o see truly, pain and sin
are only additional sources of aesthetic interest in a great
world-drama produced for his own entertainment by a Deity not
anthropomorphic enough to love but still anthropomorphic enough to be
amused.

I shall be told no doubt that this is limiting God. A human being may,
it will be urged, without loss of goodness, do things in themselves
evil, as a means to a greater good: as a surgeon, he may cause
excruciating pain; as a statesman or a soldier, he may doom thousands
to a cruel death; as a wise administrator of the poor law, he may
refuse to relieve much suffering, in order that he may not cause more
suffering. But this is because his power is limited; he has to work
upon a world which has a nature of its own independent of his volition.
To apply the same explanation to the evil which God causes, is to make
Him finite instead of Infinite, limited in power instead of Omnipotent.
Now in a sense I admit that this is so. I am not wedded to the words
'Infinite' or 'Omnipotent.' But I would protest against a persistent
misrepresentation of the point of view which I defend. It is suggested
that the limit to the power of God must necessarily spring from the
existence of some other thing or being outside of Him, not created by
Him or under His {82} control. I must protest that that is not so.
Everybody admits that God cannot change the past; few Philosophers
consider it necessary to maintain that God could construct triangles
with their angles not together equal to two right angles, or think it
any derogation from his Omnipotence to say that He could not make the
sum of two and two to be other than four. Few Theologians push their
idea of Freewill so far as to insist that God could will Himself to be
unjust or unloving, or that, being just and loving, he could do unjust
or unloving acts. There are necessities to which even God must submit.
But they are not imposed upon Him from without: they are parts of His
own essential nature. The limitation by which God cannot attain His
ends without causing some evil is a limitation of exactly the same
nature. If you say that it is no limitation of God not to be able to
change the past, for the thing is really unmeaning, then I submit that
in the same way it may be no limitation that He should not be able to
evolve highly organized beings without a struggle for existence, or to
train human beings in unselfishness without allowing the existence both
of