As Norman Geisler states it:
Norman Geisler is illogical, and that is a faulty syllogism. Rust and rot are things that exist, in and of themselves, as are wounds and damage caused by moths. To extend that faulty syllogism to evil is to vastly underrate and devalue the evil that is done on earth. To claim that evil is not a substance (or substantive) makes it illogical to claim that good is substantive. To reverse that syllogism and claim that good is simply a privation in the substantiveness of evil is a claim that few people would make, but for Geisler’s syllogism to actually work, then it must work in the negative as well.
If good = 1 and evil = -1, then to remove any amount of good only takes us to 0 at best. To claim that evil instead = 0 and not -1 creates the falsehood of the excluded middle of neutrality (0.)
All of those logical fallacies fit in well with Calvinist doctrine, but, then, Calvinist doctrine has never been logically defensible. It is nothing more than an appeal to the emotions of fear and anger.
I’m convinced that you are delusional. Calvinism isn’t based on fear or anger. You’re the one who doesn’t know how to carry a normal conversation on with someone.
More* ad hominems* from someone that we could deduce* knows* how to carry on a conversation. And, this isn’t a conversation, it’s a debate, (by the very nature of the topic you presented and where you presented it), and if you can’t handle defending your position in a debate, then maybe you should find another pastime.
If Calvinism isn’t based on emotions, then, by all means, please demonstrate its basis in logic that cannot be easily refuted.
The real question that I’m trying to get at (and that you don’t want to answer) is not “What does some theologian think about this subject?”, but “What do you think, Cole?”
Why do you feel that you have to be defensive? Are you at war or something? I like to discuss things. Not fight. You are the one who is fearful. It shows in your responses.
You’re the one resorting to* ad hominems* instead of actually discussing things and giving straight answers to questions. If you don’t have an answer, it’s perfectly acceptable to simply say, “I don’t know.”
Perhaps you should take your last post and ask those questions of yourself.
I have answered the question. You just don’t like it because I have an answer. Evil is a lack in good things but not a thing in itself. It’s kind of like holes. Holes don’t exist in and of themselves but only in another. Evil is a privation in the good that God made. God removes His hand of grace (for morally sufficient reasons) and evil desires are given birth.
Sigh. And I’ve explained why your answer is illogical. I submit that you’re the one that is displeased because it has been demonstrated that your belief is backed up only with logical fallacies. But, now, I at least have the clarity that you’re not at all interested in a discussion or debate of positions, you simply wish to make a proclamation and have us all bow down to it. You accuse me of being a contrarian, yet you are the one making posts that oppose the premise of this entire forum, in many of the sub-forums. Perhaps you should keep your posts in the “Discussion Negative” sub-forum, or perhaps you’d be happier posting on a site where the people will whole-heartedly agree with your opinions.
And now, since I’m really done with trying to get you to take an honest look at your position, and see if it’s really what you believe, and not just the opinion of some preacher, I’ll say that statement is the most ignorant, soul-seared, cold-hearted, and willfully blind thing I’ve ever read.
“Oh, don’t be upset, you poor Jews, that whole holocaust thing wasn’t an actual evil, it was just a lack of good.”
“Your wife and daughters were raped and murdered by the LRA, Mr. Rwandan? Don’t be mad, Joseph Kony wasn’t really evil, mind you, he was just suffering from a lack of goodness.”
But, hey, the Calvinist false god of predestination wanted all of that to happen, huh?
I never said that the holocaust wasn’t evil. But evil is corruption. Have you ever seen a hole just floating around? If you did it would be a hole in space. Holes don’t exist in and of themselves. They exist in another. The same goes with evil. Evil is a privation of the good. When God removes His hand of grace you get destruction and chaos. It’s clearly a Biblical concept. It seems you just don’t like what the Bible teaches.
Also, you just called the Biblical God a false God. Continue on with your hardness of heart blaspheming if you wish. I wouldn’t recommend it though.
Yeah . . . you know it’s okay for you guys to disagree on this. The whole evil vs good and where did evil come from thing is actively debated amongst far more knowledgeable theologians than I ever expect to become in this life . . . they can’t agree, either.
