This will be short as I’m up against time constraints. Yes, I think from what you’ve said that we’re not far apart except perhaps in semantics. One thing:
What I meant is that hardening can also be translated “strengthening.” (I’m told.) Therefore the evil intent of Pharaoh which he may have feared to do, he is given the courage to carry out. We all may have evil intent that we’re afraid to carry through because of our fear – mainly of repercussions, consequences, etc. So Pharaoh did all that was in his heart, which he may have feared to do otherwise.
So my theories as to how “evil” came about. Mind, I can’t corroborate any of this scripturally so I don’t talk of it often, but if you’ll receive it in the spirit of a mere whim, I’ll share.
God created the world from Nothing. (I’ll capitalize to emphasize that I will treat it as a “thing” for greater ease in discussion. I might also refer to it as chaos though that’s a little closer to Something.) As He fills all in all, there was no Nothing, so He had to create it. Someone else (perhaps Allen? I’m not sure) said that God opened up a wound in Himself in which to create something “not God.” The “not God” was “Nothing” and became “Chaos.” It was from this Nothing or Chaos that God wrested His creation. The Chaos resisted, “desiring” to remain as it was, but God persisted. Chaos tends toward disorder, breakdown, in other words, death and dissolution. God means it to become, and will have it become “Something.” That is the fight.
It was impossible for God to create the Something Other without first creating the Nothing, and the Nothing – the dissolution – is an evil thing for it is utterly opposed to the will of God, which is life. Chaos is what happens to our bodies as we age. Gradually order gives way to chaos (physically speaking) and we die. But God’s way is to push through the Chaos into LIFE. The evil or Nothing or Chaos is a necessary intermediary step. Jesus entered into the Chaos in His death and He defeated it. He laid claim and owned every spot where His sandal trod (as Abraham did). He expanded the Kingdom into death and Chaos itself and turned it inside out. The work of the devil is to revert to chaos, but the work of the Cross is to enter this enemy “territory” and claim it and convert it and thus “destroy” it by causing it to BE.
Please keep in mind that it is midnight here and I have been awake since 6:30 am and besides have had two glasses of wine! If I’ve said this badly I’ll try again tomorrow. And I never said it’s scriptural, but I think it might be just a little bit Barthian, if I said it right.
I’m not sure I can keep up with this thread Good points and posts all round, on a very convoluted topic. So far, though, I have to stick with the theodicy I outlined in my early posts. I couldn’t accept that God deliberately chose, caused or stands back from the evils of the world - and I would rather trim down His omniscience and omnipotence to accommodate that than trim down His omnibenevolence. Thus do I favour Open Theism + Cosmic Warfare rather than Calvinism. Not that I claim to have all the answers by a long shot, but I prefer to hold onto to God’s goodness rather His power.
Finally able to get back to this thread. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you’ve posted, Chrisguy, and I would agree that we’re closer to in our views than it might seem. I think we’re talking past each other when we speak of free will and will get to that in a minute. I also don’t think you’re as much of a determinist as you claim! (Will get to that as well)
First off, I want to outline why I think God created us humans and what at least one of his purposes is, and will touch on “free will” as well:
We are born with no choice in the matter, to parents we do not choose and in a culture and environment we have no say in. We have needs and desires as a baby which change as we grow. We are educated by parents, teachers, religious leaders, popular culture, our environment etc. We have a “moral sense”, I’ll call it moral intuition that is informed by our education but, I believe, at root is derived from God. This is initially incompletely formed, vague and largely dependent on instruction from our parents such as “hitting your brother is wrong”. As we grow this changes and becomes more principal-based than rule-based.
When we make decisions to act this moral sense may come into play. In most decisions such as “should I wear my blue shirt or the red one?”, there’s no moral issue at stake. In others, such as “I’m late leaving for work-- should I speed and get there on time or be late?” it may. Obviously many factors will come in to a “moral decision”, fear of punishment, my desires, mood, upbringing (“my parents had no problem speeding if they really needed to”), and the moral intuition will come in to play in this mental calculus as well. At times, the moral intuition will line up with the other factors, i.e. “I really have no desire to torture this baby and besides it’s just wrong.” Other times there may be a real conflict. As an example, imagine a single young man in his twenties, (I’ll call him “Earl”), goes out with some friends one evening. They go to dinner, have a few drinks and it’s time to go home. One of Earl’s friends is an attractive young woman who has expressed her interest in him before but is really not his type. She’s had a bit too much to drink and is really coming on to him. Earl is tempted to sleep with her, even though he knows he has no long term interest in her and this will result in pain for her. His hormones are raging, he knows what some of his friends would do in this situation, however, his moral intuition tells him this is wrong. Both sides are fairly evenly matched. There is a real battle going on and Earl’s fighting it. The true Earl is at the center of the storm. He’s influenced by all these factors but Earl has the final say. He truly can resist the urge to do wrong or give in. It’s difficult but, in this case, the moral intuition wins out, he ignores her advances, goes home, “and the angels rejoice”. This type of moral or spiritual battle is of great importance to Earl’s moral and spiritual development. Having sided with right, it becomes easier to the next time. He can gradually becomes a person who wouldn’t do that sort of thing. On the flip side, giving in to the temptation makes it easier “to give in” the next time, his moral intuition therefore becomes degraded, weaker and blunted. I believe God wants us to become people who will always choose right no matter what the circumstances and this is part of his method. (“Be ye perfect…”)I also believe the Holy Spirit helps us in these battles. Certainly he helps Christians and I suspect non-Christians who are truly trying to do right.
