Reformulating the question of theodicy

1. Theodicy is not the attempt to fit the God of the Bible to a 'God' we already know. The problem of evil is the problem of how the God of the Bible is consistent.

'Today many of the skeptics I talk to say, as I once did, they can't believe in the God of the Bible, who punishes and judges people, because they "believe in a God of love." I now ask, what makes them think God is Love? Can they look at life in the world today and say, "This proves that the God of the world is a God of love"? Can they look at history and say, "This shows that the God of history is a God of love"? Can they look at the religious texts of the world and conclude that God is a God of love? By no means is that the dominant, ruling attribute of God as understood in any of the major faiths. I must conclude that the source of the idea that God is Love is the Bible itself. And the Bible tells us that the God of love is a God of judgment who will put all things in the world to rights in the end.'

(pp. 82f, Tim Keller, The Reason for God)

2. Theodicy is not the attempt to understand how God is consistent according to reason, but how he is consistent according to himself. The measure of consistency is not logical coherence (what does that prove anyway?), but the revelation of God in the Gospel as the God of love (that proves we have hope, God is true, Christ is Lord, etc).

Theodicy is not, as Leibniz thought, to be brought before the forum of reason, which can understand and judge, so that one can dispute or reflect about God; as Job experienced it, it is much more about a dispute with God - summoning God against God (Job 16;19); one appeals to God against God.

(p. 213, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology)

3. Christ engaged in theodicy long before Leibniz. He cried "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" appealing to God against God. Three days later he was answered not with an argument, but with his resurrection. It was a revelation of God himself, and like all God's revelations it was an act. It was an act of love and an act of power, showing God as both loving and almighty.

The question of theodicy should not be avoided by Christians, but it should be reformulated into the model provided by Jesus. It is Biblical and Christian to wrestle with God, to cry out against evil and not to accept it passively. Like Christ we might have to wait for the revelation of God we are want, but "if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him".