THEODICY

(from Greek theos, god; dike, justice), the justification of God, which is concerned with reconciling the goodness and justice of God with the observable facts of evil and suffering in the world. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, in his Theodicy (1710), defended the justice of God in spite of the existence of evil. For him, God is almighty only in that he is able to do that which is logically possible. Certain factors may each be independently possible but mutually incompatible, and, because God created the world under these limitations, the created world is indeed the best of all possible worlds. Most theodicies aim at solving the theological problem of evil (see evil, problem of).