As I was thinking about the question of the atonement from my previous post, I realized there is a contradiction between the concept of The Fall and a common explanation for evil. I have never seen this problem addressed before in any way. Maybe I’m missing something or it has been addressed before. If so, I’d like to know.
The problem of evil is how there can be evil in a world if God is all powerful and all good. One common answer to this is the argument from free will: God allows evil in the world, because only if there is evil can there be free will. We must be free to choose good or bad. This argument assumes that free will is one of the greatest goods, so God allows evil in order to allow the greater good of free will.
First, I would like to point out this means that there must be a good that exists independent of God. If good is simply whatever God says it is or wants it to be, he would not be constrained by greater or lesser goods. he could simply declare that free will is not a great good, and create a world without evil. The only way it makes sense for him to create a world with free will is if there was some criteria outside of God that could determine this world is better. All arguments for evil actually require that God weighs pros and cons, rather than just declare whatever he wants to be good or evil. Therefore, we can have good without God.
But the interesting point is what this says about the Fall of Adam and Eve. According to the free will argument, a world with evil is actually better than a world without evil. A world without any evil would not have any free will. God created this world with evil because it is better. Yet the Christian view is that before the fall, there was an idyllic Eden without evil. The sin of Adam and Eve is often represented as introducing free will. That makes sense if free will is impossible without evil. Therefore, the fall was good. Original sin is good. The world before the fall, without evil, was worse than the world we have now. If that is not true, then you loose the argument for evil. God could create a world like Eden, but he doesn’t, so he is not all good. How can people say that evil is acceptable because it gives us free will and yet simultaneously hold that the world before the fall was better than the world after the fall?
September 9, 2008 at 5:34 pm |
The choice (free will) wasn’t between good and evil, the choice was to obey God or not. Evil is a result of the choice, not the other way around. Free will didn’t come with sin, it came with the creation of man. You still have that choice today. Are you going to shoplift something or pay for it? Are you going to cheat on an exam, or study hard and do your best? Are you going to ignore your neighbour who needs help because you think he stinks, or extend grace to him and see what you can do to help?
Being God doesn’t mean you can arbritarily declare something good or bad. It is the character of God Himself that establishes that.