"If there is a God and if ire is good, why does he allow so much suffering and evil?" Christians are asked this question too often to beable to shirk the issue or to evade answering by denying that the question has any meaning. This book, while avoiding glib answers, outlines the way in which evil fits into the scheme of Christian redemption. The first part surveys the ways in which men have tried to account for suffering and evil from the earliest times, from the myth of Prometheus through the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, the Buddhist conception of evil as activity and the long-lived Gnostic idea of matter as evil in itself, down to the present-day belief of Communists that evil is the result of an unjust organization of society. Part two examines the Old Testament notions of evil: and the third part describes the way in which Christ's suffering and death reveal God's concern for his creature. The final part discusses the theology of evil in the writing of the Fathers, Augustine, Aquinas and later theologians, together with the prectical ways in which Christians can use their, awareness of evil to draw closer to God and, paradoxically, to acknowledge more deeply his infinite love.