Many years ago a professor in my college philosophy class walked to the blackboard and wrote out a set of questions concerning the power of God and the nature of evil posed by the Greek philosopher Epicurus:
• Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is He impotent.
• Is He able, but not willing? then is He malevolent.
• Is He both able and willing? whence then is evil?1
A classmate told me the discussion had so disturbed him that he had lost his theological moorings.
1 From Aphorisms, circa 300 B.C.↑
