God created evil

[oldcelt]

There is a problem when the NKJV uses an unqualified term such as “evil”.

Isaiah 45:7 from the RSV:
[7] I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe,
I am the LORD, who do all these things.

From the NAB:
The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity;
I am the Lord who does all these.

Hence the many problems with unqualified interpretation and the confusion of Protestantism.

And you ought to know from your Catholic training that is the reason for the existence of the Church, the Church is how He makes Himself understood.

“[20] First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,
[21] because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”(1 Peter 1:20-21)

One of my problems with the Church. It makes the assumption that intelligent human beings cannot read. Those “qualified” people were trained by other "qualified people, all of whom had a specific agenda. Their interpretation is invalid because they approach the subject with a preconceived notion.
That is one of the most basic research no-nos.

 

[Richca]

Since when is a penalty evil? I know that Aquinas is highly admired, to say the least, on this board, bit I think he is making a major stretch to get the language to conform to his beliefs. It is a common human trait that I’m sure all of us are guilty of at one time or another.

So far as the creature, the Christian God created that creature, and being omniscient, knew that it would be evil. Therefore, He knowingly created evil.

As Aquinas says, evil is the privation or absence of good and he divides evil into penalty or punishment and fault concerning rational creatures. For example, when Adam and Eve transgressed God’s command in the garden of Eden, God punished them and deprived them of the good of sanctifying grace and original holiness and justice, they lost the good of immortality and the exemption from suffering and death, they lost the good of being in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve found themselves deprived of goods that God created them with. This absence or privation of good in a creature which God intended to be there is the evil of penalty. Just as blindness is called an evil because it is a privation of sight in a being that would normally have it. Now God’s just punishments though good in themselves because they are inflicted according to God’s justice which is a good, we experience them as evil because they deprive us of some good or other. However, in this present life, God’s just punishments we may experience due to our sins or the consequences of original sin are not always considered evil simply but relatively as Aquinas says because they are normally medicinal in nature and directed to our eternal good for those who are so disposed.

When God creates, He creates being and every being as such is good. Evil is the absence of good and being. That God created evil is a contradiction in terms.

 

[Amandil]

One of my problems with the Church. It makes the assumption that intelligent human beings cannot read.

The history of protestantism is proof that “intelligent” people can’t read; that is to say that they will violate even the most basic rules of hermeneutics.

The New Testament is incomprehensible apart from the Church which it came from, just as the Old Testament is incomprehensible apart from the life and culture of Israel and the ancient Near-east.

Interpretation is the art of finding out what the other person meant by what he/she wrote, not what you mean by his/her words.

oldcelt:

Those “qualified” people were trained by other "qualified people, all of whom had a specific agenda. Their interpretation is invalid because they approach the subject with a preconceived notion.
That is one of the most basic research no-nos.

The problem with your accusation of circular reasoning is that it is the Source of the agenda, who is Jesus, who qualified the men of the Church and gave them the agenda of the salvation of souls.

Secondly, the Church preceded the Bible.

Thirdly, the Bible presupposes the Church; it does not make the Church or serve as its constitution. It serves not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made.

For someone who is supposed to be trained in the Catholic Church you have some severe deficiencies in understanding what it says about itself.

You saying that the Church’s interpretation of the Bible is invalid is like saying that Shakespeare’s interpretation of Hamlet is invalid.

The notion is as funny as it is absurd.

 

[oldcelt]

The history of protestantism is proof that “intelligent” people can’t read; that is to say that they will violate even the most basic rules of hermeneutics.

The New Testament is incomprehensible apart from the Church which it came from, just as the Old Testament is incomprehensible apart from the life and culture of Israel and the ancient Near-east.

Interpretation is the art of finding out what the other person meant by what he/she wrote, not what you mean by his/her words.

The problem with your accusation of circular reasoning is that it is the Source of the agenda, who is Jesus, who qualified the men of the Church and gave them the agenda of the salvation of souls.

