Results 1 - 3 of 3
|
|
|||||
Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | God sought Moses to kill him | Ex 4:24 | DocTrinsograce | 198348 | ||
Hi, Budderfligh... No, I don't believe there is any passage in Scripture that attributes God as the cause of evil. Quite the contrary: to assert that God was the cause of sin would be blasphemous, for He is perfectly holy and righteous in every regard. The old Baptist divines put it this way, "From all eternity God decreed all that should happen in time, and this He did freely and unalterably, consulting only His own wise and holy will. Yet in so doing He does not become in any sense the author of sin, nor does He share responsibility for sin with sinners. Neither, by reason of His decree, is the will of any creature whom He has made violated; nor is the free working of second causes put aside; rather is it established. In all these matters the divine wisdom appears, as also does God's power and faithfulness in effecting that which He has purposed. (Numbers 23:19; Isaiah 46:10; John 19:11; Acts 4:27-28; Romans 9:15, 18; Ephesians 1:3-5, 11; Hebrews 6:17; James 1:13; 1 John 1:5)" (1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 3, Paragraph 1) Note that God decrees all things, but in such a way that He isn't the author of evil and doesn't share responsibility for it. He also does so in a mysterious way that allows the will of His creatures to be exercised in what we would think of as "free." Note the insertion of the statement "nor is the free working of second causes put aside, rather is it established." This bit gets into an area of thought called causality. The church came into existence couched in the context of Hellenistic Greek culture. Consequently, you see a whole lot of Greek thinking expressed through the New Testament. When you talk about Greek thinking, you naturally pretty much talk Aristotle. The early church would have been as aware of Aristotle as you and I are aware of Abraham Lincoln. (That's not a perfect analogy. We generally think more highly of Lincoln in a personally and morally.) We can see Aristotle's methods being used by Paul, for example. Throughout Christian history Aristotle has been used, sometimes too far -- especially when the doctrine of sola Scriptura became obscured. Without getting into too much detail the idea is kind of like setting up a series of dominoes. When you push the first one with your finger, the dominoes all fall in sequence. In one sense all you did is push over one domino. In another sense, you pushed over all the dominoes. God created the angels and man, Lucifer fell then deceived Eve, Eve sinned, Adam followed in sin, etc. There are a clear set of causal relationships, but the Scriptures assure us that the moral culpability does not work backwards in such a way as to impugn the moral excellency of the Creator. I'm probably doing a very poor job of explaining "secondary causes." It's hard to get into it all in this venue. If you want a good starting place dealing with theodicy, you might try: http://www.theopedia.com/Theodicy By the way, when people start talking about fairness, then ask "Whose fairness?" As Creator, God can and does dictate what is fair. But who would want anyone other than God to do that? He is perfectly knowledgeable, perfectly wise, perfectly holy, etc. etc. Besides, what's all this stuff about fairness anyway. Anyone who wants fairness from God doesn't understand the disaster of the fall and the horrendous nature of sin. The most fair doctrine in Scripture is the doctrine of hell! What we desperately need is not fairness... what we desperately need is mercy! In Him, Doc |
||||||
2 | God sought Moses to kill him | Ex 4:24 | budderfligh | 198406 | ||
Hello Doc, Just wanted to let you know that I had the opportunity to visit the website on Theodicy and I learned much from it. There was a link on the site that I'd like you to look at when you get time. I'd like your opinion on it. You will find the link at the bottom of the page titled "A Good reason for Evil by Gregory Koukl". I am unfamiliar with the author. The article is written in simple, easy to understand language and even though I found a few of his statements rather contradictory I'll have to admit he gave me a lot to think about. His views coincide with St. Augustine's stance on evil. I plan to do further study on Augustine's writings but I just wanted your viewpoint on what he had to say. I'm not saying that I agree with him, merely that he's given me new food for thought. I also found an opinion held by Norman Geisler that states that evil is nothing more than a result of free will. Geisler also draws upon St. Augustine's opinion (but does not, in my opinion, tend to agree with Koukl cited above). "In trying to answer the question of where evil came from, Geisler says that the basic elements in the theistic response to this problem are found in Augustine and Aquinas. Since their time theists have followed the contours of their thought. Both agreed on the response that can be stated as follows: 1. God is absolutely perfect. 2. God created only perfect creatures. 3. One of the perfections God gave some of His creatures was the power of free choice. 4. Some of these creatures freely chose to do evil. 5. Therefore, a perfect creature caused evil. In a nutshell Geisler says, God is good, and He created good creatures with a good power called free will. Unfortunately, they used this power to bring evil into the universe by rebelling against their Creator. So evil did arise from good, not directly but indirectly, by the abuse of a good power called freedom. Freedom in itself is not evil. It is good to be free. But with freedom comes the possibility of evil. So God is responsible for making evil possible, but free creatures are responsible for making it actual." God bless you and keep you, budderfligh |
||||||
3 | God sought Moses to kill him | Ex 4:24 | skccab | 198408 | ||
Shalom budderfligh, Just thought I'd give you some info on Greg Koukl. I don't agree with everything he says, but he says it in such a way that I will usually at least take a second or third look at how I see things. He hosts a weekly radio call-in show which you can download or listen to on-line. It's quite an interesting show, actually, or at least on long, lonely midnight shifts it makes for a good listen. The website is called Stand to Reason, you can google it. Cheri |
||||||