Michael, thanks for your reply to my post on Benatar's book and the theodicy problem.
(see: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1524200697985398755&postID=
8936657446179280985)
I do not think God is "bound" by the rules of logic. We, however, are insofar as we wish to think and speak intelligibly. Likewise, God is not "bound" by the rules of grammar, even though there are limits to what can be meaningfully said about God.
The rules of logic do not determine what can be, but rather what can be thought, just as the rules of grammar do not determine what can exist, but rather what can be said. C.S. Lewis once said that meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning just by having "God can ..." added to them.
To say that God "cannot" "create a creature that would both (a) love him freely and (b) would never use that freedom to choose evil", is not to say anything about what God can or cannot do, but rather to point out that attributing both a and b to God just makes no sense - just as it makes no sense to say that God can create a square circle, or that Zeus can rooba chaga rid-grf.
As far as "the old problem of whether God could create a rock so big that he could not move it" is concerned, I accept the very simple solution offered by Gijsbert van den Brink in his book Almighty God (in my view, an excellent analysis of divine omnipotence, both theologically and philosophically): God can create such a rock, and if God were to do so, that would be the end of God's omnipotence - God could omnipotently choose to not be omnipotent any longer. Yet, as long as God is capable of doing this but chooses not to, God remains omnipotent.
The "old problem" is only a problem if one is committed to the claim that God is NECESSARILY omnipotent, but why should one be committed to this claim?
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Gerrit, in my experience, when thoughtful Christians consider my response to their standard manner of dealing with theodicy, they respond much as you suggest. For them, insofar as Christianity is as much a child of Athens as Jerusalem, it is committed to rational discourse about God. That entails respecting Aristotelian principles of logic, including of course the rule of non-contradiction. So, my objection is directed rather at that wing of Christianity, most notably parts of the contemporary Evangelical tradition, that has turned its back on Athens, and 2000 years of Christian theology. (They are, in a sense, mystics, albeit of a rather desiccated, suburban variety.) It is to these people one would say that their labours to construct a rational explanation for evil -- as the inevitable price of our free will -- is quite inconsonant with their joyful embrace of irrationality at every other level, and their scorn for traditional theological writings. If faithful to their a-rationalist position, they should say that we humans should not bother our little minds with these arcane puzzles. They may even quote Paul's words about how trivial is the wisdom of this world, and remind us that we are called upon to have the faith of a little child.
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