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I agree. God ALLOWS evil when the only other option is to cause a greater evil

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But while I work on an answer, tell me, what do think the greater good was? And if you say that it was primarily that Job's character was strengthened, then how would you justify that this greater good justifies all the evil that was done?

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The thing I will admit is that I am not God thus I cannot conceive or understand WHY God allows things to happen. My pointing out the scripture of God ALLOWING Satan to have way at Job was to point out that God, by allowing Satan to test Job, was indirectly responsible for the evil the befell him.

What's your answer for me?
~Brandi~

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And tell me why exactly, if God needed to trick Ahab into going into battle in order to die, why did God tell Ahab that He was sending a lying spirit through all of His prophets? Reverse psychology? Yes, that’s it! He thought Ahab might see through His trick and think that He was really on Ahab’s side in this battle so He sent the prophet that He knew that Ahab didn’t like to first tell him the truth sarcastically so he wouldn’t believe THAT (that God really WAS on his side???) and then to tell him the real truth so that he wouldn’t believe THAT (that God really WASN’T on his side???).

I don’t get it Mephi. Seems like your interpretation makes God out to be a trickster – Ahab in wonderland.

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But you are forgetting something really important: Ahab's PAST and God's knowledge of Ahab's nature. Read up on how evil and pathetic Ahab is as a king in 1 Kings. How he let Jezzie lead him around by the nose. How he provoked God to NO END. How he punked out TO THE POINT where God had to SPECIFICALLY tell him that he would win again the Arameans. (Oh, and Ahab BELIEVED God on that one) But he turned around and jigged up on THAT one!!! He makes a treaty with someone that God wanted to DIE!


1 Kings 20:40-43
While your servant was busy here and there, the man disappeared." "That is your sentence," the king of Israel said. "You have pronounced it yourself." Then the prophet quickly removed the headband from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized him as one of the prophets. He said to the king, "This is what the LORD says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die. Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people.'" Sullen and angry, the king of Israel went to his palace in Samaria.


PLEASE read the story! Ahab's had punishment coming for a LOOONG time and it's been DECLARED more than a couple times. After the Namoth thing, God just declared SPECIFICALLY how it was going to happen. But back to the method of being fooled. HOW did God know that the "lying spirit" would entice Ahab...even so much that Micaiah's correct prophecy WOULDN'T change his mind? Look at Ahab's HISTORY. He's a friggin joke of a king who is adept at making his own plans and following others by the nose. It's easy to see how he went ahead with his plans, especially as tentatively as he did. He's a punk par excellence! Look at it! After Micaiah gave him the prophecy, what did he do? He not only tried to HIDE somewhat to avoid being killed but he also insisted that Micaiah be held there "until his safe return" (like some type of "insurance" in his OWN mind or something) This little biaaa is so weak that he would let all of those other prophets boost his thoughts enough to go ahead and do it...but not with full conviction! He halfway believes Micaiah and tries to hedge his bets. In other words, it seems that he doesn't fully believe ANY of the prophets. He doesn't believe Zedekiah enough to boldly face his enemy...and he doesn't believ Micaiah enough to NOT go to battle. Is it REALLY so hard to see how the "lying spirit" in the mouths of all those prophets worked????

PLUS...

If what you are saying is true, then why did this happen?

1 Kings 22:24-25
Then Zedekiah son of Kenaanah went up and slapped Micaiah in the face. "Which way did the spirit from the LORD go when he went from me to speak to you?" he asked. Micaiah replied, "You will find out on the day you go to hide in an inner room."

WHY would Zedikiah slap Micaiah, unless he took what Micaiah said VERY seriously? And WHY would Micaiah reply like he did? Dude, you don't just accuse another prophet of being a LYING prophet. That ain't cool. And Zedekiah knew that. Wouldn't this corroborate the "lying spirit" thing?

And let's please not forget about the OVERALL context of the story that I gave in my last post.


Maybe it's just me but your reading is COMPLETELY implausible, given what I'm understanding of the whole story. You expand God's showing of mercy to Ahab (basically letting the massacre occur AFTER Ahab's death) as being God's COMPLETE LONGING and PINING after Ahab to trust in him and believe in him. This is not even justified by the text and can only really be EISEGETED in, from what I'm seeing.

