The problem of evil and critical realism

ABSTRACT This paper applied the philosophical theory of critical realism to the problem of evil. Using the method of critical analysis of related literature, the paper discovered, among other things, that existing theodicies that are responses to the problem of evil can broadly be categorized into the compatibility thesis and the incompatibility thesis, respectively; and that the relevance of critical realism for the problem of evil lies in preserving a logical gap between the idea of the nature of ‘God as He really is, and how He is conceptualized or described by human theodicies’. The paper argued that whereas the thesis of the non-observability of the nature of God as He really is, independent of human cognition, conforms to critical realism, the non-observability of the omnibus does not. And to accommodate this, the novel concept of critical theism is proposed.