Unbeknown
Senior Moderator
That "problem" is a problem - not to the argument that "the Universe has a Creator" - but only, to the arguments about current mainstream Christian conception of God.
It appears that DBH is not the only Christian philosopher who struggles with the issue - one far greater than him - C.S. Lewis - had a very hard time reconciling his Christian understanding of the Attributes of God with observed reality - personal and universal both.
Some papers to peruse:
1. The Problem of Evil - C.S. Lewis Speaks to Life’s Most Difficult Questions (pro)
2. Narrating Pain: C.S. Lewis and the Problem of Evil (pro)
3. C.S. Lewis and David Hume on the Problem of Evil (neutral)
4. C.S. Lewis, God and the Problem of Evil (critical)
Also by Lewis:
“Son,'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.”
I think we can call this concept the "Erasure of Evil" or the "Undoing of Evil" - where pain is not just compensated for - it is practically unlived.
This concept can be validated by our own Hadith literature (some other day - in sha'Allah).