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The Hardest Problem: God, Evil and Suffering

Rupert Shortt

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How can a supposedly all-powerful and all-loving God permit evil and suffering on a grand scale?

The question has assailed people across cultures at least as far back as the biblical Book of Job. To sceptics, it forms clinching evidence that all talk of providence is childish -- or even a dangerous delusion. Writing clearly and concisely but avoiding simplistic answers, Rupert Shortt argues that belief in a divine Creator is intellectually robust, despite apparent signs to the contrary. Having cleared the ground, he goes on to show how a Christian understanding, in particular, points the way forward through terrain where raw feeling, intellectual inquiry and the toughest trials of the spirit often overlap.

The Hardest Problem takes its place alongside the work of C. S. Lewis as an essential guide to one of life's deepest dilemmas for a new generation of readers.

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Praise for The Hardest Problem: God, Evil and Suffering

  • Rupert Shortt is clear and incisive in this new work of theodicy'One of the most cogent writers of our day''Beguiling''Deep theological knowledge and spiritual discernment''Wise, informed and immensely thoughtful'A stunning challenge to the casual atheism of our ageHis arguments are powerfulThe book succeeds in presenting a reasoned case for holding fast to the reality of God, as Christianity understands it, and not shirking from the troubling existence of suffering.

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Rupert Shortt

Rupert Shortt

Rupert Shortt is religion editor of The Times Literary Supplement and a former Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. He writes for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard. His books include Benedict XVI (2005), Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack (2012), Rowan's Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop (2014) and God Is No Thing: Coherent Christianity (2016).

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