If Satan tempts us, God allows it and is thus partially responsible

[hellopeople]

If God was so keen on free will, why would he wipe out practically all of humanity in the flood. Weren’t those people just exercising their free will? If God has no problem killing unrighteous people, why wouldn’t he kill satan, the most unrighteous of them all?

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

If God was so keen on free will, why would he wipe out practically all of humanity in the flood. Weren’t those people just exercising their free will? If God has no problem killing unrighteous people, why wouldn’t he kill satan, the most unrighteous of them all?

Why not try answering this yourself?

 

[hellopeople]

Why not try answering this yourself?

Well my answer to this question is that there was no flood and the devil doesn’t exist. Doesn’t really answer the question though

 

[hellopeople]

If God was so keen on free will, why would he wipe out practically all of humanity in the flood. Weren’t those people just exercising their free will? If God has no problem killing unrighteous people, why wouldn’t he kill satan, the most unrighteous of them all?

Does anyone writing “FREE WILL” have anything to say about this?

 

[o_mlly]

Does anyone writing “FREE WILL” have anything to say about this?

You confuse categories. To end Satan’s existence, being pure spirit, God would annihilate his existence. For humanity, being body and spirit, bodily death is not annihilation but merely transformation; the soul continues as does Satan’s spirit.

Further, as an aside, God loves Satan but He loves you more.

 

[hellopeople]

You confuse categories. To end Satan’s existence, being pure spirit, God would annihilate his existence. For humanity, being body and spirit, bodily death is not annihilation but merely transformation; the soul continues as does Satan’s spirit.

Further, as an aside, God loves Satan but He loves you more.

Well they don’t really make any reference to an afterlife in the Torah. It certainly seems like the people that died in the flood were annihilated completely…as were the people in Sodom and Gommorah.

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

The person and soul belongs to God. He can do with them whatever good he wills.

Human death, in and of itself is not intrinsically evil.

God does not will people into Hell nor does he will them to do evil. He wants people in Heaven. The guilty, by their free will, have chosen everlasting separation from God – a permanent Death. Those who find favor in God have chosen, by their free will, everlasting existence with God – a permanent Life and Victory over Death.

Why doesn’t God “kill” Satan? Satan is already dead, by Lucifer’s prideful choice: “Non Serviam!”. Lucifer tossed away God and chose permanent Death and Defeat over Life. Satan, the Liar, the Deceiver, The Murderer From The Beginning.

God has revealed to us The Beginning, The Middle and The End. In The End it has also been revealed that Truth, Perfection, Life, Existence (God) achieves Victory.

Lucifer, in the presence of all that is Truth and Perfection, chose Defeat.

We on Earth have a free will choice to make: Victory or Defeat, Life or Death, Truth or Lies.

Choose wisely and freely.

 

[jrgiancola]

Hellopeople, you ask some interesting questions. Why did God not completely destroy satan and all trace of him and his followers? The Bible does not say. Perhaps lucifer and his followers rebelled against God because He created man and loved man. Perhaps they were jealous of God’s love for man. This still does not explain why God did not just eliminate satan all together. As for the flood, and the cities of the plain, Paul says that the Mosaic Law was intended to “define” sin; presumably, there was no definition of sin prior to the institution of this law, and those people did not know what sin was. But, if Adam and Eve did in fact eat from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” perhaps those people preceding Moses did have some concept of what was evil. The Bible is silent on many things, particularly your recent questions. Jesus said that Sodom and Gomorrah will be judged less severely than Jerusalem, Capernaum, and the other cities of Jesus’ time; perhaps this is part of the reason. Before Moses, perhaps the people were less knowledgeable regarding sin than the people of Jesus’ time. I’m guessing, of course, on all of this. But I do have a point: It’s a matter of choosing to believe in God and that He is merciful, loving and just. I know that whatever God does, He has a loving, merciful and just reason for doing so. I just do not always know what that reason is. What human can completely understand God? First of all, we don’t even use 90% of our brain power, and secondly, God has not given us all the details, only what He knows that we need to know. It’s a matter of choosing to believe or not to believe. I believe God. I’ve had a very difficult and tragic life; but I know God loves me and I believe He knows what He is doing in my life. I choose to believe. This does not mean that I believe every interpretation of Scripture that I am told to believe. I don’t believe absolutely every interpretation of any church, including my RCC. However, I’m a Roman Catholic because I believe this church has the most complete and true revelation from God, more than any other church. In the end, I have chosen to trust God regardless of whether or not I think I know his reasons for doing things. He has never let me down, even though I’ve let Him down more than often.

