ABSTRACT
The essential premise of free will theodicy is that God endows rational creatures with free will, thereby enabling them to establish with full moral responsibility their own eternal destinies. Contemporary free will theodicy deals with a distinction between moral evil – that is, evil owing to exercises of creaturely willing – and natural evil, which is what remains of evil after our exercises of will are accounted. The case in favor of recent approaches to free will theodicy is a weak one. To the extent that they work at all, their success is only partial, and it is purchased at the expense of diminishing God's perfection overall. Perhaps, a theodicy of freedom would have greater success by adopting a stance like that of the older writers, who, whatever they had to say about freedom, held steadfastly to the doctrines of God's omniscience and complete sovereignty over creaturely decision and action.
