The Conjunction of Opposites

[Clare73]

I don't think child leukemia is an instance of the justice of God, if that's what you're getting at, no.

Child leukemia is the result of Adam's fallen nature which is the result of the justice of God on his disobedience.

 

[Colo Millz]

There is something in my view terribly amiss and extremely remote from the genuine theology of the New Testament in your simplistic predestinarianism. (I assume this is what you would call it).

Child leukemia exists on the level of secondary causality and in no manner is decreed by God as some kind of cosmic punishment.

There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that every single thing whatsoever that occurs at the level of secondary causality — in nature or history — is governed not only by a transcendent providence but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things.

But one should consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of — but entirely by way of — every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on).

 

[Colo Millz]

Your exaggerated adoration of God’s sheer omnipotence can yield conclusions as foolish as Calvin’s assertion, in Book III of the Institutes, that God predestined the fall of man so as to show forth his greatness in both the salvation and the damnation of those he has eternally preordained to their several fates.

Were this so, God would be the author of and so entirely beyond both good and evil, or at once both and neither, or indeed merely evil (which power without justice always is).

The curious absurdity of all such doctrines is that, out of a pious anxiety to defend God’s transcendence against any scintilla of genuine creaturely freedom, they threaten effectively to collapse that transcendence into absolute identity — with the world, with us, with the devil.

For, unless the world is truly set apart from God and possesses a dependent but real liberty of its own analogous to the freedom of God, everything is merely a fragment of divine volition, and God is simply the totality of all that is and all that happens; there is no creation, but only an oddly pantheistic expression of God’s unadulterated power.

One wonders, indeed, if a kind of reverse Prometheanism does not lurk somewhere within such a theology, a refusal on the part of the theologian to be a creature, a desire rather to be dissolved into the infinite fiery flood of God’s solitary and arbitrary act of will.

In any event, such a God, being nothing but will willing itself, would be no more than an infinite tautology — the sovereignty of glory displaying itself in the glory of sovereignty — and so an infinite banality.

 

[Colo Millz]

In your view we are very, very far away from the view of transfiguring love which is the message of Easter.

 

[AV1611VET]

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

 

[Clare73]

There is something in my view terribly amiss and extremely remote from the genuine theology of the New Testament in your simplistic predestinarianism. (I assume this is what you would call it).

I would call it what Paul calls it and reveals it to be.
And it falls to you to show the Biblical error of my understanding.

Child leukemia exists on the level of secondary causality and in no manner is decreed by God as some kind of cosmic punishment.

All this is not perfect as it was perfect in the Garden, is the result of the Fall and its consequences ordained by God.

There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that every single thing whatsoever that occurs at the level of secondary causality — in nature or history — is governed not only by a transcendent providence but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things.
But one should consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of — but entirely by way of — every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines (and so on).

That comfort is neither purchased by us nor does it exist apart from the faith in God, which faith is the gift of the Holy Spirit (Php 1:29, 2 Pe 1:1, Ac 13:48, 18:27, Ro 12:3), not given to all.
And I have no doubt that you know this as well as I do.

 

[Thea2]

… So what? …

I know a bit about Daoism. The Dao De Jing has been a life long interest of mine and for the last 7 years I have been translating it from Chinese characters. That’s why I noticed you mentioning Jung.

 

[DamianWarS]

What do you make of the hard passages quoted above which indicate that God is responsible for evil, or at least, calamity?

Perspective is everything. if God is good, then everything from God inherits that goodness, regardless if we call it darkness or something else. Anything that is truly good is of God and anything truly evil is not of God as it goes against him. The Genesis creation account shows us a darkness that is transformed from disorder to order. in contrast, Revelation shows us a darkness destroyed, not transformed. One becomes a part of God's order through it's transformation, the other must be destroyed to maintain the order. thus 2 kinds of darkness, one of God, the other not.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that every single thing whatsoever that occurs at the level of secondary causality — in nature or history — is governed not only by a transcendent providence but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things.

