Why does God create souls he know will wind up in hell?

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OrbisNonSufficit said:
Yet God creates people knowing they would be damned. Does He even love those people?
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Yes.

Freedom of choice means that you are responsible for your actions.
OrbisNonSufficit said:
At the same time, by creating those people and knowing their effects God technically wills consequences of their actions to be in the world. They are not His actions, but they are introduced by Him with His full knowledge. It’s somewhat like giving someone a gun knowing they would shoot someone.
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So God’s foreknowledge is the reason why people sin. Gotcha.
OrbisNonSufficit said:
I myself am probably leaning towards Molinism and middle knowledge
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Occam’s razor, and the fact that John Chrysostom and others didn’t even think middle knowledge is pretty detrimental to the theory.
 
But without creating them how would He know that they would, or would not, choose damnation?

Unless the person actually exists and acts, you don’t ‘know’ they ‘will do’ something’. It’s not like God is an incubator with all these perfectly formed fully born-lived-and-died people inside Him whom He can ‘release’ or ‘not’.

As people have noted before, God’s knowledge of us rests on Him being aware of what we have chosen in our lives not because He can ‘see into the future’, but because from Him being God He is outside of time and it is all taking place in a continuous kind of ‘now’.

So no He cannot create beings that He ‘knows’ will not sin. If a person ‘will’ sin, that person already has to have existed for the sin to be ‘seen’. So if God sees that John Smith will sin and not repent, God must have already created Him, and He can’t ‘not create’ Him.
 
stpurl said:
As people have noted before, God’s knowledge of us rests on Him being aware of what we have chosen in our lives not because He can ‘see into the future’, but because from Him being God He is outside of time and it is all taking place in a continuous kind of ‘now’.
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Totally wrong. First of all, out-of-time does not means “a continous kind of now” because the concept of simultaneity (“now”) implies itself the concept of time.
It is simply nonsensical to try to express God’s life " in temporal terms", as you are doing. Out of time is a condition completely inconceivable for us.

Ephesians 1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

The term “before” in Ef 1:4 is to be interpreted analogically and it indicates very clearly that God’s knowledge does not depend on the act of creation (in fact, what happens before does not depend on what happens after); therefore, God has always known eternally the souls who go to heaven, independently from the act of creation of the universe.
stpurl said:
So no He cannot create beings that He ‘knows’ will not sin.
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God is omnipotent and He certainly can choose to create only souls who will go to heaven. You are positing a weak god , not the omnipotent God of the christian faith
 
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You have not understood what I said at all.

Not a bit.

You insist on yourself ‘sticking to’ a limited and temporal understanding of God’s nature and abilities.
 
akck said:
Why does God create souls he know will wind up in hell?
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Free will is a gift, a good gift. No one has to abuse it; no one has to go to hell.

From our perspective, that is all we need to know. Man is a morally accountable being, regardless. And to ask, to demand, that we simply do the right thing is not unjust in the slightest manner.
 
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Because making people is a good, is making souls that end up choosing damnation always a good?
 
How? If people have free will, they have to have the experiences to make the choices. Once they have ‘made the choice’ God can’t ‘unmake’ it because He would be interfering with their free will.

I’l ask you exactly how can God ‘make’ a creature who does not choose hell?

God does not have a ‘list’ of creatures that ‘will’ or ‘won’t’ choose evil. It’s not as if God is looking down at a creature who does not YET exist and says, “Oh hey, I see that one going rogue at age 52, I just won’t create HIM.’ That isn’t the way it works.
 
I suggest you read some St Augustine and Aquinas works, they spell out quite clearly that God can have a person saved if he so desires, what they admit they cannot explain is why God creates some people who do not accept salvation.
 
stpurl said:
God does not have a ‘list’ of creatures that ‘will’ or ‘won’t’ choose evil.
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According to some in this thread, He does. Not my claim; theirs.

So why does He do that?
 
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Okay, and? God desires all souls be saved. Why create any more damned souls than absolutely necessary? Judas is the only one I will give you for the sake of discussion. Everyone else is unnecessary.
 
So why create them? Why create souls that prevent His desire that all be saved from being realised?

So don’t make those people either. Simple.
 
Judas is an exception and not only did he not know Christ better than us he also committed suicide and so his death was timed according to him. Judas also chose his death and despaired.
 
Explain. I don’t see how this follows.

So God is incapable of making a soul which doesn’t require damned souls existing to be saved?
 
The difference between the death of Judas and that of John Smith from Ohio is that Judas despaired, the worst sin, John Smith did not despair and was more open to God’s mercy.
 
That still does not answer the question: Why create that which prevents God’s desire from being carried out? If God knows the fate of a soul, He can simply not create them, and then never encounters the issue of rejection of God’s grace.
 
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