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Pseudo-Intellectual
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58
| Posted 7/24/2001 12:35 PM (GMT -6) |   | This question was inspired in part by Cibertus’s question about pre-fall freedom. He said something to the effect that before the fall the question of freedom was wether we would resist the temptation of evil.
Here’s my question. Why was Satan and demons needed at all? Why didn’t God defeat his enemy FIRST and then recreate creation with humans and stuff. It seems like a lack of patience on God’s part or something. It also seems that God was taking a bigger risk then was necessary.
Track with me a bit.
Let’s grant that God has some form of covenant of non-interference with Satan. Even so eventually God will finish kicking his but, the war will be over and, either Satan will get obliterated or he will get locked up in hell were we are off limits to his influence. Why not wait until that time and then create Eve and Adam? We would still have the possibility of evil but there wouldn’t be any unnecessary risk involved by letting Satan be an advocate for evil. After all Satan needed no advocate to tempt him into his fall. Neither do we yet God let Satan do just that.
This seems unwise to me. What’s the deal couldn’t God wait out the first battle before thrusting us into the middle of a second one? Why not wait it out?
d.c.
dudechild
"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe
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still_unsure
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 54
| Posted 7/24/2001 4:28 PM (GMT -6) | | Just a thought, but perhaps Satan fell after man's creation. Maybe he was jealous? Maybe I'm peein' in the wind...
Rob
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
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| Posted 7/24/2001 7:29 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Just a thought, but perhaps Satan fell after man's creation. Maybe he was jealous? Maybe I'm peein' in the wind...
Rob
Rob-
I think ultimately it's Satan who is peein' in the wind, but I wonder about this sort of thing myself (the relationship between God's motivation for creating the word and his war with Satan, NOT Satan's urinating habits). If Doc is right that Gen. 1.1 is creation, and Gen. 1.2ff describes recreation out of chaos, then it's pretty hard to argue that Satan fell after the creation of man. After the original creation of the world, yeah, that can be argued. And many do so, Doc included. But after man's creation? If that was the case, then a) God's the author of the "chaos" of Gen. 1.2, and b) Satan's fall to earth didn't impact creation as far as we can see. He just showed up.
Now maybe I'm just peein' in the wind. 
Tom
"The will to prepare to win is greater than the will to win." Bobby Knight
Edited by - TGB on 07/25/2001 12:33:08 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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still_unsure
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 54
| Posted 7/25/2001 6:42 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi Tom:
I'm sure I did once read a take on Satan's fall where it was linked to God's creation of man. I can't remember where, it may have been a Jewish commentary. Do you know of anyone who holds to this view? I'll try to find the reference I read.
God bless
Rob
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/25/2001 12:58 PM (GMT -6) | | SUFFERING AS RISK
Tom, Rob and D.C.:
Help me out here. I've read on this site a bit, but not participated until just recently. You might have a take as per this question.
In how "RISK" is thought about and used on this site, is it that about the same thing as Las Vegas ODDS? (mathematical probability, etc.)
I'd be grateful for your feeling on this.
To be transparent, my reason for asking is that with regard to God's "suffering" for/with us, the use of quantitative issue just doesn't seem to do justice to all that. (At least not for me.) Your opinion of that is welcomed too. Here is the alternative...
Well, first I should bear my heart and say why this matters to me. (Before pasting a quote that I thing is neat.) Spirituality--the state of my own soul and its relationship to God--is vitally important to me. God's reaching to me and drawing me into fellowship with him is everything--that and my own need of the same. So, I find the passage below to be quite something. (qualitative rather than quantitative, perhaps.) And, nicely, it seems in my eyes to sidestep the impasse the BGC exhibited to the world-wide-web a year or two ago. (You judge that too.)
Oh, it is from a book recommended to me by my brother-in-law-the-priest. Part of my ongoing studies in spirituality.
----(Sorry: i don't have java; so my quotes are in the stone age.)----
A Suffering God
--------------------
Does our sin cause sorrow to the heart of God? Does he suffer when we suffer? Do we have the right to say to the man or woman who is suffering: "God himself, at _this very moment_, is suffering what you suffer, and is overcoming it?"
