Evil and suffering.

[Chuckt]

I don't believe it differentiates Chuckt

Evil is penal. What evil was there before disobedience in the garden? There was only one rule.

Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

"...for in the day...you eat...thou shalt surely die."

That is penal. Man disobeyed and received penal evil.

Hebrew is not easy. If you ever looked Hebrew up on Blueletterbible, there isn't a word for word correlation/translation.

Any Hebrew not on the ark was destroyed by the flood. Without writings on cavewalls or the rosetta stone, you wouldn't probably know ancient languages. What we have is good but we have some words that scholars aren't sure about because they are so old.

If you want to differentiate meaning, you have to go by context and there was no evil before the fall of man. Everything was created good and man sinned. The result was penal evil.

[streetsinger]

Chuckt, with all due respect, scripture does not say that evil ensued because of man's disobedience, God said he created it, no special kind of evil, no evil that has to be introduced by man, just evil;
Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
He also created Satan, put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil into the garden, and allowed Satan, in the guise of a serpent, to enter the garden to tempt Eve who had never encountered a lie and so was unable to defend herself. It appears to me that he had an agenda and these things were put in place to set the ball rolling. After Adam sinned and was turned out of Eden, God didn't give up on him, he showed his love by making the couple clothes and when their son Cain sinned by murdering his brother, God placed a protection around Cain forbidding retribution. as scripture says;
Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. [9] For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I believe that there are things that we need revelation to understand and to try to understand without revelation is futile.

[Chuckt]

Genesia 2:15 ¶ And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep (שמר shamar , guard) it.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Adam was to guard the garden. Adam was only given one command and a command with a consequence. No one made Adam sin. He did it himself. And because the prototype of man couldn't do better, all couldn't do better than the prototype.

The verse you quote is lacking the context of Genesis where God said He created everything good.

Chuckt, with all due respect, scripture does not say that evil ensued because of man's disobedience, God said he created it, no special kind of evil, no evil that has to be introduced by man, just evil;
Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

[streetsinger]

Genesia 2:15 ¶ And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep (שמר shamar , guard) it.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Adam was to guard the garden. Adam was only given one command and a command with a consequence. No one made Adam sin. He did it himself. And because the prototype of man couldn't do better, all couldn't do better than the prototype.

The verse you quote is lacking the context of Genesis where God said He created everything good.

If you say so Chuckt, you pay no attention to my reasoning or the scriptures I cite so to continue debate with you will obviously be fruitless, at least to me.

[Chuckt]

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. [9] For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I believe that there are things that we need revelation to understand and to try to understand without revelation is futile.

This is your reasoning that without revelation understanding it is futile. Here is revelation:

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Jesus made everything and without him, nothing was made. He didn't sin so therefore there is no moral evil in Him. That is the context and that is the revelation.

Hebrews 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as [we are, yet] without sin.
Hebrews 9:28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

1 Peter 2:22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

[Lily]

[QUOTE=Monique;100445]

[I]Found my college notes on " evil and suffering ".






Have you been cleaning out a cupboard Lily.
What college/study was this from?

I spent a few years doing theology and ethics Monique. Went back to school in my early 40's and sat with all the kids
Eventually came to love ethics after about 6 months of saying " ethics is pants " and thinking Immanuel Kant must have been a total loon
You will never master ethics as a subject if you keep applying you're own personal ethical values like I was but once I put my own ethics aside and I just concentrated on the differing criteria of the philosophers, it was plain sailing. Have to admit though, I found sailing with the Utilitarianism of bentham and Mill by far a smoother ride.

Must start a thread on the different ethical criteria

[Lily]

What evil was there before disobedience in the garden?

Chuckt, how would you then tackle Streetsingers point when he says,

He also created Satan

We know that satan was cast out of Heaven " after " Adam and Eve were created and we also know that satan created his own evil Ezekiel 28:15 but how do you tackle his reasoning that Scripture does indicate that there was evil before the disobedience in the garden.
If satan was cast out of Heaven " after " Adam and Eve existed but "before " they disobeyed God, then just by pure reason, evil " did " exist before that disobedience in the garden ? Curtesy of satan.
Reason again says it must existed before, because he wouldn't have been cast out of Heaven and given free reign to tempt Eve if he hadn't been evil.
You can't tempt someone into making one hell of a bad choice ( I use hell deliberately and not as a profranity ) if that evil " temptor " doesn't exist.