Just my thoughts. Doc, hey, man, come on...I'm not the most adept biblical exegete around, but dang...


Love,



PS: Brandi, I'm hacking away at this thing. Telling you now, it's LONG...and probably more than you wanted, but I hope it ends up being helpful. I'm triming it down...and I'll put it in it's own thread probably.

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WHY would Zedikiah slap Micaiah, unless he took what Micaiah said VERY seriously? And WHY would Micaiah reply like he did? Dude, you don't just accuse another prophet of being a LYING prophet. That ain't cool. And Zedekiah knew that. Wouldn't this corroborate the "lying spirit" thing?

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I agree. My presupposition that God never does evil or is in any way complicit in evil IS strongly influencing my reading of this story.

Of course, by the same token, YOUR presupposition that God is against Ahab and that God is sometimes complicit in evil is strongly influencing YOUR reading of the story.

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Um, MY presupposition HONESTLY is that at least sometimes God can do what God purposes to do. Nothing more, nothing less. This is the only presupposition NEEDED to support my reading.


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Iconoclast:

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You assume that because God has pronounced a consequence for Ahab’s sinful behavior, that therefore God doesn’t STILL love Ahab and WANT him to repent.

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How in the world are you saying that just because I'm saying that God has pronounced a consequence for Ahab's behavior...and God stuck to it...that I'm saying that God didn't LOVE Ahab or VALUE his repentence?? Let me show you something...


Numbers 20:6-12
Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, "Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink."

So Moses took the staff from the LORD's presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them."


Deut 34:1-6
Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land-- from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar.


Then the LORD said to him, "This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it." And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.

Iconoclast, God stuck to his guns with Moses. And if you look at the text, Moses was STILL doing mad stuff for God before his death finally occurred. Should I stick to your logic and say that God didn't LOVE Moses? Should I say that God was WRONG for not letting Moses cross over into the land that he (Moses) had helped lead the Israelites to for YEARS?? Should I say that God's sticking to his punishment of Moses was wrong? Hmm...


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Iconoclast:

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My point is that YOU are treating the “lying spirit” thing as a “meta-story”. The only way your interpretation works is to see it as a “meta-story”. My point is that it fails as a “meta-story” – it cannot possibly be an accurate meta-story because it is neither a complete mapping of the story line and nor is it a “fractal” of the story line. In fact, it is self-refuting, as a “meta-story” for it exposes the very story line as false. Thus, it is NOT the actual “meta-story” but is a critical piece of the actual story and must be understood that way. An example of a “meta-story” is when Jesus explains the real meaning of the parable of the sower.

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With all due respect, my brother, are you serious? First of all, it's seems pretty obvious that the story line that you are referring to is NOT the whole story. You don't seem to incorporate the context I've tried to provide at all. And you are right. I'm not treating the "lying spirit" thing as "meta-story" I'm looking at it IN the story as a whole to see how it makes sense. I'm NOT imposing a theme upon this to reconfigure it.


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Iconoclast:

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Zedekiah was not being accused of being a lying prophet. Zedekiah was angry because he KNEW that God wanted that city to be taken.

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I just don't know what to say for this one. I'm speechless. Just being honest.


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On another note, let's not forget this overall context of this conversation. The "greater good" idea. Why can't this text (and others) be used to demonstrate how Iconoclast's idea about COMPLICITY may be WRONG?? Maybe it's possible for God to USE satanic or evil things as tools for greater good purposes...and how come we can't look to THIS as biblical evidence to say so? It seems like Iconoclast is trying every trick in the book to hold to his thoughts on complicity with this case instead of being open to the chance that he's wrong. Once you impose a thought on exegetical processes like this, sometimes, the LEAST BIT of plausibility is then taken over the breadth of evidence! Hey, I'm open that I may be wrong and I don't CARE either way. (I have no vested interest in trying to vindicate God. This is what I mean by I don't care either way) So, my chief thing is to just try to 1)recognize my presupps 2)ADJUST for them where that's needed and 3) go where the evidence leads me. And honestly, it's leading me, in THIS case, to say that God used a "lying spirit" to entice Ahab to go to his doom...as he wanted. And IF this is the case, then maybe, as Doc stated, this can facilitate a "greater good" idea theme of how God can USE evil means to promote God's will:

