Continuing the discussion on God and evil, from a popular and/or
layman’s perspective, is very important. Recently, I have answered a series of
five questions discerned from a skeptic of Christianity. I hope these issues
will at least open up the plausibility of the Christian worldview from the
popular perspective. Today, the topic is:
Why did God create the tree in the Garden of Eden?
The objection runs like this: If God is all-knowing, then He
knew that by creating the tree, and prescribing a commandment not to eat of it,
that Adam and Eve would freely sin against God, thereby introducing moral evil
into the world. So why would He do this?
As
hinted at in other answers, a love relationship requires a free moral agent. If
that is the case, then by definition the free moral agent must be free either
to sin or to obey the command of God. If there is no command given, then while
they are still an inherently moral agent, they've not functionally achieved
this. In short, they cannot truly love what they do not obey. Thus, a command
was placed in the Garden. The tree was not infused with magical properties;
instead, the idea is that by disobeying the command (eating the fruit), one
would become "wise" (e.g., knowing) with respect to the difference
between good and evil. That difference can only be known by experience for
moral agents (moral creatures who are not themselves the standard of moral goodness).
They could know only the good by obeying, but the experiential knowledge
referred to of evil and its difference from good could only come from eating
the fruit.
Now God knew they would disobey. Plausibly, any moral non-divine
creature will do so. So why did He plant the tree and give the command? Because
man needed to be tested in order to be a true moral agent. He failed the test.
But never fear: God so ordered the world that He would bring in His only Son,
to die on the cross--He also did that out of love! The Christian worldview not
only accounts for justice, but also love, in its reconciliation of the world to
Christ and abolishment of evil. Can your worldview say the same?
What does it mean to introduce moral evil in the world when both free will and Satan pre-existed the introduction?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the question! I simply mean "the world" as in Earth, and Christian theology holds that Satan was an angel, a heavenly being. On Earth, the only creatures there capable of sin were mankind (and while Satan was there, he certainly wasn't of the physical earth). That's all that is meant. You might be concerned about Satan himself, in which case I refer you to the previous post! :)
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