I have a simple question that arose when I began reading scholarly discussions about karma and the problem of theodicy:
Can karma really be called the Hindu answer to the problem of theodicy?
I ask this as a layman, not as a specialist in theology or Hindu philosophy. For most of my life as a Hindu, I had never heard the word theodicy. I came across it only later through my engagement with the Bible, Christian thought, and scholarly writings. I have also known Christians who have never heard the word, although they have certainly asked why suffering and evil exist and how such suffering can be reconciled with belief in God.
That distinction is important. The question of suffering is universal; theodicy is the technical name given to a particular theological problem.
What exactly is the problem of theodicy?
At its centre is a question about God.
If God is the creator and governor of the world, and if God is good, just, merciful, and powerful, how can evil and suffering exist in God’s creation? How can God’s justice and goodness be reconciled with the reality of evil?
The word theodicy itself comes from the Greek theos, “God,” and dikē, “justice.” Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty notes that the term was brought into general use by Leibniz in his Essai de Théodicée as a defence of God’s justice in the face of evil.¹
There are, of course, different formulations of the problem. Richard B. Hays, for example, points out that in Scripture the problem is not simply the general question of how a just God can permit suffering, but the particular question of how Yahweh can abandon Israel.² Nevertheless, the central concern remains the relationship between God, evil, and divine justice.
This is where my difficulty begins when karma is presented as the answer to theodicy.
Karma is not one simple, fixed doctrine
The word karma has a much longer and more complicated history in Hindu thought.
In early Vedic literature, karma is closely connected with action, particularly ritual action. The Brāhmaṇas develop ideas concerning the consequences of ritual acts. Pūrva Mīmāṃsā gives central importance to prescribed action and ritual. In other Hindu contexts, karma means action or deed more generally. Later traditions develop ideas concerning karmic consequences, rebirth, and classifications such as sañcita, prārabdha, and kriyamāṇa karma.
In other words, karma developed gradually and acquired different meanings in different Hindu traditions.
That history matters.
If karma has had several meanings and functions, then I have to ask:
Which karma is supposed to be the answer to theodicy?
Is it Vedic ritual karma? Mīmāṃsā’s karma? Karma as moral action and consequence? The later doctrine of karma and rebirth? Or a generalized “Hindu doctrine of karma” constructed by modern interpreters?
The question becomes even more important because Hindu traditions were discussing evil before karma had developed into the later doctrine with which we are familiar.
The chronology raises the first serious question
O’Flaherty makes an observation that I find particularly significant. She notes that there are problems of the theodicy type in Vedic and Brāhmaṇa texts, but karma does not appear until the later Upaniṣadic period. She therefore observes that “the patterns of theodicy were established before the doctrine of karma and continued to develop alongside it.”³
If this is so, then karma cannot simply be described as though it were originally developed to solve the problem of theodicy. Hindu traditions were already wrestling with evil, suffering, divine responsibility, fate, and cosmic order Hindu traditions were already wrestling with evil, suffering, divine responsibility, fate, and cosmic order [including the traditional threefold classification of suffering as ādhyātmika, ādhibhautika, and ādhidaivika]4
Karma subsequently became one important way of understanding action and its consequences. But it was not the only Hindu response to the problem of evil.
Indeed, after examining Hindu mythology, O’Flaherty concludes that we should speak of Hindu approaches and solutions to theodicy in the plural, rather than of one single Hindu solution.5
That historical observation makes me hesitate before accepting the statement that karma is the Hindu answer to theodicy. Yet scholars explicitly make the connection This is not a question I have invented.
Paul G. Hiebert writes:
“Karma therefore provides an answer to the question of theodicy by fitting evil into a greater cosmic order.”6
Ursula Sharma also specifically discusses the relationship in her article “Theodicy and the Doctrine of Karma.”7 Gananath Obeyesekere similarly extends the category of theodicy beyond monotheistic religions, defining it as the problem that arises when a religious system fails logically to explain human suffering or fortune within its own system of beliefs.8
So there is clearly a scholarly tradition that places karma and theodicy together. I do not object to scholars making that comparison. My question is about what exactly the comparison means. A logical solution is not necessarily the same as a lived explanation
Susan S. Wadley makes a particularly interesting observation. She writes that although karma “may present a logical solution to the problem of theodicy,” the individual who is actually “enduring his or her karma” appears to seek other explanations. She adds, significantly, “or so I read the history of the Hindu search.”9
This distinction catches my attention.
A concept may provide a logical explanation to an analyst, while the person actually experiencing suffering may not find that explanation sufficient. That does not disprove the philosophical usefulness of karma. But it warns us against assuming that a theoretical solution is necessarily the same thing as the explanation sought by a believer.
So what exactly is being claimed?
I think we need to distinguish between three different statements:
First: Karma can be used to explain suffering by placing it within a moral order.
Second: Karma can therefore be interpreted as addressing some questions that resemble the problem of theodicy.
Third: Karma is the Hindu solution to the problem of theodicy.
