The problem of evil

[polytropos]

Here again, I think you’re using shorthand by conflating “the existence of God” with “the existence of an all-loving, all-benevolent God.” The problem of evil is not definitively put to rest through proving the existence of God, but through proving that the God that exists is all-good, all-benevolent, all-loving. If that is proven, then the human standards of judgment according to which God seems “indifferent”, or “unfeeling”, or even “vengeful” or “malicious” would have to be wrong. But I think, by the standards of theism, it is comparatively easier to prove the existence of an “unmoved mover” than to prove that this unmoved mover loves you and cares about you.

To clear up first, I think everyone in this topics means by “God” the full Christian, Catholic understanding of God - which means the filled-out Unmoved Mover of Thomism and the God of revelation. I think that the problem of evil indeed undermines neither of them, because they are the same one.

I’d also say that Thomism does not stop at proving the existence of the Unmoved Mover. One does not go through the First Way and then say, “Well, there is a Being which is Pure Act. It may or may not be good or loving, but we can assume it’s God, so we assume it’s good and loving.” There is quite a bit more that goes into concluding what the nature is of the Unmoved Mover, and it is held that its goodness is philosophically demonstrable as much as its existence. So I’d agree that the existence of the Unmoved Mover is easier to prove than it is to prove “that this unmoved mover loves you and cares about you” - but the latter proposition is taken to be demonstrated as well. (Although revelation certainly fleshes it out.) We know that this Unmoved Mover has uniquely endowed us with intellects as (it seems) the one creature made in His image and capable of knowing Him. He also, as I’ve said, created us and sustains us in being.

Although this is not directly related to His loving us, He is Goodness Itself by the convertibility of the transcendentals, which entails that He cannot “create evil” (if that were a coherent phrase, since evil is a privation of good) and wills our good (indeed, God necessarily wills our final causes, and that is how we know Him as Supreme Intellect).

Now, again, the skeptic is absolutely free to delve into Thomism and dispute its doctrines: he can try to dispute the doctrine of analogy, the convertibility of the transcendentals, the proof for the Unmoved Mover, any of the derivations of the Unmoved Mover’s other qualities, etc. But so long as his problem of evil is contingent on rejecting such doctrines, it’s no good.

There is a morally neutral way of raising what is called the problem of evil, though. Namely, it is to say, “what evidence do you have that there is an all-benevolent being in the universe that loves you and that cares about your well-being?”

I think the formulation I gave above manages to avoid this pitfall.

I don’t think it does. How does asking about the evidence for an omnibenevolent (and, presumably, omnipotent, omniscient) being differ from asking for a proof of the existence of such a being? A proof for the existence of the Christian God would, in my opinion, suffice to answer such a question - in which case the question is not really raising the problem of evil. So it still would support my basic contention that the problem of evil isn’t what’s at issue and is contingent upon disputing other doctrines.

What remains paradoxical, however, is the proposition “God is morally good” (which any Christian would assert) and “God loves us and cares for us.” The problem of evil poses the question whether, if we say “God is good” and the problem of evil doesn’t change that, then whether God is good according to a human understanding of goodness; and whether God loves us according to a human understanding of love.

And if we believe that this human understanding of goodness and love is relative, imperfect, then morality itself could be undermined. Indeed, killing someone could be wrong according to our human understanding of right and wrong, good and evil; but it’s conceivable that we simply do not understand what is good, and what is not good (which, indeed, is enlisted by Christians precisely when seeking to resolve the paradoxes of the problem of evil).

I don’t find such propositions problematic. They could be qualified within Thomistic philosophy. The statement “God is morally good” would seem to me to be false (depending on how you are using the word “morally”), since God has no moral obligations (that would entail him having final causes and potentialities, which would be a contradiction). The statement “God is good” is true but is understood in terms of the Thomistic doctrine of analogy.

