from "On Being a Theologian of the Cross"--
(footnote, pp. 84-85) "It is remarkable that there were so few attempts to construct theodicies prior to the 18th century. Certainly there was no shortage of suffering and disaster. Life was 'nasty, brutish, and short.' In Luther's own day the black death had decimated the population of Europe and still threatened. Villages and towns lived in constant dread of fire and natural disasters, and so forth. Yet attempts to absolve God were deemed foolish. Is it not curious that only when life seems to be easier do thinkers set out to 'justify' God? Is it perhaps that when we think ourselves to have done so well we question God for being so inept? Perhaps it is as Hannah Arendt remarks, 'When men could no longer praise, they turned their greatest conceptual efforts to justifying God and His Creation in theodicies' (Hannah Arendt, The Life and Mind, vol. 2, p. 97)."
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