 If the sort of view outlined above is correct, there is ample reason for God to create a universe in which there is moral evil, for only through the presence of moral evil is it possible for creatures like us to develop a legitimate moral identity, and make an informed and responsible choice to accept or reject God’s offer of friendship with us. It is important to see that on such a view, moral evil is not treated as a causal means to the good of our having friendship with God. If that were so, opponents could justly object that God could simply have created us in such friendship from the start, and the defense would fail. Rather, the good on which this kind of theodicy is based is a free and informed choice that can only be made from a position of sinfulness. Rather than constituting a causal means to our establishing our own stance toward God, sin is an indispensable part of the process — something without which a legitimate choice for or against God’s friendship is not just causally but conceptually impossible. But that is not all. In the case of those who choose in God’s favor, at least, moral evil is defeated in that it is bound up in a total state of affairs that counts as a far greater good, in which the evil is addressed and overcome. The very autonomy that the sinner once insisted upon is surrendered to God, thus becoming the foundation for a new understanding and a richer relationship, in which one is able to act as an informed and wholehearted participant in the divine enterprise of working good. Sin does not function as a causal means in this process, nor is it simply overbalanced by some other good with which it coexists. It encountered and overcome, through the providential operation of God, as manifested in creaturely freedom.