[continued in next post]

 

[polytropos]

What the analogy means is that “good” as it applies to God is not univocal, but neither is it equivocal, so when we say, “God is good,” it is not exactly according to a human understanding of goodness. It is similar to a human understanding of goodness, but distinct. One might then deny that the statement “God is good” could have any meaning - but that just seems to beg the question against the doctrine of analogy. (And one can try to dispute the doctrine of analogy. If the disputing of which is central to the problem of evil, then the problem of evil doesn’t do any of the “work” itself.) The claim would be false, anyway: even though we cannot understand God in terms of moral obligation, there are various senses in which He is good. He uniquely created us in His image (with intellect). He created us gratuitously and holds us in being at every moment. By the convertibility of the transcendentals, He is Goodness Itself. On a less strictly philosophical basis, He sent His son to die for our sins.

So neither the human nor Godly understanding of goodness and love “is relative, imperfect.” Our moral obligations are still strictly defined in terms of the natural ends inherent in our forms. God’s goodness is analogically understood. While His nature is ineffable, it doesn’t follow that we don’t know anything about Him or that it is meaningless to say He is good.

[Evil] could also be consistent with a loving and caring God, in principle – but that would be the paradox. *It is no more or less a paradox * than to say that a human being can torture another human being as an act of love and concern; or, in fact, that a human being can murder another human being based on a “higher” conception of love and concern than most people can understand. Which is conceptually possible.

I disagree that it is a paradox. To say God does not have moral obligations is not to say that he has different moral obligations that we just don’t know about, therefore perhaps we don’t know anyone’s moral obligations.

A human being, having final causes, cannot (conceptually or in principle) be without moral obligations. A human’s moral obligations are a necessary consequence of his substantial form qua human being. They are also, likewise, intelligible and non-negotiable. God does not have a substantial form (as a consequence of His being Pure Act) in the same way that He does not have final causes.

But I think the other thing that is being confused here is that your analogy is mean to hold “tortur[ing] another human being as an act of love and concern.” Such an analogy would seem to imply that evil is “an act of love and concern” from God - which is wrong. To say evil is “consistent with a loving and caring God” is not to say that “God commits loving and caring acts which are also evil.” Evil occurs but is not intended or willed by God.

Indeed, it is unfalsifiable, if one’s response is, “it is a form of love, and a form of goodness, that transcends your limited human understanding.”

That is not my response. Evil is a privation of good, not “a form of love, and a form of goodness, that transcends your limited human understanding.”

Truthfully, though, I cannot falsify the notion that a human being’s torturing or murdering another human being is not a moral act that transcends my particular understanding of what is moral or immoral, either. Conceptually, that is possible. Or, if I want to say – to be morally neutral – that a human being cannot torture another human being and claim to be doing so as an “act of love,” I cannot falsify the proposition that it is I that do not fully understand the nature of love;

I would stress that, on the Thomistic view, moral obligations of created things are intelligible (for the most part). And evil is not ever permitted by calling it an “act of love” - and, anyway, I am not claiming that God is absolved because evil is his own act of love, as that would contradictorily imply that God is willfully creating evil.

or, for that matter, I cannot prevent someone from simply stretching the definition of love and saying “the problem is solved.”

With the concept of God, the Christian apologist is stretching the definition of “love” and of “goodness.” These do not mean the same things for God, that they would for a human being (e.g., if a woman becomes squashed like a grapefruit through the will of God, it does not mean that God doesn’t love her; but if a woman becomes squashed like a grapefruit through the will of man, to say “that man loved her but squashed her like a grapefruit” would raise a “problem of evil,” would be problematic and paradoxical, indeed seemingly non-sensical).

I hope I’ve made clear that any “stretching” of the definition of love as it applies to God is non-arbitrary and clearly defined through the doctrine of analogy within Thomism. Indeed, “love” and “goodness” do not mean exactly the same things for God. But since there are reasons for the distinction, the apologist is not committing the fallacy of special pleading.

The example you give here is misleading. A woman cannot be “squashed like a grapefruit through the will of God.” The fact that it might occur does not mean that God wills it.

 

[Portofino]

I think this might be plausible if it were 2, or maybe 3, people who claimed to have appearances. But with each individual that you add to the list, it becomes exponentially less likely that they had some sort of appearance nearly identical to those of the others…

The thing is, though, the account of the multitude of individuals who claimed to have seen the appearance first-hand is written about by others, not by the eyewitnesses themselves. If I write an account and say, “I saw it, and so did 10 of my friends,” my friends aren’t speaking for themselves. I am speaking for them.

