Epicurus riddle.

[Angrboda]

The same kind of thinking applies with regards to God’s omni-benevolence. If I am not mistaken, either Drich or Godschild has promoted the concept that the Bible doesn’t say God is omni-benevolent. That’s actually true. The most it says is that He is Just. Conversely many New Age Christians believe in a mysterious emanation of Love, if only we could receive it (i.e. blame the victim.) Both the Church of Rome, Orthodoxy, and New Church theology have more subtle doctrines, but review of those would far exceed the scope of a single post. As mentioned previously, these revolve around restorative justice and kenosis. If reason did not firmly assure me of God’s existence, I would not be swayed by the possibility of God’s mitigating actions. If God is indeed all-loving, then creation must be metaphysically optimized in such a way that it is ultimately made whole by our participation and struggle within it and Christians have as their example our Lord’s ultimate triumph over betrayal, brutal torture, and painful death. We suffer nothing that God Himself has not endured to achieve Glory.

The problem does not come from postulating that God is all-loving. The other side of omni-benevolence will do, that God is all good. If you do not accept that God is all-good, then you admit that he is prone to evil, even if only a little bit. This for most Christians simply will not do. Thus he is postulated as omni-benevolent, whether or not it's in the bible, for the simple expedient of ruling out the possibility that God has committed evil acts. This meaning of omni-benevolent is sufficient to restore order to the riddle.