The Devil is a fallen Angel. All things created were created good. Evil is a privation of that good. God did not create sin. Sin is a misuse of a good that has been created. A knife can be used to cure or to kill.
In the beginning there was nothing. He created everything.
Yes, He did create everything. Sin, nor evil, are things they are privations. You cannot create a privation or a negative. They are misuses caused by creatures.
By creating a thing you create is absence - let there be light - before there was no darkness because there was no light. Light is something darkness is the lack of light. So before light there was no darkness. There was no thing.
HIs plan was not to make people and force them to go to Heaven. His plan was to create a moral universe with rational creatures who had the freedom to choose or reject Him. You must distiinguish between His active will and passive will. His active will are the things He does, Creation, Miracles, the Incarnation etc. etc. His passive will are the things He allows --man to choose Him or to reject Him.
A better way to understand it is that he makes good come from the evil men commit. He does not create evil he allows it. He allows it for a greater good.
What god are you speaking of? The God of the written word allowed sin to enter, but He is not the author of sin. The Scripture states God temps no one. James 1 verse 23 states the following concerning the subject of God and tempting. “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.”
Along with being merciful God is also just. Forgetting sin is not just. To satisfy Justice the debt had to be paid. To be merciful he became man and paid it. These are not subjective rules God set up. They are part of His being and essence.Not to interrupt the discussion of the nature of evil but…
I too have never understood the necessity of Jesus’s death in order to forgive sins. Inhimthroughher, you did a good job explaining how His death was able to pay an infinite debt within the framework of Christian faith, but I don’t think that it fully explains it.
Why is the payment even necessary?
If someone stole $50 from me I have two options. I can either hold that person in debt until they repay the $50, or I can just forget about it and not worry about getting my money back. If I were a rich man*, I may not care too much about getting the money back. I’d probably be happy so long as the thief were sorry for what he/she did.
It would seem that God is a pretty rich guy. Why is it necessary that he performs this whole stunt of sacrificing himself in order to pay a debt to himself when it could’ve just been truly forgiven and forgotten?
I think that **jonfawkes **is right saying that God created the rules. If the whole rule of sins needing to be paid by sacrifice was created by God, why not change the rule or at least make an exception? It is a rather bizarre rule to start off with…
*I am tempted to now sing “Daidle deedle daidle daidle daidle deedle daidle dum!”
Then to be merciful and just to the thief that took $50 from me, I should write out a check to myself and and let the thief know that I am cashing my own check? Seems like a pretty strange and pointless ritual.
As always analogies are imperfect and break down if depended on too much. The point of the analogy was to give a general idea of the situation.
The most important thing in life is love - and the capacity for love implies free will. Genuine love is the result of choice not compulsion. God created us for love knowing we may abuse that gift but it is a lesser evil than creating us as zombies. **We cannot have everything for nothing. **There is always some price to pay for what we have received…
Here’s my take on it, Tom. God becoming man was a radical transformation of his nature; God, a spiritual being outside of time took on human form – our form – in time. He took on our form although he was entirely God also, and could not act in a way that would contradict God, including the giving up of his earthly life at the hands of worldly evil, all without condemning those who rejected him. In doing so, the God-man creates a way for us to be reconciled with God, a way that requires a *radical transformation of our nature *too, to embrace humility and obedience in following the path of Christ. In following this path, we are crucified with him, rise with him, and ascend with him.
It is important to remember that the nature of God did not change. He is still fully God, He assumed a human nature, given through the Blessed Virgin Mary. The two natures, God and Man, were united in the person of God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. (Two natures, one person. A person is a “who” a nature is a “what”) The human nature of Christ really suffered and died, (His soul seperated from His body) because of its union with the Divine nature in the Divine person, His suffering had infinite value and he was able to pay the debt of sin. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit He gave us we are able to be united with Him through Sacramental Grace, this does transform us and makes us part of Hid mystical body. As part of His mystical body we are required to submit ourselves to the head which is Him. We must live in harmony and in coordination with the end of the body. It is a radical way of life we are called to live. We are to offer Christ our human nature and unite ourselves to his person allowing Him to live through us similar to the Incarnation.
Try reading the NT; you will learn a lot from God Himself there on this subject and no i am not being sarcastic; I’m serious.
Have you ever consulted Jesus on this “bolded” issue shown above? He said very simply “I am the Way, the truth and Life; NO ONE comes to the Father except through ME”; He means no one, not you, not I, Not peter, Paul, Mark, Luke or James & not Mary; no one. isn’t that ironic - God has a sense of humor; Jesus comes into our human earthly world as a man through Mary and she cannot get to the Father, where He came from but through Him. Why is that? Because Jesus is both the judge and the justifier and earned the title of Justifier because He is the only one with enough value to drink that cup of wrath and survive unlike most of the world and can impute His righteousness to whom ever He wants and there is not a darn thing a man or woman can do about that; who can resist His will? No one.
So yes, he creates evil. HE created evil only to save us from evil.
Evil is a privation and lacks perfection and being. Therefore evil is not created nor can it be created. You are not making any sense. Please define evil in the way you are using it.