Richard Swinburne and Kwasi Wiredu on God and (Moral) Evil

In much of Western philosophy of religion, God is conceived as a perfect being in terms of power, knowledge, goodness, and related attributes. In contrast, a dominant characterization of God in contemporary African philosophy of religion presents the deity as limited in power, knowledge, goodness, and related attributes. In this chapter, I engage in a comparative, cross-cultural exercise that brings divergent Western and African perspectives on the problem of evil into a philosophical conversation. I compare Richard Swinburne’s Western/Christian approach to the problem of evil with Kwasi Wiredu’s African approach. I argue from a comparative, cross-cultural philosophical perspective that the free will and greater good theodicy of Swinburne faces philosophical difficulties that Wiredu’s limited God approach to the question of evil does not contend with. I argue that given the philosophical difficulties that Swinburne’s theistic perspective faces, Wiredu’s limited God view offers an attractive alternative viewpoint that more persuasively accounts for the reality of (moral) evil in the world.