Talk:Augustinian theodicy/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 09:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 09:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I am very impressed with this article! You started from scratch and have definitely come a long way. The lead, in particular, is exemplary - everything in the article body is in the lead. I've got a few nitpicks, so I'm placing this review on hold for now, but I'll probably pass the article whether you choose to address these or not. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Lead

• You may want to include a "part of a series on" template below Augustine's picture to help readers find related articles. Maybe Template:God? Problem of evil is an example of it being used.
• The first paragraph seems a tad redundant - aren't all theodicies designed to respond to the problem of evil? Maybe change to something like The Augustinian theodicy is a theodicy, a response to the problem of evil. As such, it justifies the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God in the face of evil and suffering in the world.
• Per WP:LEDECITE, you don't really need to use citations in the lead, especially for something basic like Augustine's works.
• can seem to be more than just a lacking of goodness could be changed to is more than just a lack of goodness, for brevity.

Verifiability

• Citation 19 seems to be missing the "author" field in the citation template.
• Citation 18 is a little sketchy. It's good enough for me because it's hosted on a university website and the claims it's being used to back up are not extraordinary, but if you tried to take this to FA it might be a problem, since we don't know who wrote it. Can it be replaced?
• Again, this isn't a problem at the GA level, but what makes philosophyonline a reliable source?

Prose

• Augustine was influenced by Plato and his followers; it was as a result of this that he was able to first consider a non-physical substance. I don't understand this sentence, probably because I don't know about Manichaeism. Perhaps you could explain how this was in contrast with his earlier ideas or give an example of a non-physical substance. (I've added a link to substance theory - is that what you are referring to?)
• Maybe include a phrase saying who Tomas Aquinas is, like you have for Calvin.
• When you say that Aquinas recognizes evil, do you mean that he recognizes it as having an independent existence? That would seem to contradict the part where you say he agreed that evil was a privation, not an independent entity. Could you clarify?
• Did Calvin really say that humans can't control whether they covet or not? In any case, you need to show how the first paragraph on Calvin relates to the topic of the Augustinian theodicy.

Other

• You may want to include at navigation template at the bottom of the article, such as Template:Philosophy of religion or Template:Theology. You can use more than one if you want, like at Problem of evil.
• Try to introduce links to this article in other articles. For example, you could probably link Alvin Plantinga's free will defense and Theodicy to this.

Hi Cerebellum, thanks for your review. I've just gone through the article addressing the concerns you made (as well as other minor improvements. If there is anything I have missed, please let me know. I'm leaving the sources as they are for now because, as you said, they're not being used to support anything controversial. I will, however, try to improve all the sources at a later date. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Excellent, I am happy to pass this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 23:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)