B
Boulder257
Guest
God created Satan and holds him in existence, if I understand correctly. Why doesn’t God just annihilate Satan and the demons to remove that temptation? Why does he allow Satan and the other demons to exist?
- Status
R
rinnie
Guest
That is a question God has never revealed to us. Completely anyway. But we so know from the book of Job that the devil believed he could get people to turn away from God. SO God gave man free will to choose him or the devil.
God will remove Satan and his demons and followers at the end of age.
O
oldcelt
Guest
The ultimate question for the Christian God…with His powers of omniscience and omnipotence, there is no valid excuse for any involvement with evil.
O
Oreoracle
Guest
I’m not religious, but given Christian philosophy, would it matter? Lucifer was tempted to do evil without any external influence. He was an angel, yet the capacity for evil lay within him all along. If that’s true of an angel, then surely we could be tempted without a demon influencing us.
D
dshix
Guest
For the same reason that God doesn’t annihilate us when we sin. Free will. God gave the angels a choice: to be His loving servants or to refuse His command and go to Hell. Lucifer and other angels chose to separate themselves from God, and thus brought the punishment of Hell upon themselves.
It would be inconsistent for God to annihilate them after that choice. He created them with free wills, and since God never changes, is outside of time, and cannot contradict Himself, it is actually a contradiction to say that He could annihilate them now. He created them with immortal souls; and they will remain for all eternity.
J
JRKH
Guest
C
cornbread_r2
Guest
It seems odd to hold that God must tolerate the existence of evil for all of eternity. In any case, are you sure that angels, good and bad, have souls?
M
Mumbles140
Guest
- I do not find it odd, as the existence of evil flows from free will. God gifted His rational creations with free will, and thus would be contradicting Himself if He took that away.
- I would not say angels/demons ‘have souls’ in the sense of humans, as humans have mortal, corporeal bodies. I’d more likely say that angels and demons are ‘souls’, not bound by the constraints of a body, and thus incapable of death.
D
dshix
Guest
Actually I agree with your entire first sentence. It IS “odd” to our weak, frail human reason. But when you consider the God is One, and He is indivisibly consistent. It makes sense. When I say that God “must” do something, I don’t mean that He must because He is forced to do so by some outside force, but rather, it means that He must because He, Himself, cannot contradict Himself, because it is against His nature.
As such, God cannot create a square circle. This is not because he lacks power, or because he is stopped by another power, but because God does not contradict Himself.
I
Iron_Donkey
Guest
Satan is a creature in his own right, not just a temptation to us. If God were to annihilate him, it would have to be the case that it is a good thing to annihilate creatures when they turn from him, not just that it would make things easier in some ways for some other creatures.
Further, eternity is a long time, and God understands it better than we do. We know that even when evil happens, good can be brought out of it. Built into your question is the assumption that things would be better in all respects, or at least mostly better, if Satan were to be annihilated, but we don’t actually know that. As an example, the fall of man was definitely a bad thing, but Christ’s redemption raised us to a higher state than where we were before we fell.
Not to mention that in addition to the fact that we can’t actually know what the eternal consequences of such an action would be, whether things would as a whole be better or worse, such thinking overlooks a certain fact: God is perfect, but there is no upper limit to how good the created world could be, and evil is not a thing in itself but rather an opposition to or an attempt to remove/ignore/counter good. Which isn’t to say that evil isn’t real, only that it’s existence isn’t self contained - it is the result of a twisting of a good.
This results in two more things to consider: first, the world can always get “better” (just create one more virtuous being). There is no upper limit. So while we sit here saying “why doesn’t God do X to make the world better/remove some evil/remove some temptation to evil,” we have to recognize that even if He did that, we would still be able to ask the same question about something else. This isn’t to say that it might not make more sense for God to do or not do something, but it is to say that the mere fact that things aren’t perfect or that there is some lack of a good that we could imagine (evil being a lack or twisting of good) does not in it self contradict that God is good or only does good - the world is created at a certain state of goodness and is in a state of journeying. Rather, this realization that things could always be better transforms the question to “why this collection of goods (with this potential for evil, or opposition to them) as opposed to some other one?” Which is a legitimate question, and worth probing, but also one that we shouldn’t be surprised if we can’t answer in all respects, because of that whole “eternity is a long time” thing. We cannot comprehend the entirety of how things actually are now, much less how they are evolving, how they would be with some change, or how they would evolve from that point after that change. So it’s a good question to poke at, but not one that we should expect to comprehend the entire answer to.
For your particular question, this means that we can’t really comprehend the alternatives to the world in which Satan exists, maybe some are better in some ways and not in others, maybe some would start out better but not “journey as well,” as it were, maybe some would have the same or similar type of journey, but just start along it at different points - for such a large potential change, we have really no way to tell. But God does, and making the right decision is kind of His thing, so after we come to know who God is, we can know that He does the right thing even if we can’t always completely tell why.
The second point, which was referenced some above, is that our evil choices are twisted goods, as opposed to completely evil things in themselves. The evil is in our decisions rather than in our existence or our nature or our abilities that allow us to make the evil decisions and act upon them. So removing an evil is removing a twisted good, which necessarily means removing a good. So in addition to all of the collateral effects, there is the destruction of a good itself, which is not something that we should demand lightly.
