But the narrator in Gnomon assures us that all citizens understand and accept the Witness'
omnibenevolent surveillance and guidance.
God has free will, which He, being
omnibenevolent, uses only for good.
There are certain parameters that define the argument from evil: God must be assumed to be omnipotent and
omnibenevolent, and one must grant that there is moral, natural, or epistemic evil in the world.
If also
omnibenevolent, much of the cognitive dissonance we dignify with the term "theodicy" emerges.
The mere mention of the concept 'God' (Murray and Rea, 2008:6), and the mind construes an Omnipotent,
Omnibenevolent and Omnipresence entity who created the world ex nihilo.
that God is mandated by his
omnibenevolent nature to always bring about
He is omniscient (all-knowing) and
omnibenevolent (all-good).
Hick makes an appeal to the "positive value of mystery" in justifying suffering: On the one hand, suffering despite an
omnibenevolent deity boggles the mind; on the other hand, it brings out character traits of "sympathy" and "compassionate self-sacrifice" (Hick, 2010: 335-6).
One of the essential teachings of Judaism is the belief that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and
omnibenevolent. If God were truly omniscient, or "all-knowing," He surely must have been aware of the imminent death of eleven million human beings, six million of which were his chosen people.
But possessing maximal attributes entails contradictions: God must be omnipotent but also, because
omnibenevolent, unable to do certain things.
Eventually Christians would discover that our omnipotent and
omnibenevolent God allows evil and cannot directly cause it, and thus we now distinguish between God's active will and his permissive will.
Theodicy is the attempt to reconcile the
omnibenevolent God with evil and suffering in the world and is a rather crucial part of how we engage with our spiritual life.