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GHitch -> RE: Evil, created by God? (10/4/2008 1:36:35 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SovereignIsHe
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Proverbs 16:4 The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?
These are three verses that get tossed around during this debate... And the following to some degree...
Jeremiah 42:6 Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.
Let's set the record straight : God did not and cannot create evil in the moral sense of wrong, wickedness and sin.
If God creates evil in the sense of sin or wrong action, then he is responsible for it.
The word in the quoted texts is used in many ways in Hebrew. It is like the English word 'bad'. 'Bad' can mean many things: as in 'something bad happened to him', 'he is a bad man', 'bad things happen to good people sometimes', 'he played the song very badly'...
Barnes says, on the Isaiah verse, quote:
The parallelism here shows that this is not to be understood in the sense of all evil, but of that which is the opposite of peace and prosperity. That is, God directs judgments, disappointments, trials, and calamities; he has power to suffer the mad passions of people to rage, and to afflict nations with war; he presides over adverse as well as prosperous events. The passage does not prove that God is the author of moral evil, or sin, and such a sentiment is abhorrent to the general strain of the Bible, and to all just views of the character of a holy God.
The Hebrew word is 'ra' or raah and signifies a whole suite of things as in Brown-Driver-Briggs :
quote:
bad, disagreeable, malignant
1b) bad, unpleasant, evil (giving pain, unhappiness, misery)
1c) evil, displeasing
1d) bad (of its kind - land, water, etc)
1e) bad (of value)
1f) worse than, worst (comparison)
1g) sad, unhappy
1h) evil (hurtful)
1i) bad, unkind (vicious in disposition)
1j) bad, evil, wicked (ethically)
1j1) in general, of persons, of thoughts
1j2) deeds, actions
2) evil, distress, misery, injury, calamity (noun masculine)
2a) evil, distress, adversity
2b) evil, injury, wrong
2c) evil (ethical)
3) evil, misery, distress, injury (noun feminine)
3a) evil, misery, distress
3b) evil, injury, wrong
3c) evil (ethical) or Strong :
quote:
From H7489; bad or (as noun) evil (naturally or morally). This includes the second (feminine) form; as adjective or noun: - adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, + displease (-ure), distress, evil ([-favouredness], man, thing), + exceedingly, X great, grief (-vous), harm, heavy, hurt (-ful), ill (favoured), + mark, mischief, (-vous), misery, naught (-ty), noisome, + not please, sad (-ly), sore, sorrow, trouble, vex, wicked (-ly, -ness, one), worse (-st) wretchedness, wrong.
The word is even used to describe ferocious animals as in the 'evil beast' use in Gen 37:33 (KJV) - translated as 'wild animal', 'fierce animal', 'ferocious beast', etc. in other translations
The Prov 16:4 verse is useless in attempting to blame God for the existence of evil as it clearly does not mean that God created anyone evil or bad but the he created them and they are evil.
Adam Clarkes commentary says,
quote:
Even the wicked for the day of evil - וגם רשע ליום רעה vegam rasha leyom raah. The whole verse is translated by the Chaldee thus: “All the works of the Lord are for those who obey him; and the wicked is reserved for the evil day.” As רעה raah literally signifies to feed, it has been conjectured that the clause might be read, yea, even the wicked he feeds by the day, or daily.
If we take the words as they stand in our present version, they mean no more than what is expressed by the Chaldee and Spriac: and as far as we can learn from their present confused state, by the Septuagint and Arabic, that “the wicked are reserved for the day of punishment.” Coverdale has given, as he generally does, a good sense: “The Lorde dotll all thinges for his owne sake; yea, and when he kepeth the ungodly for the daye of wrath.” He does not make the wicked or ungodly man; but when man has made himself such, even then God bears with him. But if he repent not, when the measure of his iniquity is filled up, he shall fall under the wrath of God his Maker.
The Amo 3:6 text is "If a ram's horn is blown in a city, will the people not also tremble? If there is a calamity in a city, has Jehovah not also done it?" in the modern KJV.
So no, God does not create evil in the sense of morally wrong, but rather evil in the sense of bad things, calamities etc.
It is evil to charge God himself with creating evil in the moral sense.
Indeed, evil, as a moral wrong, cannot be created per se except through the act of choice and action. Evil in the moral sense is not something physical that can be created it is a state, choice or act of rebellion.
Also we see that "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Ecc 7:29 KJV
Or, as the GW translation puts in, "I have found only this: God made people decent, but they looked for many ways to avoid being decent."
C.S. Lewis notes: "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." --The Problem of Pain
"If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying." --Mere Christianity
When we read the bible we must not make it contradict itself. This is what we do when we use verses out of the global biblical context to make God himself the author of evil (moral wrongness). We must always remember the other verses like Hab 1:13 "Your eyes are too pure to look at evil. You can't watch wickedness." - how much less to create it himself!!?
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