Ontological and value incommensuration: Marilyn McCord Adams on medieval and modern approaches to Theodicy

Abstract

The Medievalist and philosophical Theologian Marilyn McCord Adams argues that the standard treatments of evil in Anglo-American philosophy of religeon are overtly abstract respecting both evil and God. She contends that the typical focus on moral evil detracts from attention to horrendous evils, or horrific individual suffering, which is the most difficult class of evils to reconcile with the Christian faith. Adams also argues that we can satisfactorily account for why horrors occur and how God can defeat them if and only if we interpret God and creatures as being ontologically incommensurate, which precludes the commonplace among analytic philosophers that divine goodness is moral goodness. on Adams's interpretation, these moves will require substantial reworkings of traditional Christian teachings on sin, eschatology, and related doctrines.