Even small moral battles can be important, such as deciding whether to help mom with the dishes after she’s had a long hard day versus going off to play a video game. Of course, the reason for choosing the “good” is also important. Choosing good out of fear, in hope of a reward, or simply to feel good about yourself would not have the same beneficial effect and could lead to the danger of spiritual pride. There is probably a little of those motives mixed in to any moral decision, but the point is to do right because one ought to. As a person consistently chooses to do right in these types of spiritual battles, the foundation of the “moral intuition” may become apparent. The root is love, agape. The best, the most developed, moral intuition is based on love, not arbitrary commands of God, but love like His. A soldier who drags injured comrades off the battlefield in the face of enemy fire is not thinking of some reward. The Congressional Medal of Honor he may be given was not a thought at the time. He does what he does because it’s right, because of love.
Moral evil exists because humans are free to fight these spiritual battles and to choose evil. The point is the battle, the decision and not so much the action. However, if there was no chance of the evil action, the action wouldn’t even be considered. The battle wouldn’t occur. Stopping someone who has already chosen the evil action, however, does not interfere with his* choice* (which he’s already made) to do evil. If God intervened every time someone chose to do evil, however, it would prevent the kind of moral battle I’m speaking of.
I’m wondering, Chrisguy, if these battles and the conflict involved correspond to the “difficulty” you mentioned as opposed to contingency when speaking of “free will”?
Now as far as you being a determinist, I wonder if that’s really true?
To be given a crown, a reward, implies moral responsibility. The person who receives the reward has done something praiseworthy. If the actions were due solely to circumstances outside the individual’s control such as genes, teachers, environment etc, what is there to praise? The influences all worked within the individual to end up with actions he had no real control over. We don’t praise robots for doing what they’ve been programmed to do.
Now, to wrap up with theodicy. From what I’ve written above, you can see that I believe moral evil is a result of the moral or spiritual “battle” I’ve described when individuals choose “wrong” instead of “right”. God intervening to stop the wrong would prevent this process. As far as natural evil goes, I remain a bit unsure, but came across this paper by TJ Mawson, “The possibility of a free-will defence for the problem of natural evil”, there’s a PDF of the paper at commonsense atheism.com. The paper is a real “brain melter” but he brings up some good points and seems to be on to something. You might have to google it to find it on the site.
I’m going to end with a quote from Tom Talbott, again in The Inescapable Love of God:
I admit, I struggle with the idea of free will. I go back and forth thinking it’s absurd or the best explanation of what I experience in my daily life. I freely confess, whatever may really be the case, I certainly FEEL free, particularly in moral circumstances.
I think this may here be key to developing a coherent theodicy based on free will. So far the points you’ve made that bear repeating are:
Not all choices need be free choices for the universe to be meaningful in the way free will makes it meaningful
God desired to make creatures which “grew” in their understanding of good and evil - he wanted beings which “developed” into perfect creatures.
God wanted this process to occur through, in part, the creatures’ own agency, so he gave them free will.
In order for free will to be meaningful in the highest sense God intended, there must be some “pain” or “difficulty” or “evil” to overcome - a creation in which there was never any hardship to face would be one in which the deepest levels of freedom did not exist - or else the type of free will which God thought most meaningful would not exist (can you really be called free if every choice you make is one you have no resistance in making?)
I think I’m beginning to comprehend the free will defense. However, a point that is increasingly clear to me and one I think is misconstrued in those who use this as a theodicy is that NOT ALL EVIL/PAIN/DIFFICULTY IS THE RESULT OF FREE WILLED CHOICES. I think this was the biggest hurdle for me in understanding the FWD. There are many observable evils which cannot be traced back to any moral being whatsoever (at least on the surface of things). This brings up the problem of trying to show how God, even granting he wished his creatures to have free will, would allow certain evils to ever occur. In the case of the Holocaust, if he was omniscient and knew that Hitler would commit the terrible acts he did, then why not somehow thwart his coming to power? Why not have him lose his job, or stumble and hit his head and have amnesia?
