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Evil and embodiment: towards a Latter-day Saint non-identity theodicy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2024

Derek Christian Haderlie  and
Taylor-Grey Edward Miller Open the ORCID record for Taylor-Grey Edward Miller [Opens in a new window]
Derek Christian Haderlie
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
Taylor-Grey Edward Miller*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
*
Corresponding author: Taylor-Grey Edward Miller; Email: taylor-grey_miller@byu.edu
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Abstract

We offer an account of the metaphysics of persons rooted in Latter-day Saint scripture that vindicates the essentiality of origins. We then give theological support for the claim that prospects for the success of God's soul making project are bound up in God creating particular persons. We observe that these persons would not have existed were it not for the occurrence of a variety of evils (of even the worst kinds), and we conclude that Latter-day saint theology has the resources to endorse a strong soul-making non-identity theodicy. We then introduce two complications for this account rooted in the problem of horrendous evils. First, horrendous evils threaten to undermine our confidence that God is good to each created person within the context of their life. And second, horrendous evils raise concerns about the value of persons whose existence depends on the occurrence of those evils. We may wonder whether those whose existence depends on the occurrence of horrendous evils are valuable enough to motivate God's allowance of those evils. We show that by attending to important structural features of a post-mortem, pre-eschatological state called the spirit world, Latter-day Saints can ameliorate these concerns about horrendous evils.

Keywords

problem of evilnon-identitytheodicyLatter-day Saintssoul-making
Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 13
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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