Secondly, the Church preceded the Bible.

Thirdly, the Bible presupposes the Church; it does not make the Church or serve as its constitution. It serves not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made.

For someone who is supposed to be trained in the Catholic Church you have some severe deficiencies in understanding what it says about itself.

You saying that the Church’s interpretation of the Bible is invalid is like saying that Shakespeare’s interpretation of Hamlet is invalid.

The notion is as funny as it is absurd.

The bible was created by the early church, correct? Jesus does not specify a particular church, does he?

Nothing that you have mentioned is incomprehensible. BTW, you ad hominems are just showing your desperation. You avoid the real question, and insult another’s training.

My accusation of circular logic is perfectly reasonable based on the written record, and I think you really know it.

 

[Amandil]

The bible was created by the early church, correct? Jesus does not specify a particular church, does he?

In regards to your term “particular church”, I’m not going to cite Ignatius or Irenaeus, for you know full well what they say.

And you know full well that there was only one Church, and you know who was the representative which Christ left in charge of THE Church.

Just as you know who was left in charge of THE Church after him, etc., ad-nauseum.

So lets avoid equivocation of the term, shall we?

oldcelt:

Nothing that you have mentioned is incomprehensible.

Yet you continually misrepresent it. So what exactly does that say?

oldcelt:

BTW, you ad hominems are just showing your desperation. You avoid the real question, and insult another’s training.

Really? What ad-hominems would that be?

If you claim to have training in Catholic teachings, yet you continually misrepresent those teachings and instead put your little spin on them, what precisely am I to make of your misrepresentations?

It is also a common tact to produce a red herring by accusing your objector of attacking you personally.

oldcelt:

My accusation of circular logic is perfectly reasonable based on the written record, and I think you really know it.

So, IOW, your claim is that I’m being dishonest. Pot, meet kettle.

You want to treat the Bible like college-level historical survey or textbook; it doesn’t fit your preconceived framework, so you dismiss it.

If your family had a family biographical history stretching back over 4000 years, it’s going to contain expressions and traditions that if any “historian” came upon it and tried to read it apart from the context of your family, while he may be able to read what is there, he won’t understand it as you or your family understood it, or if he somehow did it would be in only a superficial sense.

The Bible is a family history, and much more since it contains the utterances of God.

So, no, your charge is not reasonable at all. The Church’s interpretation of Scripture is spiracle, not circular.

Outside of the Church, indeed any interpretation is circular, because it is being read through a lens which is alien to the mind through which it was written.

IOW, your interpretation is circular because you read it through your ideological lens(that of a former catholic who apparently holds some animosity against the Church), not some sort of “objective” or intellectually honest or unbiased view.

The bottom line is that you and I can accuse each-other of circular reasoning until we’re blue in the face. But I recognize something that you apparently do not, the Bible does not belong to me to interpret according to my worldview, it belongs to the patrimony of the Church.

So in the same vein neither does any interpretation of Scripture belong to you, and any interpretation you posit for it to be true must in some way identify with that of the Church. If it doesn’t, it’s circular.

It’s no different than those who try to interpret the U.S. Constitution apart from the Founding Fathers and come up with all sorts of absurd notions about what the Constitution supposedly grants or denies.

And you know this as well.

 

[oldcelt]

The history of protestantism is proof that “intelligent” people can’t read; that is to say that they will violate even the most basic rules of hermeneutics.

The New Testament is incomprehensible apart from the Church which it came from, just as the Old Testament is incomprehensible apart from the life and culture of Israel and the ancient Near-east.

Interpretation is the art of finding out what the other person meant by what he/she wrote, not what you mean by his/her words.

The problem with your accusation of circular reasoning is that it is the Source of the agenda, who is Jesus, who qualified the men of the Church and gave them the agenda of the salvation of souls.

Secondly, the Church preceded the Bible.

Thirdly, the Bible presupposes the Church; it does not make the Church or serve as its constitution. It serves not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made.