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2. Does this make God an accomplice or complicit with evil -- with Satan in particular? IN THIS CASE, I can't see how the conclusion can be avoided -- though it depends on how much you read into "complicit." So too in other cases (as with the numbering of Israeli soldiers, the sending of the lying spirit, etc...). SOMETIMES God's purposes and Satan's purposes coincide. What the enemy intends for evil, God intends for good (Gen 50:7 I believe). This doesn't mean, as Calvinists hold, that their purposes are ALWAYS or even USUALLY aligned. But SOMETIMES, it seems, they are. Satan wants to torment Paul. God wants to humble Paul. So God says, "have at it."

But I don't think this makes God EVIL, so long as HIS PURPOSES are GOOD. The intention, it seems to me, is everything.

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Here's what I want to know, Icono. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE by granting my interpretation? Let's go down the line! What fundamentally changes about God IF God did INDEED use a lying spirit to entice Ahab? What changes about God IF God DID send an EVIL SPIRIT (Heb: ruach ra'ah) between Abimelech and the men of Shechem? (Judges 9:22) What fundamentally changes about God if God REALLY DID send an evil spirit to trouble Saul? What fundamentally changes about God IF God DID use Satan to make David count the men? What changes about God IF God REALLY DID just hand Job to Satan on a silver platter? What if God REALLY DID allow a "messenger from Satan" to rip up on Paul because God had a purpose?

Are you going to reinterpret ALL of these accounts just to hold to your idea of complicity with respect to God? Would you cease to BELIEVE in God if your idea of complicity is wrong? I really want to know.

Holla,

quote:

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Zedekiah was not being accused of being a lying prophet. Zedekiah was angry because he KNEW that God wanted that city to be taken.

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You assume that because God has pronounced a consequence for Ahab’s sinful behavior, that therefore God doesn’t STILL love Ahab and WANT him to repent.

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Doc: Sidebar (as in a court room): Meph, I like your feistiness. But could you pull back just a wee bit? Phrases like "trying every trick in the book," or telling Icon to "PLEASE read the story" strike me as disrespectful (like Icono isn’t reading the story, just trying every trick in the book to stick to his presuppositions).\

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1) Sorry for the "every trick in the book" thing. Perhaps I should have said that I feel that Iconoclast is grasping at straws somewhat. That is probably more in line with what I was feeling, but less indicative of purporting that Icono's operating in bad faith.

2) It really doesn't seem to me that Iconoclast is reading the entire context of the story. Hence, my "PLEASE read the story!" I just noticed that Iconoclast really hasn't seemed to look at anything outside of the immediate passage.

My apologies for any offense to anyone. Really. Moving on...


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Doc:

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Which brings me back to my fundamental point: I don’t think either reading excludes the fundamental point that God is not complicit with evil, though he may allow evil agents to do what they want to do as an act of judgment.

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I understand that, especially coming from your perspective. But that was not the main point.


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Doc:

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EVEN IF God "send" a lying spirit to Ahab, therefore, couldn’t you simply say that this was an act of judgment (given Ahab’s repeated resistance, as you point out)? Seems to me the only thing that hangs in the balance between your reading and Meph’s is whether or not there was yet ANY HOPE for Ahab when the prophet gave his (real or sarcastic) vision of the Lord sending the lying spirit. If there was no hope at this point, then the vision could be serious, and yet God was not complicit in evil. He was simply judging him.

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So, if it was genuinely possible that Ahab had the GENUINE ABILITY to repent...and God didn't let him...then THAT would be complicent in evil, right? I hear ya. I think both Icono and myself noted Ahab's screwed up character. But here's the thing, Doc. With your take above, this is going why the open view that we've honed on this board, right? NOW, taking all that into account, do you REALLY feel that Iconoclast's view has more plausibility than the traditional one? Hmmm...





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Your presupposition that God is really AFTER Ahab (as though God sits around and brainstorms with the heavenly hosts about how they are going to screw over some poor slob) keeps you from seeing that Micaiah is being totally straightforward when he first approaches Ahab and that it is Ahab’s response that drives the rest of the story line. It is all happening real-time – not as some script that was written out by God’s brainstorm team.