 

[hellopeople]

Hellopeople, you ask some interesting questions. Why did God not completely destroy satan and all trace of him and his followers? The Bible does not say. Perhaps lucifer and his followers rebelled against God because He created man and loved man. Perhaps they were jealous of God’s love for man. This still does not explain why God did not just eliminate satan all together. As for the flood, and the cities of the plain, Paul says that the Mosaic Law was intended to “define” sin; presumably, there was no definition of sin prior to the institution of this law, and those people did not know what sin was. But, if Adam and Eve did in fact eat from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” perhaps those people preceding Moses did have some concept of what was evil. The Bible is silent on many things, particularly your recent questions. Jesus said that Sodom and Gomorrah will be judged less severely than Jerusalem, Capernaum, and the other cities of Jesus’ time; perhaps this is part of the reason. Before Moses, perhaps the people were less knowledgeable regarding sin than the people of Jesus’ time. I’m guessing, of course, on all of this. But I do have a point: It’s a matter of choosing to believe in God and that He is merciful, loving and just. I know that whatever God does, He has a loving, merciful and just reason for doing so. I just do not always know what that reason is. What human can completely understand God? First of all, we don’t even use 90% of our brain power, and secondly, God has not given us all the details, only what He knows that we need to know. It’s a matter of choosing to believe or not to believe. I believe God. I’ve had a very difficult and tragic life; but I know God loves me and I believe He knows what He is doing in my life. I choose to believe. This does not mean that I believe every interpretation of Scripture that I am told to believe. I don’t believe absolutely every interpretation of any church, including my RCC. However, I’m a Roman Catholic because I believe this church has the most complete and true revelation from God, more than any other church. In the end, I have chosen to trust God regardless of whether or not I think I know his reasons for doing things. He has never let me down, even though I’ve let Him down more than often.

Thank you very much for this post. It seems a little less cut and dry than many of the other posts in this thread (and on the forum in general) and I like that a lot.

 

[jrgiancola]

You’re welcome. Some of these people consider me a heretic because I do not agree with the ban on contraception, I believe ectopic pregnancies can morally be aborted since they will kill the mother if not aborted and the fetus cannot survive anyway, and I believe in gay marriage. However, I also believe in the Holy Trinity, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, the infallibility of papal decrees. Trust God to show you the way and the answers. Just ask Him to help you understand. He loves you just as much as my or anyone else in the world.

 

[SugarMagnolia]

Here is my logic:

God is far more powerful than Satan.

Satan can tempt us.

God has the power to stop Satan from tempting us.

There is no way for Satan to tempt us behind God’s back, because God is all knowing.

So, if Satan exists, and he tempts us, God is letting it happen. God knows that Satan is tempting us and says “OK Satan, you can do that.” In my opinion, it is pretty much the same thing as God tempting us Himself, because he could stop it, but chooses not to do so.

Can anyone refute this logic?

Why has no one on this thread brought up The Book of Job? In The Book of Job Satan comes before God and accuses Job. Satan is one of the angels who reports to God and God listens to him. Job represents humanity. Satan claims that Job is not as righteous as God thinks he is. God expressly gives Satan permission to torment God.

HelloPeople, you bring up the age-old philosophical Problem of Evil here:

If God is omnipotent
And God is benevolent,
Why does evil exist?

Many answers or Theodicies have been proposed but none is quite logical.

Yes, God does allow evil. It is a necessary by-product of free will. But, even though God allows it, it is not His Will for us.

Evil is not an opposite and equal power. It is the absence of Good. It is simply what results when you choose not to follow God’s Will, (the great and beautiful Good He has planned for us.)

Peace and Blessings,
Terrysa

**Evil is not an opposite and equal power. It is the absence of Good.**This was St. Augustine’s theodicy, but the flaw is that it doesn’t explain how God’s perfect creation went wrong in the first place.

A more practical objection to Augustine’s theodicy is that the absence of good is not necessarily evil, but can be neutral. In other words, there are actions which are neither good nor evil, but morally neutral. Refraining from doing good is not necessarily the same thing a actively doing evil.

Satan is not, that is partly my point. But Humans have “promoted” him to that role.

And if, as you state in another post, Satan was originally good and by exercising his free will became evil, that brings up a question: If there was no other Satan before this Satan, who or what tempted him into turning evil? Which begs another question: Would evil exist if Satan did not exist? And if it does, how do we know which evil is a result of our own weakness and free will and which is a result of Satan putting temptations before us?

This is getting quite complex.

I think we simplify this question when we attribute evil to Satan. You say **If there was no other Satan before this Satan, who or what tempted him into turning evil? ** The traditional answer is that Satan was self-tempted. I believe there are two problems that result from thinking evil, or temptation, comes from Satan. One is that it is a literalistic reading of Job and as such it overlooks the serious moral questions proposed by that book. The other is that it allows people to point the blame on someone esle. To quote Flip Wilson: “The devil made me do it.” If we read Job as the poem that it is, and read Satan as a poetic personification of evil, we will address our own propensity to choose evil. In the Eden metaphor, When Adam sins he blames Eve; Eve in turn blames the serpent (symbol of the devil). Neither of them take responsibility for their sin. They each point their finger at another tempter. If we read Satan as a metaphor for evil, then we will recognize the moral weakness within ourselves that gives in to temptations.