For someone who is supposed to be trained in the Catholic Church you have some severe deficiencies in understanding what it says about itself.

You saying that the Church’s interpretation of the Bible is invalid is like saying that Shakespeare’s interpretation of Hamlet is invalid.

The notion is as funny as it is absurd.

You are confusing deficiencies for disagreements…and your analogy with Shakespeare doesn’t fly. He wrote Hamlet…the early founders of what would become the Roman Catholic Church did not write the scriptures. They just chose what they wanted from among many writings available.

When you say that the NT is incomprehensible apart from the church you must mean that people arrive different conclusions if they are not under the allure of the Church. People using their own intelligence are quite capable of arriving at their own conclusions.

The notion that Jesus qualified people almost 500 years early is extraordinary and a new one to me.

 

[oldcelt]

As Aquinas says, evil is the privation or absence of good and he divides evil into penalty or punishment and fault concerning rational creatures. For example, when Adam and Eve transgressed God’s command in the garden of Eden, God punished them and deprived them of the good of sanctifying grace and original holiness and justice, they lost the good of immortality and the exemption from suffering and death, they lost the good of being in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve found themselves deprived of goods that God created them with. This absence or privation of good in a creature which God intended to be there is the evil of penalty. Just as blindness is called an evil because it is a privation of sight in a being that would normally have it. Now God’s just punishments though good in themselves because they are inflicted according to God’s justice which is a good, we experience them as evil because they deprive us of some good or other. However, in this present life, **God’s just punishments we may experience due to our sins or the consequences of original sin are not always considered evil simply but relatively as Aquinas says because they are normally medicinal in nature and directed to our eternal good for those who are so disposed.
**

When God creates, He creates being and every being as such is good. Evil is the absence of good and being. That God created evil is a contradiction in terms.

Aquinas conveniently ignores omniscience. This makes his view at very least incomplete.

It is very simple: The Christian God knows EVERYTHING, past, present and future. He knows our fate before we are created. If we are destined to do evil, then God created that evil by creating us.

 

[Amandil]

You are confusing deficiencies for disagreements…and your analogy with Shakespeare doesn’t fly. He wrote Hamlet…the early founders of what would become the Roman Catholic Church did not write the scriptures. They just chose what they wanted from among many writings available.

For someone who professes to be a Deist you sound incredibly like Lorraine Boettner(or at least one of the numerous people who parrot his false history).

But surely you ought to know that his nonsense was debunked half-a-hundred times.

oldcelt:

When you say that the NT is incomprehensible apart from the church you must mean that people arrive different conclusions if they are not under the allure of the Church. People using their own intelligence are quite capable of arriving at their own conclusions.

You know quite well what I mean.

oldcelt:

The notion that Jesus qualified people almost 500 years early is extraordinary and a new one to me.

Again, you know quite well what I mean and what Jesus did(and would argue that He continues to do to this day).

For someone who professes to be a historian to somehow imply that there is no historical continuity from the Apostles, to the post-Apostolic, to the ante-Nicene and post-Nicene Church(what you in your Boettner-esque way call “the Roman Catholic Church”), as if it is wholly distinct from what was known as Christianity up to that point and beyond, that definitely says something about what type of historian he is.

Especially when even some of the most secularized historians don’t even bother to debate this fact.

But, you will do as you will.

 

[oldcelt]

For someone who professes to be a Deist you sound incredibly like Lorraine Boettner(or at least one of the numerous people who parrot his false history).

But surely you ought to know that his nonsense was debunked half-a-hundred times.

You know quite well what I mean.

Again, you know quite well what I mean and what Jesus did(and would argue that He continues to do to this day).

For someone who professes to be a historian to somehow imply that there is no historical continuity from the Apostles, to the post-Apostolic, to the ante-Nicene and post-Nicene Church(what you in your Boettner-esque way call “the Roman Catholic Church”), as if it is wholly distinct from what was known as Christianity up to that point and beyond, that definitely says something about what type of historian he is.

