Re: Origin of Sin & Theodicy [was [asa] Greg Boyd's Theodicy of Natural Evil

Steven,

you are right, and I had not thought it through to make a coherent statement.? I think the key idea here is that the opposite of evil is not simply to avoid evil, but to do good.? So we had the capacity to fall in Eden, and we also had the capacity to positively extend the boundaries of Eden throughout the Earth.?

So, if natural evil thus served a purpose for?unfallen mankind (so that we could positively spread Eden throughout the earth),?then I would guess that the existence of other fallen beings (angels) along with our own capacity to fall?are what ultimately explain natural evil.? The existence of fallen beings (along with our own capacity to fall) provided the need for mankind to overcome something even before we ourselves had sinned.? Hence, we were given the ability to do positive good as the alternative.? And we were confronted with the evil right there in the garden (the snake).? This?snake?didn't want us to emerge from Eden as glorious Sons of God to spread God's glory over the earth.?

But at the same time, I'm sure God knew we would sin, and so ultimately our presence on a world with natural evil put us into an environment where we could also be redeemed after we fell.

So perhaps the two ideas are not incompatible.?

Phil

________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Jul 31 02:49:51 2007