I understand. That doesn’t answer the “problem/mystery of evil” question though. Is it worth it to create beings with free will, knowing that evil would result, in the case of this world? Obviously God deemed it to be worthwhile. This leads to the “greater good” idea-that God wouldn’t allow evil unless He can ultimately bring something better out of it.
It’s simply an ethical question. If we could foreknow that the course of our actions would result in evil, would it be ethical for us to pursue that course anyway?
Yes. It would.
That is exactly the principle of double effect. That’s also why I’ll bring up an analogy.
Consider a child implanted in a woman’s fallopian tube.
Man (in the ethical image of God) can remove the whole fallopian tube, knowing that the child will die. The removal is an ethical procedure. Man does not intend to kill the child. Man only needs to strictly intend to save the woman’s life. The procedure does not require us to desire or try to kill the child in any way.
That act is very different from an abortion, where the doctor intends (actively) to kill the child. An act of removing a fallopian tube, and then purposely crushing it while a live infant/embryo in the tube is unethical and immoral. The second part is manslaughter or murder.
The principle of double effect has boundaries.
The principle of double effect exists because there is no other way available (at the time, or in all eternity) for another outcome.
Let me reverse the question on you for a moment:
Given an a-priori axiom: God can not create (non omniscient) creatures without the potential for evil.
Which has more good, quantitatively ?
To create nothing, or to create some things which are good?
Is it not obvious that if there is nothing, nothing good has been created?
Now consider:
Evil is not a “thing”. You can not create “evil.” Evil is the deprivation of “good”.
So, when examining “to create” or “not to create” as the question … I think some good creation is better than no creation. Existence is a greater good than non-existence.
( I don’t mean to exclude that God is infinite Good even if he did not create at all. )
As to the greater “good” that Akin and the saints are talking about, that’s the incarnation.The real question is, why didn’t God do the greater good (the incarnation) from “the beginning.”?
This is what I said is a mystery. (Or at least, that’s what I tried to say, imperfectly.)
In my own mind, the mystery consists of this point: For God to empty himself, he apparently had to deprive himself in some way. In one sense, deprivation an evil / potential evil. Yet God can not actually DO evil, even to himself. So, how can the incarnation come to pass?
IMHO. This has to do with sin being actualized in the world, and this is why the incarnation is a response to sin … rather than something which happened from the beginning.
When God entered into a covenant with Abraham and Moses, he had to make an Oath.
The Scriptures tell us that “God swore by himself” because “He had no one greater to swear by.”
At the moment God entered into an oath, he was saying: “If I fail to keep my word, I am subject to death.” That’s what an oath means.
But God, foreknowing that his oath would fail unless death occurred on the cross, still chose to make the oath; otherwise all of humanity would die and be in the power of death.
(And he “rigged” the game, for the moment he suffered death … his oath was fulfilled, and he was no longer required to die. Hence the resurrection. )
If Man had not sinned, there would have been no need for a promise. There would have been no need for an oath. There would have been no need for a cross. That “could” have been a very great good, quantitatively. But, I am not sure the incarnation could have happened in that scenario. I am not sure it couldn’t, either. This is the mystery to me.
Does God suffer any evil by merely being incarnated?
If that’s the case, then the incarnation could only come to pass because of a crisis.
The saints have never really spoken (with any precision) about the issue I am raising.
