Paidion… how do you justify this caviller extrication of “evil” OR “calamity” from your bibles with yet another pejorative “supposedly” WHEN “evil/calamity” IS in the text? What, Isaiah is putting words in God’s mouth too… seriously??
Most of the baffling and/or contentious questions are based on some kind of reading of the O.T. I really think that, if we will look at the greatest revelation of who God is, and what He is like - in Jesus Christ, we can avoid a lot of brain-twisting agony. Let the fullest revelation cast its shadow back on things written in the childhood of the race. Let the clearest expression of faith, hope and love be the guide, not old customs and cultural things that we may never understand.
As for ‘evil’ I think it is very obvious that the word is multivocal, yes? If it is understood in the Manichean sense, that Evil is a power equal to but opposite that of God, then NO - God did not create any such thing.
If we call any tragedy that happens ‘evil’ - sure, God will bring painful things into our life, obstacles, whatever it takes to be a faithful Father. But calling those things ‘evil’ is a poor interpretation, just as accusing our earthly fathers of creating evils when they spank us or correct harshly.
When God brought judgment on Israel, was that Evil? It may have seemed that way to the Israelites, but if so, they were referring to the pain of judgment, the severe correction, that they brought on themselves.
People create evil; because God created people does NOT imply that He created evil; that’s a non-sequitur.
Satan is a created being so yes God created evil.
God has divine omniscience and foreknowledge. Evil didn’t catch God by surprise.
Something doesn’t have to be a part of your nature for you to create it.
A carpenter creates a table but wood isn’t part of his nature.
I never said God wasn’t good to everybody. I just know the bible credits God with creating evil and there must be a big picture explanation for that but big picture explanations are harder to come by than little ones.
I never said God wasn’t good to everybody. I just know the bible credits God with creating evil and there must be a big picture explanation for that but big picture explanations are harder to come by than little ones.
Cloud9 Posts: 12Joined: Sun May 03, 2015 1:06 pm
Top
God certainly created the knowledge of good and evil together in the same tree which That suggests you can’t have one without it’s contrast.
Cloud9 - I’d really like you to critique/respond to my post above, from earlier today.
Thanks
Dave
And therein lays the rub Dave because THAT’S exactly what evangelicalism has given us. It’s what I said back here… “The problem as I see it is the term “evil” has been infused with an almost ethereal or mystical presence as though IT (evil) has a power of its own standing. IT is then personified in such language as ‘devil’ ‘Satan’ ‘Lucifer’ and all manner of dark meaning attached to it.”
IF “evil” had this magical life-force that Christendom has given it then why is there not likewise a “good” life-force DISTINCT FROM God, as per “the evil” (relative ‘the tree’) – see how logic and consistency makes a nonsense of such things.
Yep, and THAT’S the self-defeating non-sequitur argument you’re left with…
Thanks Davo, I’m with you.
Just because Satan is evil and was created by God does not mean that God created evil. It doesn’t logically follow on. To make a very limited analogy, the parents of a murderer are not responsible for creating murder just because they created their child. The fact that evil didn’t ‘catch God by surprise’ again does not mean that God created evil; it means he was well aware it would happen.
That analogy doesn’t work though because the wood the carpenter is using does not come from himself. Everything God creates though DOES come from Himself; it originates from His being, from His nature, from His thought, from His intentions, from His heart. He is not using any outside materials - He is creating by Himself and through Himself. And He Himself has created human beings with the capacity to make choices, just as He does, even the capacity to do evil. That’s where evil comes about. He might sustain the existence of evil, He might choose to use evil but He does not create it.
No it doesn’t. At all. Isaiah 45:7 gets translated calamity because evil does not fit there - evil is not the technical opposite of peace or well-being, calamity is. If the comparison was ‘good’ and ‘evil’ you might have a case. But it’s not.
I don’t really have an answer and maybe I don’t understand your point above. I don’t spend a lot of time on meditating why evil exists or assigning blame for it. If you notice right off the bat Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent and the serpent has a forked tongue. I am guessing that tongue could stand for the negative and the positive or for good and evil.
