Is God responsible for evil for not offering Beatific Vision as a gift?

[Vico]

Vico:

STT:

fhansen:

Well, sin is not inevitable or necessary. And yet it can be beneficial in terms of helping us finally come to appreciate its opposite, which is summed up best by the term “love”. Had Adam loved God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, then there would be no problem; his justice would be complete. More than likely he does just that by now.

Sin is inevitable when you are under strong temptation. Everything is just matter of time.

It depends upon if the person has sanctifying grace or not and if you are referring only to mortal sin. With sanctifying grace (lost with mortal sin) it is possible to remain in that state until death.

STT would include Adam & Eve, before the Fall, as being subject to the inevitability of sin.

That means excluding original justice.

 

[MonteRCMS]

God is INFINITE.

You and I are human and most definitely infinitesimally tiny.

That’s what happens with finite is compared with INFINITE.

 

[STT]

Yes, the angels had to cooperate with the grace of God to reach heaven and had been given sanctifying grace. They fell willingly, which means mortal sin.

You didn’t get my point. I meant, Satan knew that a person with sanctifying grace can resist temptation. So why he was trying to tempt? Satan is an intelligent being so He doesn’t do useless thing.

 

[eddietoo]

yes, a person in sanctifying grace can resist, or not. just as a person in the state of mortal sin can resist, or not.

 

[eddietoo]

not being satan, i cannot speak for him/her.

however, there is an old saying that misery loves company.

also, satan’s sin is pride. as i see it, he rebelled because he realizes that he is not the be all and end all of creation. he knows that God created other, than himself, intelligent and free creatures so they could share fully in His divine life. satan hates God and wants to thwart God at every opportunity. so, satan tempts and tempts and tempts, for no other reason than to defy and thwart God’s will.

 

[Vico]

Satan is an intelligent being so He doesn’t do useless thing

Intelligence does not guarantee that. Opposition to God is a motive even if the tempted would not fail.

 

[MonteRCMS]

God arranges for us to have the resources necessary to make determinations of what we need to do.

 

[fisherman_carl]

The beatific vision is a gift. But God gives us sufficient free will to choose it or not. We have to choose good (God) or evil (selfishness). To love or not to love, that is the real question.

God created a world knowing there would be evil and suffering. Does that make God bad? If you listen to some critics of God they would have you believe so. They would fault God for not creating a world where we had no free will. Or they fault him for not creating a world where there is less evil and more good. But, even if there was less evil they would still fault God for it even if the worst evil in the world was a stubbed toe.

God could not have created the world and just lived in eternity as the Trinity in perfection forever. But he chose to create a world that is in a state of journeying to the perfection he has in mind for it.

The critics of God can not prove that God could not have morally justifying reasons for allowing evil. Just because we don’t have all the answers for why God allows evil doesn’t mean that he could not have morally justifying reasons considering that he is an omniscient being. If he was just some guy on the street with a lot of money, power, and ability to fix all the worlds problems we might take him to task for not doing more. Superman could be taken to task if he sat idly by while men robbed the bank right in front of him. But God is not superman and superman is not all knowing. He could not possibly know the results of every action ever taken. So if anyone could be or should be given the benefit of the doubt it would be an omniscient being. But even superman could know something we don’t. Perhaps he let the bank robbers go because they had innocent people held hostage. And that at some later time when it was safe to do so he was planning to rescue them and bring the bad guys to justice.

We may not know why God permits every evil but we do know that he plans to make everything right in the end as only God could do. Only God could make things right for the innocent sufferer who dies unjustly treated. Under the atheist view such a person’s suffering and death is meaningless with no hope for justice. But under the Christian view death is not the end but only a beginning to eternity. Thus, St. Paul says he does not consider the extremely temporary suffering in this extremely small period of time we are in this world to be anything in comparison to the eternal glory we will experience in heaven.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Involves all the complications implicit with free will.

God created imperfect finite people who are not robots but who have a voluntary code of conduct [The Ten Commandments].

 

[Benadam]

I know you didn’t mean it., but God didn’t create imperfect people.

 

[AdamP88]

He gave us the gift of free will. So that we could freely choose Him over evil. He could have made us all drones that had to worship Him. But who wants forced love?

He wants us to choose to love Him without compulsion. But in giving us free will, He also took the risk that we would reject Him.

 

[Vico]

…
Well, according to scripture Adam and Eve where under temptation of Snake/Satan. It seems that the temptation was strong enough to make them sin.

The cause of their sin is in their wills – it was not impossible for them to resist the temptation due to the grace of God constituting them in a state of original justice.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Only God is perfect.

He is the CREATOR.

And He is PERFECT.

We, His creations are imperfect.

 

[STT]

The cause of their sin is in their wills – it was not impossible for them to resist the temptation due to the grace of God constituting them in a state of original justice.

They knew that they were going to die if they eat the fruit so they were under strong temptation.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

The cause of their sin is in their wills – it was not impossible for them to resist the temptation due to the grace of God constituting them in a state of original justice.

They knew that they were going to die if they eat the fruit so they were under strong temptation.

Yes. It is their fault however, since they could resist but willfully choose not to.

 

[STT]

Yes. It is their fault however, since they could resist but willfully choose not to.

We all fail when temptation is strong. Sinning is just matter of time.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

Yes. It is their fault however, since they could resist but willfully choose not to.

We all fail when temptation is strong. Sinning is just matter of time.

That is not a Catholic teaching. The dogma of the Catholic Church is that an act must be voluntary to be a sin, and that it is not impossible to remain free from mortal sin once one is justified. God gives sufficient grace.

 

[STT]

That is not a Catholic teaching. The dogma of the Catholic Church is that an act must be voluntary to be a sin, and that it is not impossible to remain free from mortal sin once one is justified. God gives sufficient grace.

Were they rational being? Yes. Were they fooled by Snake/Satan? Yes. Why should they be punished knowing the fact that they got fooled.

Moreover, did God say that the act of eating the fruit is a sin? No (He just said that you shall die).

 

[Vico]

Vico:

That is not a Catholic teaching. The dogma of the Catholic Church is that an act must be voluntary to be a sin, and that it is not impossible to remain free from mortal sin once one is justified. God gives sufficient grace.

Were they rational being? Yes. Were they fooled by Snake/Satan? Yes. Why should they be punished knowing the fact that they got fooled.

Moreover, did God say that the act of eating the fruit is a sin? No (He just said that you shall die).

St. Paul wrote that Adam was not fooled:

1 Timothy 2: 14 And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression.

Yes God said it was mortal sin, for we read his command:

Gen 2: 16 And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: 17 But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. for in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
Gen 3: 11 And he said to him: And who hath told thee that thou wast naked, but that thou hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?

Now, for Eve, she sinned first by admiring what was forbidden, instead of avoiding the temptation, and then debated it and yielded to it.