Hyro,
This is a bit diversionary. But, I'll kick it around with you some, if the moderators don't object.
God, being omnipotent and omnipresent, surely knew before hand that the "perfect" angel would go astray.
I suppose that is true.
Obviously he wasn't "perfect" or he would have never have fallen.
I don't think that is so "obvious" or necessarily follows.
I see in this just the foreknowledge of God. I don't think the foreknowledge of God means the imperfection of God. Nor the self choice of a free will creation implicates his Creator.
And because God knew what would happen well in advance, he is therefore complicit in everything that Satan supposedly is.
This is a philosophical problem which has been argued for centries. I don't think we can solve it.
However, who are you going to find transcendent to God as an umpire to do a little straightening of Him out ? It has never made sense to me that the creature man, could be superior in any way to the Creator God.
There are two choices to me. One is that somehow God was able to create beings, (humans), who are more moral and ethical then Himself. And thus we His creations, have to have a good talk to teach Him what He did wrong. This makes no sense to me, though it may be tempting to think that way.
How could the effect be superior to the cause ? How could God give to us something that He did not have to give - ie, superior ethics, so that we must educate the Almighty ?
The second possibilty is that, Yes God foreknew. And yes, this being became something so negative. Yet God is still absolutely right and righteous. And this is difficult for us to understand.
I take the second approach.
One writer put it this way. The day will come when we realize that in many things we in which we thought we were right and God was wrong, we will find that God was not wrong but we were.
And in some other things in which we think God is wrong and we are right, He may say "I was right. But you were right also."
This difficult problem of the foreknowledge of an omniscient God may be like that. God may not say "You were wrong. And I was right." But He may say "I was right. But you were right also."
At any rate, the idea of us the creatures finding fault with the Creator does not make sense to me.
jaywill:
But, of late, I think God did allow Satan to develop to be a grand repository to contain all the created creatures that for one reason or another do not want to have anything to do with God.
Hyro:
Satan's role has changed considerably from OT to NT. In the earliest manuscripts, we see him as a helper of God to test people's faith in God -- essentially a devil's advocate (no pun intended). His role dramatically changes to become evil incarnate and the ruination of man.
I don't think Satan role changes as you say.
From the beginning Satan injects the thought into man that God is an arbitrary tyrant who does not have man's best interest at heart. He causes man to doubt the goodness and love of the Divine heart. He causes man to doubt the truth of the Divine word.
This activity is constant throughout time until Satan goes into eternal perdition.
His job has always been to convince man that he, Satan, is God, and that God, is Satan. Satan's scheme has been to
reverse roles of God and Satan in man's mind. That is so that we regard the Devil, the Slanderer as the one setting free and God the Savior as the enemy.
We see in the book of Job where God uses Job as a test tube experiment to see if he will fall.
I do not deny that Satan was like a mad dog on a leash which gave God an opportunity to display His glory.
God knew what would happen. God let the matter happen so that you and I and the Devil could see what would happen.
Many things are brought out for OUR sake, to see. It is not as though God goes through them so that He can find out what is what. He knows already.
So he causes Job's entire family to die and to have him inflicted with diseases so God can prove something to Satan.
That is right.
Concerning thier temporal existence, they really had it bad off. Concerning their eternal life, you do not know how greatly they will be blessed. Do you ?
If you ask me, it sounds like Satan one that little battle by getting God to become so (for lack of a better word) ungodly.
The reason for Job's experience is really not found in the book of Job. God, in the book of Job, NEVER gives Job OR the reader, an explanation of the whole ordeal.
I do believe that there is an explanation. But I think it is found in the New Testament probably mostly in the book of Second Corinthians. It is there that we see the outward vessel of God's saints being torn down that the inward treasure of God's life may be manifested in its indestructible nature, value and worth.
I have graduated from believing Satan's slanders and regarding God as the villian of the universe or the Bible.
The problem is that he is God's invention, and on that basis alone makes God complicit.
As I said, this is an age old philosophical debate about free will and predestination. Does God's foreknowledge make God responsible for the choices of the free will agent ?
You may adopt the view that the existence of Satan shows the evil of God. But this makes no sense to me. I think God is one for whom a greater cannot be imagined. Who is the transcendent umpire who is qualified to correct the Almighty ?
The "faulty, error prone Almighty" who needs some education and correction from His own creatures, makes no sense to me.