More importantly what you are NOT presupposing is that God is seeking to influence for THE GOOD in everything He does – and I mean AHAB’S GOOD. God’s goal is to win our love not grind us into the ground. He doesn’t entice us into battle so that we will fall! God tempts no man. We are the ones who grind ourselves into the ground by refusing to trust and rely on God.

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and...

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Mephi

Personally, I have to 1) give God his props as God the Creator...along with FULL rights and priveleges and 2) BELIEVE that the Christ Work is ENOUGH to cover all the madness...enough to hold to God ultimately being "for us". That's all.

Iconoclast

The Christ work is NOT “ENOUGH” to cover all the madness…it is NOT “enough” to hold to God “ultimately” being “for us”. It is FAR, FAR MORE than that. It totally, completely and conclusively proves that God loves us murderers of God. What more could God possibly do to convince us that He totally loves us right here and right now, not some ideal that we might become, but US, EVEN as we are murdering Him. God is NOT “ULTIMATELY” for us. He is for us right here and right now and He is actively working in every moment in our best interest.

THIS presupposition is THE foundational hermeneutic for understanding God’s word. And it was purchased for us on the cross of Calvary.

I will say it again. The Old Testament can ONLY be understood properly from the presupposition that God loves us sinners so much that He died on a cross while calling for us to be forgiven in the very moment we were murdering Him.

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All I can say is this: For you to say this, which seems to insinuate (to me) that I don't AT ALL let the Christ Work interpret the operation of divine interaction, you MUST NOT (I repeat) MUST NOT really be getting everything I've been discussing about 1) the greater good idea and 2) the glorification idea. I've tried again and again to demonstrate this line of thinking, but it keeps seeming to get misinterpreted. So far, many people have got it. Doc basically seemed to have it, which is why I really liked what he said. With Iconoclast's interpretation, we seem to be going BACKWARDS towards our conversations about the implications of OMNIBENEVOLENCE that I thought we hashed out LONG TIME ago.

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It is CLEAR that our differences remain at the presuppositional level. I think that your "complicity in evil" thing leads to an problematic idea of omnibenevolence that EVENTUALLY creates problems with the warfare worldview theodicy and exegesis within the view. You seem to think that my "greater good" idea entails "complicity in evil". We're on opposite sides of the fence here. I agree to disagree.

But this is what gets me.


The "traditional" interpretation, I think, is traditional for a reason. I think it really fits all the evidence more accurately. It just makes more sense. The only issue was that some people felt that it gave God a bad look...and didn't make it seem like God was REALLY for us...and didn't cohere with the revelation of Jesus. But I thought the way we'd honed the ideas on this board DEALT with this sufficiently! It seems to me that if what Doc said in his "b" idea (remember the 98% agreement...by the way Doc, now it seems that you and I are in 99.9999% agreement in principle!) is taken, there's no REASON to go to the stretches that I feel Iconoclast does. All of the incidents that I mentioned could be interpreted under the same manner...which is the following:

God DOES do everything possible at all moments in time to minimize evil...and is "for us" in the same manner, WITHIN the constraints of God's self-convenantal limitations ON ALL LEVELS.

This is why I did the thing on Moses. One CANNOT be understanding my position and say that I don't think that God LOVED Ahab or LONGED for his repentance. They CAN'T be. And this works for ALL the incidents I cited where God used demonic means as means for God's purposes...AND coheres wonderfully with the warfare worldview...AND doesn't deny God's omnibenevolence...AND stays AWAY from God being complicent in evil in the ultimate sense. Y'all DO see this, right? Well, whatever..lol

Anyways, as far as interpretations, reader, make your OWN choice. I've presented stuff from my side. I'm done. Again, I'm sorry if anyone got offended. Didn't mean to.


Holla,

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Mephi: WHY would Zedikiah slap Micaiah, unless he took what Micaiah said VERY seriously? And WHY would Micaiah reply like he did? Dude, you don't just accuse another prophet of being a LYING prophet. That ain't cool. And Zedekiah knew that. Wouldn't this corroborate the "lying spirit" thing?BJS: If Micaiah's "lying spirit" comment is, as Iconoclast argues, to be taken sarcastically, why was it taken so seriously? We should infer sarcasm when the prophet listening first-hand to the comment didn't infer it?