Especially when even some of the most secularized historians don’t even bother to debate this fact.

But, you will do as you will.

As will you. My premise is very simple regarding the OP and does not even involve later history and Jesus (except as part of the trinity. So far as I’m concerned, the question has been answered in the affirmative through logic and backed by Isaiah.
The rest is irrelevant window-dressing.

 

[Amandil]

As will you. My premise is very simple regarding the OP and does not even involve later history and Jesus (except as part of the trinity. So far as I’m concerned, the question has been answered in the affirmative through logic and backed by Isaiah.
The rest is irrelevant window-dressing.

But where your logic is flawed is that man is not created ontologically evil, man chooses to do evil by the abuse of free will.

And the citation from Isaiah you interpret from the KJV the term “evil”(which is itself equivocal and not entirely accurate) and out of context.

So it has not been answered “affirmatively” because you’re committing a post hoc fallacy.

 

[oldcelt]

But where your logic is flawed is that man is not created ontologically evil, man chooses to do evil by the abuse of free will.

And the citation from Isaiah you interpret from the KJV the term “evil”(which is itself equivocal and not entirely accurate) and out of context.

So it has not been answered “affirmatively” because you’re committing a post hoc fallacy.

You are again ignoring omniscience.

 

[adrift]

Hey people, you’re arguing about why God did not create evil, yet none of you seem to realise that God actually states that he created evil.

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Why don’t you address this verse. After all they are God’s very own words, aren’t they?

Tom

What is the word that was translated? Some translations have it as I make well-being and create woe.

 

[Amandil]

You are again ignoring omniscience.

Clearly I’m not. I have demonstrated how I’m not. Omniscience presupposes free will so therefore cannot be an argument against it.

Just because you say that I am doesn’t make it true.

 

[oldcelt]

Clearly I’m not.

Just because you say that I am doesn’t make it true.

Well, then you are saying that an all-knowing deity who creates someone or something that it knows will be evil bears no responsibility. Man, can you imagine if humanity functioned that way?

 

[Amandil]

Well, then you are saying that an all-knowing deity who creates someone or something that it knows will be evil bears no responsibility. Man, can you imagine if humanity functioned that way?

Have you never seen a crucifix?

It seems rather convenient to pick and choose what you like to believe and ignore what you don’t.

 

[oldcelt]

Have you never seen a crucifix?

It seems rather convenient to pick and choose what you like to believe and ignore what you don’t.

I am not picking and choosing…just asking a rather obvious question. And what does a crucifix have to do with anything?

 

[oldcelt]

Some information on Isaiah 45-7. Everyone take it for what you will.

hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-did-isaiah-intend-with-his-unusual-usage-of-create-in-isaiah-457

The section on evil is about midway

 

[PRmerger]

Well, then you are saying that an all-knowing deity who creates someone or something that it knows will be evil bears no responsibility. Man, can you imagine if humanity functioned that way?

You seem to be operating under a misapprehension that God is bound by time.

With God all things are in the Eternal Now.

So there is no such thing as God knowing that something “will be evil”.

 

[oldcelt]

You seem to be operating under a misapprehension that God is bound by time.

With God all things are in the Eternal Now.

So there is no such thing as God knowing that something “will be evil”.

PR, I think you would have a very difficult time reconciling your belief that God is totally out of time with omniscience and omnipresence, and the Holy Spirit being sent as a teacher, etc.
I am under no misapprehension.

 

[PRmerger]

PR, I think you would have a very difficult time reconciling your belief that God is totally out of time with omniscience and omnipresence, and the Holy Spirit being sent as a teacher, etc.

How so?

Can you explain how being omniscient and omnipresent creates some sort of dichotomy with not being bound by time?

It would appear that your position is exactly CONTRARY to being omniscient.

If God is indeed omniscient, it naturally follows that he would be not be bound by time.

But perhaps you can explain how God is bound by time while also being omniscient and omnipresent?