Problem of Evil (Sproul's version)

Back up one more --- does it glorify the Father to HAVE to punish His kids?

It does prove His character, if that is what you mean.

Here's what I've gotten down to, russ ---- IF God wills evil, what is to say He doesn't will evil and sin in your (a believer's) life?? And if that is so, then God's OK if we are lawless. We are lawless because He wills it. And now lawlessness is part of God's character and He looks strangely like the coming AntiChrist.

Just keep that in the back of your mind because there is another was evil could come into the world without it being God's will.

No argument there. It is actually someone who says God willed evil that would be questioning these.

Now you're getting the point. There was a CHOICE for Israel -- crucify Him or crown Him. There was a "secular" context in which that decision had to be made and there was an outcome for them prepared by an all-knowing God dependent on that decision.

See, again I would rather say He KNEW they would reject it and then planned for it. That way the choice if REALLY theirs, not God's.

Actually, this prophecy is NOT complete yet but the part you got is true.

Right there you are getting the cart before the horse. Yes, God FOREORDAINS everything that happens. No, that does not mean that He does so ignorant of what man will do. That is, Rom 8:29 says "foreknow ... predestinate." Omniscience before omnipotence in the exercise of His foreordination.

Not because THEY did God's will -- because SOMEBODY did what God wanted done. It could have been the Romans that prosecuted and crucified Christ and the the prophecy we spoke of above fulfilled -- ISRAEL might then have spread the gospel "blessing" to all the world. Instead, it was pretty much Gentiles that spread it, right?

I'm willing to be proven wrong on Isa 53 -- what verse do you find that in. But, obviously to say it was foreordained" and "prophecied" in Acts 4 when that is merely "reporting" is a bit dishonest, don't you think?

Sorry -- if "God wills it" and God is supremely sovereign as Sproul teaches, then he is accusing God of causing Adam to eat the fruit and causing people (double predestination-wise) to reject Christ. If He has and uses that authrority, He IS responsible.

Yeah, whether He would create beings like Himself who had the authority to choose or not.

It wouldn't really be a "test," now would it, if God knew they were going to fail? Why not skip the Garden scene and plop them into a cursed world that God willed to come upon them anyway??

Overrules our choices? At what point? I have been maintaining that He can change the cosequences of our choices but often He can't take back what He promised would happen to us personally.

Do you see what I am saying? Calvinists think that if man can choose, he will somehow disrupt God's plans. But I have demonstrated through Pharoah, Jesus, Israel, etc. that either choice would not have kept God's plan from coming to fruitition. The only ones ultimately affected by individual decisions were the individual who made the decision and those God gave him (say Pharoah) authority over, right?

Yes -- if God says you must believe on Christ to be saved, that definitely is His sovereiengty at work regardless whether you choose Him or not! And yet personally, you also know that you made the decision "your own self" and God is not responsible for you being in hell or sinning.

See, I like this! You're beginning to see that Calvinist's view of sovereignty is a bit flawed. Good. You see God's will as His sovereignty and, distinct from that, God's will as His foreordination which is not really what He wants to happen in its details or the way He wants it to happen necessarily but is His plan for how it will all come to pass.

No, Adam can have "free will" as God does -- he just cannot have supreme sovereignty as God does. There has to be Someone above Adam "making the rules" that dictate the consequences of free will in obedience or in disobedience, right?

See, there you go back to your Calvinist understanding of "foresee." If God "foresees" things per the Calvinist definition, He directly causes them to happen -- there is basically no allowance for free will of any kind. Even opposing will is not "free" because God is said to have "created them evil" (i.e. Lucifer, Adam, all mankind by being born sinners). So, yeah, then God "foresaw"/"created" evil.

I agree with the first premise. Like I said, God KNEW what breaking His own law would mean and disciplined Himself to be perfect!

As to the second, yes, but all God's planning HAS to take into account what He will do if an independent entity does something averse to His own plan. The very fact that there are 2 individuals -- God and Adam, God and Lucifer -- means there are 2 different and vastly disparate minds. And even wanting the same thing, you KNOW they are going to see different ways to get it, just like you and I, right?

When you first realized that there was a God and that you had sinned, God had one plan to save you -- you had an entirely different one for escaping the consequences of your act. If you were like me, you equivocated first, then measured yourself by other men, then tried to ignore the guilt because as yet you had NONE of the mind of God, right?

No, no! Dualistic meand equally powerful -- no clear winner. No, that is NOT true.

You're right -- God doesn't "rule over the forces of darkness" for sure!! He is more powerful than they are -- He does and will defeat them in their own spiritual realm. But who are you saying gives them their orders?? Who has sovereignty over them?

Do you recall the centurian? Who did he say Christ could command to heal his daughter without Christ having to go there?? Who did the centurian have sovereign authority over and do you suppose some of them disobeyed despite his sovereignty??

Well, I'd say you are thinking like Sproul and a Calvinist then.

It is an observation that is mostly true. God has supplied the means by which we can care for ourselves and we largely take it for granted.

skypair