Doc: Couldn’t he have slapped him precisely BECAUSE he detected the sarcasm?

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I don't think so. Look at what Zedekiah said as he slapped Micaiah:

v. 23[Micaiah]: "So now the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. . ."

v. 24 Then Zedekiah went up and slapped Micaiah in the face [and said] "Which way did the spirit from the Lord go when he went from me to speak to you?"

Zedekiah was offended because he BELIEVED that Micaiah was really saying that Zedekiah's prohecies were lies from a lying spirit. If the text didn't offer us anything other than that Zedekiah slapped him, it might be more plausible to speculate that Zedekiah was slapping him because he detected sarcasm, but in that the text provides us with the accompanying dialogue, I just don't see how the "sarcasm interpretation" would make much sense.

Iconoclast:

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Zedekiah believed that he had the actual word of the Lord. And he DID. But he didn’t continue to listen AND he was unaware of his complicity in playing Ahab’s game. That is why he was genuinely miffed at Micaiah. He didn’t say, “how dare you accuse me of lying about the word of the Lord!” He said, “Which way did the spirit from the LORD go when he went from me to speak to you?” Zedekiah is accusing Micaiah of making up a NEW word of the Lord on his own. He presupposes that Micaiah knows and agrees that the spirit of the Lord was in Zedekiah but that this NEW spirit of the Lord in Micaiah is not really the Lord but Micaiah.

The story line shows that Zedekiah BELIEVED that the spirit of the Lord had spoken to him. When Micaiah FIRST corroborates this but THEN changes it Zedekiah is full of righteous indignation – this is the meaning of the slap. He is not behaving as though he has been personally attacked – he is treating it as a matter of honor – Micaiah’s lack thereof.

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You really SHOULD have been a lawyer, Iconoclast! I think I see what you're saying here, but it just doesn't seem as plausible to me. I think the reader has to exercise too much conjecture to get to the "sarcasm interpretation." Just my opinion. Oh well.

[Oh, and by the way, nice use of the word "precisely" in your post above. . .I love that word, too. ]

Brett

"Siste viator et memento mori."

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Since neither he nor anyone else here can share a personal experience in which they understood/approached/related to evil in a forward direction as Mephi has suggested we are able to do in explaining some evil through hindsight, then I’m inclined to doubt whether or not there’s much value in suggesting that we concede the possibility that God may instruct us to abandon our default settings toward evil.

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I DO have a personal experience along these lines that I could tell, but honestly, it's DEEPLY, DEEPLY, DEEPLY personal and I don't need people here thinking that I'm crazier than I already am. Gotta be straight up honest, man. Sorry.

I really wonder what people would have said if Abraham told them what God told HIM about killing Issac. Hmmm...

And...

Brett:

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You really SHOULD have been a lawyer, Iconoclast! I think I see what you're saying here, but it just doesn't seem as plausible to me. I think the reader has to exercise too much conjecture to get to the "sarcasm interpretation." Just my opinion. Oh well.

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I completely agree, Brett. I like Iconoclast's ability to think laterally. It really shows up in a lot of his work, as he is able to come up with many alternative suggestions for things. However, I still think his idea is not the MOST plausible for many reasons.

"Let a thousand flowers bloom",

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I think that God ALLOWS a lesser evil for a greater good in the sense that:

a) he allows all evil to originate for the good of free will (but not for the SPECIFIC EVIL THINGS any given free agent does)

b) he sometimes doesn't prevent a specific evil he could prevent for a greater good (e.g. Paul's thorn in the flesh from Satan).

Meph and co. have pressed me on "b," arguing that if I grant that God can sometimes go THIS FAR, on what basis can I argue that he couldn't go THAT FAR (e.g. Zosia, World Trade Center Attack). It's a fair question, and one for which I don't have a good answer. I can't specify an abstract principle that could give us "the line" that God doesn't cross over.

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Icono: But while I work on an answer, tell me, what do think the greater good was? And if you say that it was primarily that Job's character was strengthened, then how would you justify that this greater good justifies all the evil that was done?

