Episode 199. Let me draw some conclusions regarding my attempt at outlining a Christian hypothesis on theodicy. First and foremost, all theodicies are limited. They only provide some reasonable justifications for moral evil, and horrid natural realities in the world, but they are never completely satisfying. Why is this the case? It's because mystery and faith are essential components in every theodicy. Messy personal experience is also a component and not everyone has the same experience. Another limited aspect of theodicies is that logical arguments are rarely helpful when someone is experiencing suffering. In fact, offering someone a rationale argument when they're in pain is probably the worst thing you can do. Putting your arms around the person to support them is much more comforting. Conclusion number two, pedagogical and greater good arguments are common in theodicies. Many people acknowledge that moral evil and horrid natural realities often teach them valuable insights and lead to good. In addition, personal experience of moral evil and horrid natural realities in retrospect, usually, a long time afterwards, seems to offer one of the best justification for their presence in a world created by an all loving, all powerful, and all knowing God. It's my belief that our universe appears to be the perfect stage for soul-making. The central purpose of this existence is to understand and experience love, to love God and to love one another. And to fully understand love we need to know and experience what lacking love is, in particular moral evil. Conclusion number 4, Christian theodicies find their fulfillment in Jesus. If Jesus learned obedience from what he suffered, then Christians should as well. And if Jesus, through death, became a source of eternal salvation then death has an ultimate purpose and Christians should be grateful. I think that a lesson that could be drawn from the famed Biblical book on suffering, the book of Job, is that the creation heals us in times when we face suffering and death. As we noted, the Book of Job reveals that intelligent design in nature declares that God is in complete control of the world, including suffering and death. I know this personally. There was a period in my life when I was suffering terribly. But it was during long walks through the beautiful river valley in my city that I started to experience healing. I was also given the distinct sense that God was in complete control of my life. My final conclusion deals with theodicy and evolution, and it allows us to ask the question, why did God create through evolution? One reason is, to maintain God's epistemic distance and his deus absconditus character. For example, if the fossil record were like the young Earth creation fossil pattern prediction or if the fossil pattern were like the progressive creation fossil pattern prediction, then God would be like Star Trek Jesus. And this would be scientific proof for the existence of God and concordism. But this would totally disrupt the world as we know it, and completely destroy the need for faith. Another reason for why God created through evolution is to provide a very good world with real freedom to develop a real relationship with God. In particular, an un-coherced and truly loving relationship. God has given us the freedom to believe whether evolution is dysteleological, with no planned purpose and design, and ultimately no God, or to believe that evolution is teleological, being planned, purposeful and designed and ultimately ordained and sustained by God. It is only in an evolutionary world that we can have complete freedom either to reject God or to love him. End of episode.