I lean towards our finite and limited comprehension may at times just not understand the rightness of the Ultimate Governor - God.
For example, you are here cautioning me of the faulty and error prone God. Yet of all men who seemed qualified to make that judgement, Jesus Christ, I think, showed Himself the most qualified. And He did not teach that way.
Satan is masterfully cunning and humans are stupid in comparison.
Satan is too cunning for us to be able to deal with. But He is not too cunning for Christ to deal with. So we humans need to be in oneness with Christ in order to overcome Satan.
Christ has to become our wisdom. Which is what Paul told the Corinthian Christians:
"But of Him [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption." (1 Cor. 1:30)
You see there? Being put by God into the sphere of Jesus Christ causes this Person to become wisdom to us from God - righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ -
"In whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. This I say that no one may delude you with persuasive speech." (Colossians 2:3,4)
So whose fault is it for man falling for the bait? Did not God set up the trap, the bait, and the allure itself? After all, God is allegedly the Creator of all that is. Any and all things that happen have to, logically, be attributed to him and him alone.
I think this kind of reasoning lead to a dead end. And few people live thier lives this way. You have no sense of being coerced or forced in many of the decisions you make.
I mean, Flip Wilson got a lot of laughs saying "The Devil made me do that !" But actually, your truer sense is that you made choices. Many of them were simply evil.
Concocting and elaborate philosphy that God is the one to blame for your evil choices, is not as sactifactory a justification as the justification God has provided by the saving redemption in Christ.
So my approach is to marvel at the salvation God has provided in His Son rather then continue Adam and Eve's excuses to blame thier Creator.
"And the man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruuit from the tree, and I ate.
And Jehovah God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate." (Gen. 3:12,13)
I regard your line of reasoning as just a further passing of the buck. "God's to blame. God is implicated. God is responsible. I am innocent and God is the guilty one."
I find it much better to simply take the way of Justification through faith in the finished work of the Savior Christ and let the plan of redemption be my way of jutification.
If you want to carry that argument with you to the judgement day, go ahead. I would rather stand upon Christ whom God has put forth as my merit and justification before an eternally righteous Judge.
jaywill:
My opinion is that all the rebels, all the revolters, all the unbelievers, all those disgruntled and opposed to Ultimate Governor of the universe, needed a big repository to all go together. Satan the Devil was allowed become what he did from his lofty position to be that leader.
Hyro:
How can you rebel against something you aren't even sure is there? Is it really rebellion against God, or is there simply not enough information to make an educated guess?
I think if God is not there, there should be no sense of wrong doing in your own conscience.
But in many things, your own conscience protests, that you were off. You were wrong.
If there is no God I think you would have perfect peace about everything you did.
Are both you and I rebelling against Allah, or do we simply have no good reason to assume Allah's existence?
Islam has a completely different teaching on Allah forgiving you sins. And that goes well beyond the scope of this topic.
jaywill:
Whatever God is, Satan became the opposite of that.
Hyro:
Whose fault is that, ultimately? Last I checked, Satan didn't create himself and neither did we create ourselves. It seems that you are minimizing, severely, God's own role in the whole kit and caboodle.
Last time I checked, God said to this being
" You were perfect in yur ways from the day you were created, until unrighteousness was found in you." (Ezekiel 28:15)
A being created perfect in his ways at some point gave birth to unrighteousness within himself.
I agree with you that God probably foreknew this would happen. I have graduated from the game of trying to imagine that we creatures need to educate the Creator to His erroneous ways.
If anyone in history had the qualifications to point out that God is the faulty one in all this, that would have been Jesus. As you can see, Jesus poured out His life under the conviction that His Father was absolutely right and righteous:
"Righteous Father, though the world has not known You, yet I have known You, and these have known that You have sent Me." (John 17:25)
Jesus prayed
"Righteous Father .. the world has not known You, yet I have known You ..."
He acted like it. He trusted His Father to the uttermost, even unto His death on the cross. His conviction of the Father's rightness was the strongest of all human convictions, I think, in the history of man.
Christ, who was excelling in purity, goodness, and holiness, did not give us any hint that His Father was at fault. I think I have to trust His testimony over your kind of rationale.
Jesus went through all of what He suffered under the unshakable conviction that His Father was the Righteous Father. I trust Him on that.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.
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