Why did God allow the demons to tempt us in the first place?

[Miguel2]

One day the demons will not all be complety locked in hell, becoming unable to tempt us? If so, why didn’t God, in the first place, lock them up immediately after their fall from Heaven? It would be easier not to sin if there were no demons whispering in our ears and maybe Adam and Eve would not even fallen. Things would be better without demons around.

 

[Krisdun]

I think it was Eve who was tempted first…Adam tried to resist at first but due to not wanting to disappoint Eve he did as she asked.

 

[Lunam_Meam]

One day the demons will not all be complety locked in hell, becoming unable to tempt us? If so, why didn’t God, in the first place, lock them up immediately after their fall from Heaven? It would be easier not to sin if there were no demons whispering in our ears and maybe Adam and Eve would not even fallen. Things would be better without demons around.

Angels have a free will, and the ones who chose to rebel against God maintained that, as it is with humans.

Regarding Eve and Adam, Eve is led to the tree (a metaphor) "by the childish curiosity of seeing what is special about it, and by a rashness that makes her consider God’s command a useless one since she is strong and pure, the queen of Eden, where everything is subject to her and nothing can hurt her. Her presumption is her ruin. Presumption is the yeast of pride.

At the tree she finds the Seducer, who sings lies to her inexperience, to her beautiful virginal inexperience, to her badly guarded inexperience. And, the allurement continues because there is no will to break it, on the contrary, there was the will to continue it, and to learn what did not belong to man."

“It is said in Genesis that the Serpent tempted Eve when the Lord was not walking in Eden. If God had been in Eden, Satan could not have been there. If Eve had invoked God, Satan would’ve fled. Always have thought in your hearts. And, call the Lord with sincerity.”

"Oh! If she had called to God! If she had hurried to Him saying: "Father! The Serpent had caressed me and I am upset! The Father would have purified her and healed her with His breath, which could’ve infused new innocence into her as it has infused life. And, it would have made her forget the snake’s poison, nay it would’ve engendered in her a disgust for the Serpent, as it happens in those who bear an instinctive dislike for diseases of which they have just been cured. But, Eve does not go to the Father. Eve goes back to the Serpent. The sensation is a sweet one for her. “Seeing that the fruit of the tree was good to eat and pleasing and agreeable to the eye, she took it and ate it”. And, she “understood”. Now malice was inside her and was gnawing at her intestines. She saw with new eyes and heard with new ears the habits and voices of beasts. And, she craved them with insane greed.

Continued…

 

[commenter]

Without free will, no saints.

 

[hope]

Yes Eve was tempted first, she could have said no.
Eve than tempted Adam, he could have said no. Do not see that the reason was that he didn’t want to disappoint Eve.
Adam than blames Eve, Eve blamed the snake.
It would be easier without the fallen angels but than would it be a true test? Adam and Eve’s sin is called the “happy fault”.
Felix Culpa

“O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer.”[5] In the 4th century, Saint Ambrose also speaks of the fortunate ruin of Adam in the Garden of Eden in that his sin brought more good to humanity than if he had stayed perfectly innocent.[6] This theology is continued in the writings of Ambrose’s student St. Augustine regarding the Fall of Man, the source of original sin: “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”

 

[Krisdun]

Eve probably blamed both Adam and the snake

 

[Vico]

One day the demons will not all be complety locked in hell, becoming unable to tempt us? If so, why didn’t God, in the first place, lock them up immediately after their fall from Heaven? It would be easier not to sin if there were no demons whispering in our ears and maybe Adam and Eve would not even fallen. Things would be better without demons around.

A test is necessary.

Catechism

2847 … God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings… There is a certain usefulness to temptation. No one but God knows what our soul has received from him, not even we ourselves. But temptation reveals it in order to teach us to know ourselves, and in this way we discover our evil inclinations and are obliged to give thanks for the goods that temptation has revealed to us.155

730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."26

Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.27

 

[Techno2000]

One day the demons will not all be complety locked in hell, becoming unable to tempt us? If so, why didn’t God, in the first place, lock them up immediately after their fall from Heaven? It would be easier not to sin if there were no demons whispering in our ears and maybe Adam and Eve would not even fallen. Things would be better without demons around.

God uses the demons and angels to see what direction you want to go, the path to good or the path to evil.

 

[hope]

Neither Adam nor Eve accepted responsibility for their sin of disobedience. I am not sure if it is correct to say that Adam also blamed God " Genesis Chapter The man said, `The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’’ but that is how I read it.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

It would be easier without the fallen angels but than would it be a true test?

Angels didn’t need a “more powerful tempter” tempting them in order to reject God. What seems to have happened is:

God creates angels.
Some angels reject God.
God: “Well that wasn’t great, maybe if I make less perfect beings, they won’t reject me.”
God creates less perfect beings (i.e. us)
God: “You know what, I’m so confident these less perfect beings will not reject me that I’ll let the more perfect beings try to tempt the less perfect beings away from me.”
God when the less perfect beings are tempted away:
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[Dan_Defender]

Jesus said it best in Matt 18:7 ‘…For it is necessary that temptations come…’
Necessary as in, free will calls for it.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

Adam blamed God for putting Eve in the garden, and also blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. Neither accepted responsibility for their disobedience to God.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

That is exactly what Adam is doing, well its partly your fault God, you put/ gave the woman here.

 

[ThomasMT]

Without free will, no saints.

And who tempted the temptors, while they were still up in heaven with God? They were able to excercise free will just fine. The only explanation that I can think of, for man’s added challenge, is that we are held to a higher standard.

 

[commenter]

commenter:

Without free will, no saints.

And who tempted the temptors, while they were still up in heaven with God? They were able to excercise free will just fine. The only explanation that I can think of, for man’s added challenge, is that we are held to a higher standard.

Change requires Time. No Time, no change.
Temptation requires Time. There’s a before, during and after.

From what I was taught, the Angels were not tempted in Time, as humans are. Time didn’t exist.

Their “free will” must have been exercised in some other fashion, somehow having full awareness of all the consequences of their choice, and full control. Thus without Time, repentance, concupiscence, regret, change, temptation, relapse are all meaningless, because they are time bound concepts.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Suffering affords man a situation in which he can exhibit a higher level of love.

If you “love” God in a situation where everything is easy, what merit is there in that? But if you love God by making sacrifice and defeating adversity, saying no to demonic temptation, you have attained a higher love, a Christ-like sacrificial love.

Scripture that references higher value of love in the face of difficulty include:

• Luke 6:32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
• John 15:13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

You see that overcoming adversity is the greater act of love. So too when we overcome demons.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Change requires Time. No Time, no change.
Temptation requires Time. There’s a before, during and after.

That seems pretty hand-wavey. I would argue that if there was no such thing as “the devil before he fell” then God straight up created the devil to be evil.