Calvinist theodicy: God is not guilty for decreed sin because he is perfect goodness; skeptical theism is the strongest available path for Calvinists

Mike does not directly endorse the ends-justify-the-means framing. His response (as a non-Calvinist imagining what a Calvinist should say): God cannot be guilty because God IS goodness — he is perfect by nature, not by conformity to some external standard. On this side of heaven we may not be able to explain why he decreed certain things, and we don't need to. The best theodicy path for Calvinists is skeptical theism — the view that we are not epistemically positioned to judge whether God had good reasons for allowing/decreeing evil, and that demanding such an explanation reflects human arrogance. Mike recently addressed this in a video on his top atheist arguments against God. Skeptical theism is technically not a theodicy (not an explanation) but a challenge to the demand for one.