It’s my understanding – and correct me if I’m wrong – that not only did Paul never meet Jesus in the flesh (his vision on the Road to Damascus excepted) but neither did the evangelists. It was the Gospel reputed to be according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So the multitudes purported to have seen him were not given the opportunity to speak for themselves. As I understand it, even the epistle of Peter is not known to have been written in Peter’s hand. Peter was a fisherman, most likely intelligent and sensitive (obviously, he responded to the call of Jesus), but it’s unclear whether he would have known how to read and write; he may have lacked the “Pharasaic” education of someone like Paul.

But this really just kicks the problem back a level. If one submits that the disciples were mistaken, then one would need a separate theory for the empty tomb…

Well, here’s a not unfair question, I think – perhaps the tomb was not empty. I don’t know that the tomb was empty, I only know that the evangelists claim that it was (and, from my understanding, they were not writing completely independently of each other). “Matthew” and “Luke”, for example – who never met Jesus; I’m speaking of the evangelists, not the apostles – are believed to have based their accounts on a posited “Q” source (Q, Quelle, is admittedly a hypothesis, based on the strong resemblance between the Jesus sayings found in Matthew and in Luke). It’s also believed – again, with an assertion of probably, though not certainty – that Matthew and Luke also probably drew upon Mark’s gospel.

But if the tomb was empty, there are still two valid possibilities – one, a well-wisher (Josephus?) rolled back the stone and took Jesus’ body; two, Jesus rolled back the stone himself, having woken up from a deep state of unconsciousness. There’s no proof for these possibilities, of course. I only know that resurrection from the dead is not the only, nor even the most likely one. If any of our contemporaries claimed to have resurrected from the dead, the same exploration of other possibilities would be applied; there is no bias in maintaining that other possibilities have not been exhausted.

This is obviously based on my understanding of the “laws of nature” of or biology, just as – as I pointed out in an earlier post – my questioning someone who says, “I never had a childhood; I was born as an adult” would give me a reasonable motivation to think of other possibilities, including that the individual was not telling the truth (which would be the most insulting insinuation on my part, at least in the minds of those who believed the individual telling it to be of upstanding character).

The evidence for Jesus’s resurrection is, of course, empirical, so one could always hold that the event was too miraculous and there must be an alternative explanation, even if we could not know it.

Well, take the case of the woman (in the article I shared), who woke up from the morgue, went home, and starting cooking in the kitchen. One possibility is that she resurrected from the dead. Another possibility is that the people who declared her to be dead were mistaken. I admittedly would explore the second possibility, before affirming the first.

 

[Portofino]

To clear up first, I think everyone in this topics means by “God” the full Christian, Catholic understanding of God - which means the filled-out Unmoved Mover of Thomism and the God of revelation. I think that the problem of evil indeed undermines neither of them, because they are the same one.]

I think I grant that Catholics have come up with a perfectly cogent explanation for the problem of evil, that is internally consistent and well worked-out. This pertains not merely to Thomistic arguments, but also more traditional theological arguments, such as:

—evil came into the world because of a misuse of free will, the disobedience of Adam and Eve, that resulted in the Fall

–Satan, whose own free will turned away from the good, also brought evil into the world

–free will is a value in and of itself, an inherent value; to create a world where evil is not a possibility, because free will does not exist, would itself be a great “evil” of sorts

–moral evil, thus, is due to the free will of the individual; natural evil (hurricanes, floods, tornadoes) are consequences of the Fall, and thus of the free will of our first parent, Adam

Theologically, I’m not convinced by the explanation given of the Fall/of Satan/Adam and Eve, but I cannot disprove them, either (nor, with all due respect, can I disprove the story of Pandora’s box, which is a cogent but fairly simple explanation for all of the evil in the world). But this I admit – I cannot disprove any of these doctrines, because these doctrines do not lend themselves to being proven or disproven empirically.

