International conference proceedings.

This volume is part of the project on The problem of evil in religious traditions: origins, forms and coping, on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Vrije Universiteit and the exhibition "Religion & Evil" in the Tropenmuseum.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction / Hendrik M. Vroom -- On Tragic Wisdom / David Tracy -- The Void: Simone Weil’s Naming of Evil / Lissa McCullough -- “The Community unto Death”: Reflections on Contemporary Spirituality, Capitalism and State-Sanctioned Mass Death / Joseph W.H. Lough -- Coping with Evil: Challenging the Western Christian Approach / Marisa Strizzi -- The Pursuit of Happiness, the Production of Evil and the New Christianity / Paul R. Fries -- Radical Evil, Autonomy and the Problem of Formalism: Where Does Kant Leave Us? / Tom Jacobs -- On Evil: An Immanent Critique / Tinneke Beeckman -- Spirituality and the Problem of Evil: The Challenge of the Philosophy of Jean Nabert / Theo L. Hettema -- Why Are We Inclined to Do Evil?: On the Anthropological Roots of Evil / Hendrik M. Vroom -- Is God Violent?: On Violence and Religion / Wessel Stoker -- Reasons for Having No Reason to Defend God: Kant, Kierkegaard, Levinas and their Alternatives to Theodicy / Claudia Welz -- Religion as an Aid for Coping with Evil?: Confronting the Coping Thesis with Barth’s Reflections on Nothingness / Petruschka Schaafsma -- Distortion, Dishonesty and the Problem of Evil / Beverley Clack -- “Divine Absence Itself Becomes a Mode of Divine Presence”: Evil and Suffering in the Christian Feminist Thinking of Elizabeth A. Johnson / Aurica Nutt -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects -- Contributors to this Volume.

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The fact of evil continues to raises questions – questions about the relationship between God and evil but also questions about human involvement in it. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is now time to see the existence of evil not just as a problem for belief in God; it is a problem for belief in humanity itself as well. For human involvement in evil is not simply a matter of coping with evil but also concerns the fact that humans themselves often seem to do wrong and evil inevitably. Human finitude, ignorance and the unforeseeable consequences of good intentions as well as of neglect can often lead to tragedy. This volume contains contributions from an equal number of male and female scholars in Western Europe and America. It contains discussions of thinkers like Kant, Kierkegaard, Barth, Weil, Levinas, Naber, Caputo and Johnson. It deals with issues like tragedy, finitude, critiques of Western culture, violence and God, and the question of whether theodicies are needed or are even honest. This volume offers an interesting survey of ‘wrestling with God and evil’ from a variety of perspectives in the philosophy of religion on both sides of the Atlantic.