The answer from my new/tentative free willed theodicy is that maybe it is only in the face of certain evils will the free willed creation learn the lessons of life/come to a deeper knowledge of good and evil. Let me explain.
If we consider that learning is a willed process, we will see that it requires an effort on the part of the learner. If we think that God wanted certain beings which learned of themselves, and grew of themselves to be like him, or to really “get life” and see things the way he sees them, it would follow that he could not MAKE them learn. He could help them, but, since the strength would have to come from themselves and since they were free, he couldn’t cause them to learn any old way. And, if we think also that this process of learning was to be of true value in God’s eyes, that is, if the creatures were to commit acts of the deepest worth - true free acts in the moral sense - such choices must be accompanied by DIFFICULTY or PAIN, in some meaning of the term. If no acts had any pain or difficulty that accompanied them, then the type of free willed actions and choices that are most meaningful would not occur. Or, at any rate, at least A CERTAIN TYPE OF MEANINGFUL ACTION would never occur (it may no be coherent to call different actions “most meaningful.”) A type of good that God wanted in his creation - namely, the free willed triumph over difficulty - would be absent. The key here is that the learning process would NECESSARILY REQUIRE PAIN IN ORDER TO BE OVERCOME. The pain must be present else the conquest is not attained.
Now, another point of confusion was thinking of free will in terms of right or wrong choices. I could not see how the “wrong” choices of a being should have any ramifications for another, and I could not see the whole point in creating beings that were tempted to “wrong” and them proclaiming them “guilty,” particularly if they’re created already with a propensity to “fall away from perfection.” But if free will is thought about in terms of a creation which is in the process of being made INTO perfection, it makes perfect sense.
So, from this theodicy, the problem of evil would be answered thusly: evil exists as a necessary hurdle to be overcome in the attainment of the knowledge of God, perfection, eternal life. The type of action required of us requires evil to be present in some degree. Without evil there would be nothing GAINED from one’s action in the sense of personal acquisition of knowledge. One could be created with perfect knowledge of God, I suppose, but then again that same being could not be said to have “attained” anything. God apparently wanted us to be FREE and gave us the “dignity of causation.” In short, what God wanted was “actions made in the face of difficulty.”
The critics who say that God could have made free creatures that were still free but never experienced pain are right - God could have, it seems to me, or he could have made the growing in knowledge process inherently pleasurable, like eating or having sex. But (and keep in mind there are many acts which we do that God made to be such inherently pleasurable), God wanted certain acts (though not all) to be made in the face of evil because such an act produces a good otherwise impossible (personal conquest.)
One could still maintain that no evil was superfluous. Even horrendous evils exist in order to educate mankind and give them a deeper understanding of the knowledge of good and evil and to help them attain a deeper more thorough victory over evil.
I think that this quote sort of highlights the misunderstanding that I had. I think it is false to say that creating a being in a state of perfection is incoherent. Christian theology teaches there are angels who constantly behold the face of God. I see no incoherence in the idea of a universe being created in a state of bliss and enjoyment of God without ever having been exposed to evil. But such a universe would not be one which OVERCAME evil, nor one which ATTAINED TO the perfection that it had. I kept trying to make beings which were perfect from the get go equivalent to creatures who had attained their perfection with some causation on their own part and were exposed to evil, and was wondering why God made the latter instead of the former. In reality, the two beings are not equivalent at all so the question does not hold.
I can imagine 3 options God had in creating the universe.
One in which there was evil, and it was never overcome (Hell would exist here.)
One in which there was no evil, and nothing was overcome.
And one in which there was evil, and in which it was overcome.
God perhaps thought option 3 the most valuable to create. And free will would come into play here as a necessary quality of existence, without which the word “overcome” would have no meaning.
I still think it helpful to think in terms of a variety of goods being bestowed on us. God’s purpose in created us was not ONLY to give us free will. That is but ONE good and there are many which do not require free will to enjoy - indeed, which free will may even preclude us from enjoying.
I think I am coming around to this idea of the free will defense.
Good points as usual. I think you’re right that evil was, if nothing else, anticipated as a possibility, and to be honest, a likely possibility whether viewing God from the classical or open theist perspective. To be honest, I think he anticipated evil as likely and used it for greater good. There are certainly many “goods” that I can see coming from battling evil and Christian writers that I respect can see us gaining some “good” in the face of evil, whether it be natural evil such as illness or moral evil such as abuse, maltreatment by another human.