With Thomism, which I admittedly have zero expertise in, I certainly have an admittedly “vague” sense in which I’m not convinced that the definitions given of pure actuality/potentiality, change, causality, substance, etc. are necessarily definitions that link up with the things themselves, with the phenomenon they are seeking to explain. It’s unclear to me whether the words are describing actual things, or whether they are concepts “blowing in the wind” (“casuality” is one such concept; David Hume, for example, took to task the argument of “First Cause”, positing that our very notion of causality is suspect). I’m admittedly baffled as to the notion of the interchangeability of Goodness with Being; or of evil as privation. But if one takes this for proven then, yes, its application to the problem of evil is certainly coherent. But if I haven’t disproven these claims – and I’m not sure if that’s even possible – then I wouldn’t go so far as to say, “in the interim, I am obliged to consider it proven, otherwise I am begging the question.” I certainly woudln’t say that regarding not being convinced by the story of the Fall, or of Pandora’s box, either. Again, I can disprove neither of those stories.

Indeed, I think my point still holds as regards theological explanations, as well (original sin, the Fall, the inherent value of free will, the existence of Satan as the explanation for why there is evil). It’s coherent, and internally consistent, and quite impressive in its way; only, it baffles me a bit, since I don’t relate to these particular assertions.

 

[Portofino]

The example you give here is misleading. A woman cannot be “squashed like a grapefruit through the will of God.” The fact that it might occur does not mean that God wills it.

Here I think there’s more to be said. If we define evil as “suffering and death” then it’s not clear to me that Christians do not believe these can be the will of God, and thus not truly evil (which is a paradox, but something which I think Christians often freely admit; it surpasses human understanding).

Some examples:

----the Flood, which destroyed most of mankind, was an expression of God’s will (if God cannot or does not will evil, then it cannot be accepted that the Flood was “evil”; yet, of course, it’s hard not to think that it was evil, just as the tsunami in Indonesia is thought of as evil)

—the death of the first-born Egyptians, during Passover (great wailing in Egypt, over the death of their children); this was willed by God, per Scripture that is held to be inerrant, as were the 10 plagues

–the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah

Philosophy would normally speak of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah – or of Pompei, for that matter – as an example of “natural evil.” Perhaps you are saying that God may have willed this, but that – when He did – it could not have been evil.

Finally, regarding my expression of a woman being “squashed like a grapefruit”, I’m speaking of a Christian understanding whereby a death is is often chalked up to the will of God; God knows better. Perhaps it was her time to go. So she sits on a railing, the railing suddenly breaks, and she falls to her death (this happened in Manhattan, a few weeks ago, to a young professional).

I’m not sure a Christian would definitively rule out the possibility that, “God called her home; it was her time.”

This would put into question the very existence of natural evil, as evil. I think it gets a bit muddled, though, because I’ve heard any of the following explanations for non-human or natural evil:

—Satan was at work
—God punished them (the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and, in the minds of some, Pompei)
—that’s just the way the world is; it’s a consequence of the Fall
–it was God’s will; we cannot understand God’s ways

The middle option, “God punished them,” has some support in the Old Testament. But the last one, “we cannot understand God’s ways” is ultimately saying that what appears to be evil (including something as dire as a woman being squashed like a bug) is not actually evil at all, but goodness and rightness that is admittedly beyond your ability to comprehend (just as the goodness of Good Friday, in the minds of Christians).

 

[Abu]

Bahman #197
If God knows each being fate then this acts as a strong constrain on each individual will, forcing them to move and act on a precise known line by God.

False, obviously, because free-will means that individuals can act for good or evil as they choose. God knows how each one will act because He is omniscient – He knows all things. What you feel God should or should not do is immaterial to reality.

What do you mean “with their nature”? You mean that they couldn’t help it because they couldn’t go against their nature?

“Some angels chose to disobey God, fully knowing what they were doing because of their nature, and were punished by God with hell” – which clearly means that their powers of knowledge created in their nature AS ANGELS enabled them to know that the result of their free choice of disobeying God would be bad for them.

