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Fatal Flaw?
- Thread starter Deacon
- Start date
God is not the author of sin.
But God, for His own high purposes, did not choose to make us so many Stepford wives without ability to choose. He gave us free will, knowing that we would fall into sin by our own deliberate fault. But for that eventuality, He had already devised a plan to rescue a vast number of guilty humans by satisfying His own justice through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and drawing men and women to HImself by faith though the Holy Spirit, not counting their sins against them.
But God, for His own high purposes, did not choose to make us so many Stepford wives without ability to choose. He gave us free will, knowing that we would fall into sin by our own deliberate fault. But for that eventuality, He had already devised a plan to rescue a vast number of guilty humans by satisfying His own justice through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and drawing men and women to HImself by faith though the Holy Spirit, not counting their sins against them.
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
As you said God draws man to Himself, He does not cause them to either believe or not believe.
So man uses his God given free will to make the choice to either trust in or reject God.
If that's what you think, carry on. This is not, praise God, the Cal vs Arm forum. I was replying to the O.P. I suggest you do too.
...don't forget about the angels. Them too:
2nd Peter Chapter 2
4 | For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; |
Jude Chapter 1
6 | And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. |
The whole creation groans.
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I believe Adam was made upright, but then God planted a Garden and took Adam from the land where he was made and put Adam in this Garden - in His very presence as God walked in this Garden.
Adam was created flesh, but flesh and blood will not inherit God's kingdom. The "flaw" was not in the making of Adam, but Adam lacked the righteousness to exist in God's presence (Adam was flesh, with the desires of the flesh but without spiritual life).
I believe the Fall was ultimately a part of God greater creation (His kingdom, a chosen race of believers who are a priesthood serving Him and exhibiting His glory).
I would not call it a "flaw", though. I think of it more as natural man being kinda like seeds. The seed must die for the plant to grow (the ultimate goal being the plant).
Silverhair
Well-Known Member
The OP asked if God had purposefully designed humans with a fatal flaw?
Did you not say that man has a free will and that God draws man to Himself in your response to the OP.
So my response to you and also responded to the OP.
Now if you want to see it as dealing with C/A then you are reading that into the text.
Agree fully with that. What's happening here is a spectacle for every creature in the universe to watch.
Ephesians Chapter 3
8 | Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; |
9 | and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God who created all things; |
10 | to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, |
11 | according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: |
Yes!
The first human, Adam, was created with the ability to sin. Note that before Adam was created, Logos was chosen to be the Lamb of God, therefore God anticipated sin and the fall of humanity. And, in our fallen state, it brings glory to God when we repent. Game, set and match!
I didn't want this to fall into a C/A debate, so purposefully passed on putting it in that forum.
Reformed theology's emphasis on God's sovereignty doesn't preclude the holding of a free-will position.
~~~~~~~
I’m reading: What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory. by Scott Christensen (2020)
But he's also written a shorter, more reader friendly edition: Defeating Evil, How God Glorifies Himself in a Dark World (2024)
[I'd recommend the reader-friendly edition!]
Christensen takes a compatibilist position, (with an emphasis on Christology).
Compatalist believe that God’s absolute sovereignty coexists with genuine free-will, making humanity moral responsible for choices they make.
His theodicy, which he calls “the greater-glory theodicy,”
“… meets the two criteria that Greg Welty proposes for a faithful theodicy.
The first criterion says that the goods God pursues in the face of evil must be dependent on those evils. … The supreme glory that God receives through redemption … is clearly dependent on the fall of mankind and the manifold evils it produced. …
Welty’s second criterion says that the goods pursued in the face of evil must be weighty and important enough to justify the evils that produce those goods. ..." (WAE, p. 287)
Christensen's position is that God permits and even ordained evil because, within his sovereign plan, its defeat through Christ produces a greater glory than would have been possible if the evil never existed.
This is not a particularly new idea. A similar view is expressed in John Piper's Desiring God website.
"In Christian theology, to “ordain” evil means that God, from all eternity, has decided and planned for certain sinful actions or events to occur, not because He loves or approves of sin, but because He sees them as part of a greater good purpose."
I'm struggling with this position!
Rob
Reformed theology's emphasis on God's sovereignty doesn't preclude the holding of a free-will position.
~~~~~~~
I’m reading: What about Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory. by Scott Christensen (2020)
But he's also written a shorter, more reader friendly edition: Defeating Evil, How God Glorifies Himself in a Dark World (2024)
[I'd recommend the reader-friendly edition!]
Christensen takes a compatibilist position, (with an emphasis on Christology).
Compatalist believe that God’s absolute sovereignty coexists with genuine free-will, making humanity moral responsible for choices they make.
His theodicy, which he calls “the greater-glory theodicy,”
“… meets the two criteria that Greg Welty proposes for a faithful theodicy.
The first criterion says that the goods God pursues in the face of evil must be dependent on those evils. … The supreme glory that God receives through redemption … is clearly dependent on the fall of mankind and the manifold evils it produced. …
Welty’s second criterion says that the goods pursued in the face of evil must be weighty and important enough to justify the evils that produce those goods. ..." (WAE, p. 287)
Christensen's position is that God permits and even ordained evil because, within his sovereign plan, its defeat through Christ produces a greater glory than would have been possible if the evil never existed.
This is not a particularly new idea. A similar view is expressed in John Piper's Desiring God website.
"In Christian theology, to “ordain” evil means that God, from all eternity, has decided and planned for certain sinful actions or events to occur, not because He loves or approves of sin, but because He sees them as part of a greater good purpose."
I'm struggling with this position!
Rob
I’ve heard it preached; ‘When all of this is said and done and time is no more, every creature in the universe will know there only be One Will.’
Ben1445
Well-Known Member
God did not describe His creation that way. I would not either.
Maybe there is a better way to phrase the question that doesn’t sound so much like did God make a mistake on purpose during creation.