Finally I would like to add that if God wanted to create being with free will who also could not choose evil, then he could have done so. This may sound like a logical contradiction, but it isn’t. God could have created a world in which it was impossible to do evil. If there were no forbidden fruit in Eden then Adam and Eve could not have eaten forbidden fruit. They could not have even have desired to eat forbidden fruit because the idea of forbidden fruit would be absent from their minds.

 

[Brendan]

If God was so keen on free will, why would he wipe out practically all of humanity in the flood. Weren’t those people just exercising their free will? If God has no problem killing unrighteous people, why wouldn’t he kill satan, the most unrighteous of them all?

He did ‘kill’ Satan.

But the killing of a spiritual entity, such as an angel or a human, does not result in their non existance.

Rather, it is a recogniton that the person has freely chosen not to obey God, and is therefore will not spend enternity with God.

They (Satan and those who die in Mortal Sin) spend enternity seperated from God, in what we call Hell.

So Satan, an all the unrighteous who died in the Flood, Sodom etc… are in Hell. They exist, they think, they feel, but they are dead. That is what ‘dead’ means to a spiritual creature.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

Well my answer to this question is that there was no flood and the devil doesn’t exist. Doesn’t really answer the question though

At least you got that right.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

You’re welcome. Some of these people consider me a heretic because I do not agree with the ban on contraception, I believe ectopic pregnancies can morally be aborted since they will kill the mother if not aborted and the fetus cannot survive anyway, and I believe in gay marriage. However, I also believe in the Holy Trinity, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, the infallibility of papal decrees. Trust God to show you the way and the answers. Just ask Him to help you understand. He loves you just as much as my or anyone else in the world.

If you trusted God as much as you claim you would accept ALL His laws, not just the ones that are convenient for you.

 

[hellopeople]

Why has no one on this thread brought up The Book of Job? In The Book of Job Satan comes before God and accuses Job. Satan is one of the angels who reports to God and God listens to him. Job represents humanity. Satan claims that Job is not as righteous as God thinks he is. God expressly gives Satan permission to torment God.

HelloPeople, you bring up the age-old philosophical Problem of Evil here:

If God is omnipotent
And God is benevolent,
Why does evil exist?

Many answers or Theodicies have been proposed but none is quite logical.

Evil is not an opposite and equal power. It is the absence of Good.This was St. Augustine’s theodicy, but the flaw is that it doesn’t explain how God’s perfect creation went wrong in the first place.

A more practical objection to Augustine’s theodicy is that the absence of good is not necessarily evil, but can be neutral. In other words, there are actions which are neither good nor evil, but morally neutral. Refraining from doing good is not necessarily the same thing a actively doing evil.

I think we simplify this question when we attribute evil to Satan. You say **If there was no other Satan before this Satan, who or what tempted him into turning evil? ** The traditional answer is that Satan was self-tempted. I believe there are two problems that result from thinking evil, or temptation, comes from Satan. One is that it is a literalistic reading of Job and as such it overlooks the serious moral questions proposed by that book. The other is that it allows people to point the blame on someone esle. To quote Flip Wilson: “The devil made me do it.” If we read Job as the poem that it is, and read Satan as a poetic personification of evil, we will address our own propensity to choose evil. In the Eden metaphor, When Adam sins he blames Eve; Eve in turn blames the serpent (symbol of the devil). Neither of them take responsibility for their sin. They each point their finger at another tempter. If we read Satan as a metaphor for evil, then we will recognize the moral weakness within ourselves that gives in to temptations.

Finally I would like to add that if God wanted to create being with free will who also could not choose evil, then he could have done so. This may sound like a logical contradiction, but it isn’t. God could have created a world in which it was impossible to do evil. If there were no forbidden fruit in Eden then Adam and Eve could not have eaten forbidden fruit. They could not have even have desired to eat forbidden fruit because the idea of forbidden fruit would be absent from their minds.

My question isn’t merely why is there evil in the world. In my opinion, the evil in the world is a product of free will, not the devil. But, if there is a devil who tempts us, God must be letting it happen because he has the power to stop it. And if God does not have the power to stop the devil, then the devil is more powerful than God.

