Dewi Zephaniah Phillips’ Critique of Theodicies
Authors: TÜRKBEN Yaşar 
Published: April 2022

The problem of evil, which is one of the important issues of contemporary philosophy of religion, is one of the important arguments expressed in the context of objection to the existence of God. This argument, which we can trace back to Epicurus, is by D. Hume, “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able to? Then He is powerless. Does he have the power but does not want to prevent it? So he wants evil to happen. If he is both able and good, then where does this evil come from?” It has been put forward in a question format that leaves a dilemma in the form of a question. Contemporary philosophers such as J. L. Mackie, on the other hand, argued that God's absolute goodness, might and existence of evil contradict each other, and argued that the three premises mentioned cannot coexist, and therefore the theistic God conception would be contradictory within itself. The problem of evil has been discussed by various philosophers from different aspects within the framework of the analytical philosophy tradition, which is one of the important philosophical schools of the modern period. In this context, logical positivism, which represents the first period of the analytical philosophy tradition and found its expression in Wittgestein's first period work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, found all fields of knowledge meaningless, except verifiable factual propositions, on the grounds that they are metaphysical. Therefore, since the general issues of theism, especially the problem of evil, fall within the scope of the aforementioned metaphysical field, it has been declared as a meaningless and non-factual type of knowledge by logical positivism. However, in the process, the principle of strict verification fell out of favor and the theory of language games and the basic issues of theism of the second Wittgenstein period began to be evaluated within the "types of knowledge that can be talked about". According to the theory of language games, just as different games (there are different language games and each of them) have their own rules, language also has its own rules. Anyone who does not know the rules of football will have difficulty in understanding the game played, and someone who does not know the rules of the language will have difficulty in understanding the subject. D. Z. Phillips, one of the Wittgensteinian philosophers, also radically adapted the theory of language games to the philosophy of religion. He argues that religious belief is a language game of its own and has no relation to the factual field (non-realism). According to him, evaluating propositions such as "God is good" or "God is mighty" in philosophical or scientific contexts leads us to the wrong path. Since the language of the context in which they are expressed is different, it cannot be discussed within thought systems that have different language games such as philosophy, which has a unique language world. The problem of evil should also be evaluated in this context. In a statement that "God is good", "God" no longer refers to a particular object or person. Here, only a feeling of “trust” can be mentioned. Again, when it is said that "God has infinite power", "a feeling of refuge" can be mentioned. However, this does not indicate the existence of the "God" object. According to Hick, these statements of Phillips are expressions of atheism in a different way. Therefore, this is unacceptable from the point of view of theism, as it denies the very idea of god. Phillips criticizes the philosophical solutions to the problem of evil, especially Swinburne. In this context, he criticizes the free will defense of Phillips Swinburne and Plantinga from various perspectives. Again, he deals with the views that the existence of evil and the existence of God can be defended together, that is, theodicies one by one, and tries to show that they are not successful. He also criticizes the theodicy, such as "spiritual maturation theodicy", "atonement theodicy", "defense of cognitive limitation", which were put forward to respond to evil from the theist perspective, in the context of different types of evil such as the holocaust, mental and physical suffering. Thus, he tried to evaluate and support the claim that the theism's statements about the problem of evil should not be seen as philosophical propositions from the perspective of Wittgensteinian language games.