Originally posted by Travelsong:
In that case you might be able to enlighten me. How did you resolve these issues?
How did a fully sovereign god become just and benevolent by creating a universe doomed to destruction and creatures destined for hell? To what purpose did such an act serve his glory?
I don't think there was any one thing that enlightened me. It was a process when I challenged myself on some fundamental issues. As I began to understand what God required of me I began to realize that he simply wanted me to mature and grow as I aged. He wants me to have a relationship with Him that is active much like having a relationship with my wife.
I went back to the basics of some things I knew. I knew God existed. I had seen him do things which I would call miracles. As I journeyed back in time I realized that I had been interpreting scripture on the basis of what so many others said not on what was done historically. When I began to investigate the times that surrounded the time of the writing I was looking at in scripture, I began to get a better picture of what the actual message was. Many times it was very different than what I heard at church, read or thought . In my earlier years I asked the tough questions of my pastor and older people I knew, and got no answers except to often hear they didn’t know but they believed it. I was not happy with those kind of answers.
Initially I had been taught a very rationalistic approach to scripture and that all the words fit together like a puzzle. The only problem is that it is a false idea. The message fits but not always the words. Each boo of the Bible must be looked at in light of it historical context. For example if a person said, “The bats were sure flying today!” That could be interpreted in a number of ways. A baseball fan might interpret that as though he the writer was at a baseball game watching players hit home runs. Another might see that as though the writer were at a baseball game and the batters could not hang onto the bats. A animal lover might see that from the perspective of a person under a bridge at 5:00 PM in Austin, Texas watching bats fly from under a bridge. The only correct message would come from the writer. If the writer was not living then information about the writer would need to be known. If his location were known that would solve a lot of the problem in interpreting those words.
To understand scripture well one must try to see the message through the eyes of the writer and the recipients. Most of them had a Jewish background. Their way of seeing things is very different than ours which is a Greek philosophy. To understand the message of the writer one must understand the historical background of the writing. That is where the work begins. If one understand the historical background usually the message is easy to understand.
“How did a fully sovereign god become just and benevolent by creating a universe doomed to destruction and creatures destined for hell? To what purpose did such an act serve his glory?”
I do not agree with what I perceive as your underlying thought behind the question. I believe that God created the world for His glory and in doing so he said it was very good. I see it much the same as when you and your wife have a child. You don’t get married saying you will have a child so the child can turn out bad. You have a child and then pass the child around all the relatives smiling each moment. We do know there are those children who do turn out evil. Is that the sole fault of the parents? No it takes the responsibility of the child too.
Realize that when you read the OT they only had about an 800 word vocabulary and what the elements were. I think they were earth, wind and fire.
When you read about destruction for example in 2 Peter it is not talking about a literal falling apart of the planet but a judgment. If one reads literature of the same time period he will find that the same word pictures are used of judgment and not the planet falling from the sky. Fire often symbolizes judgment. The Jews say God as being a part of everything even man’s decisions. In one sense they are right and in another wrong.
In one sense God create evil by creating man and giving him a choice. By the fact of creating good there must be evil otherwise there would be no good nor evil. That is a Jewish perspective but often we do not think that way.
It is much like saying that when a couple has a baby they are creating evil. They create evil by also creating good. Without bad there is no good. Without good there is no bad. One cannot exist without the other.
