Marilyn McCord Adams

A philosophical treatise focusing primarily on the specific challenge of horrific evils and God's ability to still provide positive meaning to those who suffer them. The book does provide explanations of other philosophical perspectives but assumes a relatively decent handle on philosophical persons and ideas. The author draws much from the Scholastic philosopher-theologians and their immediate predecessors.

The author's descriptions of honor/shame societies, matters of holiness and impurity, etc. are quite interesting and do well at exposing the limitations of modern paradigms. The author's demonstration that God's "answer" to evil is found in the cross and God experiencing suffering is quite apt.

For those who understand philosophy, this book probably has value; for the rest of us, the value is more limited.… (meer)

This book began clearly and succintly, as I would expect from a book written from the analytic tradition. However, I felt that the later material were largely repetitive, was not as rigourous as I would have liked it to be and appealed too much to the discoveries of empirical psychology or social anthropology. I had hope that she would have performed more clarifying analysis of the concepts rather than unload loads of empirical facts. However, the bold introduction and incoporation of new moral concepts unprecendented in analytic moral philosophy (i.e. purity and defilement, honour and shame) to answer how evil can be overcomed deserves applause and praise, although it could have been done in a more rigourous fashion. But I truly benefitted and learned from her attempt at ingrafting these new moral concept into the analytics rather improverished moral framework. Thus, four stars for a creative and bold resolution of the problem of evil.… (meer)