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The problem of infant suffering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 1998

ANDREW CHIGNELL
ANDREW CHIGNELL
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520
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Abstract

The problem of infant suffering and death is one of the most difficult versions of the problem of evil, especially when we consider how God can be thought good to the infant victims by the infant victims. In the first portion of this paper, I examine two theodicies that aim to solve this problem but fail. In the final section, I argue that the problem can be better dealt with by maintaining not that God must redeem the suffering of such children, but that such children are not the sort of beings whose suffering God can or must redeem.

God is good, God is just, God is almighty: only a madman doubts this… Doubtless when their elders suffer these afflictions we are wont to say either that their goodness is being tested…or that their sins are being punished. But these are older people. Tell me what we are to answer about children!

St Augustine, in a letter to Jerome

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , May 1998 , pp. 205 - 217
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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