Theodicy is the attempt to vindicate the justice, goodness, and power of God in the face of the existence of evil and suffering—to answer the ancient problem that if God is wholly good He would prevent evil, and if wholly powerful He could, yet evil exists. The term was coined by Leibniz, but the question is as old as Job. Scripture does not approach the matter as if God were a defendant in the dock of human reason; rather, it humbles the questioner and supplies the materials for a faithful answer. It affirms without flinching that God is absolutely sovereign—He works all things after the counsel of His will, and evil does not escape His decree—and at the same time absolutely holy—He is not the author of sin, cannot be tempted with evil, and is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. It locates the origin of moral evil in the free, culpable rebellion of creatures, angelic and human, not in God. It teaches that God permits evil for wise and good ends He does not always disclose, overruling it for greater good—the supreme instance being the cross, the worst evil ever committed, ordained for the greatest good ever accomplished. It points to the final judgment, when every wrong will be righted and God’s justice fully vindicated, and to the new creation, where evil is abolished forever. And it answers the suffering saint not chiefly with a syllogism but with a Person: God Himself, in Christ, entered the world’s suffering and bore its evil. The biblical theodicy thus refuses both the denial of God’s sovereignty (to spare His goodness) and the denial of His goodness (to preserve His power), holding that the Judge of all the earth shall do right, even where His ways are past finding out.