“The God of success and the apathetic man of action completely contradict what we find at the core of Christianity: The suffering God and the loving, vulnerable man. On the other hand, the crucifie...

Widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in contemporary philosophy of religion, this book by Linda Zagzebski is a major contribution to ethical theory and theological ethics. At the core of the book lies a form of virtue theory based on the emotions. Quite distinct from deontological, consequentialist and teleological virtue theories, this one has a particular theological, indeed Christian, foundation. The theory helps to resolve philosophical problems and puzzles of various kinds: the dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in moral psychology, the claims and counterclaims of realism and anti-realism in the metaphysics of value, and paradoxes of perfect goodness in natural theology, including the problem of evil. As with Zagzebski's previous Cambridge book Virtues of the Mind, this book will be sought out eagerly by a broad swathe of professionals and graduate students in philosophy and religious studies.

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The Crucified God

Divine Motivation Theory

This article first presents an overview of the arguments on behalf of a passible and so suffering God. These arguments are: 1. The experience of immense suffering over the past century, especially ...

Does God Suffer

The dramatising of theology : humanity’s participation in God’s drama with particular reference to the theologies of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth

Once the preserve of philosophy and theology, what Weber called `the problem of theodicy' - the problem of reconciling normative ideals with the reality in which we live - recurs in the social sciences in the secular form of `sociodicy'. Within a functionalist framework, sociodicies have offered legitimizing rationalizations of social adversities, inequalities and injustice, but seldom address the existential meaning and ethical implications of human affliction and suffering in social life. We suggest that an apparent indifference to these questions in social theory reflects a deeper tension between modernity's millennial expectations of moral progress and the escalating history of violence, exploitation and suffering in the modern world. The task of sociodicy, we argue, should be reconstructed as a critique of the decivilizing implications of this tension, not just to document the consequences of suffering on people's lives, but in order to reassess the experience of modernity at the end of one of the mo...

The Problem of Suffering and the Sociological Task of Theodicy

Thompson provides a survey of modern thought on the doctrine of the Trinity, which has recently enjoyed a revival of interest. He examines the work of important theologians and their views on the relationship of the trinitarian doctrine to Scripture, the Church, philosophy, politics, and society.

The Crucified God

Citations

Divine Motivation Theory

Does God Suffer

The dramatising of theology : humanity’s participation in God’s drama with particular reference to the theologies of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth

The Problem of Suffering and the Sociological Task of Theodicy

Modern Trinitarian Perspectives

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