Why didn't God...

[sw85]

Sorry, I was not wishing to avoid your observation. Manichaeism of course was one of the formative influences on Augustine- and is a natural response to the ‘existence’ of evil as well as good. His final response to the problem was the explanation the evil was in reality ‘nothingness’. Therefore, according to Augustine, evil was not ‘created’.

Now, let us assume that the devil is a/the personification/paradigm/exemplar origin of evil.

If we take Augustine’s explanation the evil is a ‘nothingness’, and Satan is therefore “Mr. Nothingness”, it is obvious that he is not created by God (since nothingness, evil, is according to this model, the absence of creation).

But if we take a model in which the Devil has positive existence (i.e. he is a positively existing ‘evil being’)- then it is also obvious the God did not create him, since what God creates is good.

The problem is assuming that the Devil as the personification of evil is the same thing as assuming that the Devil is the form of evil. There is no form of evil precisely because evil is nonbeing, privation, or perversion. The Devil is the most evil thing a thing can be and still be said to be. Insofar as he still is, he’s good, hence not unequivocally evil.

 

[johnnyjones]

Considering everything said, God still knew that when he created Lucifer he would become the ultimate evil. So, he was created with a purpose even though he had free will. God knew what his choice would be. Very perplexing for the human mind. I can only surmise that the only way for humans to have a free will was to create a being that God knew would become the greatest tempter. Would a utopia have been better? Was there another way? Someday I may know.

 

[grannymh]

Considering everything said, God still knew that when he created Lucifer he would become the ultimate evil. So, he was created with a purpose even though he had free will. God knew what his choice would be. Very perplexing for the human mind. I can only surmise that the only way for humans to have a free will was to create a being that God knew would become the greatest tempter. Would a utopia have been better? Was there another way? Someday I may know.

Remember that free will worked for the angels who submitted to God.

 

[johnnyjones]

Remember that free will worked for the angels who submitted to God.

… yes and ultimately God knew everything everybody was ever going to do.

 

[tonyrey]

Considering everything said, God still knew that when he created Lucifer he would become the ultimate evil. So, he was created with a purpose even though he had free will. God knew what his choice would be. Very perplexing for the human mind. I can only surmise that the only way for humans to have a free will was to create a being that God knew would become the greatest tempter. Would a utopia have been better? Was there another way? Someday I may know.

If there are beings with free will it is inevitable that one of them will become the greatest tempter! It is possible that some one elsewill eventually end up with that doubtful “privilege”! The Communion of Saints implies that there is also a Community of Devils… We are not isolated individuals but inextricably interrelated and interdependent.

 

[Qoeleth]

Is the Devil “bad, very bad”? Nothing can be bad by nature – that’s a non sequitur. What makes the Devil bad is the fact that he rebels against his own goodness (he is an angel, after all). That’s the nature of all evil: it’s a privation or warping of that which is good.

We should be alarmed if, in fact, the Devil were claimed to be a being ontologically equivalent to God, just nasty and mean-spirited. Such a being is an ontological impossibility.

We arrive again at the ontological status of evil. You say nothing is bad by nature?
Is famine bad by nature?
Is theft bad by nature?
Is badness bad by nature?

No doubt you would say that these are not ontological positive things. “Famine” is “an absence of food”. “Theft” is a “deprivation of respect of private property”, etc

One can easily say is ‘evil’ is just a deficiency of ‘goodness’. But one could equally take the position that ‘goodness’ is merely a cessation of ‘evil’. Is war the absence of peace, or peace the absence of war?

The fact is, our language tends to treat evil ‘things’, as well as good things, as ontologically positive. If a person has a disease, one does not say “You are suffering from a insufficiency of good health”, but rather “You have cancer/diabetes, etc.”

Ontological status is a function of language- if we have the word “evil”, it followers that, within our language system, evil ‘exists’.

 

[johnnyjones]

We arrive again at the ontological status of evil. You say nothing is bad by nature?
Is famine bad by nature?
Is theft bad by nature?
Is badness bad by nature?

No doubt you would say that these are not ontological positive things. “Famine” is “an absence of food”. “Theft” is a “deprivation of respect of private property”, etc

One can easily say is ‘evil’ is just a deficiency of ‘goodness’. But one could equally take the position that ‘goodness’ is merely a cessation of ‘evil’. Is war the absence of peace, or peace the absence of war?

The fact is, our language tends to treat evil ‘things’, as well as good things, as ontologically positive. If a person has a disease, one does not say “You are suffering from a insufficiency of good health”, but rather “You have cancer/diabetes, etc.”

Ontological status is a function of language- if we have the word “evil”, it followers that, within our language system, evil ‘exists’.