[smellycat]

eden is irrelevent.knowledge of good and evil is irrelevent.the tree of life is Christ.

put it into context,man didn,t know about evil,like children today trusting adults.
we tell children not to trust strangers,we know some are evil.

we know the way and the life,which jesus has taught us.

eden is never described as heaven.?

[Lily]

Irenaeus ( AD 130-202 ) followed Augustine in tracing evil back to human free will. He differs in that he admits that God did not make a perfect world and that evil has no valuable role to play in God's plan for humans.

His central features of his theodicy are,,

God's aim when HE created the world was to make humans flawless, in his likeness.

Genuine human perfection cannot be ready-made, but must develope through free choice.

Since God had to give us free choice, He had to give us the potential to disobey him. ( which I think Jay Dub reasoned )

There would be no such potential if there were never any possibilityof evil. If humans were made ready-perfected, and if God policed His world continually, there would be no free will.

Therfore, the natural order had to be designed with the possibility of causing harm, humans had to be imperfect, and God had to stand back from His creation.

Humans used their freedom to disobey God, causing suffering.

God cannot compromise our freedom by removing evil.

Eventually, however, evil and suffering will be overcome and everyone will develope into God's likeness, living glory in Heave. This to Irenaeus, justifies temporary evil.

Unlike Augustine, Irenaeus admitted that God is partly responsible for evil. His responsibility extends to creating humans imperfectly and making it " their " task to develop to perfection.
This idea is based upon Irenaeus' interpretation of Genesis 1:26 where God said,,,
" let us make man in our image, after our likeness. "
Irenaeus concluded that at first, humans were made in God's image and only later would develop into his " likeness ".
For Irenaeus, being in God's image involved having intelligence, morality and personality, yet it lacked completion.
Completion would only be gained upon transformation into God's " likeness ".
It was Irenaeus' claim that evil was an essential means to effect this transformation.

Irenaeus's biggest challenge, of course, is to explain " why " evil is necessary and " why " God did not simply make humans perfect to begin with.
Irenaeus's supporters have added their own answers to these questions.

Irenaeus' own explanation, however, was that attaining the likeness of God requires the willing co-operation of human individuals.
That willing co-operation requires genuine freedom, we cannot willingly co-operate with something if we are being forced into it. ( That one foxes Lily but is in my freewill thread )
Genuine freedom requires the possibility of choosing evil instead of good. God's plans therfore require the genuine possibility that our actions might produce evil.

Ireneaus explained that humans did choose evil, which is why the fall occurred. But although evil clearly makes life difficult, it nevertheless is beneficial in that it enables us to understand what good is. ( I suspect Jay Dub is going to love this dude )

He further argued that those who say that God should never allow evil to happen are infact saying that God should take away their humanity. For being human entails having freedom, yet if God were to intervene each time an evil act is committed, there would not infact be any freedom to commit evil.

If anyone do shun the knowledge of both kinds of things, he unaware divests himself of the character of a human being.
Irenaeus, against Heresies iv, xxxix

Having explained the necessity of both potential and actual evil, Irenaeus looked ahead to Heaven, where everybody will have completed the development into God's likeness, and where sufferings on earth will have been long forgotten.

Something to think about today,

Irenaeus has removed the logical problem of evil appearing from out of the blue by accepting that God's world was not perfect.
What problem/s does Irenaeus's theodicy face, if any ?

Tomorrow, the freewill defense v the critique of freewill defense.

[smellycat]

people could be doing right but for the wrong person.

lets say satan has 1000 followers,he inflicts 500 with cancer,and the other 500 he uses to care for them.

the 500 nurses would be doing good,feel good about life and love satan thinking the other 500 are evil etc.

the knowledge of good and evil is useless,if your leader is evil.

we follow God so we know this not to be the case.but it is very important to follow jesus,and the knowledge these things won,t carry on.

otherwise its pointless .