But over time, with the Persian stimulus, the biblical God became a God of 'loving kindness,' and evil was pushed off on to others.
Parallel legends exist in the figures of Antichrist and of Ahriman, the Persian god of evil.
The devil idea is supposed to exonerate God from complicity in evil, and it could do that in ancient Persian dualism, where the God of good and the God of evil are equally powerful.
The problem of a God who permits evil in the world has never been solved through reason or religion, while on the other hand, a transcendent God has been open to personal experience since the dawn of spirituality.
In the 1980s, Alvin Plantinga presented a version of the free will defence which, he argued, demonstrated that the existence of an omnipotent benevolent God and of evil are not inconsistent.
Then, in the 17th century, Leibniz invented the term theodicy to describe his defense of a God accused of creating an evil world; the word later came to mean an attempt to account for evil itself.
This lump of lead replaces "Joan of Arcadia," an entertaining show that actually grappled with issues of life and death and the existence of God and of evil; the explanation that Leslie Moonves, the chairman and C.E.O. of CBS, gave when he cancelled "Joan" was "I think talking to ghosts may skew younger than talking to God".
The two joined in repressing the dualistic Bogomil sect, a heresy holding the coexistence with God of a principle of evil that participated in creation.
It may seem obvious that neither can survive: that once the operations of creaturely wills are subordinated to God's will, libertarian freedom disappears, and with it any hope of absolving God of moral evil.
Griffin argues that traditional theism makes God the source of evil because God's will establishes the general principles of the universe (2004, 37).