Satan is bad by nature because he chose it. Or did he really because God knew there had to be an evil entity for free will to exist, so he was destined to be “bad”.

 

[grannymh]

Satan is bad by nature because he chose it. Or did he really because God knew there had to be an evil entity for free will to exist, so he was destined to be “bad”.

Somewhere, someone just referred to the purpose of free will. Pardon my poor memory. So I will comment on the purpose of free will from what I know about it from the Catholic position.

Our spiritual soul’s intellect and will are given to us so that through knowledge and love we can share in God’s own life. It is not necessary to have a choice between good and bad in order for our free will to operate. This is because our will is geared to seeking our ultimate good which is to live in the eternal realm of God’s love.

 

[sw85]

We arrive again at the ontological status of evil. You say nothing is bad by nature?
Is famine bad by nature?
Is theft bad by nature?
Is badness bad by nature?

No doubt you would say that these are not ontological positive things. “Famine” is “an absence of food”. “Theft” is a “deprivation of respect of private property”, etc

One can easily say is ‘evil’ is just a deficiency of ‘goodness’. But one could equally take the position that ‘goodness’ is merely a cessation of ‘evil’. Is war the absence of peace, or peace the absence of war?

The fact is, our language tends to treat evil ‘things’, as well as good things, as ontologically positive. If a person has a disease, one does not say “You are suffering from a insufficiency of good health”, but rather “You have cancer/diabetes, etc.”

Ontological status is a function of language- if we have the word “evil”, it followers that, within our language system, evil ‘exists’.

I grant the logic but reject the premise. It doesn’t follow that things must necessarily exist the way we speak about them. When I say “the sky is blue,” I am not literally saying that there is a thing which definitely exists called “the sky” and that it is literally blue in color, as if it were a great big carpet above our heads painted by God. I am condensing a network of facts relating to sense perception, the color spectrum, and the scattering of light through the atmosphere into a simple heuristic, that conveys all this information without needing to retread it every time I open my mouth.

Even so, our language recognizes evil as a deficiency or privation more often than you realize. Cancer and diabetes are both examples of “disorders” or “diseases,” which is to say deviations from the normative order or level of ease.

 

[PumpkinSeed]

People say you cannot have free will without bad. Well, thats not necessarily true.

I can choose what to do without either choices being sinful. So, I do not buy that excuse that you need ‘bad & good’ to have free will.

Which makes me wonder, why would God even make EVIL possible? What Lucifer did was evil, going against God. So that means God made evil possible in the first place.

 

[johnnyjones]

Somewhere, someone just referred to the purpose of free will. Pardon my poor memory. So I will comment on the purpose of free will from what I know about it from the Catholic position.

Our spiritual soul’s intellect and will are given to us so that through knowledge and love we can share in God’s own life. It is not necessary to have a choice between good and bad in order for our free will to operate. This is because our will is geared to seeking our ultimate good which is to live in the eternal realm of God’s love.

I disagree. Free will is to do what one wants. Go left, go right, chose good chose evil. A choice is necessary. What you have put forth is speculation. Everything in life is a choice. Working out one’s own salvation is part of that. But, God knew what you would chose from the foundation of creation. “Geared toward good” is highly debatable.

 

[Lochias]

We arrive again at the ontological status of evil. You say nothing is bad by nature?
Is famine bad by nature?
Is theft bad by nature?
Is badness bad by nature?

No doubt you would say that these are not ontological positive things. “Famine” is “an absence of food”. “Theft” is a “deprivation of respect of private property”, etc

One can easily say is ‘evil’ is just a deficiency of ‘goodness’. But one could equally take the position that ‘goodness’ is merely a cessation of ‘evil’. Is war the absence of peace, or peace the absence of war?

The fact is, our language tends to treat evil ‘things’, as well as good things, as ontologically positive. If a person has a disease, one does not say “You are suffering from a insufficiency of good health”, but rather “You have cancer/diabetes, etc.”

Ontological status is a function of language- if we have the word “evil”, it followers that, within our language system, evil ‘exists’.

Your logic is flawed. “Famine” cannot be simply condensed down to an “absence of food.” Following that logic, I could just as easily say that, once I take my coffee mug off of my desk, my desk becomes a ratzinfratzit, which is a word I made up to mean “an object displaying an absence of coffee mugs.”

My desk no more ceases to be a desk and becomes a ratzinfratzit than does a morally neutral situation become evil merely by the lack of good.

 

[grannymh]

I disagree. Free will is to do what one wants. Go left, go right, chose good chose evil. A choice is necessary. What you have put forth is speculation. Everything in life is a choice. Working out one’s own salvation is part of that. But, God knew what you would chose from the foundation of creation. “Geared toward good” is highly debatable.

