He loves His enemies and (I might get in trouble for saying this, someone correct me if this is heresy) It is better to BE in Hell than not to BE at all.
I have never tried to explain this before and don’t even know if this satisfies the question, but it seems that the more someone grows in love and faith with God understandings are translated for the mind and it’s very difficult to translate those for ears.
I agree with most of what you have said. The part about it being better to exist and in hell than not to be created is the part I have tried to wrap my mind around too. But this does not seem to ring true in some scriptures:
*Mark 9:42
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.
Matthew 26:24
The Son of Man is to go, just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born."
Ecclesiastes 4:2-3
2 So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. 3 But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun. *
Ecclesiastes is not a full revelation though and we know that back in this time period the Jews thought that there was no afterlife and the wisdom literature writers were constantly evolving their insights in this area. But Christ seems to say there are definately cases were those who sin so badly will wish they had never been born.
The way I have resolved this question is to say that God has in His infinite wisdom deemed that the opportunity to experience some of His love in His Creation taken together with the opportunity to have eternal life and eternal love more than compensates those who will reject that opportunity. God of course knows ahead of time who will choose to love Him and who will reject Him. But those who reject Him while having every grace necessary for their own salvation still must serve and will be used as instruments (if nothing else - as warnings or examples of sinful life) that will manifest a greater good for Creation at large inspite of their personal election to reject God’s love (evil). In essence, those who reject God’s love become enslaved to their own nature which still can not have one iota of negative impact on Divine Providence and in fact must serve it even to their own elective damnation.
God destines no one to hell but does destine some to heaven (St. Mary was clearly favored from the very start). But since God creates both those who will love Him and those who will spurn Him it is clear that there is free choice for all. Having foreknowledge of how we choose is not the same as saying that God destines us to that choice.
And if one were to say ‘then why doesn’t God only create those who will choose Him and not create those who will choose against Him?’. Here I think it can be said that in asking this question the person must discover that God has freewill too and the very essence of free will requires the selection of a greater good over its lessor (which raises the moral delimma - is a lessor good objectively evil by degree?).
I suspect the reason God permits some to choose good and others evil is because there are justice principals at work and God being infinitely Good can always improve Creation and elects to have his creatures co-participate in its improvement to have “equity” sharehold in God’s family. If it were not for freewill and the possibility for rejecting God then Satan could then tell God “you only create souls who could love you like mindless and heartless robots - that is not real love that is compelled love”. By giving us the opportunity to choose to love God and incur suffering in that choice (God permits Satan to persecute all of God’s children to test them) God justifies His Children and proves their love is genuine to silence Satan and satisfy Justice.
The real question here becomes “is evil necessary for a greater good”? It would appear to me that perfection is an infinitely improving thing and to experience it one must suffer to know both good and evil and to choose where one stands.
James
), but you bake them anyway.