God can freely choose to do anything that is in harmony with His nature. God does not, however, have the free-will choice to choose to do an act that runs contrary to His nature. For instance, God cannot choose to steal because stealing goes against His moral laws (the Ten Commandments).
Well, if God created Adam with a nature to desire good, then how was it possible that he performed an act contrary to his nature?
But if he couldn’t have chosen otherwise then he really doesn’t have free will. (Human beings apparently have a capacity that God does not.)
You don’t have to choose it-or even just be able to choose it-to know it. God knows everything so if evil existed, even only as an absence or diminishment of the good He created, He would know it. Man OTOH, was created innocent, himself a good part of creation, and with no need or reason to know evil.
Because any created being necessarily lacks the perfection of God. Combine that less-than-perfection with sentience, rationality, and free will and the possibility of wrong choice is inevitable.
That is no correct. Creation is perfectly balanced since it can sustain itself. The good and evil also fully integrated in creation otherwise we could neither experience them nor perform them. Thus God did evil and good in act creation.
Alright. What does this mean, " Creation is perfectly balanced since it can sustain itself."?
It means that there is a perfect balance between good and evil otherwise that would bias our beings hence our action.
God does not have the capacity to choose evil because he is omnibenevolent. A being who is perfectly good, by definition, cannot have the capacity to be not good in even the tiniest manner. Only beings who are not perfectly good, such as angels and humans, have the capacity to be not good.
When we describe the free will of God, I think it’s important to realize that we are beginning with God as the standard and not human beings. If we begin with human beings as the standard of what is good, what is evil, or even what is free will, then we may unintentionally deviate from what is true. Because if we are to describe free will strictly from the human point of view, which allows choices to be freely made between good and evil, then, according to that point of view, God would be without free will. But since God is perfect and therefore cannot choose evil, God’s free-will choices must work in perfect accordance with all His attributes. Consequently, God has the freedom to choose to do anything that is in agreement with His perfect nature.
You evaded my question.Counterpoint:
When we describe the free will of God, I think it’s important to realize that we are beginning with God as the standard and not human beings. If we begin with human beings as the standard of what is good, what is evil, or even what is free will, then we may unintentionally deviate from what is true. Because if we are to describe free will strictly from the human point of view, which allows choices to be freely made between good and evil, then, according to that point of view, God would be without free will. But since God is perfect and therefore cannot choose evil, God’s free-will choices must work in perfect accordance with all His attributes. Consequently, God has the freedom to choose to do anything that is in agreement with His perfect nature.
If God created us in such a way that it is inevitable (your word, not mine) that we will choose evil, then why does he hold us accountable? Isn’t creator responsible for creating this “inevitability?”
I said free will in created beings made the possibility of sin inevitable. He apparently values our freedom-and the better and better choices we can come to make with that freedom, and the greater and greater justice this can produce in us, enough to endure the bad choices, knowing that the bad choices, whether our own or others, can help us learn, the hard way, not to embrace or make them again. We’re here to learn to detest evil, and run to the good, having experienced-or known-both. As it is we’re often still attracted to less than savory behavior and decisions-and to blame God for them is to cower from accepting our own moral responsibility. God deemed that our existence-even in this world messed up by sin-is worth it. I agree, especially in light of what He promises in the end.
His point is to take your point to contradiction as you notice. It is contrary because the we accept that God is good so how God could create something which can do evil accepting that that is God who is omnipotence, not us.
Certainly.
And where did this extra knowledge come from?Certainly.
"Can God create a rock so heavy He cannot carry it?"Questions: