Is God capable of evil?

[Tellyontellyon]

How can he create a being that is?

 

[Joyous Song]

How can he create a being that is?

HaShem, the Creator of all things created all things initially Good. This earth was good, and man when placed here was good. But He also gave free will, and tradition teaches, Satan was the accuser, or sifter, who sifts us to bring out the gold beneath, so not initially bad.

Yet seeing human and growing jealous of Christ in His incarnation he took up the mantel of freewill upon himself and thus became evil, just as we do as we reach seven.

Put another way, when HaShem, Praise be He, gave us free will to follow Him this also gave us free will not to follow Him! In this sense His action brought evil, yes, but only because he sought children, not slaves. It was the by product only of Creation, but a necessary one for salvation.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

God can only create beings with a free will if He has a free will Himself as well. Which means that God is physically able to do evil - and if Noah's flood was not a righteous act then it would be a great example of God being able to wipe out all of mankind if He wishes to.
But while God can choose between good and evil just like us He chooses good always. Always means always here. Since God is perfect there is no "mistake" or "wrong decision" in God's behaviour. He wants to be good, that's why He is good.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

I see, so God could do evil, but chooses good.

I guess that if he was not able to do evil then how could he be considered good... To be truly good means an intentional act, not just an automatic act.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

I see, so God could do evil, but chooses good.

I guess that if he was not able to do evil then how could he be considered good... To be truly good means an intentional act, not just an automatic act.

Indeed, it's the same when you think about it in "everyday terms": if we could not do anything evil, what would a good deed be worth? If we could not hate, what's love worth?

If your neighbour has no choice but being nice to you then there is nothing special about his kindness. It's not even worth being mentioned then.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

How can he create a being that is?

In Christianity, evil is not the opposite of good like Zoroastrianism etc. It is the absence of good.

So God could create something with free will, that then chooses to act differently than how he originally created that being to originally be.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

How can he create a being that is?

God created man and woman good and innocent with no evil in them however, He did allow evil to dwell among them for the purpose of testing their love for Him.

 

[TedT]

How can he create a being that is?

GOD has a free will so HE is indeed capable of evil but because HIS love within the Trinity is perfect, HE will never choose to create or do evil in the least. Period.

The purpose of our creation was so HE could have a loving marriage relationship with us and share the love they have in the Trinity. But love and marriage can only arise from a true free will acceptance of the proposal. And to have the ability to chose to accept HIM, We also must have had the ability to reject HIM and HIS claims or our choice was not a free choice.

Thus HE created us with the ability to choose to be evil but HIS desire was we would not so choose.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

In Christianity, evil is not the opposite of good like Zoroastrianism etc. It is the absence of good.

I'd like to look into that more deeply, what are the Bible verses?

 

[ViaCrucis]

How can he create a being that is?

Nothing that God made was made evil. That is why in Genesis we read that everything was "exceedingly good".

Evil isn't the opposite of good, evil is a shrinking, deformation, twisting of the good. And that happens through the potential enabled by volitional freedom.

The creature that God knit together in the womb of Klara Hitler wasn't an evil creature. But a human being created to bear the Divine image and likeness. That creature became evil through action and inaction, thought, feeling, and will. Because of the diminishment of human freedom and will through sin, each of us is born into the captivity of sin, which shackles the conscience and binds the will to the desires of the flesh--from which evil may freely spring. But such things are contrary to the Divine order, not part of it.

The Divine order is love, not hate. God's will for the universe is life, not death.

God cannot be evil because it is a contradiction in terms. Like a square triangle. God is good, by the sheer fact that He's God--not in some kind of Euthyphroic sense, but rather in that goodness and God are inseparable realities from one another. The endowment of good in the universe is God's energies--His acts, works, doings--present throughout the cosmos.

-CryptoLutheran