who I guess you're defining as pre-Christian?

Classical theism is pre-Christian but also heavily influenced Christianity: Thomas Aquinas is the most notable Aristotelians in the Catholic world.

But how would a classical theist...apply this concept of omnipotence to the usual set-up requiring a theodicy? 

I think how goodness and God are tied together in classical theism is quite beautiful (even if it is false); as it sees God as goodness itself from which all other things flow. In modern times, especially in protestantism, we see morality being used in a moral non-naturalist sense where goodness is a property thing’s have akin to monetary value instead of akin to roundness. Consequently, they are incapable of giving an account of how anything is really good because they must seek some external source to anything that attributes that supervenient property of goodness on to it (like a person attributes a value of $10 to a cup); and this leads them to have to special plead that God just makes up what is good as the Divine Arbiter.

In classical theism, on the other hand, goodness is the equality of a thing’s essence and esse; and so goodness is innate and natural to the thing in question (like having the property of hardness, roundness, etc.). This means that a thing is perfectly good when it is perfectly united in being and essence—in whatness and thatness. Absolute unity is, then, perfect goodness; and this absolute unity can only happen in subsistent Being itself. Why? Because anything which gets its being derivatively from something else—even its own parts—is has at least one aspect of its being which is not entail by its essence: namely, its being. This means that no contingent being can be perfectly good because it cannot be perfectly united in essence and existence (since its very existence is not a part of its essence). The only being which would have being intrinsically is Being itself; and so a perfectly good being would be Being itself, which is absolutely unified with itself and perfectly self-harmonious. This is also why the more being a thing has the better it is; because the more being it has the more its essence and existence are united (viz., the more realize it is at what it is)(e.g., a car without wheels isn’t as good as a car with wheels). Likewise, absolute unity requires absolute simplicity because if the being has parts then it does not have being intrinsically (for it depends on those parts to exist). This is what God is: He is the uniquely perfectly good being, which is the ipsum ens subsistens that is absolutely self-unified, self-harmonious, pure being, and purely simple.

When the questioner asks why God did not create a world without (or merely with less) suffering, this request doesn't seem to have anything to do with what is metaphysically possible, or what would be beyond "innate" power.

This assumes that it would have been better for their to be less suffering at the cost of the natural world in which we live now; and I am not sure why that would be the case. Again, this assumes that God has a magical power to create a world which is better than the one we have because we have this intuition that suffering is bad and that we can conceive of a world without it; but this confuses metaphysical possibility with conceivability.

This isn’t true for classical theism simpliciter, but my flavor of it would say that a completely actualized and pure intellect would always have to pick the best option. This is because it has to have full knowledge of everything that is real and what could exist due to lacking nothing at what it is (which is an intellect); and the nature of an intellect is that it always wills what it perceives as best; and what this being, since it has perfect knowledge, perceives as best is what is best; and it has unrestrained power to will what it perceives as best (which would be what is best in this case). This means that the world which was created, in its entirety, must be the best out of the options that could have been out of necessity.

What is best is a creation perfectly ordered towards what is perfectly good; which is God Himself. So whatever may be contained in God’s creation must have been, at least prior to any Great Fall, perfectly ordered towards Himself (which is perfect unity, communion of persons, complementary natures, etc.).

I'm glad to be considered your friend :smile: but . . . have you mistaken me for another TPFer? I don't think we've conversed before. If I've forgotten, my apologies.

No worries: maybe I am mistaking you for someone else.

The cost of this move, however, is that God no longer has alternative possibilities or deliberative choice in the ordinary sense. A purely actual, necessary being cannot do otherwise than it does. As a result, moral predicates such as responsibility, permission, or justification apply only analogically, not literally.

This is a very good observation, and I just happened to explain this in detail to another gentlemen; so let me quote that here:

This assumes that it would have been better for their to be less suffering at the cost of the natural world in which we live now; and I am not sure why that would be the case. Again, this assumes that God has a magical power to create a world which is better than the one we have because we have this intuition that suffering is bad and that we can conceive of a world without it; but this confuses metaphysical possibility with conceivability.

This isn’t true for classical theism simpliciter, but my flavor of it would say that a completely actualized and pure intellect would always have to pick the best option. This is because it has to have full knowledge of everything that is real and what could exist due to lacking nothing at what it is (which is an intellect); and the nature of an intellect is that it always wills what it perceives as best; and what this being, since it has perfect knowledge, perceives as best is what is best; and it has unrestrained power to will what it perceives as best (which would be what is best in this case). This means that the world which was created, in its entirety, must be the best out of the options that could have been out of necessity.

What is best is a creation perfectly ordered towards what is perfectly good; which is God Himself. So whatever may be contained in God’s creation must have been, at least prior to any Great Fall, perfectly ordered towards Himself (which is perfect unity, communion of persons, complementary natures, etc.).

The point is that God necessarily freely chooses what is best; and this is unique to God because there is nothing the same as Him in His creation. The problem is that your view thinks He just necessarily chooses (without freedom); and this assumes a ‘freedom of indifference’ metaphysic of freedom (where freedom is fundamentally about being able to choose from options). Whereas, on the other hand, classical theism holds the ‘freedom for excellence’ view (which is that freedom is fundamentally about being in a state of being most conducive to flourishing at what kind of thing you are). In FFE, one can freely choose option, e.g., A when A was the only option they could choose from; and this is not possible in FOI. In FOI, God is uniquely the kind of being that is absolutely unfree because He has no option to choose otherwise like we do; whereas in FFE, God is uniquely the kind of being with absolute freedom because He can will in accord with reason with perfect knowledge uninhibited by anything external to Himself as pure act of thought (and this is what is most conducive of a state of being for an intellect to be an intellect).

In that sense, classical theism preserves internal coherence by stepping outside the moral framework that gives rise to the problem of evil, rather than resolving it within that framework

But this isn’t true given your critique above. All your critique would show, at best, is that God has no freedom; but God, according to your concession of classical theism (for the sake of your point), would be perfectly good still and consequently would create in a perfectly good way.

This assumes that it would have been better for their to be less suffering at the cost of the natural world in which we live now; and I am not sure why that would be the case. — Bob Ross

But not to assume it is to assume something much harder to swallow -- that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds, so good that not even God could make it any better. You acknowledge this, on behalf of classical theism. How would one go on to argue which of the two assumptions is more likely? I don't know if there's a "likely-ometer" we can employ! But in favor of the first assumption, it's hard to disagree with the idea that a world without the suffering of my neighbor's child wouldn't be a better world; or, if that would upset some cosmic balance, then the next suffering child, or the next, or the next . . . etc. Surely just one could have been spared? There are so many to choose among! And while we're at it, maybe the Holocaust? And the Rwandan genocide? And . . .etc. Again, we're spoiled for choice. So much horror and suffering is all necessary?

Against the second assumption, we'd have to recalibrate all our moral and imaginative language in order to consider our current world "the best". It could only mean that God's idea of the best doesn't remotely resemble what a human would mean. And if that's the case, there's not much point in even talking about God using human attributes like goodness.

we have this intuition that suffering is bad and that we can conceive of a world without it — Bob Ross

No, that's too broad-brush. We have the intuition that a great deal of suffering is bad and that we can conceive of a world without at least some of it. If that intuition's incorrect, then see above: We are so in the dark about matters of good and bad, and of what is possible, that we might as well stop trying to talk about it.

There are, by the way, other defenses of the ways of God that don't back us into this corner, as you of course know.