It describes a God that is personal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Theodicy is one criticism against the second premise of this argument, which attempts to try and explain why an all-PKG allows evil to exist (Sober, pg. 111). Theodicy claims that some evils are necessary as they have the property of being “soul-building”. Soul-building evils are meant to force human beings to live through adversity and in turn strengthen our characters (Sober, pg.
The early reformers of the Catholic Church had one common thread; they felt the word of the Lord was grossly misinterpreted by the Church. Though the Church was working to give the people what they wanted, their practices were dishonest and they took liberties with the scriptures. Martin Luther cited two major corruptions in his Ninety Five Theses. The first was that salvation could be reached only by one’s own faith; secondly Luther objected to the selling of indulgences to provide absolution for sinners. The monies from these sales financed wars and expensive lifestyles of the popes, archbishops and bishops.
Ryan Perry HY 101 Daniel Riches January 8, 2013 Question 2 Martin Luther & Mchiavelli's writings were very different but they shared many traits and were considered ludacris and rebellious for their time. Luther stepped away from the Catholic Church and was very strong about faith and salvation. “ Faith alone is the saving and effacious use of the Word of God, according to Rom. 10[9]: “ If your confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”(Luther 7) Machiavelli wrote about how to be a succesfull leader through many different virtues, including doing anything necessary, cruel or inhumane, to gain or maintain power. “Yet one cannot call it virtue to kill one's citizens, betray one's friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; these modes can enable one to acquire an empire, but not glory.”(Machiavelli 35) “ God our Father hasmade all things depend on faith so that whoever has faith will have everything, and whoever does not have faith will have nothing.” (Luther 13) This quote truly shows how strongly Luther felt about faith and the connection to God with no middle man.
But how can you say that something is 100% evil if evil itself can’t be fully defined and applied? On the other hand Augustine was wrong to presume that nothing was 100% evil because things that can be said to be 100% evil could be argued strongly that it has either good means or thought behind it and that even though it may be 100% evil. An example of this could be killing a child, many people would see this to be pure evil, but the person behind killing this child could say that they did it because the child had a disability that they had good intentions behind their action but the action itself was 100% evil. This shows that Augustine was wrong to try and say that nothing is 100% evil because even the most evil things could be said
Ladies and gentlemen, today I am going to speak to you to unveil the corruption and unholiness of your beloved Roman Catholic Church but also why this should make you follow the ways of the renowned martyr John Wyclif and his lollard teachings. As a religion we derive from the mid to late 1300's (1382) when John Wyclif asserted his ideas on the Catholic Church to the very foundations, his initial argument was that the Bible was the only sure basis of belief and that it should be translated into the vernacular, he denied that the ridiculous traditions of the church were as important as scripture. He therefore rejected transubstantiation, advocacy of clerical marriage and denunciations of the wealth and power of the clergy. To us Lollards those arguments are correct, justified and fair. It is true that we should doubt this miraculous transubstantiation as each time this miraculous event happens it is done by a corrupt and unholy priest behind a screen.
Scripture is the Word of God revealed to men and it is necessary for his/her salvation. Along with Scripture Wesley believed in prevenient grace. He strongly opposed the theology of predestination where only few are chosen by God and predestined for heaven or hell. In the next few paragraphs I will discuss these major topics of Wesley theology. True Christianity, is what most of the followers of Jesus Christ want to experience on daily basis.
Augustine believes that evil is a ‘privation of good’ not an entity in itself. If the world was good when God created it, where did the evil come from? Augustine believes evil was a result of angels who turned away from God, misused their free will and tempted Adam and Eve, which is the origin of moral evil. Augustine reasoned that all humans are worthy of the punishment of evil and suffering because we are “seminally present in the loins of Adam”’ deserving of the punishment for original sin.
Moral evil is an act of mankind such as murder; natural evil would be something that is not caused by any specific agent but has victims such as would be produced by earthquakes. [1] Because of evil in the world, many argue against there being a creator God by attempting to show that the co-existence of evil and such a deity is unlikely or impossible. The attempts to justify the ways of God to man by proving that God can and does co-exist with evil, are known as theodicies and provide various responses to the problem of evil. Leibniz’s theodicy states that God did not choose the best in creating the world, but then God would be lacking in power, knowledge and goodness. Augustinian theodicy argues that God created the world and it was perfect, without any evil or suffering until man’s fall and Irenaean theodicy states God is partially responsible for evil and suffering as a process of soul building.
For example, if Kantianism is being used, stealing would be considered a morally wrong action because it shouldn’t become a universal law, regardless of how many people benefit from the action. I choose to compare these two ethical theories because in my perspective they are polar opposites of each other. Utilitarianism is arguing, “ANY action is morally right if it creates the greatest amount of pleasure for the most amounts of people.” This includes murder, stealing, lying, etc. On the other hand, Kantianism is clearly stating some actions are always bad, no matter what could come out of those actions. During the Industrial Revolution is the time period that utilitarianism is known to have come into being (Shanahan and Wang 103).
This was suggested as naïve optimism and unrealistic by anti-transcendentalists. They though that people who desired complete individualism would give rise to the worst aspects of human nature. Hawthorne in his story shows that relying on one’s self is a type of evil. An initial reading may show this tale to be about the idea that sin is in all men’s hearts and that there is a universal desire to keep it hidden. However much we may want others to be transparent, it is impossible because everyone wears a veil.