There are obviously many nuances to “free will” and the moral intuition I mentioned can be deformed or stunted by effects beyond one’s control such as parents, culture, brain development etc. I think this is one reason Jesus said “Judge not, that ye be not judged”. You mentioned the importance of “difficulty” or “pain” in the choices we make and I agree that overcoming that is the basis for any reward we may attain to. As far as those that fail, that become more degraded and sink into a mire of selfishness and evil, well, I think that’s where UR comes in to play. Despite their lack of progress, God has a plan for them. It may be painful, but he still loves them, brought them into being and will bring them to him using whatever methods he needs.
This is a big question and I have no great answer. I think he has limited his power in order to give us “free will”. One could argue that he may be intervening to prevent even worse atrocities than the holocaust but there is no way to prove that. I think, by and large, this is a “free will world” and God rarely if ever acts directly to prevent evil. I think he uses other humans and influences Christians through the Holy Spirit, but as far as directly stopping evil, I don’t see it.
That may be, you mentioned the angels, but we really don’t know how the angels were created. They may be simply more advanced beings that have gone through a similar process to ours, perhaps in another dimension, universe etc. Assuming there are angels and that they were created ex nihilo then there must be something special, some extra good achieved by confronting and overcoming evil. Perhaps (and if I am remembering scripture correctly, they do) the angels look-up to the saints that have overcome.
I can’t remember ever saying that I think evil was anticipated as a possibility. If I was unclear, I apologize. I’ve stated above in the thread that I find the idea of “probability” incompatible with God’s knowledge in the case of open theism. I think it incoherent to say that God doesn’t know free acts AT ALL and at the same time to affirm that he has the ability to predict them to any degree of success whatsoever. I went into the point more above, and refer you there for more, if you like. July 10, at 7:33.
I could never believe in God - at least a good God - if I believed in eternal Hell. Free will does not seem a problem to UR either because, even granting there were such “transworldly fallen beings” which would in fact deny God forever or eternally reject becoming good, God would not create them.
(Of course, on open theism, God would not know which beings would be like this. For all he knew, the entire creation would freely reject him forever. Unless you jettison the idea of true libertarian freedom, I do not see how open theists can say that God knows for sure that anyone will “be saved.”)
What do you think about this idea: beings which have the ability to fight/overcome evil are MORE FREE than beings which, having never experienced evil, do not have the ability to overcome it? Perhaps God values the first sort of beings, if not more than the second, at least in such a way that justifies his creating them? It may be God desires the existence of BOTH kinds of beings. Maybe he likes variety.
This is not especially important to me. If evil was a certainty in in the mind of God in the world he created, I can accept that. I don’t think it was something he created, but the result of creating independent creatures with free will. He may well have known that evil would result from this, and certainly has some responsibility in this, but would at least have preferred that his cratures refrained from evil. He may well have known that evil was a certainty if he created creatures with free will. (and I think he did know this.) Does this make him the author of evil? Hmmmm… difficult question , but I think not. I do agree that the presence of evil serves a multitude of purposes in developing the creatures God has made–in “soul-making” if you will. In the case of suffering innocents, however, any benefit is in the afterlife. I am sure the suffering of Christ fits in here somewhere, (especially for the suffering innocents) but I am not enough of a theologian to tease that out at this point.
I think you’re on to something here. It appears that freedom is highly valued by God–To the point that he is very reluctant or perhaps has made himself unable to intervene in the case of even the worst sort of moral evil. The 'greater good" achieved by this is is hard to see from our human perspective, but I’m sure we will appreciate it when we see the “end of the story”. Your idea of God liking variety is a good one and I think ties in to evolution and the multitude of creatures created by that process , every one of which he loves, remembers and had a plan for.
I would agree 100%. The idea of rejecting God forever is extremely difficult to believe in beings that are “fully informed” as Tom Talbott puts it. What reason is there for them to resist his will and his love? That being said, I can see God remaking the will or essence of a resisting creature before committing them to ECT of annihilation. i tend to think of the mothers of people like Ted Bundy in these circumstances. She still loves her son and I believe less than God. She wants her son to be good in spite of the atrocities he’s committed. and I believe God wants no less.
Good points and posts all round, on a very convoluted topic. So far, though, I have to stick with the theodicy I outlined in my early posts. I couldn’t accept that God deliberately chose, caused or stands back from the evils of the world - and I would rather trim down His omniscience and omnipotence to accommodate that than trim down His omnibenevolence. Thus do I favour Open Theism + Cosmic Warfare rather than Calvinism. Not that I claim to have all the answers by a long shot, but I prefer to hold onto to God’s goodness rather His power.