But I find this topic interesting, and I haven’t by any means settled my views on it, so I’m interested in musing on it with any of you. I wonder . . . the idea of a black hole fascinates me. I’m not a scientist, but I have a sort of idea of a black hole as a huge nothing or chaos that tries to swallow up everything. And so I have this picture in my mind of God, before creation, filling everything and complete in Himself – love – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, loving one another; pouring all they are into one another with complete unselfish abandon in this amazing, magnificent vortex of love.
And God agrees within Himself that it would be great to share this; to expand it to others; this divine love. Now I get a little shaky – not that the whole thing isn’t shaky. I’m just thinking, musing aloud and interested in your take on it because this has been swirling around in me for a while now and still hasn’t coalesced. I’m more of an artist than a mathematician. I’m the sort of person who looks at all those incredible numbers everywhere that make up the known world and say, “Isn’t that beautiful?” and doesn’t understand a bit of it. So you know where I’m coming from. It’s all intuitive.
Anyway, God wants to expand. The Father wants sons and daughters; the Son wants a bride; the Spirit wants a temple. And they concoct this plan. How do you make a corporate person worthy to be a companion to the Godhead? I wonder why God didn’t just form exactly what they wanted and be done with it? Could it be that such a creation would lack something in “REAL”?
When I do a journal page, I often start with a layer of stuff, then add another layer of stuff, then another and another and another until I like what I’ve made and am ready to call it finished. You can barely see the first layer, but it’s there adding to the depth and the mystery. There’s really no other way you could make a page of this sort and get the same feel. I wonder if that’s something like what God is doing, making human beings; making the One New Man (Christ in/among us, the hope of glory).
You start by making a void; a chaos, maybe. The chaos is hungry like a black hole and it tries to suck everything into itself. Maybe the chaos is a place where God is not. There’s never been such a place before, and God isn’t there, and it’s evil. It isn’t always going to be evil. God will pull it inside out, form it, fill it, refine it, squeeze every bit of “nothing” out of it, and ultimately enter the chaos as a human being, the ultimate sacrifice given on the cross and entering the chaos for the purpose of becoming its master. Now He is filling all, and soon He will be filling all in all.
Eventually the chaos will be completely transformed, but meanwhile we have bits of chaos dispersed through this world. We call it evil. It’s the ambient weather of the present evil age. And here and there we regularly have great storms of chaos, like the Holocaust, Somalia, the “evil empire,” Mao, Kim Jung Ill – also the tsunamis in Japan and Indonesia – great earthquakes in China, Iran, Haiti, volcanoes, typhoons, hurricanes, fires . . . chaos working itself out. But what if that’s just what it takes to build the sort of daughters and sons; the sort of bride; the sort of temple God desires to have?
So did God create evil? Well, sort of. God created the void; the chaos; the raw materials out of which He would wrest and is wresting that which is His ultimate intention; the companion(s) of His heart. A great people who are one as He is One, fully mature and complete, fully love, fully aware, fully alive. Perhaps this is simply the only way it could be done.
When I put a piece of pottery on the shelf to dry out, is that an evil to the pot (if it could think)? Probably. What about the kiln? Twice? A far simpler process than the making of mankind, but from the pot’s point of view I suppose it would be pure anguish. I know that’s just what it takes to make a beautiful piece of pottery. I bear the clay no ill will. It came to me as a lump of wet brown or gray slimy stuff and I’m going to turn it into a thing of beauty that could last until God the Son remakes the heavens and the earth. From my point of view, it’s worth it, and I imagine that if the pot could think, once it saw what it had become, it would agree.
So yeah . . . just my somewhat nebulous thoughts. They’ll probably change quite a lot before they’re tough enough to go into the kiln. Is it possible that all the stuff that looks so messy and wrong to us is messy and wrong because it is in the process of being made, and we’re not seeing the final outcome? That the chaos is the sort of stuff out of which you have to make the real? That the finished product will justify the agony of the process? Maybe we trust the potter and everything will be okay – maybe that’s the only thing we CAN do after all. 
