Cool thoughts alecforbes and Cindy 
Rather than addressing individual points, I think it might be easier if I just throw in my 2c and see what can be made of it, perhaps by doing so I’ll respond to some of your concerns alec:
God created the universe. Being utterly good this creation was constrained by His nature: it had to be inherently good itself, and this means that it could not include the direct creation of evil (like satan) or severe suffering and the like. The reason for a physical world was to provide a shared medium of relationality - a shared space where free willed beings, including God Himself, could develop relationship. However, it should be noted that the possibility of non-God is the logical ramification of God Himself: if x exists, there is always the logical possibility of non-x. Simply by allowing ‘other’ to be, God was taking a risk (unless He simply predestinated all things - which has a whole host of moral issues).
Freewill is intrinsically good, but it’s creation/allowance meant that God had to self-limit (kenosis?) to allow for genuine ‘other’ (the gift of freedom had to be meaningful and irrevocable - thus carry risk), and the shared medium (our universe) had to be to some degree intractable (to permit certain virtues, like patience and co-operation, and to make relationships equal). [On a purely speculative side-note, if creation flowed from God’s nature then I suspect there never was a time when creation was not, that prior to space-time there was no time, that God and creation might be chronologically, though not causally, co-existent - but at this point my brain melts].
At this point my cosmic-warfare model kicks in. God, being good, actualised a universe where control for its physical laws and self-unfolding nature was, in part, given over, delegated, to others (angels). God, being good, works through empowerment, participation, co-operation and servant-leadership. So there was a universe with embedded self-unfolding principles within it (creation coming at the edge of chaos) and creatively governed by permanently free-willed, irrevocably empowered angelic ‘others’. Allowing meaningful freedom by less than perfect beings was, of course, a risk – and God obviously knew that things could go extremely pear-shaped. But, being good He had to take this risk, and yet, also being good, He could not have taken too great a risk (it must have been more likely that the angels would have done a good job than not and there could be no chance of irredeemable extreme evil, like damnation or universe destruction); must have had a contingency plan (God was sure of His own power and wisdom to turn any evil into eventual greater good); and, being good, He could not have actualised a state of affairs where He was guaranteeing evil and suffering, either by decree or foreknowledge.
Of course, some (and, perhaps, this is a fluid and still continuing state of affairs) of the angelic beings fell, rebelled, chose evil, made poor (or incompetent) decisions etc. Thus was a wholly good universe made less than perfect – the rest of the story is one of battle: a kenotically self-limited God (to see that He is self-limited just ask ‘Can He change the past?’) versus irrevocably empowered angels. God tames the sea; God pierces the gliding serpent; God fights Leviathan etc. The devil messes with the partly intractable medium (physical universe) to bring about non- (or anti-) God, with its inevitable suffering, while God continues to move to subvert and redeem suffering. The devil introduces the red-in-tooth-and-claw element to nature, God uses that to make wondrous and beautiful creatures. Evolution is what the struggle between good and evil looks like: amazing beauty and wisdom, yet also hideous suffering and ugliness.
At some point, there is humanity. Of course, even though all this is a genuine struggle for God (He embodies certain virtues like fortitude, sacrifice, love in the face of evil, intelligence, creativity – the kind of things you can’t get with a scripted puppet-show or with meticulous foreknowledge) He always retained enough power and wisdom to bring about His good purposes – and indeed, even utilize the very tools of evil to bring about an even greater good (one that couldn’t have existed without evil, even though He never chose the evil Himself).
Death and suffering is what gave God the ability to crucify Himself as a sacrifice for the good of creation (If the evil powers had known what they were doing …) – God uses the very weapons of the enemy against him; God subverts evil (like He did in the creation accounts, the OT laws, human history etc) to make the even greater good. For now we see the true depths of God’s nature in the cross – and it this revelation that will eventually drag all beings to Him (universal reconciliation).
And so, in the end as at the beginning, there will be a perfectly good universe with a degree of intractability for us to explore and journey into and grow in, moving ever closer to God, forever and ever … Only this time, having now exhausted the potential for evil and suffering, those things will never be nor have the possibility of being actualised.
(which I was sure was going to happen when taking philosophy in college) The author, as far as I can tell is a biochemist and not a philosopher.
