Making Good: Creation, Tragedy and Hope - Tapa blanda

It has an admirable unity, no to say a seamless argument across its twenty-two relatively short but relective chapters. (...) the author never takes the easy otpion, she faces each proble; squarely and with wisdom." Allan Doig, LMH.

This book, by one of Britain's best known and most distinguished writers on Christian ethics, is intended as a resource for undergraduates. theological students, and general readers who are interested in matters of ethics and theodicy. The author's starting-point is that creation, divine or human, involves ethical responsibility. If there is a God who made the universe, God is responsible for what the universe is like. What right had God to create a world like this, full of troubles as well as glories? Is it ethical to worship the Creator? These questions, and the belief that human beings are created for God's good purpose. lead straight to an examination of the problem of evil. As Helen Oppenheimer sees it, theodicies generally over-reach themselves. A more modest approach is to consider what we can mean by calling any creation good, human or divine. in the hope that human and divine creation may shed light on one another. The value of creation is recognised in the kind of love which strives to bring something satisFying and maybe wonderful into existence, sometimes at great cost: the best may, at last, emerge from the worst. A consideration of the paradox of tragedy deveops a notion of things 'having come right' and of 'making good'. which draws together ideas of human and divine creation, and which includes, but also transcends, moral value. Helen Oppenheimer is a former President of the Society tbr the Study of Christian Ethics and holds a Lambeth DD.