Thursday 28 January 2010

The Best Possible World

God is therefore not the author of essences in so far as they are only possibilities. But there is nothing actual to which he has not decreed and given existence; and he has permitted evil because it is involved in the best plan existing in the region of possibles, a plan which supreme wisdom could not fail to choose. This notion satisfies at once the wisdom, the power and the goodness of God, and yet leaves a way open for the entrance of evil.

- G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." - Genesis 50:20 (NIV)

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