Since God is all-knowing certainly does not mean that He “plans” the evil which individuals commit, because He is infinite and so goodness without limit, and rewards goodness and punishes evil. Free-will enables the free choices which show individuals’ love or hate for God and eventually their reward or punishment.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Portofino

**The middle option, “God punished them,” has some support in the Old Testament. But the last one, “we cannot understand God’s ways” is ultimately saying that what appears to be evil (including something as dire as a woman being squashed like a bug) is not actually evil at all, but goodness and rightness that is admittedly beyond your ability to comprehend (just as the goodness of Good Friday, in the minds of Christians). **

Oh, so tedious!

The woman being squashed like a bug is a tragic accident, not a deliberately immoral act by God to kill her because it was for her own good.

How you get from A to Z is truly bewildering.

** that is admittedly beyond your ability to comprehend (just as the goodness of Good Friday, in the minds of Christians**

Again what on earth are you talking about. We are perfectly able to comprehend that Jesus chose to carry the burden of all our sins on the cross because he loved us.

Is that something you have not the “ability to comprehend”?

 

[Portofino]

Oh, so tedious!

You’ve certainly a right to your opinion

woman being squashed like a bug is a tragic accident, not a deliberately immoral act by God to kill her because it was for her own good.

Well, that’s the thing, Charlemagne – incidentally, if it is of any interest, you are Charl-e-magn-e, in my mind (4 syllables, as in French; I’m a francophile) – a Christian holds that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, and the death of the Egyptian first-born, were not tragic accidents, but willed by God. In our human terms, of course, we cannot see these as anything other than tragedies, no matter what we think of the individuals involved. Yet Scripture would seem to indicate differently.

The book of Job is even more bewildering, in a way – God agrees to let Satan test Job, thus Job’s misfortunes were not a tragic accident. Or, they were tragic misfortunes, but ones to whose occurrence God had given consent.

Anytime a Christian says, “sometimes, God sends us suffering to test us, or to help us grow stronger in the faith,” that Christian is acknowledging that God sometimes wills that we experience what we would describe as evil or tragedy.

what on earth are you talking about. We are perfectly able to comprehend that Jesus chose to carry the burden of all our sins on the cross because he loved us.f

Is that something you have not the “ability to comprehend”?

When a Christian weeps at the funeral of a loved one – or weeps at the sufferings of Christ – that Christian has a dual consciousness, as it were. Part of him or her understands the goodness of the death of Jesus, the joyousness of it, even. But the part of him or her that weeps knows that they will never understand it; that saying, “yes” to this, with both the mind and heart, is a great paradox. Jesus experienced this paradox during the Agony in the Garden; the prospect of his torture and execution was, in very human terms, the contemplation of a great evil. Yet God willed this. And Jesus assented to the will of God, even though his heart could not rejoice in it, in that moment. Insofar as his heart could not rejoice in it, in that moment, he was not fully capable of understanding that it was not a great evil, that it was not something to recoil from. That dual consciousness would have reason to exist in Jesus, insofar as he was posited to be “fully God, fully man.” It was the human part of him that could not fully understand.

 

[Abu]

Portofino #208
a Christian holds that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Flood, and the death of the Egyptian first-born, were not tragic accidents, but willed by God. In our human terms, of course, we cannot see these as anything other than tragedies, no matter what we think of the individuals involved. Yet Scripture would seem to indicate differently.

Such “tragedies”, willed by God, were punishments for evil as Scripture clearly shows. What could be more indicative of the tragedy of evil to be avoided as examples for all?

God sometimes wills that we experience what we would describe as evil or tragedy.

God does not “will evil” – something morally bad or wrong.

Anytime a Christian says, “sometimes, God sends us suffering to test us, or to help us grow stronger in the faith,” that Christian is acknowledging that God sometimes wills that we experience what we would describe as evil or tragedy.

Mankind suffers precisely because his nature is wounded irrevocably by the Fall, thus losing bodily immortality (subject to death) and the freedom from suffering, and open to the influence of the Devil.

 

[Portofino]

Did you not read that John was among the first to arrive at the empty tomb? And did you not know that Paul wrote about the resurrection long before the gospels were written?.

