Malum: A Theological Hermeneutics of Evil
Ebook
Overview
The incursion of evil has always caused people to turn to the divine, to gods or to a god, in order to reorientate their life. Ingolf U. Dalferth studies the complexity of this procedure in three thought processes that deal with the central concepts in the Christian understanding of malum as privation (a lack of good), as evil-doing, and as a lack of faith. In doing so, he provides a detailed discussion of theories of theodicy, the argument from freedom, and the religious turn to God, in which the author explores the traces of the discovery of God’s goodness, justness, and love in connection with the malum experiences in ancient mythology and biblical traditions.
“In Malum, Dalferth applies a rigorous and unremitting
intellectual passion to the so-called ‘problem’ of evil, covering
an exceptional range of theological and existential sources. Malum
shows that theodicy, long the focus of theological approaches to
evil, has been a false friend and that the lived experience of how
God overcomes existential experiences of evil offers both a
sufficient and a better way. . . . Few books really merit
the designation ‘paradigm shifting.’ This does.”
—George Pattison, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, University
of Glasgow
“Ingolf Dalferth is one of the most brilliant and prolific
theologians of our time. Deeply versed in both analytic and
continental philosophy and on the basis of his earlier studies on
the experience of evil and its interpretation, he argues that
overcoming evil does not mean the elimination of all suffering.
This book is one of the most systematic and challenging
contributions to an age-old field of thinking.”
—Hans Joas, Ernst Troeltsch Professor for the Sociology of
Religion, Humboldt University, Berlin
“This is a monumental work by one of the outstanding and leading
philosopher-theologians in the world today. It addresses the
perennial problem: If God exists, whence evil? Dalferth is a
thinker with roots in Barth und Juengel, whilst forging a
distinctive analytic-hermeneutic position in philosophical
theology. Written with subtlety, verve, and deep learning, here is
a magisterial analysis of the great theories of theodicy from
antiquity to the contemporary, and a trenchant and compelling
proposal.”
—Douglas Hedley, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Fellow of
Clare College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Ingolf U. Dalferth is Danforth Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University and Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Zurich. From 1998 to 2012 he was Director of the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich. The University of Copenhagen and the University of Uppsala awarded him honorary doctorates.