Adam and Eve vs. Bob and Sue

[opusAquinas]

If God knew Adam and Eve would sin why not create Bob and Sue instead who would not sin?

 

[jochoa]

If God knew Adam and Eve would sin why not create Bob and Sue instead who would not sin?

Because there is no need to create a sinless Bob, given God would become sinless man as Jesus. There is however the creation of sinless woman, but her name is Mary, not Sue.

Interesting question! I look forward to further discussion!

 

[TheSurvivor]

Would not Bob and Sue sin as well? Adam and Eve were sinless until they chose to sin.
If Bob an Sue can not sin they are not free and thus cannot love.

God Bless

 

[Ion]

If God knew Adam and Eve would sin why not create Bob and Sue instead who would not sin?

Because there was nothing wrong with Adam and Eve. After giving them life would have been wrong to take it away without reason, from the Adam and Eve point of view. The sin brings the death penalty but they have not yet sinned.

 

[Ion]

By the way, are Bob and Sue Aramaic names?

 

[Arandur]

Isn’t this the “why didn’t God create robots” question? Free will is required for love. And while it was possible for Adam and Eve not to sin, perhaps the Incarnation and Redemption brought about such an even greater good that to allow the finite evil in order to generate this infinite good was “worth it.”

 

[opusAquinas]

Ok everyone lets clarify:

Bob and Sue have free will too!
He could have created a man and a woman who chose freely not to sin.
He knew Adam and Eve would sin after all.
So instead of making them He could have made Bob and Sue.
So why did He not?

 

[Sparkythedog]

Ok everyone lets clarify:

Bob and Sue have free will too!
He could have created a man and a woman who chose freely not to sin.
He knew Adam and Eve would sin after all.
So instead of making them He could have made Bob and Sue.
So why did He not?

If someone has definitive knowledge that you will or will not do something in the future, do you really have free will? I don’t think so.

This speaks to God’s omniscience. If God can know in advance and for certain that Adam and Eve will fall, then A&E can do nothing but play out their predetermined storyline.

If A&E have a true choice, then God cannot know the outcome of that choice. But that limits God’s knowledge and eliminates his omniscience.

As far as I can see, God cannot have foreknowledge and allow people to have free will. It’s one or the other.

 

[Sparkythedog]

Getting a bit closer to the point of the thread. God cannot preordain that someone make a free choice. That’s a contradictory statement.

 

[opusAquinas]

Getting a bit closer to the point of the thread. God cannot preordain that someone make a free choice. That’s a contradictory statement.

God can know that you are going to sin or not. He knows the future. He exists in eternity understand? Free will and foreknowledge are completely compatible what do you not understand? I know that if I make x, x will under circumstance k1 will willfully sin. Therefore I will instead create person J. J will willfully reject sin.

 

[Sparkythedog]

God can know that you are going to sin or not. He knows the future. He exists in eternity understand? Free will and foreknowledge are completely compatible what do you not understand? I know that if I make x, x will under circumstance k1 will willfully sin. Therefore I will instead create person J. J will willfully reject sin.

If God knows I will sin, then my future is already determined. God may not have determined it himself personally, but it is determined none the less.

Here is a thought experiment that I put forward in another thread to explain this:

Imagine God knows you will sin at a certain time and place and relays to you that knowledge. Can you freely choose not to commit the sin that God has said you will commit?

If you can choose not to sin, then you have free will but God is not omniscient because his prediction was wrong.

If you can’t choose not to sin then God is omniscient but you don’t have free will.

The two are logically irreconcilable without changing the definitions of those words.

 

[Sparkythedog]

If you make person x, and you know that under certain circumstances person x will sin, then person x is just a slave to circumstance. Your example sets up person x as a domino to fall whenever another domino hits them.

Perhaps you have a different definition of free will. My definition is the ability to make a free choice regardless of circumstance.

 

[tonyrey]

If God knows I will sin, then my future is already determined. God may not have determined it himself personally, but it is determined none the less.

Here is a thought experiment that I put forward in another thread to explain this:

Imagine God knows you will sin at a certain time and place and relays to you that knowledge. Can you freely choose not to commit the sin that God has said you will commit?

If you can choose not to sin, then you have free will but God is not omniscient because his prediction was wrong.

If you can’t choose not to sin then God is omniscient but you don’t have free will.

The two are logically irreconcilable without changing the definitions of those words.