Wishing to safeguard the divine transcendence, the early Fathers, Greek and Latin, insisted upon the "impassibility" of God. Strictly interpreted, this means that, while God-made-man can and does suffer, God in himself does not. Without denying the Patristic teaching, should we not also say something more than this? In the Old Testament, long before Christ1s Incarnation, we find it stated of God: "His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel" (Judg. 10:16). Elsewhere in the Old Testament words such as these are put into God1s mouth: 3Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my beloved child? For though I turned my back on him, yet do I earnestly remember him still; therefore my heart is troubled for him2 (Jer. 31:20). "How can I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I abandon thee, Israel? My heart is moved within me?" (Hos. 11:8)
If these passages mean anything at all, they must mean that even before the Incarnation God is directly involved in the sufferings of his creation. Our misery causes grief to God; the tears of God are joined to those of man. A proper respect for the apophatic approach will, of course, make us wary of ascribing human feelings to God in a crude or unqualified way. But this at least we are entitled to affirm. "Love makes others1 sufferings its own", states The Book of the Pour in Spirit. If this is true of human love, it is much more true of divine love--and since God is personal and personhood implies sharing--God does not remain indifferent to the sorrows of this fallen world. If I as a human being remain unaffected by another1s anguish, in what sense do I genuinely love him? Surely, then, God identifies himself with his creation in its anguish.
It has been truly said that there was a cross in the heart of God before there was one planted outside Jerusalem; and though the cross of wood has been taken down, the cross in God1s heart still remains. It is the cross of pain and triumph--both together. And those who can believe this will find that joy is mingled with their cup of bitterness. They will share on a human level in the divine experience of victorious suffering
From 3The Orthodox Way2, by Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware, pp. 63-4
PotOnWheel
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 7/26/2001 9:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Why didn't God finish off Satan before creating humans? Great question. We can, of course, only guess. Consider this:
The cosmos is a socieity of mutually-affecting free agents who each possess a degree of moral responsibility for others, depending on how much authority they are given. If agents cannot affect each other, they can neither love nor be morally responsible. This domain of responsibility is, I believe, irrevocable. It had to be if it was to be genuine.
It's always possible to ask, with regard to any agent who inflicts significant harm on others, why does God create the agents after him who will continue to be adversely affect by this agents decision? And the only possible answer is, because it lied within the irrevocable "say-so" of that agent to affect these agents for better or for worse. The nature of our moral responsibility is that the trickle effects of our decsions affect others, for better or for worse. This is what it means to be given morally responsible "say-so" for others.
If this is close to correct, then perhaps we must suppose that Lucifer's domain of responsibility included the future human race, while the human race was just an idea in God's mind. Lucifer was given authority to be influential over the epoch that included the human race (and, if I'm correct in my reading of Gen. 1:1-2, a previous epoch as well). For this authority to administered in LOVE, it had to be chosen, which it was not. Hence, instead of being blessed by a high ranking angel who could have mediated God's gracious providence to us, we are cursed under a high ranking angel -- Satan -- who afflicts evil on the world (I Jn 5:19). The same authority he had to bless is now his authority to curse (I call this "the principle of proportionality" in my forthcoming book, Satan and the Problem of Evil.
Satan's authority cannot be revoked over future humanity for the same reason that a parent who turns evil is yet permitted to have more children.
Just a thought.
Doc
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/26/2001 5:59 PM (GMT -6) | | Doc:
I'd like to throw out a question for you to glance at concerning that last full paragraph. It thunked me when I read "cursed under a high ranking angel..." that their might be a sociological angle to consider, and actually a historical one too. The "created grace" idea in the West with its emphasis on divine transcendence developed into a sociology of hierarchy...eventually a Pope. The East, with a doctrine of divine immanence practiced conciliarity where still even the ordination of a Bishop requires the laity's consent. Those views of sociology (if I it is called that) might have corresponding different cosmologies. Dante didn't write in Jerusalem! Give a pause for an instant to whether the cosmos is as hierarchical as you are in a habit of thinking. I'm struck on visits away from the CRC church I attend to hang out at an OCA Vespers how "all the saints and angels" are joined with in praising God. (At what date--in the West or America--did Christians begin loosing church membership when they died?)
