Now God can create free creatures, but He can't
cause or
determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right
freely. To create creatures capable of
moral good,
therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't
give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time
prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the
free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom;
this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes
go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against
His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral
evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1974