That works! Not a single tear will be wasted

Romans 11:32
For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

We have all been placed in a place of subjugation, quite purposefully and Divinely. Only a question of time and methodology of departure from there.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

Anything that is truly good is of God and anything truly evil is not of God as it goes against him

Uh, that really doesn't work. It's just an array of excuses for the reality of evil.

God did in fact not only create evil, but set us all in same.

The only logical presumption from there is that God is Greater than all things, even the sum of them. And therefore all things serve not only His Purposes, but His Pleasure.

 

[DamianWarS]

Uh, that really doesn't work. It's just an array of excuses for the reality of evil.

God did in fact not only create evil, but set us all in same.

The only logical presumption from there is that God is Greater than all things, even the sum of them. And therefore all things serve not only His Purposes, but His Pleasure.

If all is to his pleasure and purpose then nothing is outside his pleasure and purpose and evil/sin are just illusions. Free will sufficiently adds wide competition to values and actions that can be qualitatively measured and dichotomized into good and evil. This also seems to be the fundamental biblical approach. So it comes down to how you accept free will, without it then there is no evil and it's all for His pleasure regardless of how horrific we judge things to be. But if you accept evil as fundamentally against God then you must accept a measure of free will and a concept of evil that operates outside of God's pleasure.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

If all is to his pleasure

There is no "if" unless we want to eliminate this scripture:

Revelation 4:11

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Seems clear enough.

then nothing is outside his pleasure and purpose and evil/sin are just illusions.

Severely short logic. Try this one on for size: IF God is Greater than all things then He will make good out of evil, which God does. And again, it's scripture:

Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

We should know that ^^^

Free will sufficiently adds wide competition to values and actions that can be qualitatively measured and dichotomized into good and evil.

Again, the moment you concede that God is Alive and Active in this present world AND that the tempter is in operation within people, any notions that "wills" of mankind operate free of either and is therefore just a sole will is Godlessly absurd. Just another big lie from the Godless camps trying to promote works salvation and false self justifications apart from God's working.

There is no "freewill" that is free of God or tempter. Do you see then only one will? Nope!

This also seems to be the fundamental biblical approach.

No, it's just another bad reflection among a myriad of bad reflections

So it comes down to how you accept free will, without it then there is no evil

That's just very faulty logic, nothing more.

God can and did/does create evil AND makes good of it. Now how GREAT is that?

You think you need some kind of choice to "do evil" and then "choose not to do it" so God can reward you? Here's news: God is not in NEED of people's decisions in order to reward or damn them either.

In any case not a single one of us is sinless, regardless of the acts of wills.

it's all for His pleasure regardless of how horrific we judge things to be. But if you accept evil as fundamentally against God then you must accept a measure of free will and a concept of evil that operates outside of God's pleasure.

Nothing in creation is "fundamentally against" God. He created all of it. So the only real logical conclusion is that God is better than any given thing in creation or even the sum of all things within creation.

God is not in need of excuses and isolation for creating and using evil. People who make such excuses and isolate God are just carving out some weird idol who can't stand up to the things in His Own creation.

Romans 11:32
For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

Prime Example ^^^

 

[DamianWarS]

There is no "freewill" that is free of God or tempter. Do you see then only one will? Nope!

You're implicitly are saying free will exists independently of God by naming the tempter as an adversarial will.

God can and did/does create evil AND makes good of it. Now how GREAT is that?

Nothing in creation is "fundamentally against" God. He created all of it. So the only real logical conclusion is that God is better than any given thing in creation or even the sum of all things within creation.

Evil is that which is against God. If nothing is against God, then nothing is evil. There needs to be at least a single will in competition with God's for evil to sufficiently exist. So long as that will persists, then there is evil.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

You're implicitly are saying free will exists independently of God by naming the tempter as an adversarial will.

How in the world did you hear the above.

I'll repeat: God's Will is Alive and Active in His creation, meaning no other wills or any things within His Creation are devoid of God's Working Will. IF you do not accept this your positions are technically Godless, seeking to eliminate God's Will from the equations. It's quite an absurd posture to take to begin with, don't you think?