(Note that I am not saying that we shouldn’t try to comprehend why things are the way they are, only that we will never gain more than a partial understanding, and so we should not find it troubling when our understanding fails to explain everything God does.)
Satan’s existence, his power, his intelligence are from God, but these things are not evil. His actions are, but those come from him, not God. That’s kind of the whole point of free will - the choices we make originate from within us, and we cannot blame God when we reject the goodness He offers. The goodness and the ability to choose it are from God, the choice is from us - that’s what makes it “free”.
D
Dorothy
Guest
We are finite, and God is infinite. We don’t see the bigger picture that God sees.
God created the angels and some of them rebelled. The angels have extremely high intellectual capabilities, far beyond ours, and what God gives He doesn’t take back, BUT He can draw a greater good from it! When we resist the temptations of the evil one, we become stronger! The Lord then gifts and graces us!
We, in our fallen nature, contend with the world, the flesh, and the devil. When we use the grace and all the helps God has given us, we can draw good out of evil. We do this by suffering in union with the Lord about the things we cannot change, becoming more prayerful people thus allowing our actions to spring from deep prayer, making use of all the graces we can receive from the Mass and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, good spiritual reading, etc. The Lord will draw us with His peace that surpasses all understanding.
As a humorous side note: When I was a young child, whenever I asked my mother “why” I couldn’t do something I wanted to do she would say…“because “Y” is a crooked letter!”
Z
Zipply
Guest
The issue of Satan is a downright difficult one.
We know that the Israelites went from Polytheism to Monotheism through a period of Henotheism. This is the essential theological journey of the Old Testament.
Satan is first described in that earliest poly-heno theistic period. Rigorous questions were not asked about the motivation of divine beings at that point, as these early cultures were polytheistic, projecting human types onto their gods.
So, it was not asked “Who tempted Satan?” because people were used to their being good and bad gods same as there were good and bad people. Likewise, it was not asked “Why would Satan start a war he knows he cannot win?” during a period when the Israelites were engaging in ‘Jehova is bigger than your god’ henotheistic one-upsmanship.
So…here we are today. Asking very simple ‘why?’ questions like children. It makes me feel very strange. I cannot help but feel that something really important has been missed.
We know that the Israelites went from Polytheism to Monotheism through a period of Henotheism. This is the essential theological journey of the Old Testament.
Satan is first described in that earliest poly-heno theistic period. Rigorous questions were not asked about the motivation of divine beings at that point, as these early cultures were polytheistic, projecting human types onto their gods.
So, it was not asked “Who tempted Satan?” because people were used to their being good and bad gods same as there were good and bad people. Likewise, it was not asked “Why would Satan start a war he knows he cannot win?” during a period when the Israelites were engaging in ‘Jehova is bigger than your god’ henotheistic one-upsmanship.
So…here we are today. Asking very simple ‘why?’ questions like children. It makes me feel very strange. I cannot help but feel that something really important has been missed.
R
robertmidwest
Guest
Your not saying humans didn’t have free will before Job are you? I don’t think so, but just want to make sure. Humans have had free will since Adam.
Where is the scripture that talks about the creation of angels and angels havings free will. Serious question. Not trying to be argumentative.
Where in the Old Testament are the Israelites ever anything but monotheistic?
Z
Zipply
Guest
Abraham was called out of Ur, from among polytheists. The change was not instant… Witness ‘have no other Gods before me’. In ancient Canaan, that didn’t mean 'don’t make a God out of material goods! Golden calf, anyone?
C
cornbread_r2
Guest
Existing and not existing at the same time would seem to be a logical contradiction (like a square circle), but I see nothing logically contradictory about an entity existing and then not existing – in the same way that it would not be logically contradictory for an entity to not exist and then exist.
At one time angels didn’t exist and then they existed. Did God contradict himself by calling the angels into existence?
R
rinnie
Guest
No, to be more clearer I use the book of Job to kind of explain what I was thinking.
Job had it all, God said to the devil look at my servant Job how good he is, etc. To make a long story short the devil said of course he is, you gave him everything, let him suffer, see how long he stays faithful to you.
So God let the devil loose, let him tempt us, To show the world I guess you could say what we are made of.
By the way Angels had to have had free will or the devil would not exist.
9
987mk
Guest
You are forgetting that God knows everything.
This means that God wilfully chose to create some Angels who he knew would make the choice to go to hell.
God needed some Angels to go to hell in order for his mysterious plan to work, so those particular Angels were made for hell.
There can be no other explanation. If Lucifer doesn’t rebel, there is no hell. God needed Lucifer to rebel and so he chose to create an Angel that he knew would rebel.
God creates people already knowing they’re choosing hell.
D
Dorothy
Guest
Yes, God knows everything. God gave the pure spirits free will; some freely chose to rebel.
The pure spirits weren’t made for hell. God is infinite Love.
God honored their choice, and He honors our choice.
9
987mk
Guest
You fail to understand that God created them knowing that they would choose hell, yet he created them anyway.
Without hell, there is no salvation from hell.
Hell must exist in Gods plan and Lucifer must be a part of that plan.
D
Dorothy
Guest
Free will is a terrifying gift isn’t it! All our loving Creator wants is for us to love him back with the same love He freely gives to us.
- Status