If Romans 9 is right and God hardens whom he wills, the free will defense isn’t incomplete, it’s false. How can both be “fair ways to see it” when they contradict each other on the point at issue?

The tension is real and it is not hidden here. Two things can be said. A Calvinist does not abandon the problem of evil; they answer it differently, by appeal to God’s greater purposes and the reality of secondary causes, and that answer has its own long tradition. And most Christian readings, including many Reformed ones, hold that Romans 9 is about God’s freedom in election and Deuteronomy 30 is about human accountability, and that Scripture affirms both without explaining how they fit. Both are fair ways to see it is not a shrug; it is a report that Christians have held either answer to evil, and that neither has been abandoned.