"Christensen's theological response to the problem of evil examines how sin, evil, corruption, and death not only fit into redemptive history but also magnify the glory of a good God"--

"If you are looking for one book to make sense of the problem of evil, this book is for you." Sean McDowell Grasping This Truth Will Change Your View of God Forever If God is good and all-powerful, why doesn't He put a stop to the evil in this world? Christians and non-Christians alike struggle with the concept of a loving God who allows widespread suffering in this life and never-ending punishment in hell. We wrestle with questions such as... Why do bad things happen to good people? Why should we have to pay for Adam's sin? How can eternal judgment be fair? But what if the real problem doesn't start with God...but with us? Clay Jones, an associate professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University, examines what Scripture truly says about the nature of evil and why God allows it. Along the way, he'll help you discover the contrasting abundance of God's grace, the overwhelming joy of heaven, and the extraordinary destiny of believers.

Leading thinkers in Christian philosophy and apologetics take on the problem of evil and suffering. Essays from Gregory Ganssle, Yena Lee, Bruce Little, Garry DeWeese, R. Douglas Geivett and others provide critical engagement with the New Atheists and offer grounds for renewed confidence in the God who is "acquainted with grief."

A trusted apologist provides a fresh, balanced approach to understanding how a loving God can preside over a world filled with evil and suffering.

An expert in criminology and psychology uses science to understand evil in today’s society. What is it about evil that we find so compelling? From our obsession with serial killers to violence in pop culture, we seem inescapably drawn to the stories of monstrous acts and the aberrant people who commit them. But evil, Dr. Julia Shaw argues, is largely subjective. What one may consider normal, like sex before marriage, eating meat, or working on Wall Street, others find abhorrent. And if evil is only in the eye of the beholder, can it be said to exist at all? In Evil, Shaw uses an engrossing mix of science, popular culture, and real-life examples to break down timely and provocative issues. How similar is your brain to a psychopath’s? How many people have murder fantasies? Can artificial intelligence be evil? Do your sexual proclivities make you a bad person? Who becomes a terrorist? If you could travel back in time, would you kill baby Hitler? In asking these questions, Shaw urges readers to discover empathy and to rethink and reshape what it means to be bad. Evil is a wide-ranging exploration into a fascinating, darkly compelling subject from wickedly smart and talented writer. Praise for Evil “A brilliant panorama that elucidates humanity’s dark side. . . . This science-based foundation for studying the minds of sadists, mass murderers, freaks and creeps, as well the new role of tech in promoting evil is presented in a totally engaging fashion.” —Philip Zimbardo, PhD; Professor Emeritus, Stanford University; author of The Lucifer Effect “This overview of various kinds of aberrant behavior grouped under the umbrella term evil is well backed up by the expertise of Shaw. . . . Shaw’s work will be particularly appropriate for college and high school libraries for its sober-minded, academically rigorous examination of an oft-sensationalized subject.” —Publishers Weekly “Capably written with a smooth mix of scientific insight and theoretical thought, the book will hopefully inspire empathy and understanding rather than hysteria and condemnation. A consistently fascinating journey into the darker sides of the human condition that will push on the boundaries of readers’ comfort zones.” —Kirkus Reviews

DIV In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defense of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artifact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world. In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason. In the process, he poses a set of intriguing questions. Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all? /div

The genesis of evil. The book of Genesis recites the beginnings of the cosmos and its inhabitants. It also reveals the beginning of evil. Before long, evil infests God's good creation. From there, good and evil coexist and drive the plot of Genesis. In Evil in Genesis, Ingrid Faro uncovers how the Bible's first book presents the meaning of evil. Faro conducts a thorough examination of evil on lexical, exegetical, conceptual, and theological levels. This focused analysis allows the Hebrew terminology to be nuanced and permits Genesis' own distinct voice to be heard. Genesis presents evil as the taking of something good and twisting it for one's own purposes rather than enjoying it how God intended. Faro illuminates the perspective of Genesis on a range of themes, including humanity's participation in evil, evil's consequences, and God's responses to evil.

Gregory Boyd seeks to defend his scripturally grounded trinitarian warfare theod-icy with rigorous philosophical reflection and insights from human experience and scientific discovery.

How can we talk about evil? How can we make sense of its presence all around us? How can we come to terms with the sad fact that our involvement in doing or enabling evil is an interminable aspect of our lives in the world? This book is an attempt to engage these questions in a new way. Written from within the complicated reality of Israel, the contributors to this book forge a collective effort to think about evil from multiple perspectives. A necessary effort, since psychoanalysis has been slow to account for the existence of evil, while philosophy and the social sciences have tended to neglect its psychological aspects. The essays collected here join to form a wide canvas on which a portrait of evil gradually emerges, from the Bible, through the enlightenment to the Holocaust; from Kant, through Freud, Klein, Bromberg and Stein to Arendt, Agamben and Bauman; using literature, history, cinema, social theory and psychoanalysis. Talking about Evil opens up a much needed space for thinking, in itself an antidote to evil. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and scholars and students of philosophy, social theory and the humanities.

Many stories have been told about the famous Lost Boys but now, for the first time, a Lost Girl shares her hauntingly beautiful and inspiring story. One of the first unaccompanied refugee children to enter the United States in 2000, after South Sudan's second civil war took the lives of most of her family, Rebecca's story begins in the late 1980s when, at the age of four, her village was attacked and she had to escape. What They Meant for Evil is the account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and purity of a child, Rebecca recalls how she endured fleeing from gunfire, suffering through hunger and strength-sapping illnesses, dodging life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles, and soldiers alike-that dogged her footsteps, and grappling with a war that stole her childhood. Her story is a lyrical, captivating portrait of a child hurled into wartime, and how through divine intervention, she came to America and found a new life full of joy, hope, and redemption.