The first two may be reasonable scholarly propositions. But the third seems much stronger. Why?
Because the problem of theodicy is fundamentally concerned with God’s goodness and justice in the presence of evil, whereas karma has its own history and meanings that cannot simply be reduced to that problem.
Moreover, Hindu approaches to evil existed before the later doctrine of karma, and Hindu thinkers have produced multiple explanations rather than one universally accepted solution.
Therefore, it seems more accurate to say that karma can be interpreted as one way of addressing a problem that scholars classify under the heading of theodicy. That is different from saying that karma itself is the Hindu answer to the problem.
A layman’s question
Perhaps my question can be put very simply.
If a Hindu had never heard the word theodicy, never formulated the problem in those terms, and understood karma within a completely different religious or philosophical framework, in what sense is karma an answer to the problem of theodicy?
Perhaps the answer is:
It is an answer from the perspective of comparative scholarship. If so, I have no objection. Scholars are entitled to compare concepts, place different traditions in conversation, and ask questions that ordinary believers have never formulated for themselves.
But then perhaps we should say clearly that we are interpreting karma through the category of theodicy. We should not automatically assume that we have discovered an indigenous Hindu doctrine whose original purpose was to solve the theological problem called “theodicy.”
That is my doubt.
I am not arguing that karma has nothing to say about suffering. Nor am I denying that karma can function within a Hindu explanation of suffering and moral order. I am asking something narrower:
Can a historically developing and internally diverse concept such as karma be called “the Hindu answer” to a theological problem centred on God, evil, divine goodness, justice, and mercy? Perhaps karma can be brought into dialogue with theodicy. Perhaps it can even provide one possible response to some formulations of the problem. But that is not necessarily the same as saying that karma is the Hindu solution to the problem of theodicy.
For me, that distinction is not merely academic. It is the difference between what a tradition itself says and what a scholar, looking across traditions, says about it. And that is the question I, as a layman, would like to leave with both Hindu and Christian scholars.
NB: For a broader discussion of these three forms of suffering and the human responses to them, see my earlier article, “Suffering: Question: Response to an Agnostic.”
Notes
1. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976; paperback ed., 1980), 1.
2. Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 38.
3. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology, 16.
4. For example, Indian thought traditionally classifies suffering under three categories: ādhyātmika (arising from oneself), ādhibhautika (arising from other beings or external factors), and ādhidaivika (arising from forces beyond ordinary human control, such as natural calamities). Here daivika in ādhidaivika should not be understood simply as “God”; daiva has a broader range of meanings associated with fate, destiny, unseen forces, and related notions, including Daiva, Bhāgya, Niyati, Kāla, Vidhi, Vidhāna, Vidhilipi, Diṣṭa, Bhāgadheya, Bhavitavya(tā), Krtārita, Acintya, Adṛṣṭa, and Yadṛcchā. See Sukumari Bhattacharji, Fate and Fortune in the Indian Scriptures (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2014), 22.
5. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Śiva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 376. O’Flaherty’s broader discussion of Hindu approaches to theodicy is also found in The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology.
6. Paul G. Hiebert, “Karma and Other Explanation Traditions in a South Indian Village,” in Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry, ed. E. Valentine Daniel and John C. Keyes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 130.
7. Ursula Sharma, “Theodicy and the Doctrine of Karma,” Man, n.s., 8 (1973): 347–364.
8. Gananath Obeyesekere, “Theodicy, Sin and Salvation in a Sociology of Buddhism,” in Dialectic in Practical Religion, ed. Edmund R. Leach, Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, no. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 7–40.
9. Susan S. Wadley, “Vrats: Transformers of Destiny,” in Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry, ed. Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 147–162, esp. 155.
Appendix: What Does “Theodicy” Mean?
The word theodicy may sound familiar to scholars of theology and philosophy, but it is not a term that most ordinary Hindus—or even many ordinary Christians—would normally use.
The term comes from the Greek theos, meaning “God,” and dikē, meaning “justice.” It was brought into general philosophical and theological use by the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), particularly through his Essai de Théodicée (Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil), published in 1710.
In simple language, theodicy is the attempt to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with belief in a God who is good, just, merciful, and powerful.
The basic question can therefore be put very simply:
If God is good, just, and powerful, and if God created or governs the world, why does evil exist?
This is why the problem of theodicy is fundamentally centred on God and God’s relationship to evil. It is not merely the general question, “Why do human beings suffer?” It asks how suffering and evil can be reconciled with what believers affirm about God.
This background is important for the question raised in this article. When modern scholars bring karma and theodicy together, they are placing a Hindu concept with a long and complicated history alongside a theological category that arose within a particular Western philosophical and theological discussion.
That comparison may be illuminating. But knowing what theodicy means helps us ask the more precise question:
Is karma inherently an answer to this theological problem, or is the relationship between karma and theodicy something constructed by later interpreters who are comparing two different traditions?
That is the question at the heart of this article.
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