John was the first to arrive at the tomb, but I believe that most Biblical scholars do not declare with certainty that John the disciple was the actual author of the Gospel of John. As for Paul, although he did write about the resurrection prior to the envangelists’ penning the gospels, he had never actually met Jesus in person. In the case of both Paul, and the evangelist who penned the gospel according to John, we are thus talking about information that was garnerned second hand, most likely through the verbal testimony of others.

Our association seems to have taken an unfortunate turn. I grant that the question of the resurrection of Jesus – like that of transubstantiation, or the divinity of Christ – is not a topic that can easily be a matter of neutral indifference to a person of faith. It can, indeed, inflame a certain odium theologicum between parties who disagree on a question of such fundamental importance. For this reason, perhaps it is a topic to be avoided.

 

[Bahman]

False, obviously, because free-will means that individuals can act for good or evil as they choose. God knows how each one will act because He is omniscient – He knows all things. What you feel God should or should not do is immaterial to reality.
“Some angels chose to disobey God, fully knowing what they were doing because of their nature, and were punished by God with hell” – which clearly means that their powers of knowledge created in their nature AS ANGELS enabled them to know that the result of their free choice of disobeying God would be bad for them.

Since God is all-knowing certainly does not mean that He “plans” the evil which individuals commit, because He is infinite and so goodness without limit, and rewards goodness and punishes evil. Free-will enables the free choices which show individuals’ love or hate for God and eventually their reward or punishment.

Lets see if we could agree on an simple argument:

1. God knows the ultimate fate of an being before its creation.
2. God create a being with ultimate fate of devil.
3. God create a devil since its fate was known prior to the creation (everything is just matter of time).

The main question here is why God created fallen angles including Satan. God knew the ultimate fate of them, namely rebelling against God (which I can’t comprehend what it is), turning to devils, then devils do big mess around, and they eventually go to hell. Everything was clear for God since day first, so why bother with creation of beings with devil fate?

 

[Abu]

Bahman #211

1. God knows the ultimate fate of an being before its creation.
2. God create a being with ultimate fate of devil.
3. God create a devil since its fate was known prior to the creation (everything is just matter of time).

False. As infinite and all-good, God created angels with free-will to love and worship Him. Some chose to use their free-will to turn against God and were banished to hell. The multitude of good angels have the glory of heaven in love and worship of God.

God decides, and He chose free-will for all so that all could freely choose to love and worship Him – they knew that to turn against God meant eternal punishment – pride comes before the fall.

 

[tonyrey]

…I grant that the question of the resurrection of Jesus – like that of transubstantiation, or the divinity of Christ – is not a topic that can easily be a matter of neutral indifference to a person of faith. It can, indeed, inflame a certain odium theologicum between parties who disagree on a question of such fundamental importance. For this reason, perhaps it is a topic to be avoided.

It is quite possible - and essential - on a philosophy forum to discuss these questions objectively:

1. Do you accept the moral teaching of Jesus?
2. If not why not?
3. If so how do you explain its origin?

BTW His moral teaching is directly linked to the so-called problem of evil. Otherwise you need to explain the nature of evil.

 

[Bahman]

False. As infinite and all-good, God created angels with free-will to love and worship Him. Some chose to use their free-will to turn against God and were banished to hell. The multitude of good angels have the glory of heaven in love and worship of God.

God decides, and He chose free-will for all so that all could freely choose to love and worship Him – they knew that to turn against God meant eternal punishment – pride comes before the fall.

1. God knows the ultimate fate of an being before its creation.
2. God create a being with ultimate fate of devil.
3. God create a devil since its fate was known prior to the creation (everything is just matter of time).

And which phrase is false? Could you pick up one of the above phrase and tell me why it is wrong?

 

[tonyrey]

False. As infinite and all-good, God created angels with free-will to love and worship Him. Some chose to use their free-will to turn against God and were banished to hell. The multitude of good angels have the glory of heaven in love and worship of God.

God decides, and He chose free-will for all so that all could freely choose to love and worship Him – they knew that to turn against God meant eternal punishment – pride comes before the fall.

To reject free will is to destroy the foundation of rational conclusions. There is no reason to believe biological machines are capable of reasoning!