Evil is that which is against God. If nothing is against God, then nothing is evil. There needs to be at least a single will in competition with God's for evil to sufficiently exist. So long as that will persists, then there is evil.

Believers often mistake that God, via creating something IS that which He creates. He's not. Those who claim such are technically merely "pantheists."

God can create anything and NOT be that thing. Whether power, or agency, or whatever imaginations we have been subjected to.

Nothing operates in creation apart from God, period.

So IF the devil holds some will/influence over mankind, which is a hard line scriptural fact that is an unavoidable conclusion for believers, then freewill is not only nonsense, it's simply Godless.

I cited prior that God bound everyone to disobedience. Call it SIN for even better clarity. And that binding was specifically done in order to terminate temporary dust people, JUDGE the devil and his messengers in the process, and move first people into last PERMANENT people in Christ. ALL entirely quite apart from "sole human will" which doesn't really even exist other than a delusion imposed on them by our mutual adversary, and even this as part of how God Himself set up this current environment.

 

[DamianWarS]

I'll repeat: God's Will is Alive and Active in His creation, meaning no other wills or any things within His Creation are devoid of God's Working Will. IF you do not accept this your positions are technically Godless, seeking to eliminate God's Will from the equations. It's quite an absurd posture to take to begin with, don't you think?

It's the presence of a competing will that is the thing to grasp. If there is only God's will there is nothing to contrast it, and nothing that is against God thus, nothing is evil. Not that God is his creation, creation is of a separate substance, but either creation has a form of free will and/or we are influenced by an outside free will. If there is a competing will, even in a single adversary, this is sufficient enough for evil to exist, as the adversary may influence in competition with God's will. I believe in evil separate from God and I think the bible shows this as well, even if there are examples of darkness direct from God, there is still a separate force in competition with God, thus "free will", even if only manifested in a single adversary. so there is darkness from God and darkness from an adversary, but I don't see those amounting to the same thing.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

It's the presence of a competing will that is the thing to grasp

Yes, as Jesus said: Mark 4:15 Internal theft, a sin, by an adversary

If there is only God's will there is nothing to contrast it,

In the final analysis God is the only Will, everlasting

and nothing that is against God

Again, looking at this, there is Eternal Perfection and then there is "every thing else" i.e. creation, categorically "less than" Eternal Perfection. There's your contrast. Creator/creation. The latter can not have freewill in such an equation. The creation, even the sum of it, can only and ever have a "less than" position.

but either creation has a form of free will and/or we are influenced by an outside free will

Influences are well beyond denial and indicates no such thing as freewill

this is sufficient enough for evil to exist, as the adversary may influence in competition with God's will

Every "less than" will is simply that. Only to matters of degree. Everything is in partial darkness, some in near total darkness. Yet light shines from the dark, as God Himself has commanded.

I believe in evil separate from God

God is never equated to any particular "thing" in creation. People who make such claims are technically polytheists. Yet God's Spirit dwells in His creation, unseen, unknown in full.

there is still a separate force in competition with God, thus "free will"

No matter how you want to slice this subject "all things" and "all wills" are never an issue with God and can not be considered competitive. There is no competition. Everything that exists exists because of God.

There is no getting God off the hook nor is that even necessary. A predator in nature does what it does, as God created it to do. It's no different in the spiritual arena, or in the case of devils, the anti-spiritual arena. Scripture presents a world, unseen, with occupants, unseen. That's where the accounts start to get interesting. Most believers do not even factor that into their understandings. Claiming freewill imho is simple blindness. The instant you concede to an adverse internal influence any notions of free should fly out the door. Man has a subjected will, subservient to both the adversary and to God.

there is still a separate force in competition with God, thus "free will", even if only manifested in a single adversary. so there is darkness from God and darkness from an adversary, but I don't see those amounting to the same thing.

True. They are not the same.

Bottom line on the whole freewill thing is that it's simply false. A created will in part or in collective, is subservient and subject to the Creator, period. A servant who claims to be free has merely been subjected to a derision from God and doesn't even know it or perceive it. A whisper from the dust.

