Why God Allows Evil and Suffering

Why God Allows Evil and Suffering begins with the premise that the principal purpose of man's existence is to experience love with God and one another (Matthew 22:35-40; Mark 12:28-34). It then identifies and examines the prerequisites of love in order to explain why God's pursuit of this objective necessitated that he create the very conditions that allow for the possibility of evil and suffering.

With this conceptual framework in place, Why God Allows Evil and Suffering explores the different modes of existence that are experienced by timeless beings, then contrasts these modes of existence against those that are experienced by finite beings who live within linear time. This analysis supplies the insights necessary to interpret Genesis 1-3 in a new manner, one that reconciles the biblical account of direct creation with the scientific theory of evolution.

The analysis of how the prerequisites of love intersect with the differences between finite being and timeless being also provides the insights necessary to answer the theological difficulties raised by the problem of eternal suffering. In so doing, Why God Allows Evil and Suffering answers every major facet of the problem of evil and pain, while adhering to orthodox Christian doctrine as delineated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and other authoritative sources.

The following features distinguish the argument in Why God Allows Evil and Suffering from other books on this topic:

• The assertion that love is the principal end for which God allows suffering (as opposed to free will, character development, or one of the various other objectives that have been put forth in previous attempts to answer the problem of evil).
• The identification of five prerequisites of love.
• A biblically based explanation of why these prerequisites of love-together with the limits that God places on the exercise of his absolute power by virtue of his perfectly loving, perfectly just, and perfectly wise nature-necessitate that God allow evil and suffering if fallen humanity is to have the opportunity to experience love with God and with one another.
• An in-depth analysis and interpretation of Genesis 1-3 based on concepts of time and being that appear in subsequent books of the Bible. Specifically, this portion of the book examines the differences between man's current, temporal-based existence and the timeless existence that the first humans experienced in the pre-fallen state. This analysis of the differences between finite existence and timeless existence explains how evolution and other well-established findings of natural science align with the narrative of direct creation in Genesis.
• An answer to the problem of eternal suffering, based on the prerequisites of love, that fully reconciles the biblical assertion that God is perfectly loving with the seemingly contradictory assertion that the unredeemed will burn forever with "unquenchable fire" in the eternal state, as described in Matthew 3:12 and similar passages.