The Problem of The Problem of Evil – The McDonald Lecture Series 2016

The Problem of the Problem of Evil

Ian McFarland, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge

The McDonald Lecture Series 2016 is a collaboration between St Mellitus College and the McDonald Agape Foundation. The series invites world-renowned theologians and scholars to reflect on the place of Christianity in the modern world, some of the questions it faces, and to imagine its possible futures.

Admission Free | Monday 28 November | Doors 6.45pm | Lecture 7.15pm

St Mellitus College | Collingham Road | London SW5 0LX

For more information visit www.stmellitus.ac.uk/mcdonaldlectures2016.

The Problem of The Problem of Evil

Few theological questions are more vexing, conceptually as well as pastorally, than the experience of evil. In the face of an often lamentable history of pastors and theologians attempting to resolve the 'problem of evil' by explaining it away ('It's all for the best...'), some have suggested that the whole topic of theodicy - the attempt to explain God's relationship to evil - should simply be abandoned. In this lecture Prof. Ian McFarland takes a somewhat different approach by arguing that appropriate modesty in theological approaches to the topic of evil begins with the problem of defining what counts as evil in the first place. Addressing the way in which the term 'evil' is applied as a means of defining and controlling others, he argues that responsible theological talk about evil calls for a rethinking of certain traditional ways of deploying the term.

About Prof. Ian McFarland

A Lutheran lay theologian, Ian McFarland has been Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge since 2015. He took his first degree in Classics at Trinity College (Hartford) before going on to study theology at the Union Theological Seminary (New York), the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and Yale University, where he earned his doctorate under the direction of Kathryn Tanner. He received his first academic appointment at the University of Aberdeen, where he taught from 1998-2005. He then moved to Emory’s University’s Candler School of Theology, where he was the inaugural holder of the Bishop Mack B. and Rose Stokes Chair in Theology and served as Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs, as well as teaching in the Laney Graduate School. His books include The Divine Image: Envisioning the Invisible God (2005), In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin (2010), and From Nothing: A Theology of Creation (2014). He is currently preparing a monograph on Christology.