In the Wilderness the Israelites spend a lot of time blaming and complaining and God doesn’t like it.
I think people are really God’s works in progress and we are supposed to be working towards solutions towards Earthly problems instead of playing pin the blame on the donkey. Then we are closer to being overcomers like Christ.
Sometimes we get too caught up in philosophical questions and it wastes our constructive time. Once something bad happens why do we waste time assigning blame? Isn’t that really evil? Why don’t we just redeem the time and fix the problem?
Johnny95 - good post, thanks.
I am starting to think people baulk at God creating evil because they are afraid it makes God look evil. Because people are almost always fooled by appearances just like God said in the bible.
But personally I think God can have a good purpose for creating evil.
Look at Adam and Eve. When they were made they were good but they didn’t have knowledge. They had to eat of the tree before they received knowledge and Eve wanted to be like God. Adam means man while Eve means living.
Adam got his priorities shuffled and put Eve ahead of God when he ate the apple. He could have stopped her. He was the head but the head let itself be ruled by his heart.
Eve always knew she wanted to be like God but she wouldn’t know how to become Godlike not without God’s help.
So God who wants to have children like Himself let them eat of the tree of knowledge so that they would know everything like He does.
Only they have spiritual trouble handling all that knowledge with their lack of experience and the evil knowledge results in death and human weakness.
Then we flip over to the New Testament and we find some of the descendants of Adam and Eve after multiple generations and thousands of years have passed are becoming Christlike which is a synonym for godlike.
So who is kidding who here?
God used evil to serve the purpose of educating His children so they could be all knowing and all loving just like He is.
Love conquers all even knowledge of evil.
Oh isn’t God great!
His children get to be all loving and all knowing!
Only God can work all this out for our good.
No wonder He’s always waiting for us to stop blaming and complaining and catch up to Him.
Hallelujah…we have a great future ahead of us…all knowing and all loving.
Can anyone beat that?
God is the greatest chess master of all time.
I think the question of evil is more complicated than this. And so is the question of being like God. Some say that Eve was deceived because she believed the serpent–when in truth she was ALREADY like God. (They were created in His image after all.) Others say that the seventh day is yet to come; that we humans are still in the sixth day of creation, and all these years have been our evolution into that image as He conforms us to the image of His Son.
Be that as it may, I do not believe that God actively created evil. God is omnipresent; I think most of us would agree with this. In fact, I firmly believe that all of us SHOULD agree with this. If He’s not omnipresent, then where did the rest of the places (where He isn’t) come from? Who made them, and how can an infinite God NOT fill all? In fact, He does not FILL all; He IS the all. To think of Him as somehow occupying eternity is to posit a space that encompasses God, and that would suggest some higher consciousness that created that space. No, God IS infinity. He IS eternity. He is all.
That said, where did He make a space to create separate beings such as us? He could make no space but within Himself. That emptiness is the evil. The “not God” with which He wounded Himself; the explosion of the nothing; a rift in God’s side; a rib removed; a heart pierced from which blood and water flowed. The emptiness in which He created and is creating the universe (or universes). Evil is not so much a thing that He created as it is a space He vacated. What could be more evil than a void where God is not? Sure He proceeded to fill it with life (which can only come from Him) and light (which He is) and yes, even with His presence. Yet He stood away a bit, leaving this world room to grow; to (as it were) even participate in the making of itself. Insofar as the world is incomplete, allowing scope for chaos, for the void, there is evil.
So I guess you could say that by making the world as a separate entity, God made the evil. To do that though, it seems to me, is as much as to say that the sun makes shadows, whereas a shadow is nothing but a spot where the sunlight has been obstructed and must creep in around the sides of the obstruction, and reflect itself from surrounding objects in order that the shadow may not be quite so black as it would otherwise be. If from that you choose to say that God created the evil, I won’t argue. I just don’t think that really qualifies as a creative act on God’s (or anyone else’s) part. It is merely the preventing of light from reaching all the places it would (and will) shine.
