The concept of theodicy was expanded mainly with the thought of Weber and his addition of ethical considerations to the subject of religion.

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.

In 1734, when an artillery school was established with French teachers in order to impart Western-style artillery methods, the Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy.

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 ).

Gottfried Leibniz introduced the term theodicy in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l ' homme et l ' origine du mal (" Theodicic Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Free will of man, and the Origin of Evil ") which was directed mainly against Bayle.

He however argued that there was a theodicy which united them, and that one should be free in quoting competing and sometimes contradictory ideologies in order to gain a greater understanding of truth through their reconciliation.

The term theodicy was coined by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work, written in French, Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l ' homme et l ' origine du mal ( Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil ).

French philosopher Voltaire criticised Leibniz's concept of theodicy in his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ( Poem on the Lisbon disaster ), suggesting that the massive destruction of innocent lives caused by the Lisbon earthquake demonstrated that God was not providing the " best of all possible worlds ".

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.

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.

However, in his own theodicy, even if it was somewhat more elaborate than Malebranche's, he did at least agree with Malebranche's fundamental contention that the simplicity of God's ways had to be given as much regard as the world's perfection.

Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas or Bossuet in his Discourse On Universal History ( 1679 ) formulated such theodicies, but Leibniz, who coined the term, was the most famous philosopher who created a theodicy.

The event was widely discussed and dwelt upon by European Enlightenment philosophers, and inspired major developments in theodicy and in the philosophy of the sublime.

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.

Her reason for mentioning it was to emphasise how for Buddhism we exist in a " moral universe " in which actions lead to just consequences according to a natural moral order, a situation she calls a " cosmodicy " in contrast with the Christian theodicy.

Hume doggedly refused to enter into questions of his personal faith in the divine, but his assault on the logic and assumptions of theodicy and cosmogeny was devastating, and he concentrated on the provable and empirical in a way that would lead to utilitarianism and naturalism later.

) Hume doggedly refused to enter into questions of his faith in the divine, but his assault on the logic and assumptions of theodicy and cosmogeny was devastating.

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.

British philosopher John Hick traced the history of theodicy in his work, Evil and the God of Love, identifying two major traditions: the Augustinian theodicy, based on the writings of Augustine of Hippo, and the Irenaean theodicy, which Hick developed, based on the thinking of St Irenaeus.

German philosopher Max Weber saw theodicy as a social problem, based on the human need to explain puzzling aspects of the world ; sociologist Peter L. Berger argued that religion arose out of a need for social order, and theodicy developed to sustain it.

After Kant, Hegel developed a complex theodicy in the Phenomenology of Spirit ( 1807 ), which based its conception of history on dialectics: the negative ( wars, etc.

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 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.

Irenaean theodicy, posited by Irenaeus ( 2nd century AD – c. 202 ), has been reformulated by John Hick.

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.

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.

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

The book is a theodicy, an attempt by one Christian layman to reconcile orthodox Christian belief in a just, loving and omnipotent God with pain and suffering.

In this Haredi theodicy, the Jews of Europe were no longer protected by the Torah and faith, and the actions of God which allowed this were righteous and just.

Cousin made no reply to Hamilton's criticism beyond alleging that Hamilton's doctrine necessarily restricted human knowledge and certainty to psychology and logic, and destroyed metaphysics by introducing nescience and uncertainty into its highest sphere — theodicy.

Divine Providence is a book published by Emanuel Swedenborg in 1764 which describes his systematic theology regarding providence, free will, theodicy, and other related topics.

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.

Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l ' homme et l ' origine du mal ( French: Essays of theodicy on the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of evil ), more simply known as Théodicée, is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz.

Others, such as the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga criticized Leibniz theodicy by arguing that probably there is not such a thing as the best of all possible worlds, since one can always conceive a better world, such as a world with one more morally righteous person.

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

In the twentieth century, John Hick collated the ideas of Irenaeus into a distinct theodicy.

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.

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 ).

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.

Human beings are troubled, he says, with the question of theodicy – the question of how the extraordinary power of a divine god may be reconciled with the imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over.

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

This issue is somewhat related to theodicy, the " problem of evil ", except that the solipsist himself is the all-powerful God who has somehow allowed imperfection into his world.

Other critique of Cone's theological positions has focused on the need to rely more heavily on sources reflecting black experience in general, on Cone's lack of emphasis on reconciliation within the context of liberation, and on his ideas of God and theodicy.