The onus is on you to explain** the precise mechanism** by which knowledge compels another person to act in a specific way. It is not self-evident that information is coercive!

 

[Partinobodycula]

If someone has definitive knowledge that you will or will not do something in the future, do you really have free will? I don’t think so.

You have definitive knowledge of what others have done in the past, but this doesn’t mean that people in the past lacked free will. They could have chosen to do otherwise, they simply didn’t. Your knowledge of their choices doesn’t negate the fact that they made those choices of their own free will. Likewise God’s knowledge of a person’s future choices doesn’t negate the fact that they also make those choices of their own free will. Foreknowledge is a matter of perspective, to you it may be the future, but to God it may be the past. Thus God’s knowledge of past events doesn’t constitute causation, or predetermination of those events. God’s knowledge of the future is in some manner equitable to your knowledge of the past. Neither serves to negate free will.

You know what people have done, but this doesn’t mean that they had no choice in the matter.

 

[Sparkythedog]

The onus is on you to explain** the precise mechanism** by which knowledge compels another person to act in a specific way. It is not self-evident that information is coercive!

I explained this in the post you just responded to. It is not that information or knowledge is coercive, the contradiction is in the definitions of omniscience and free will.

Read again the scenario that I posted. How would you reconcile that thought experiment?

 

[Sparkythedog]

You have definitive knowledge of what others have done in the past, but this doesn’t mean that people in the past lacked free will. They could have chosen to do otherwise, they simply didn’t. Your knowledge of their choices doesn’t negate the fact that they made those choices of their own free will. Likewise God’s knowledge of a person’s future choices doesn’t negate the fact that they also make those choices of their own free will. Foreknowledge is a matter of perspective, to you it may be the future, but to God it may be the past. Thus God’s knowledge of past events doesn’t constitute causation, or predetermination of those events. God’s knowledge of the future is in some manner equitable to your knowledge of the past. Neither serves to negate free will.

You know what people have done, but this doesn’t mean that they had no choice in the matter.

I would be inclined to agree with you if the God you were describing was a hands off deistic God who cannot interact with our world. (though I see contradictions there too) But the God you describe interacts with our reality and can make predictions from our temporal point of view.

Take a look at the thought experiment I proposed in the post you responded to. How would you reconcile those contradictions?

 

[Arandur]

You have definitive knowledge of what others have done in the past, but this doesn’t mean that people in the past lacked free will. They could have chosen to do otherwise, they simply didn’t. Your knowledge of their choices doesn’t negate the fact that they made those choices of their own free will. Likewise God’s knowledge of a person’s future choices doesn’t negate the fact that they also make those choices of their own free will. Foreknowledge is a matter of perspective, to you it may be the future, but to God it may be the past. Thus God’s knowledge of past events doesn’t constitute causation, or predetermination of those events. God’s knowledge of the future is in some manner equitable to your knowledge of the past. Neither serves to negate free will.

You know what people have done, but this doesn’t mean that they had no choice in the matter.

This. All things are in the present to God–He sees them as they are happening. Thus he knows what you’re doing without having to influence or be responsible for it; there is therefore no conflict between free will and omniscience.

There are a couple of other interesting points brought up in this thread, however, with regard to the challenge to the tension among God’s omni-benevolence, His omniscience, and his omnipotence.

1. Can God create a free willed being in such a way as to know that they will not sin?
2. What is the role of pre-valent Grace (such as in Mary’s Immaculate Conception)?
3. I don’t think so. When God creates a free-willed being, I think it’s kind of a “roll of the dice,” if you will. He must give the being an opportunity to choose. Even if He sees that choice as it happens. This must be true of both angels (who seem to have that choice at the moment of their creation, according to St. Thomas, IIRC) and humans. But then does God know prior to the creation of that being? Of this, I’m actually not sure. If He sees everything in an eternal “present,” He would see actions/choices as they happen, but before a creature exists, can there even be a “present” for it? If not, then one can say that omniscience is NOT violated by not “knowing” what that creature will do, because there is nothing yet to know until after the creature is created. Hence, the “roll of the dice” upon the creation of every free-willed creature.

Alternately, if there IS something for God to know, then God knows it, and God should decline to create the creature who would choose eternally against Him–unless He can bring greater good from the evil done by that creature, at least for the sake of other creatures. This would seem to reconcile the evil and make it good, ultimately, (though admittedly with the exception of the creature that freely chose to remain separated from God–which privation is still a “good” of a sorts to the creature, because the creature still exists when it would otherwise not, and chose what it wanted, both of which are still “goods” despite being incomplete goods). **Thus omni-benevolence is maintained by **the existence of creatures at all, the granting of the freely-chosen consequences of their choices, and of greater ultimate good.