Brandi: The thing I will admit is that I am not God thus I cannot conceive or understand WHY God allows things to happen. My pointing out the scripture of God ALLOWING Satan to have way at Job was to point out that God, by allowing Satan to test Job, was indirectly responsible for the evil the befell him.

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But I remember feeling that this was problematic because by positing multiple “levels” on which God purposes and acts, and by conceding that all conceivable evils are candidates for having been brought about compatibilistically by God on one level or another, in the end a) we really can’t speak against and oppose evil unambiguously (as I argued above, the default setting is slowly abandoned), b) there’s no reason for positing gratuitous evil anymore, and c) we are led necessarily (OK, I’m wondering if we are led necessarily) to conclude that the only place we have any real justification for believing God acts “for us” (whatever that means, I still don’t know) is the Cross and, more importantly, the—how shall I say it?—efficacy, or the implications, of this one act doesn’t reach beyond our individual need for, say, personal forgiveness. It wins heaven for us. Beyond THAT one application the Cross doesn’t really say a lot. I said this earlier; your view has a difficult time working the Cross into ALL of life, on all of your “levels.” The Cross doesn’t really define much of anything outside “My sins are forgiven here. God must be for me.” I gotta be missing it, so tell me again: How does the Cross (it’s meaning, implications, efficacy, centrality, purpose, etc.) impact and define ALL the levels of God’s acting and purposing in your multileveled approach? Seems to me that positing a multileveled purposeful God-world relationship in which God has secret higher purposes that guide his decisions in ways we don’t understand is all fine by me so long as the Cross is erected on every level.

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My first question is this: How can the Cross NOT be erected on every level? If Doc is right in SPE about the Christ Work (Incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension) being a COSMIC event with anthropological IMPLICATIONS, then it would seem that the Cross is necessarily on all important levels. Not only that, but given the inevitability of evil's emergence known to God by God's infinite intelligence, this was an cosmological redemptive event ANTICIPATED before Creation! To say that this act doesn't go beyond personal forgiveness seems very limiting to me.

Let's test my thinking here. If you get this, you get the HARDCORE BASIS of my belief. Think math. Think of infinity. Any FINITE number subtracted from infinity equals infinity, right? Basically no matter HOW LARGE the finite number, it cannot stand against infinity. If you place an infinite set on one side of a scale and ANY finite set on the other, you know what wins. THIS is how I view the Christ Work. Zosia, Job, and Holocaust acts, to us, seem like immensely evil acts. However, comparing THESE acts to the humilition and suffering IN THE ACT OF INCARNATION ALONE that Christ submitted himself to is like comparing FINITE numbers to INFINITY. No friggin comparison. Not any grossly evil act that we see in human history, no matter how heinous, can COMPETE with what we see in the Christ Work. And because the Christ Work is COSMOLOGICAL, not just ANTHROPOCENTRIC, it applies to all levels. This belief is thoroughly Christocentric and, correspondingly, theocentric.

And it's like I've said before. The ONLY way to knock this logic is to, by some means, DEVALUE the Christ Work. One has to say that the Christ Work is NOT the infinite act of divine mercy that sucks up ALL POSSIBLE "acts of complicity" One has to say that the divine sacrifice aspect of the Christ Work is NOT the WORST EVIL imposed on any being. One has to say that, in light of the Christ Work, that it does not INFINITELY surpass any other act of divine mercy. Someone would literally have to say:

If Christ allowed or ordained the Zosia event for some "greater good", then God was complicent in evil. If this is the case, then the Christ Work does not demonstrate God's infinite goodness.

But can an infinitely good act COME FROM finite goodness???? I don't see how. All other actions must be relativized according to the infinitely good act, then.

My logic is this: to the extent that one REALLY holds the Christ Work to be the INFINITELY UNSURPASSABLE act of divine mercy, one CANNOT come back and devalue that work based on any finite act that may appear less-than-omnibenevolent to us...and they cannot deny the infinite goodness upon which the act comes! The Christ Work is the ultimate grounding of my CHRISTIAN theodicy.

So, let's do this. If I am wrong on the above, then, from my perspective, then I need to know how and to what extent.

And I can't wait to see you either, brah. We're gonna have FUUUUUUUUUN!

Holla,