Did God cause Adam to fail? He did not.
Adam had complete moral power to obey God. He willingly and freely chose not to do so.
Alright-good. So only one will involved, not two, no “secret will” of God. When God commanded Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit, He did not
want Adam to eat of the fruit. That was my position. God is not the author of sin. So I don't hang it on God.
Adam was in no way forced to rebel against God's command. He had no disposition to sin, as does his fallen progeny. He had complete moral power to obey God in all things.
Now here we have a bit of a problem-because in your theology we end up with fallen man having absolutely no moral power to obey God, whereas in Christianity man's will is weakened, compromised; he's sick, asleep, lost, "dead", but not totally unable to respond to God's overtures, to grace. And this makes him
accountable for not responding, and therefore for the sin that he’ll never conquer without God. Otherwise, we
must hang all subsequent evil, at least, on God, since fallen man would have no say and God, alone, would determine man's will, and therefore his fate. He’d be hanging it on Himself in any case, as the author of sin after all.
There's really no reason for the centuries of ugly drama/sin, unless, through it, God means to gradually inform and draw man’s will to right orientation. Man cannot
find himself, God must call him, by grace. But while God must move and draw man towards Himself, man is never completely overwhelmed in will for the purpose of being saved. That's an essential truth of Christianity. It's simply absurd to think that God would’ve come up with this grand plan of creation just to save some folks at the end of the day who can’t help- have no choice-but to will rightly while damning the rest who have no choice but to will wrongly. There’s no fatherhood there, no patient, gentle parenting, teaching and drawing His children into maturity, a maturity consisting ultimately of choosing to love, with love being the very definition of justice or righteousness for man, and choice being an absolutely essential part of obtaining and expressing love. IOW, if the person cannot weigh the differences, and choose to love, then he
doesn’t really love at all-and his justice is not yet realized. There’d just be this pitiful little puppet show instead, as if such a show should actually
glorify God? But the primary glory of God is
His love, and the glory that He crowns
man with is love as man also struggles to embrace and participate in that love because, again, love is not love unless it’s a choice,
both a gift and the choice to accept the gift. God’s glory is reflected in the good He does within and for His creation. God’s primary glory is His
goodness, manifested by humble servitude towards man flowing from His unfathomably powerful love.
You might want to be sitting down for this one.
"The law was added
so that the trespass might
increase." (
Romans 5:21).
Sin was
necessary to manifest God's
justice,
wrath,
judgment and to manifest his
power by judging, conquering and saving from sin.
Sin/moral evil was useful only to teach man of its ugliness, futility, harmfulness, and of our inability to overcome it apart from God.
If God wills/creates evil does He have
malice? Or is His purpose very different-to allow creation-us-to experiment with our rebellious and wayward ways in order that we might learn of their empty and harmful consequences, that we might turn from ungodliness to godliness, that we might turn from evil to good having directly learned of the distinction between the two the hard way-and of the supreme value of the latter.
Or are you suggesting that God gave the law because He likes to spread evil?? Could He have a greater good in mind instead? We’re told that there’s no accountability for sin where the law is unknown and yet the law isn’t evil in itself; in fact, it’s holy, spiritual, and good according to Rom 7, being the revealed will of God for man. It cannot be
bad to hear of it. But what
good comes from hearing the law? Well, we’re also told by Scripture that the law is a teacher, disclosing sin, revealing sin and our inability to overcome it. So, the more sin that we know or experience in this world the more we can and
should finally learn of its harmfulness and ugliness as a result. If sin only
increases the more the law is heard, then we can’t escape the fact that man has the problem, not the law. And the only reason for having this knowledge is so that man might have a change of heart, by learning of his problem with sin, and his failure at overcoming it, of his state of unrighteousness apart from God, with this knowledge being necessary precisely
because his will is involved. Because then he’d be receptive to the grace that God has at the ready for convicted sinners. The more broken and repentant we are the more forgiveness and help and love He pours out. Otherwise no lessons, no such education, is necessary; it would have no value. But as it is God‘s been patiently working on turning humankind back to Himself ever since Adam first turned away in Eden. That’s why the centuries-long process of revelation and covenants, choosing a certain people to, among other things, demonstrate man’s failure at achieving righteousness, and finally birthing His Son into our world through them so that we might finally accept and embrace grace, embrace
Him, when we meet Him, where
He can then work righteousness in us, putting His law in our minds and writing it on our hearts. It takes a
lot to steer stubborn man away from himself and towards God.
From the beginning of the bible through the end man is commanded, appealed to, admonished, encouraged: to choose good over evil, life over death, God over no God. But instead of, “
If you will…”, as Jesus asks in Matt 16:24 and Rev 3:30, as examples, your theology seems to says, “You
will…” Maybe He should’ve said, “Never mind, you don’t need to know about this stuff anyway because, strictly as a point of theology, you
will follow Me, you
will open the door.”
But regardless of professed theology most Christians live pretty much according to
my theology in real life. They strive, they seek to persevere, to be holy and refrain from sin and to remain in Christ; they’re vigilant, they know they must bear good fruit, that what they
do counts, that it’s not over and done until they meet the Just Judge and He tells them so.
So to sum up, God did nothing evil by giving the law but something
good, by teaching us that we
cannot be lawful, we cannot be who we were created to be, apart from Him. This is the #1 lesson man needs to learn, which Adam didn't yet comprehend in Eden. The bottom line with Adam is that
he deemed it acceptable to disobey God, to deny His authority,
regardless of the influences, which definitely included Eve. He hadn't yet learned something of the vast difference between Creator and creature.
Sorry about the wordiness here-and the rambling. I think it's because you’re right, I felt quite woozy after your post and had to take a long break, so sick of heart was I over the state of confusion present in Christianity. I may still need smelling salts-still feeling a bit weak and could possibly relapse. Sooner the better just in case, no USPS pls.
