Also, a comment about the “best possible world” doctrine. What does that say about heaven? If Satan and his demons are to be bound forever and we will be in heaven as perfect creatures, then the conclusion is that, in heaven, we will not have free will and, therefore, will not be morally perfect.

Furthermore, if Lucifer sinned while in heaven, what is to prevent it from happening again, even after Satan is bound forever?

In either case, God allows such evil to exist because ultimately, the best possibly world can only be achieved when man has free will. If God had created a perfectly good world, and made man absolutely good, this would have left no room for human freedom, which would have been less than morally perfect thing for God to do.

Furthermore God cannot be the cause of evil, although he does allow it to exist. Philosophically speaking, evil does not exist, but is rather a “privation” or lack of goodness or substance.

I’d recommend dusting off Aquinas’ Summa Theologica for proof. For lighter reading, check out The Phiolosphy of Evil by Paul Siwek, SJ.

“The only way I could reconcile the problem of evil with the existence of God was by rejecting the notion of Divine omnipotence.”

Very courageous of you! And very insightful. Many Christians are so implicitly stuck with God’s omnipotence that the idea of rejecting it never crosses their minds. They just can’t see that as an option and so they are stuck with malformed solutions that don’t do much to address the issue.

I agree completely.

N.T. Wright, in his online discussion with Bart Ehrman, made the claim that God had some sort of long term plan that involved Jesus and that this somehow explained away human suffering. Try telling that to the people who suffered over the centuries before this “long term plan” came to fruition. That is just nonsensical gobbledygook, as far as I am concerned.

The only way I could reconcile the problem of evil with the existence of God was by rejecting the notion of Divine omnipotence.