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Document Details :

Title: Overcoming Poverty and Oppression
Subtitle: Liberation Theology and the Problem of Evil
Author(s): PHAN, Peter C.
Journal: Louvain Studies
Volume: 20    Issue: 1   Date: spring 1995   
Pages: 3-20
DOI: 10.2143/LS.20.1.556002

Abstract :
Of God is able but unwilling to prevent evil, God is malevolent. On the other hand, if God is willing but unable to do so, God is weak. In either case, God is not God. But if God is both omnipotent and benevolent, as believers say, whence is evil? Ever since Epicurus (341-270 BC) argued that this is not possible to uphold God's power and goodness simultaneously in the face of evil, an argument repeated by the 'patron saint of sceptics,' David Hume, in the eighteenth century, philosophers and theologians have been busy devising a theodicy to defend both divine goodness and power.

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