Can God do Evil?

[martymonster]

Well?

I'm going somewhere with this.....but for now.....yes or no.

Can God do Evil?

I don't know....can you create it and not have done it?

 

[Daniel9v9]

No. God does not create, bestow or impute evil. However, He can and does punish evil, which is in and of itself is good and righteous, perfectly in line with God's good and righteous character and will.

God is good and the source of all that is good. Evil is rightly the absence of God, not part of God's creation.

 

[zoidar]

Well?

I'm going somewhere with this.....but for now.....yes or no.

Can God do Evil?

You have to define what you mean by evil. He can't do an evil act, but He can cause calamity for a bigger purpose.

 

[Dave L]

Well?

I'm going somewhere with this.....but for now.....yes or no.

Can God do Evil?

Isaiah 45:7 from several translations;

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (KJV 1900)

“I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (ESV)

“I form light and create darkness, I make success and create disaster; I, Yahweh, do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (HCSB)

“I am the one who forms light and creates darkness; the one who brings about peace and creates calamity. I am the Lord, who accomplishes all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (NET)

“I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the Lord, am the one who does these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (NLT)

“I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the Lord, who do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (RSV)

“I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (MEV)

“I forme the light and creat darkenes: I make peace & creat evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (Geneva)

“Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I am Jehovah, doing all these things.’” Isaiah 45:7 (YLT)

 

[LightLoveHope]

1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said:
2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-
7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place
Job 38

 

[Dansiph]

Well?

I'm going somewhere with this.....but for now.....yes or no.

Can God do Evil?

Amos 3:6 King James Version (KJV)
6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?

Is an interesting verse.

 

[His student]

Can God do Evil?

No - but He can and does display His innate knowledge of evil through secondary causes such as the rebellion of angels, the fall of mankind, and the results of those.

Regardless of what universalists such as yourself say - He will also display the necessary end of evil throughout eternity with the pouring out of His wrath on those secondary causes which displayed evil in this present age.

He will also pour out His love for eternity on those who overcome evil in this age through their faith in and subsequent eternal union with His Son.

You can declare for all of your life the unfairness of such events. But it will only last until you, like every angel and man with you, will bow before God and declare His ways righteous.

Better by far to bend the knee and do so now by faith rather than when forced to with the rest of the faithless of this present world.

AND NO - no matter your motive - making up your own rendition of God, His nature, and His actions is not the same as having faith in His Word. Such lack of faith is in fact a form of evil in itself - being displayed in this case by a secondary cause, namely you.

 

[Light of the East]

So you think that Jesus was lying or mistaken when He said, "I am the way the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father except by Me."

It's not me who has said this, it was Jesus Himself. So this means that only those who have put their faith and trust in Christ are saved.

You either believe what Jesus said or you don't. What you are putting forward is what is called "Universalism" which teaches the heresy that everyone will be saved whether they have faith in Christ or not.

Except that you limit God's mercy to people hearing about Jesus, which means that God, who is love, would damn anyone unfortunate enough to be born in the wrong place or the wrong time.

You have a very warped view of God.

 

[Light of the East]

I can't speak for anyone else.

But I'm ready for the big reveal.

Where are you going with this?

Go back to Post 27 in this thread. God does not damn to eternal hell because to do such a thing would be evil.

That is my point. Eternal hell is an invention of men to bring others into fear and to be able to control them.

 

[Light of the East]

He already got there! See post his this page #27.

He's a shrewd universalist. Hang on, that's my job!

Uh huh......shrewd. Funny, guy. Sorry to steal your job.

It's just strange that people can so blithely state that God is love and then not connect the dots regarding what love is, what love does, and the man-made idea of a useless and utterly purposeless torturing of souls forever.

I was reading something the other day and it made this connection. God is good, not evil, therefore, He would not do something that is innately immoral and evil, i.e., punish forever without any purpose, those who have sinned,

ESPECIALLY those who never even heard of Christ or the Gospel.

 

[Light of the East]

No - but He can and does display His innate knowledge of evil through secondary causes such as the rebellion of angels, the fall of mankind, and the results of those.

Regardless of what universalists such as yourself say - He will also display the necessary end of evil throughout eternity with the pouring out of His wrath on those secondary causes which displayed evil in this present age.

He will also pour out His love for eternity on those who overcome evil in this age through their faith in and subsequent eternal union with His Son.

You can declare for all of your life the unfairness of such events. But it will only last until you, like every angel and man with you, will bow before God and declare His ways righteous.

Better by far to bend the knee and do so now by faith rather than when forced to with the rest of the faithless of this present world.

AND NO - no matter your motive - making up your own rendition of God, His nature, and His actions is not the same as having faith in His Word. Such lack of faith is in fact a form of evil in itself - being displayed in this case by a secondary cause, namely you.

I'm not making up "my own rendition of God" as you claim. The Bible is clear. God is love. God is light and there is no darkness in Him.

Eternal hell is not consistent with being Light or Love.

 

[Light of the East]

I don't know....can you create it and not have done it?

He doesn't create evil. All Christian philosophers I have read state that evil is the absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light. It has no substance, therefore, God did not create it.

 

[Light of the East]

No. God does not create, bestow or impute evil. However, He can and does punish evil, which is in and of itself is good and righteous, perfectly in line with God's good and righteous character and will.

God is good and the source of all that is good. Evil is rightly the absence of God, not part of God's creation.

Yes, the Early Fathers of the Church agree that God punishes evil, but that punishment has a remedial (healing) nature, not the nature of sadism, which is what eternal torment would be.