When one says that free will is to do what one wants, that is a description of an action. The human person has a nature which has the ability to freely make choices and then the person can act on the choice if it is possible.

Please note that I did not say “Geared toward good”. I did not refer to just any general good; I referred to our goal of salvation. Here is the comment from post 27.

“Our spiritual soul’s intellect and will are given to us so that through knowledge and love we can share in God’s own life. It is not necessary to have a choice between good and bad in order for our free will to operate. This is because our will is geared to seeking our ultimate good which is to live in the eternal realm of God’s love.”

Is it possible to imagine a day when all our actions are based only on our goal of acting as God would have us act? We would ignore any temptations to waver from our goal so that we would not spend time choosing and/or risking the possibility of doing something which was wrong.

Can we choose a lesser good than our ultimate good? We often do that. Perhaps we need to spend more time thinking about our ultimate goal simply for its own sake. The ultimate goal or purpose of our lives is to live forever in God’s love. Nonetheless, we have the ability to freely ignore our purpose and our own ultimate good.

Perhaps I have greater respect for our human nature in that I see it as wounded and not totally corrupted.

 

[Qoeleth]

Your logic is flawed. “Famine” cannot be simply condensed down to an “absence of food.” Following that logic, I could just as easily say that, once I take my coffee mug off of my desk, my desk becomes a ratzinfratzit, which is a word I made up to mean “an object displaying an absence of coffee mugs.”

My desk no more ceases to be a desk and becomes a ratzinfratzit than does a morally neutral situation become evil merely by the lack of good.

I only mentioned the example to illustrate the type of position adopted by those who say the evil is non-existent. My point was it comes down to language.

 

[johnnyjones]

When one says that free will is to do what one wants, that is a description of an action. The human person has a nature which has the ability to freely make choices and then the person can act on the choice if it is possible.

Please note that I did not say “Geared toward good”. I did not refer to just any general good; I referred to our goal of salvation. Here is the comment from post 27.

“Our spiritual soul’s intellect and will are given to us so that through knowledge and love we can share in God’s own life. It is not necessary to have a choice between good and bad in order for our free will to operate. This is because our will is geared to seeking our ultimate good which is to live in the eternal realm of God’s love.”

Is it possible to imagine a day when all our actions are based only on our goal of acting as God would have us act? We would ignore any temptations to waver from our goal so that we would not spend time choosing and/or risking the possibility of doing something which was wrong.

Can we choose a lesser good than our ultimate good? We often do that. Perhaps we need to spend more time thinking about our ultimate goal simply for its own sake. The ultimate goal or purpose of our lives is to live forever in God’s love. Nonetheless, we have the ability to freely ignore our purpose and our own ultimate good.

Perhaps I have greater respect for our human nature in that I see it as wounded and not totally corrupted.

Sure, you can say thinking is not acting. I think we both understand “will” to be an act. Free will is to act based on a mental choice. Not everyone is Christian and thinking in terms of how they are geared to perform. Whatever our hearts feel we must remember the scriptues and the seriousness of our condition. Romans 3:12 “ALL have turned away, they have together become worthless, there is NO ONE who does good, not even one.” Our will I would submit is inclined otherwise.

 

[shoe]

…“nuke” the Devil, so to speak? Wouldn’t that have made it easier for us to avoid sin if he ceased to exist and have power over us?

If God “nuked” the Devil because he made the choice to rebel against God’s perfect will, another angel would probably just come along and make exactly the same choice as the Devil did. And then God simply would have another angel to nuke and the human race would still have the ability fall into some kind of temptation, since the choice to rebel against God’s loving kindness seems inherent with the free-will gift He has so graciously bestowed upon both angels and mankind.

 

[johnnyjones]

If God “nuked” the Devil because he made the choice to rebel against God’s perfect will, another angel would probably just come along and make exactly the same choice as the Devil did. And then God simply would have another angel to nuke and the human race would still have the ability fall into some kind of temptation, since the choice to rebel against God’s loving kindness seems inherent with the free-will gift He has so graciously bestowed upon both angels and mankind.

I know we are talking about a lot of silly what ifs but you can’t really say in the scenario you set up that, “another angel would probably come along.” Lucifer’s gang followed him so that indicates other angels(demons) would not “step up” to confront God, unless it was in his plan that one of them would. Would man have sinned without a tempter (devil)? I may never know but it makes sense that it had to happen that way other wise there would be no contrast, no choice to make, therefore no free will.
In a sense it’s a fruitless conversation because this is this only way it could be.

 

[Lochias]

I only mentioned the example to illustrate the type of position adopted by those who say the evil is non-existent. My point was it comes down to language.

Gotcha.