However, while I think this holds true, I still think it is just a supporting fact; it is not necessary to assume that God’s omniscience is violated by not “knowing” what a creature will do prior to its creation. The reason? As alluded to before, if God has even conceived of a creature, hasn’t He already in an essential sense created it? Thus there is nothing to know prior to God conceiving of a creature. Once He conceives of it, then He can know whether it will choose for or against Him, or choose sin but still repent and come back to Him–but at this point, He cannot “decline to create” the creature, because in the act of conceiving it, He has already in a sense created it. To say that you can unmake a creation, if omniscience still holds, is a contradictory and thus nonsensical statement.

Therefore, though God does not “know” before creation (even conceiving the plan of) of a creature what it will do, because there is nothing TO know yet, His omniscience is preserved. And even the choice to create a creature with the capacity to choose either way is good, because even a negative choice still bears good from the good of existence, choice, and greater good God can make of it for others; this preserves His omni-benevolence.

And lastly, God’s omnipotence is preserved when all this is properly understood, because of two often-overlooked reasons: the law of non-contradiction (God “cannot create a rock so big that He can’t move it” because this is a silly nonsensical, contradictory statement, just as knowing something before there is anything to know or completely unmaking something already made and known are contradictory) and the reality of God as absolute (whatever God does is by definition “Good;” He is the constant to which all of our definitions are relative; e.g. if He had defined 2+2=5, that would be the Truth, and we would have no perception otherwise).

 

[Arandur]

1. This one is more interesting. The nearest analogy to pre-valent grace preventing sin but still being “saving” that I know of is the difference between helping someone out of a pit (of sin) and keeping someone from falling into the pit. In both instances, the person is saved (from the pit/from sin). If this is what God did with Mary, and preserved her from sin for her whole life, why didn’t He do this with Adam and Eve, or with every last one of is for that matter?

Assuming that He is omnipotent and that He DID do this means that we know that it does preserve free will to do so and it IS possible (not a contradiction of terms; i.e., not “non-sense”). So why didn’t/doesn’t He do it for others?

It seems like a very good thing, and appeals strongly to our sense of justice and mercy, to the extent that we would want to require this of God for Him to be omni-benevolent.

This avenue, I think takes away the shelter I found earlier in God’s “roll of the dice,” because once He has “rolled,” He could still, by the Marian example, intervene to prevent sin. Although we don’t know whether it would be possible to preserve this way from the effects of sin, since Mary was still subject to the human condition.

I will have to think more on this, but for now I think I fall back on God’s omni-benevolence being preserved by the fact that He can (through the powers of omniscience and omnipotence) both bring about greater good from what sin/evil He allows to happen, and still leaves intact the goods of existence and choice even for those who choose evil.

 

[Arandur]

One additional thing point 2 brings up:
3. Similar to God’s pre-valent grace acting on Mary to preserve her from sin, so, too, do we believe that once in Heaven, in the Beatific Vision, sin is no longer possible. So why are we all not just granted the Beatific Vision to start with?

To this my main answer is also the same as before (greater good and limited good still possible by allowing the privation of evil). Also, the situation may be different because the Beatific Vision may not be possible without having first allowed some possibility of evil and then Redemption and Adoption through the Incarnation. This would explain why Adam and Eve “walked with God” in the Garden, but had not the sufficient Beatific Vision to prevent their sin (they had not yet “eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”). Only after the Redemption is the Beatific Vision possible.

The exception to this seems to be the Angels, who have no Redemptive Salvation as we know it. There the difference seems to be time and eternity, according (IIRC) to Aquinas. For St. Thomas puts the choice to the Angels as an eternal one at the moment of creation, without the option of change because they are not “in time” like we are. Pre-valent grace may not operate outside of time, and the Beatific Vision may not be possible IN time.

More to think on there.

Thanks for the thought experiment. Sorry for the length.

 

[sw85]

Ok everyone lets clarify:

Bob and Sue have free will too!
He could have created a man and a woman who chose freely not to sin.
He knew Adam and Eve would sin after all.
So instead of making them He could have made Bob and Sue.
So why did He not?

Because the choice would not be free if he would decide in advance to have unmade it.

God wants us not to sin but this is not the only thing he wants.