When the law was read to the people at the rebuilt temple, they realized their fallen state, because of the myriad of curses God brought upon them, and wept, having seen their real condition. And even these never perceived the depth of evil within them that was not them. When anyone has a single stray evil thought, the perpetrator of that thought is the agency behind every sin that has ever transpired in mankind. So it's not as simple as just a stray dismissed evil/lawless thought now is it? The darkest agent is therein.

 

[DamianWarS]

There is no competition.

Man has a subjected will, subservient to
both the adversary and to God.

True. They are not the same.

Bottom line on the whole freewill thing is that it's simply false.

Maybe it's just sementics but you seem to present a contradiction. There is no competing wills yet we are subservient both to the will of God and the adversary.

Is the adversary merely a functional mechanism for evil no different than instinct of a wolf hunting it's prey, or does the adversary have an autonomous will himself?

In terms of free will you seem to jump to free will in humans and then reject it. I'm not speaking of humans, I'm speaking of the adversary. Can God create something with an autonomous will that goes against him, not merely a mechanical sacrafical will that only parrots the opposite?

If no such will exists apart from God then evil is just a word of utility but evil itself cannot contrast God's desires as it would be a part of his desire. Since evil is of pain, suffering, death, disorder, hate, etc... as a message is the antithesis to the gospel. but if all, including evil, is from and of God, then God's laws are arbitrary as even evil has a seat at the table. Judgement too is arbitrary and presents a God liken to a bully child killing/sparing ants at his pleasure with a magnifying glass.

Such an outlook makes morality is just an illusion, no different than determinism without God. If morality is meaningless God's promises are too, as lie or truth, evil/goodness, dark/light, etc... have no qualitative difference as its all equally of God.

 

[BelieveItOarKnot]

Maybe it's just sementics but you seem to present a contradiction. There is no competing wills yet we are subservient both to the will of God and the adversary.

God "intentionally" created an adversary in the form of the antiChrist spirit, the spirit of disobedience, the DEVIL, Satan.

And he bound that evil within mankind. We all got our own little chunk of that beast inside. Not a happy meal.

Now watch what happens:

Romans 11:32
For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

The only difference between believers and unbelievers is we are supposed to SEE our condition and speak HONESTLY about it. Not be slaves to it, but dominators over it. Nevertheless God has mercy upon us to even allow us to continue in this state because you see, it's not JUST the person. It's the person and the TEMPTER.

The promise of God in Christ is to DESTROY the devil, all his works, all his ways. And that time, the devil's time will come to a blazing end. That ending is going to be done IN MANKIND, when God finally decides to drive out that usurper, permanently.

Read all about it in Matt. 25

"and he shall separate them one from another"

That's the separation of "mankind" from "devilkind."

 

[AV1611VET]

God "intentionally" created an adversary in the form of the antiChrist spirit, the spirit of disobedience, the DEVIL, Satan.

Negative.

God created Lucifer.

Lucifer even took part in celebrating the creation of the earth.

Job 38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
7 When the morning stars [this would include Lucifer] sang together, and all the sons of God [Lucifer included] shouted for joy?

 

[David Lamb]

God "intentionally" created an adversary in the form of the antiChrist spirit, the spirit of disobedience, the DEVIL, Satan.

And he bound that evil within mankind. We all got our own little chunk of that beast inside. Not a happy meal.

Now watch what happens:

Romans 11:32
For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

The only difference between believers and unbelievers is we are supposed to SEE our condition and speak HONESTLY about it. Not be slaves to it, but dominators over it. Nevertheless God has mercy upon us to even allow us to continue in this state because you see, it's not JUST the person. It's the person and the TEMPTER.

The promise of God in Christ is to DESTROY the devil, all his works, all his ways. And that time, the devil's time will come to a blazing end. That ending is going to be done IN MANKIND, when God finally decides to drive out that usurper, permanently.

Read all about it in Matt. 25

"and he shall separate them one from another"

That's the separation of "mankind" from "devilkind."

Surely the devil was not created as an adversary. After all, at the end of His creating, God pronounce everything that He'd created at "very good." At some time after his creation, Satan fell/disobeyed God.