to blame for humanity's unenviable existence.

For Weber, religion is best understood as it responds to the human need for theodicy and soteriology.

A perceived inadequacy with the theodicy is that many evils do not seem to promote such growth, and can be positively destructive of the human spirit.

From this line of thought one may conclude that, as these conclusions violate our basic moral intuitions, no greater good theodicy is true, and God does not exist.

As an alternative to theodicy, a defence may be proposed, which is limited to showing the logical possibility of God's existence.

Written following the death of his son, Aaron, from the premature aging disease progeria, the book deals with questions about human suffering, God, omnipotence and theodicy.

The Augustinian theodicy is based on the writings of Augustine of Hippo, a Christian philosopher and theologian who lived from 354 to 430 AD.

An anti-theodicy acts in opposition to a theodicy and places full blame for all experience of evil onto God, but must rise from an individuals belief in and love of God.

According to Reinhold F. Glei, it is settled that the argument of theodicy is from an academical source which is not only not epicurean, but even anti-epicurean.

Exposition and analysis of Ibn Taymiyya's writings on God's justice and wise purpose, divine determination and human agency, the problem of evil, and juristic method in theological doctrine show that he articulates a theodicy of optimism in which God in His essence perpetually wills the best possible world from eternity.

This sets Ibn Taymiyya's theodicy apart from Ash ' ari divine voluntarism, the free-will theodicy of the Mu ' tazilis, and the essentially timeless God of other optimists like Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi.

The overarching story of the book is that of a satirical theodicy, questioning why human beings suffer from evil and pain, and exploring the ingenuity with which we combat those conditions.

The field of theodicy arose from attempts to answer this question.

One of these relied upon the tried apologetic technique ( see the argument for theodicy from free will, for example ) of reconstruing apparent limitations in the Creator as expressions of solicitude towards His creatures, and indeed as tokens of His mercy towards them.

Of particular note were Fathers Gerhard Schneemann, Theodor Granderath and Florian Reiss, who produced a number of important works: the " Collectio lacensis " (" Acta et decreta sacrorum conciliorum recentiorum ", 7 volumes, Freiburg, 1870 – 1890 ); the " Philosophia lacensis ", a collection of learned books on the different branches of philosophy ( logic, cosmology, psychology, theodicy, natural law ) and published at Freiburg, 1880 – 1900 ; and, perhaps best-known, the " Stimmen aus Maria-Laach " (" Voices from Maria Laach "), appearing from 1865, at first as individual pamphlets defending against liberalism within the Roman Catholic church, and from 1871 as a regular periodical.