Love, Cindy
Thank you Cindy for your very interesting thoughts. I do have to disagree though about God creating evil. In my mind this does damage to God’s character.
Not gonna disagree with you Cole, but I’m not sure you’re right either. Someone had to make it – or to make the naught that is evil. If evil is the absence of Good, then Good had to withdraw to cause that absence. So as I said, I just don’t know. There’s something here we’re not fully understanding.
Is it the naught, which God hates (because it isn’t what He wants) yet the substance from which He makes the good? The nothing is not good, but who made it? You could say it didn’t have to be made, as it is nothing at all – yet for there to be an “other” for God to eventually fill, He first had to NOT be in the other. And where God is NOT, is evil. So you could say, from a certain point of view, that God created the evil by His withdrawal. In order to destroy that evil, He must fill it and transform it from a nothing to a family, a bride, a sanctuary.
Very amorphic, nebulous, theoretical and philosophical – and not at all certain. But seriously, if the absence of good entails that God is not there (as it must), then surely God would have to have withdrawn, in order to create that void. Unless of course there are places that God is not, simply because He isn’t big enough to fill them . . . you see my difficulty, I think.
Love you, Bro,
Cindy
Hi Cindy,
Yes, I think I see the difficulty. I think the absence of God’s grace could be for a number reasons. I think He is still present though in His severity. Not necessarily His wrath but His severity. I believe that what evil men and Satan mean for evil God means for good. When He witholds His mercy it’s for morally sufficient reasons is what I believe. I don’t think He is the direct cause of evil but the indirect cause of it by permitting it as He turns it around and brings beauty out of ashes.
Love you too, Cindy.
Hi Michael Cole,
How about llistening to Einstein on whether God did or did not create evil!
Try: youtube.com/watch?v=FTL_BF2US-Q
but if that does not work just search with Google and you will find in Youtube a short and moving debate between Einstein as a child and his professor.
And contrast with the apple which God created but Adam chose to eat!
Blessings to all!
Michael in Barcelona
God is good.
After THINGS were created in Genesis 1, God said each was good.
God created the Tree of the KNOWLEGE of good AND evil.
The tree is good because God created it.
God did not create evil because evil is not a THING.
Evil is a way of thinking, a “knowing” about the opposite of good (God).
Evil is a way of thinking “NOT GOD”.
Because of the tree God created, we have the ability to think of, imagine, and desire things that are not good, not God.
This ability gives rise to sin, suffering, and death.
The tree is good and has a very good purpose.
In order for God’s essential character to be experienced, it is necessary that our individual consciousness be able to explore and experience the opposites of good (God).
It is through the borne out experience of evil knowledge that we (will) become fully and experientially aware of God’s goodness. Otherwise, goodness, love, light, etc. can never actually be known or understood.
In the end, all evil knowledge will give way to the comprehension of the glorious opposites found in the person of God.
Michael, I have no idea what you mean by “when God removes his hand of grace”. It’s seems nonsensical to me.
Everything is an act of God’s grace, including our “evil knowledge” ability. All pain and suffering we experience today as a result of evil knowing will one day be seen as an act (the act?) of supreme grace.
Phillip MacDonald says it best: “IS EVERYTHING SAD GOING TO COME UNTRUE?” godslovewins.com
Hello David and all bros and sisters,
As I also posted a reply to Michael Cole’s post, just for the record and to clarify your reference to a quote from Michael without adding his full name:
I too have no idea what Michael Cole means by “when God removes his hand of grace”…,
Cheers and prayers to you Michael Cole , David, and all!
Michael in Barcelona
Which is the CREATION of evil. If God had to DO ANYTHING in order that EVIL comes to existence, it is CREATED. If by any action God does causes EVIL, then God is the CAUSE. He is not personally responsible for the evil you do, but he is responsible for the reason you can do evil.
There is no Scripture or logical evidence in Scripture that shows Satan was ever created good.
John 8:44
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native (original) language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Jesus seems to know more about who and what Satan is than any theological lawyer trying to make Satan an antihero.