God and Evil: A Unified Theodicy/Theology/Philosophy

David Birnbaum's scholarly work is a careful and thorough piece of scholarship on an arcane subject that, in these days of the tsunami and Katrina, has even the general public scratching its head. As a Christian who had pretty carefully researched the literature on the subject of theodicy, I was very much surprised to find numerous sources previously unknown to me--most of them Jewish scholarly works that add much to the intellectual material with which to work. I highly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in theodicy--and also recommend it to those with merely a thoughtful interest in the subject.

The question of how a good and just God allows there to be evil in the world has no truly satisfactory answer. Thus the most powerful and convincing part of this work is the author's showing the shortcoming of various answers given by others. However instead of remaining discontent with his and our inability to answer this question the author makes a noble if in my opinion mistaken effort to explain this Evil by speaking of its contribution to human creative power and freedom. I agree that suffering often teaches, may help make a person a far better human being. It also may make them worse. I also agree that our service of God in the world means using our own powers and freedom for Good. But I do not see how this explains or even begins to explain the kinds of injustice millions of human beings have suffered in this world. There are throughout Jewish and human history millions of children who were killed before they had a chance to live. There were millions of largely innocent human beings who had to go through the worst possible horrors. What explanation can there be for this? That other evil people have done this ? But there are after all great destructions caused by Nature. And there are too Evils so out of proportion with what would be helpful to people's ' growth' as to make the whole presumption of its beneficiality ridiculous. I prefer the position of Rebbe Lev Yitzhak of Berditchev who put God on trial and yet continued praying to God. I believe that is the honest answer if there is one. As a person who needs God so much and prays to God all the time even as I write this now, I pray I am not making God angry with my words. But we have, I have no explanation for so many evils so much evil done , without justification or reason. God , where were You when so many of your children were....

It doesn't get much better than this, that is assuming you can talk about a theodicy not getting much better. David Birnbaum delivers a very very carefully thought out, consistent, organized and all encompassing theodicy/theology such that this might be last book you will feel the need to read on this subject. David doesn't ignore other theodicies, he discusses all of them while on his path to presenting his. His thesis is consistent with the various streams of normative Jewish belief/law including the traditional ones.