Maybe you have already given this a treatment. I've not read you except on the internet. Your might included this collegiality among saints and angels. But I was just asking if your theory requires more hierarchy (read unnatural dominance) than might be God's design. ("Nature" is roughly anything that is according-to-design in how it relates to God. I'm trying to write as if Orthodox but my Neo-Kuyperian Reformed exposure is popping through.)
(What I'm writing might require speculation, particularly with respect to whether tyranny can included a fundamental change in the cosmos it is exercised in. I rather think that it is man's "job" to recapitulate everything back to the Creator--and that being part of Satan's jealousy and why he had it in for us. The sin coming into and the curse effected on the world through us. I walk slowly where I feel unfamiliar.)
So, what do you think about the first part?
Just a late night thought.
PotOnWheel
Edited by - potonwheel on 07/26/2001 11:56:51 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 7/27/2001 11:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Hello PotOnWheel,
When I speak of the sociological nature of the cosmos, I mean only to refer to the fact that every agent has "say-so" to affect other agents (and ultimately, to some degree, all subsequent agents). The cosmos is a society.
Now, agents have different degrees of say-so, and different levels of authority, as experience as well as the Bible attests. Experientially, think of parents over children, employers over employees, etc... But also, in various domains, a person with more expertise has more "say" than others, and generally speaking (all other things being equal) a person with exceptional intelligence and character will have more power to affect others than a person with exceptionally low intelligence or poor character. Biblically, we read about "principalities, powers, dominion, authorities, rulers and demons" (Col1, Eph 6) -- and most scholars think that some sort of angelical hierarchy is being referred to here (see my discussion in God at War. We also read that Satan is the "archon" of this world (Jn 12. 14. 16 = "prince" or "ruler"). And the Bible speaks of people having authority over other people.
Hence, the idea of a heirarchy seems biblical. What is not biblical, but very western, is the idea that the "higher" agent affects the lower agent, but not vice versa. (This is the kind of thinking that led to the doctrine that God was utterly immutible and impassible). God's design is not for a unilateral, top-down, cause-effect government, but a mutually impacting relationship of love. Indeed, because it is a kingdom of love, the "higher" agents are supposed to win the allegiance of the lower agents by serving them out of them out of love. "The first shall be last" "He who is greatest must become least."
Nothing demonstrates this more profoundly than the cross. Here the highest stoops to the lowest (hell!) to serve and win over undeserving sinners. This is how God defines omnipotent authority.
As I see it, the issue is not whether or not there is a heirarchy but rather what kind of heirarchy is it.
Hope this somewhat addresses your question. Blessings
Doc
Edited by - GregBoyd on 07/27/2001 4:49:25 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Pseudo-Intellectual
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58
| Posted 7/28/2001 4:01 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Satan's authority cannot be revoked over future humanity for the same reason that a parent who turns evil is yet permitted to have more children.
Doc, I agree with you that if God granted irrevocable freedom to Satan over future humanity I couldn’t, with integrity, take it away. The question is, however, what does God gain from taking this risk that he would not have had he taken a more calculated risk. Your analogy breaks down because it is the evil parents free choice to create future children. Satan did not choose to create Adam and Eve, God did.
Why didn’t God make a more wise (IMHO) covenant with Satan that if he freely fell God would kick his butt and then once that’s all taken care of create Adam and Eve? What would he lose by doing so that he would gain by taking this bigger risk? If Satan did not fall and solidified himself in love then God would still reserve the right to create new un-as-of-yet-solidified creatures (Adam and Eve) in which Satan could bless the hell out of them (literally ).
I once heard you preach and you said something like this: If a person has a pit-bull on a leash and they know what that pit-bull is capable of and they freely choose to release that pit-bull in a pre-school playground we should blame the person not the pit-bull for the evil that happens. (By the way doesn’t this sound like the beginning of Job?)
Well what if we change the analogy to fit creation. God created a free angelic being who had the potential to turn itself into a Lassie or a pit-bull and either way God had already decided to submit pre-schoolers to this dog once it had made up it’s mine but before he know what the angelic being would choose. Should we see this as a necessary risk? What is so necessary about it? Why couldn’t God have but this angelic being in an incubator and waited to commit to creating Adam and Eve until this angle decided to become a Lassie?