The book of Job brings up a lot of questions about the devil. I think it is generally accepted that “satan” from the book of job is not the same satan as the one Christians believe in…this is for a few reasons. First of all, it doesn’t seem like Satan is in hell or away from God at all. I keep hearing that hell is the absence of God, and if that is where Satan resides, how can he talk to God? Also, in the book of Job, Satan OBEYS God…and not only does he obey God, but it seems like he only has power when God wills it. Satan suggests that he messes with Job and it is only after God OK’s it that he does it. The book of Job does not depict the Christian satan.

 

[StrawberryJam]

My question isn’t merely why is there evil in the world. In my opinion, the evil in the world is a product of free will, not the devil. But, if there is a devil who tempts us, God must be letting it happen because he has the power to stop it. And if God does not have the power to stop the devil, then the devil is more powerful than God.

The book of Job brings up a lot of questions about the devil. I think it is generally accepted that “satan” from the book of job is not the same satan as the one Christians believe in…this is for a few reasons. First of all, it doesn’t seem like Satan is in hell or away from God at all. I keep hearing that hell is the absence of God, and if that is where Satan resides, how can he talk to God? Also, in the book of Job, Satan OBEYS God…and not only does he obey God, but it seems like he only has power when God wills it. Satan suggests that he messes with Job and it is only after God OK’s it that he does it. The book of Job does not depict the Christian satan.

1. your first sentence agrees with catholic teaching
2. second agrees with catholic teaching
3. I agree, but it is impossible to have that senario in catholic teaching
4. agreed.
5. Don’t agree
6. Agreed, he was able to get a meeting with God without any delay or problem.
7. He is unchained now, until the second coming. I guess that is when it’s a finality for him
8. Agreed
9. Agreed
10. It actually does, oddly enough. Satan only kills 10 people in the bible. And, he does it in the Job story.

 

[jrgiancola]

If you trusted God as much as you claim you would accept ALL His laws, not just the ones that are convenient for you.

I believe and follow all of His laws. I don’t believe the church has correctly interpreted Scripture on the matters of contraception and homosexuality. I believe eventually it will change its doctrines on these. The fact that I disagree with some church doctrine, which has not been pronounced ex cathedra, does not mean I don’t believe in God’s laws. The church has made mistakes in the past. In the fifteenth century, it was heresy to believe Galileo’s theory that the earth revolved around the sun. Ours is the only church in history that, once realizing its errors, changes its doctrine to conform to reality. That’s one of the things that makes me trust our church. As for abortion, Catholics are permitted to kill in self defense. A fetus, attached inside the Fallopian Tube, cannot survive; unfortunately, the mother will die if she does not have this fetus removed. The mother has a moral right to defend her own life, whether the threat is intentional or not. Abortion of an ectopic pregnancy is an act of self-defense, which is allowed by the church.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I believe and follow all of His laws. I don’t believe the church has correctly interpreted Scripture on the matters of contraception and homosexuality. I believe eventually it will change its doctrines on these. The fact that I disagree with some church doctrine, which has not been pronounced ex cathedra, does not mean I don’t believe in God’s laws. The church has made mistakes in the past. In the fifteenth century, it was heresy to believe Galileo’s theory that the earth revolved around the sun. Ours is the only church in history that, once realizing its errors, changes its doctrine to conform to reality. That’s one of the things that makes me trust our church. As for abortion, Catholics are permitted to kill in self defense. A fetus, attached inside the Fallopian Tube, cannot survive; unfortunately, the mother will die if she does not have this fetus removed. The mother has a moral right to defend her own life, whether the threat is intentional or not. Abortion of an ectopic pregnancy is an act of self-defense, which is allowed by the church.

Unhappily, you have got it ALL wrong.

You can not determine on your own (if you claim to be a faithful Catholic) what Holy Mother Church got right and what she did not. You simply can not.

The mother has no moral right to defend her life against her own child. This has nothing to do with the Catholic right to kill in self-defense.

Abortion is never ever ever allowed by the church. You got your terms wrong, too. Look it up. Or watch Deacon Harold’s excellent series explaining the difference.

 

[hellopeople]

Unhappily, you have got it ALL wrong.

You can not determine on your own (if you claim to be a faithful Catholic) what Holy Mother Church got right and what she did not. You simply can not.

The mother has no moral right to defend her life against her own child. This has nothing to do with the Catholic right to kill in self-defense.

Abortion is never ever ever allowed by the church. You got your terms wrong, too. Look it up. Or watch Deacon Harold’s excellent series explaining the difference.

I don’t think it is right to say someone’s beliefs are “ALL wrong.” No one knows God’s true nature, so I don’t think it is appropriate to claim someone’s beliefs are wrong.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I don’t think it is right to say someone’s beliefs are “ALL wrong.” No one knows God’s true nature, so I don’t think it is appropriate to claim someone’s beliefs are wrong.

It is indeed not only appropriate but also charitable when we are speaking of a Catholic claiming loyalty to the Magisterium.