(May 18, 2017 at 7:31 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:(May 18, 2017 at 10:18 am)SteveII Wrote: 1. Free will does not logically mean evil--just the potential. I believe that being in the actual presence of God makes any possible choice of evil impossible because of the situation not because of a logical impossibility.. I don't know though--just a theory developed to answer the question.
2. God is very much responsible for allowing us to choose (because without that ability, we cannot love anything--including him). Adam was punished, yes, but the real question was it worth creating him (including knowledge of his eventual fall and punishment)? I think it is clear that God would say yes to that. Adam would say yes to that (I certainly am glad of it personally). To flip it around, would you say it would have been better to be created without free will--which would include no ability to love? What would be the point?
3. I don't think that's the case. When you don't take it/discuss it piecemeal, the basic doctrines fit together without much trouble.
1. How could the angels have rebelled if it were impossible to sin in god’s presence? Are you defining free will as something other than being able to make a choice? If we can’t make a choice in heaven, then by your own argument, we won’t be able to love.
2. If I have a child and offer that child certain freedoms, they would be according to what I feel he can handle at a given age. I wouldn’t give a three year old the same freedoms as an eighteen year old and then punish him severely when he chooses to do what I told him not to do. I’ve taken children through the terrible twos and teenage rebellion. I’ve never thought that deliberate disobedience on their part justified cruel and unusual punishment on my part.
3. Actually, the doctrines only seem logical when taken piece meal. It’s when I put them all together that they fall apart.
1. Why do you think Angels are in God's presence? Job 1:6ff give a different picture.
2. You are missing the whole point about what the disobedience did. God is holy and just (inseparably built into his nature) and couldn't continue the relationship in the same way as before. It was not like God decided to punish Adam, it was the natural consequences of the action. Analogies to children do not apply.
3. Systematic theology take a lot of time to study and understand because there are hundreds of interrelated doctrines. Most Christians do not have a firm grasp on it.