 

[Peter_Plato]

1. God knows the ultimate fate of an being before its creation.
2. God create a being with ultimate fate of devil.
3. God create a devil since its fate was known prior to the creation (everything is just matter of time).

And which phrase is false? Could you pick up one of the above phrase and tell me why it is wrong?

Premise 1. God could not know the fate of a being “before” its creation for two reasons.

1. God is in eternity. He is not in time. With God there is no before or after but only a timeless now in which all time is present to him. He does not know the fate of a creature “before” its creation, he simply knows the fate of the creature.
2. God cannot know the fate of a being with free will without the creation of that being to determine its fate. Its fate is not determinable “prior” to its creation (see reason #1), but, rather, its fate is logically dependent upon its creation, since no fate could be determinable without the free will of the agent to, paradoxically, “determine” that fate. Its fate is not dependent upon God, but upon the agency of the creature and therefore can only occur with the creation of the free agent. God does not know that fate “before” the creature is created because there is no “before” for God. He is eternal.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Portofino

**In the case of both Paul, and the evangelist who penned the gospel according to John, we are thus talking about information that was garnerned second hand, most likely through the verbal testimony of others. **

Again, you are indulging in “maybe.” Maybe John didn’t write the gospel of John?

You haven’t answered how Paul would dare to speak with authority about the resurrection of Jesus without incurring the wrath of the other apostles for telling a big lie. The wrath never came because they all believed the same thing, including Peter and John who were among the first to arrive at the empty tomb.

I agree we are straying from the topic of this thread.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Portofino

**In the case of both Paul, and the evangelist who penned the gospel according to John, we are thus talking about information that was garnerned second hand, most likely through the verbal testimony of others. **

Again, you are indulging in “maybe.” Maybe John didn’t write the gospel of John?

You haven’t answered how Paul would dare to speak with authority about the resurrection of Jesus without incurring the wrath of the other apostles for telling a big lie. The wrath never came because they all believed the same thing, including Peter and John who were among the first to arrive at the empty tomb.

I agree we are straying from the topic of this thread.

A strong case exists for Matthew as the Apostle Matthew and Mark acting as more of a secretary or redactor for Peter than author. Luke was also a very close associate of Paul who had access to a number Apostles who could clarify and inform, and the case for early authorship of Luke and Acts is very good, so this reliability of the Gospels concern is weak, at best.

You are correct that this is off topic.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Peter,
**

1. God is in eternity. He is not in time. With God there is no before or after but only a timeless now in which all time is present to him. He does not know the fate of a creature “before” its creation, he simply knows the fate of the creature.**

Well, that presents a paradox, doesn’t it. We say that time began with the Big Bang. There was no “before” that.

Yet we are told that God created the angels. Did He do so “before” He created the universe? That is, do the angels exist in time, a timeline of their own separate from ours? After all, they once did not exist and then came to exist, didn’t they. They once were all innocent, then many split with Satan for hell.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Peter,
**

1. God is in eternity. He is not in time. With God there is no before or after but only a timeless now in which all time is present to him. He does not know the fate of a creature “before” its creation, he simply knows the fate of the creature.**

Well, that presents a paradox, doesn’t it. We say that time began with the Big Bang. There was no “before” that.

Yet we are told that God created the angels. Did He do so “before” He created the universe? That is, do the angels exist in time, a timeline of their own separate from ours? After all, they once did not exist and then came to exist, didn’t they. They once were all innocent, then many split with Satan for hell.

I suspect time is an inherent aspect of any created, changing reality. That may even allow for hierarchical time within time schemes, or “layers” of time, so to speak. The heavenly realm where angels exist may have its own time signature, perhaps within which is our more limited cosmic time as a substrate.

An analogy might be to the way a narrative story has a time sequence that begins at the first word on the first page and carries sequentially through to the end but the author’s own reality outside of the story has no temporal connection to events within the story. Inside the story, there may be departures via sequential “loops” or flashbacks to past or possibly even future events outside of the main story timeline. The author, God, however, is completely outside of and unconstrained by any of the time continuum(s) developed within the story.

Eternity, or God’s perspective, is all in all, including, but not limited to, all time events.