The Problem of Evil

Abstract Philosophers and theologians tend to approach the problem of evil through a specific framework, centred on the age-old dispute between traditional theists and atheists. Consequently, despite the attention drawn to the problem of evil, detailed reflections on its scope, structure, and diversity are infrequently encountered in the literature. This chapter addresses this gap by offering a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the problem of evil. It argues that the general scheme of the problem of evil consists of the following three variables: (i) God, (ii) evil, and (iii) an allegedly conflicting relationship between (i) and (ii). It then explains that we can obtain multiple versions of the problem of evil by assigning distinct values to those variables.