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NASB | Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing peace and creating disaster; I am the LORD who does all these things. |
Subject: "I make peace, and create evil" |
Bible Note: You wrote: 'I'm sorry but I'm gonna need to disagree with you. The only thing that has always existed is God himself, there is no eternal existence of "moral good" and "moral evil".' Evil didn't exist, but since evil/sin by definition is that which is contrary to God's law and God's holiness, moral good did exist. God's perfection never depended on there being an "opposite force" present. You wrote: 'Since God is the only thing that is eternal then **ALL** "good" AND **ALL** "evil" came from him, by him, and the scripture says so.' Well, since God created all things, in a certain sense He is responsible for the existence of evil. However, what He created was good, but not immutably good. If something (or someone) God created morally upright chose to rebel against God's law of his/her own volition, that person is the author of that evil, not God. 'I'm sorry, but I don't think we can pick and choose the definitions that work best just because we don't want to believe them. I don't think it is fair to say "this isn't the interpretaion he ment".' No, but it is perfectly fair to look at what else God reveals about Himself in the rest of Scripture to see what this verse could possibly mean in the whole context. God being evil or being the immediate cause of something against his own nature doesn't match up with the rest of the Bible. 'God is the pinnacle, he is above both "good" and "evil", and he is neither.' No. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? --Habakkuk 1:13 The sinless Christ, God himself, had no sin. If Jesus were both good and evil, then he wouldn't have served as the sinless sacrifice for the sins of Christians. I could go on for hours from Scripture about how God's infinite holiness is an immutable characteristic of His nature. The Bible makes that absolutely clear, and this one verse from Isaiah simply does not fit if "ra" means imperfection in any sense of the word. 'He created both for a reason and I think it should be asked, why did God create "EVIL"?' The better question would be, "Why does He allow evil to exist?" --Joe! |