Look, any human being who would do such a thing we would call evil. How then does any human being place such an action on God Himself.?

 

[His student]

Eternal hell is an invention of men to bring others into fear and to be able to control them.

That is perhaps somewhat correct - the Man Christ Jesus that is.

Eternal hell is not consistent with being Light or Love.

The Man Christ Jesus obviously disagrees with you.

Any variance from His teaching on the subject is indeed your own rendition of the truth.

Most of the information we have about eternal punishment comes from Him.

Take it up with Him.

It almost goes without saying that receiving Christ as Savior involves agreement with God that there is something to be saved from. That something is the wrath of God according to Jesus.

I see that you declare yourself as a seeker of truth. There is no reason to continue to seek the truth. Jesus Christ is the truth. You only have to believe Him. You have received Christ as you personal Savior - haven't you?

If not - you can do that this very day.

 

[Light of the East]

That is perhaps somewhat correct - the Man Christ Jesus that is.

The Man Christ Jesus obviously disagrees with you.

Any variance from His teaching on the subject is indeed your own rendition of the truth.

Most of the information we have about eternal punishment comes from Him.

Take it up with Him.

Yeah, except that Jesus never talked about eternal punishment. The Bible speaks of "aionion" punishments, such as this:

Jde 1:7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, in like manner to these, having given themselves to whoredom, and gone after other flesh, have been set before -- an example, of fire age-during, justice suffering.

The Western translations of the Sacred Scriptures are rife with mistranslations of the word "aionios." Latin scholars mistakenly translated it as "eternal" when it means no such thing. It comes from the root word "aion" which means "an age." Therefore, the aionion punishments are age-lasting or age-duration punishments. They last for an age to achieve a purpose - the remediation and restoration of sinning souls and bringing them Home to God.

Mat 25:46 "And these shall go away to punishment age-lasting, but the righteous to life age-lasting."

And this is consistent with what the rest of the Scriptures teach, that after the ages upon ages, Christ will turn the Kingdom over to the Father and God will be all in all.

Man-made, as in Augustine starting this idea of people as a "damned mass" (massa damnata) and worthy of only eternal punishment, and then Anselm of Canterbury and Aquinas picking this thread up and making a dogma out of it for the Roman Catholic Church in one of Her many theological errors (such as the Filioque clause to the Creed, Indulgences, penal substitution theory, etc.)

Nice try. No cigar. Now go study the Scriptures in the original Greek rather than the corrupted texts of English translations.

 

[renniks]

Job acknowledged the action of God but he never characterized that action as evil. He never judged God's action.

Job wasn't right about everything. He admits this in the end. I"spoke of things I did not understand." Just making the point that because Job said it doesn't make it true. The overall truth in Job and also the truth found in Ecclesiastes, is that we cannot possibly know or fathom what God has done from beginning to end. But since there is no greater Being, the purpose of life is to worship him.

 

[RDKirk]

Job wasn't right about everything. He admits this in the end. I"spoke of things I did not understand." Just making the point that because Job said it doesn't make it true. The overall truth in Job and also the truth found in Ecclesiastes, is that we cannot possibly know or fathom what God has done from beginning to end. But since there is no greater Being, the purpose of life is to worship him.

If you'll notice, immediately after Job makes his statement, the scripture itself validates and commends Job's remark. So Job was certainly and unarguably righteous in that particular statement.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

God is completely logical and everything He says and does makes perfect sense. We may lack the knowledge to see how that could be... but it is just that, a lack of knowledge on our part. Once all things are revealed then we will see how perfectly logical and sensible it is.
Truth for God is truth for us. There is nothing about truth that we are unable to grasp, understand, and apply logically to life and the universe. As a systems engineer and and analyst, it was my job to break processes down into their smallest workable elements and procedures. The process could be huge... but once broken down it made perfect sense and was completely within our grasp to understand and duplicate in a application. God and His creation are the same way. Once we have all the information, we will be able to see how and why it was done the way it was. Perfectly logical and completely within our ability to see and understand.

 

[renniks]

God is completely logical and everything He says and does makes perfect sense. We may lack the knowledge to see how that could be... but it is just that, a lack of knowledge on our part. Once all things are revealed then we will see how perfectly logical and sensible it is.
Truth for God is truth for us. There is nothing about truth that we are unable to grasp, understand, and apply logically to life and the universe. As a systems engineer and and analyst, it was my job to break processes down into their smallest workable elements and procedures. The process could be huge... but once broken down it made perfect sense and was completely within our grasp to understand and duplicate in a application. God and His creation are the same way. Once we have all the information, we will be able to see how and why it was done the way it was. Perfectly logical and completely within our ability to see and understand.

Except we will never have all the information this side of heaven. In fact, I don't think eternity will be long enough to fully understand God. There is no end to God, you never reach the point where you say that's it, there's nothing more to learn, because he is infinite.

 

[renniks]

Man-made, as in Augustine starting this idea of people as a "damned mass" (massa damnata) and worthy of only eternal punishment, and then Anselm of Canterbury and Aquinas picking this thread up and making a dogma out of it for the Roman Catholic Church in one of Her many theological errors (such as the Filioque clause to the Creed, Indulgences, penal substitution theory, etc.)

Really? I don't think the concept of eternal punishment started with Augustine:

• 150 AD Justin Martyr: "We have been taught that only they may aim at immortality who have lived a holy and virtuous life near to God. We believe that they who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in everlasting fire" (First Apology, 21).