The Evils of Theodicy

The thesis of this book is straightforward: Professor Tilley argues that theodicy as a discourse practice creates evils while theodicists ignore or distort classic texts in the Christian tradition, unwittingly efface genuine evils in their attempts to justify God, and silence the voice of the suffering and the oppressed by writing them out of the theological picture. The result is often a theological legitimation of intolerable social evils. Using speech-act theory, Tilley reveals the practical and moral presuppositions and implications behind the communicative actions of speaking and writing that have yielded our classic texts relating God and evils: the Book of Job, Augustine's Enchiridion, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Hume's Dialogues, and George Eliot's Adam Bede. Tilley's analysis shows how distant the powerful speech acts embedded in these texts are from the Enlightenment discourse which has translated them into theodicy discourse. For too long theodicists have created a picture that misportrays the evils in God's world by dividing evil neatly into human sin and natural suffering. Such a picture obscures and even legitimates the "social sin" and "evil practices" which corrupt and destroy humans individually and collectively. The point of The Evils of Theodicy is not only to describe the theodicists' world but to change it radically.