I understand your argument I just don’t see the necessity involved in it.
d.c.
dudechild
"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/28/2001 4:36 PM (GMT -6) | | This is a repeat dangling for an answer.
Up above I asked a question becasue it is input from some of you on how the matter of RISK for God takes on its meaningfulness that I want to get. Here condensed, I asked"
"Is "RISK" thought about [primarily as] mathematical probability, [or is it thought about with]regard to God's "suffering" for/with us (quantitative versus qualitative?) . . . Your opinion of that is welcomed too."
Anyone?
PotOnWheel
Var sa Gut!
Edited by - PotOnWheel on 07/28/2001 9:40:21 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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themuzicman
Always ready for lunch and the weekend
Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 48
| Posted 8/6/2001 5:13 AM (GMT -6) | | Perhaps God needed a battlefield on which to defeat him?
(Also, if we're to say that Satan fell before the creation of the earth, that would imply that time pre-dates creation.)
"God is dead" - Nietscke
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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 8/7/2001 8:52 AM (GMT -6) | | Dudechild: God created a free angelic being (Lucifer) who had the potential to turn itself into a Lassie or a pit-bull and either way God had already decided to submit pre-schoolers to this dog once it had made up it’s mind but before he know what the angelic being would choose. Should we see this as a necessary risk?
Doc: The more that is ventured, the more that is gained – or lost. How is the risk in Lucifer’s potential to bless or curse us different than the risk in parents potential to bless or curse their children? If God desires to work through free subordinates – agents intended to mediate his divine love to others – then the risk involved will always be proportionate to the possibility of good involved. And when the risk turns out bad, it always seems like too much was risked. But, I believe, it couldn’t be any other way.
POW: "Is "RISK" thought about [primarily as] mathematical probability, [or is it thought about with]regard to God's "suffering" for/with us (quantitative versus qualitative?) .
Doc: These aren’t mutually exclusive. If one knew all the variables, one could perhaps assign a probability to each risk. And the risk has consequences for God and others under the influence of the morally responsible agent in question.
Themuzicman: Welcome to the Site: You ask, "if we're to say that Satan fell before the creation of the earth, that would imply that time pre-dates creation."
Doc: It implies SEQUENCE before creation, but not TIME, since TIME is simply the measurement of sequence WITHIN CREATION. Classical theists have endlessly tried to deny any sequence before creation while affirming that the world was created and thus is not eternal. If someone can render this concept coherent, I am open to it… for I can give it no meaning. How do you affirm a verb without sequence? The classical tradition wants to assert that "before the world there was no time." If they mean by time "a before and after" [which they do, for they hold to divine timelessness), then the statement comes to this:
"before the world there was no before…"
A is –A.
Devoid of meaning.
Hence I hold that sequences are eternal, within God before the world, between God and the world after the world is created.
Blessings
Doc
"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." C.S.Lewis | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 8/8/2001 11:59 AM (GMT -6) | | I understand you here, Doc. I won't go that step to make it sound so concrete (not the right word). Being is a VERB alright. Communion, says Zizioulas, is an ontological category! But, I'm a dullard: If "eternally begotten" in "eternally begotten of the Father" has sequence...then I'm 100% with you. Otherwise I chalk it up to the "M-word"--mytery. But lets hear it for your posting road signs to fend off the classicist static timeless eternal stereotype of God! Amen,amen and AMEN!
quote:
Doc: It implies SEQUENCE before creation, but not TIME, since TIME is simply the measurement of sequence WITHIN CREATION. Classical theists have endlessly tried to deny any sequence before creation while affirming that the world was created and thus is not eternal. If someone can render this concept coherent, I am open to it… for I can give it no meaning. How do you affirm a verb without sequence? The classical tradition wants to assert that "before the world there was no time." If they mean by time "a before and after" [which they do, for they hold to divine timelessness), then the statement comes to this:
"before the world there was no before…"
A is –A.
Devoid of meaning.
Hence I hold that sequences are eternal, within God before the world, between God and the world after the world is created.
PotOnWheel
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