Response to Lee and Knight
Response to Lee and Knight
lee_merrill said:
This doesn't work, though, Rob, for I don't see how stopping Hitler would have impinged on people's free will in some inherent and unpreventable way. For what about the free will of all the Jewish people who died? I don't see how Hitler's free will must be preserved, and the Jewish people's free will need not be...
Blessings,
Lee
It absolutely works! God allows(not stopping) or God doesn't allow(stopping) for His own purposes. Knight's question presents that God
coerced through planning(foreordination) the torture and murder of the Jewish people under Hitler while Knight tries to preserve his own position by saying that God simply allowed it to happen and was just to do so.......
Knight: Rob that would be a reasonable answer for God allowing the Holocaust. (the Open View perspective)
Yet not a reasonable answer for God meticulously planning, decreeing, and orchestrating the Holocaust. (the Settled View perspective)
Please reconsider.
.....What Knight is forgetting is that simple
foreknowledge,
foreordination, and
allowing produce the same effect for the same reason. If I were to ask Hilston did God foreordain Hitler's treatment of the Jews then he would answer 'yes' withough hesitation. If I were to ask you did God foresee Hitler's treatment of the Jews then you would answer likewise. And, by Knight's own admission God allowed it!
If I were to ask all three of you why did God allow it then the precise answer would be so that love would exist through free will.
In other words, from our(Jim, you, and me) perspective God foreknew what results His creation would produce including the evil outcomes; and, we believe that He went forward with His plans anyway deciding to
'allow' the evils to occur to achieve His own good purpose.
Knight on the other hand, believes that God
'allows' evil to achieve His own good purpose of creating free will agents just as we do. For some reason, Knight and the o.v., have come to the conclusion that it matters
WHEN God decided to allow evil.
From their perspective if God is simply doing His best against the wills of those pesky humans then God is just. However, if God created those pesky humans knowing what evils they would do then God is unjust.
"Why would it matter WHEN God allowed the evil to occur for His own good purposes?" is my question. Logically, why does it matter in the least? It seems to for them.
I'll re-post the exchange and await your reply.
God hates evil, but
He loves us more than He hates evil. God want's us to have freedom. He gave us our own will - an incredible gift - a display of love in a fashion we can barely put to words. God loves us so much He gave us something that lets us be us (our will). Yet, some people use that freedom (their will) to do evil things, which of course God hates,
but for God to not allow evil God would have to take away our freedom (our will) which would be unloving.
Now you can answer... what was God's "good" purpose in torturing Jews through Hitler's hands?
Isn't this the same reason God might ordain evil if foreknowledge is true?
Rob Mauldin