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A world more full of weeping than [we] can understand.” David O’Connor quotes this line from Yeats in the first sentence of his book on God and the problem of evil. His conclusion at the end of the book is that a world with both God and evil cannot be understood. One of the terms has to go, and it is God.

The problem of evil has plagued Christians for centuries. It has led Augustine to suggest the free-will defense, Hume to doubt God’s existence, thoughtful Christians to question their faith and a host of philosophical theologians to develop various permutations allowing God to coexist with evil. But as Notre Dame professor and Catholic priest David Burrell recognizes, humans have never solved the problem of evil completely.