I
Iron_Donkey
Guest
I haven’t sifted through the whole 14 pages of posts, so forgive me if I’m being repetitive. But two points:
In reply to your original statement, which we’ve seemed to move away from, Satan is not the source or embodiment of evil. He is just a creature who choose evil (so God did not create some sort of fountain of evil that is corrupting the world.) Moving on:
Second, it seems like you’re pitting the power of God against the power we have by virtue of being created in His likeness.
We don’t have “significant freedom.” We have freedom. We can choose to reject God’s good.
Now you say that God could create a world where this never happens while leaving us with the ability to do so. But a problem with this is that our choices are part of the world, and in speaking of a world created in such a way that we never make bad choices, you are speaking of world in which our choices are created.
So it is certainly possible that, in a world created by God where we can make choices, no one makes bad choices, but it is not logically possible to make a world in any sense where the Creator determines choice outcome and maintain free will.
This does not present a problem with omniscience, or even God changing His plan to interact with the choices that He knows we will make – it is still us, not Him, that “creates” our response to the choice. He can manipulate things as He desires within these self-imposed restraints.
The next question would be whether or not it is evil to allow choice and hence allow evil. If evil is viewed as an absence or an imperfection of good, then the answer is no: in a world with choice, we can allow ourselves to participate in God’s good, hence in some sense the good is being spread to other beings (and those who do not participate are missing the sharing of God’s love, or good). In a world without choice, this does not happen. There is a lack of that type of good – the good of the choice to do good. Notice the lack includes whatever lacks would be present in the choice scenario (except in the choice scenario there is an unmet potential), since in one case beings (to the extent that they can be called that without choice) are not choosing to participate, and the other people are not to participate. In both cases the good of the choice is absent.
In reply to your original statement, which we’ve seemed to move away from, Satan is not the source or embodiment of evil. He is just a creature who choose evil (so God did not create some sort of fountain of evil that is corrupting the world.) Moving on:
Second, it seems like you’re pitting the power of God against the power we have by virtue of being created in His likeness.
We don’t have “significant freedom.” We have freedom. We can choose to reject God’s good.
Now you say that God could create a world where this never happens while leaving us with the ability to do so. But a problem with this is that our choices are part of the world, and in speaking of a world created in such a way that we never make bad choices, you are speaking of world in which our choices are created.
So it is certainly possible that, in a world created by God where we can make choices, no one makes bad choices, but it is not logically possible to make a world in any sense where the Creator determines choice outcome and maintain free will.
This does not present a problem with omniscience, or even God changing His plan to interact with the choices that He knows we will make – it is still us, not Him, that “creates” our response to the choice. He can manipulate things as He desires within these self-imposed restraints.
The next question would be whether or not it is evil to allow choice and hence allow evil. If evil is viewed as an absence or an imperfection of good, then the answer is no: in a world with choice, we can allow ourselves to participate in God’s good, hence in some sense the good is being spread to other beings (and those who do not participate are missing the sharing of God’s love, or good). In a world without choice, this does not happen. There is a lack of that type of good – the good of the choice to do good. Notice the lack includes whatever lacks would be present in the choice scenario (except in the choice scenario there is an unmet potential), since in one case beings (to the extent that they can be called that without choice) are not choosing to participate, and the other people are not to participate. In both cases the good of the choice is absent.