A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory

The problem of evil has haunted religious philosophy for millennia: how can an all-powerful, perfectly good God permit suffering and sin? Albert Taylor Bledsoe confronts this most relentless of philosophical challenges in his 1854 treatise, rejecting abstract speculation in favor of what he calls careful observation of the actual moral world, combined with the truths revealed through religion. He constructs a systematic defense of divine goodness by engaging with the great thinkers who preceded him: Plato's dialogues on morality, Leibniz's optimistic metaphysics, and Calvin's doctrine of divine sovereignty. Bledsoe contends that earlier philosophers failed not because the theodicy problem is insoluble, but because they pursued false methods. His own effort aims to dispel misconceptions about the nature of moral evil and its relationship to human agency and divine glory. The result is a rigorous, 19th-century American contribution to one of philosophy's oldest and most difficult questions: the compatibility of evil with an infallibly perfect God.