The incursion of evil has always caused people to turn to the divine, to gods or to a god, in order to reorientate their life. Ingolf U. Dalferth studies the complexity of this procedure in three thought processes that deal with the central concepts in the Christian understanding of malum as privation (a lack of good), as evil-doing, and as a lack of faith. In doing so, he provides a detailed discussion of theories of theodicy, the argument from freedom, and the religious turn to God, in which the author explores the traces of the discovery of God's goodness, justness, and love in connection with the malum experiences in ancient mythology and biblical traditions.

Ingolf U. Dalferth is Danforth Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University and Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Zurich. From 1998 to 2012 he was Director of the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich. The University of Copenhagen and the University of Uppsala awarded him honorary doctorates.