Cindy’s answer might be similar to my early proposal that God’s is not the author of evil… in that evil is not his purpose or end game. Evil is not the purpose of His.Story. God’s purpose was and is to demonstrate a particular character trait, that is his ability to love his enemies, in a word… grace. However, he could not demonstrate grace without the presence of enemies, so God ordained the fall so that he could flex his grace muscles. Most holding this view use the word ‘ordain’ to acknowledge that God willed the existence of sin, while also communicating that his actions were part of a larger purpose, to demonstrate grace. Also though God did ordain these terrible things, he does not soil his own hand directly in the evil we see in the world, but instead through Satan, as we see in the case of Job.
Cindy’s answer above uses a neat metaphor of light and shadow. She says ‘the emptiness which God created’ or the ‘space He vacated’. Whatever verb you are comfortable using to describe God’s actions in the existence of evil, we must all admit that God’s utter sovereignty over both good and evil ought to result in awe. At least that is Paul’s response in the Romans 11 doxology. The Holy Spirit is perfectly comfortable using active verbs to describe God’s role in the existence of sin as we see in Romans 11:32, “…God has bound…”.
I must confess that earlier comments in this post that reject God’s sovereignty over evil and instead give attribution to the ‘free will of man’ leave me baffled. I know that is the view of C.S. Lewis and most professing Christians, however, the Scriptures themselves offer a much better answer. The crucifixion of Christ ought to be evidence enough that the unregenerate nature of man in fact hates God. Even Peter himself, who followed Christ for three years, rejected the plan of Christ with cursing in the end, until the light dawned in his life. Furthermore, nothing is capable of changing its own nature, but only powers external to itself. An apple, a animal, a rock cannot cease to be itself, but can only be changed into apple pie, hamburger, or a building through the hands of a builder. Likewise a non-Christian cannot love God, except through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. Though we are not robots, none-the-less our will is restricted in that we can only act according to our nature. The will of man is hardly free to convert itself! Unregenerate man can never love God because it is not within his nature to do so. However, when the finger of God touches each one with his transforming power there is a new nature, a new birth, and love for God. This is the good news!
A friend once used the illustration of a boomerang to describe what God is doing in this world. In decreeing the fall God threw the boomerang away from himself such that it was out of the reach of any savior, human or angelic… out of the reach of all, except Jesus Christ. Thus Jesus Christ alone is praised and glorified in the redemption of mankind when the boomerang lands safely back in his hand.
Cloud9, You say that people baulk at God creating evil because they are afraid it makes God look evil. I say it’s the other way around. People don’t like to look in the mirror and admit that we create our own mess.
OUCH!! You’re exactly right LLC 
Time for some outside opinions on Did God create evil:
Christian Courier
CARM
God and Science
Got Questions
Interesting professional responses. I can’t read into any of them that God creates evil.
God can bring good out of evil so why can’t He create it?
Can you be Christlike and not know the difference between good and evil?
No…because Christ is God and God knows everything.
Was He suppose to leave us as ignoramuses?
Christ said to judge with righteous judgment…so we have to know evil to be able to draw distinctions in our minds.
I think Genesis 3 is all about God starting people to think and use their minds and make wise decisions.
People become adults from overcoming evil not pretending it doesn’t exist.
The age of accountability starts at age 13 with Bar Mitzvah and the onset of puberty.
Did you read the articles?
Do you have rebuttals to them?
And are you asking a hypothetical, philosophical and theological question?
I am just expounding my viewpoint. Sometimes we become so entrenched in traditional theology that we only see a part of the whole picture.
Have you ever noticed when you go to church that they say basic doctrines over and over but there are a lot of holes and gaps that they don’t fill in.
Well you can read the bible for yourself and fill in the gaps.
Each scripture is like a stone or child’s building block.
Everyone can build his own theological house and compare…then see whose is really better.
I used to read bible essays all the time…A lot of them start out fine then half way through they deteriorate…
A lot of people have a paper hanging on a wall claiming to be expert…it doesn’t mean they are equally competent to articulate doctrine.
We are supposed to be good at the bible by reading it as a primary source ourselves…that is the best way to build a godly mind and learn to spot doctrinal error.