More Things .... 5

Peril and Providence

We went through a few questions rather quickly last time as we were ending the study. There was a comment about God’s decisions involving risks at times. How is that appropriate? If God knew (knows) what was going to happen - and if he predestines the events - where’s the risk? Perhaps Adam and Eve needed to be taught a lesson about good and evil. Surely God did not. But how do we get God off the moral hook when it comes to the appearance of sin and evil? Understanding this is important when defending our faith. By the way — an ancient Israelite would have thought differently about these questions than most believers do today. One reason is that we have layers of tradition that filter the Bible in our thinking. It’s time to peel those layers away.

God’s Gift

We might wonder why God doesn’t do away with evil and suffering on earth. The answer sounds paradoxical - He can’t — because that would require the elimination of all his imagers. He will do away with evil and suffering at the last day, but not yet. For evil to be eliminated, Earth and humanity as we know it will have to end. God has a plan, a chronology, for this ultimate end. It could be no other way, given God’s decision to create time-bound humans as the vehicles for his rule. But in the meantime, we experience the positive wonders of life as well. Though God knew the risk of Eden, He deemed the existence of human kind preferable to our eternal absence.

Despite the risk of evil, free will is a wonderful gift. God’s decision was a loving one. Understanding that requires only a consideration of the two alternatives: (1) not having life at all, and (2) being a mindless robot, capable only of obeying commands and responding to programming — unable to love.

If our decisions were all coerced, how authentic would those “decisions” actually be? If love is coerced or programmed, is it really love? Is any decision really a genuine decision at all? It isn’t (God is not the author of sin). For a decision to be real, it must be made against an alternative that could be chosen.

We all know the difference between freedom and coercion. The IRS doesn’t tell you that you may perhaps pay your taxes by April 15th. When you behave wrongly, where would the emotional healing of forgiveness be if the person you offended was merely programmed to say those words, or coerced to say them? Free will is a gift, despite the risk.

Knowing good and evil

several phrases in Genesis 3: 5, 22 that have puzzled interpreters become more understandable in light of what we have been talking about the last several weeks.

In Genesis 3:5

Genesis 3:5

For God knows that when you (both) eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you both) will be like god(s), knowing good and evil.”

The serpent (nachash) says to Eve. (elohim) .... This verse is like the Psalm 82 verse singular elohim and plural — the second is plural (though most read singular) because of the context of Genesis 3:22

Genesis 3:22 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”

us — he is speaking to his council members- the elohim (plural). This tells us to 3:5 should be plural.

And this fits well with Psalm 8:5

Psalm 8:5 ESV

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

heavenly beings … read it like this “a little lower than elohim)....and this will be our convention — heavenly beings instead of little g gods.

We aren’t a little lower than God, we are light years lower than God. Relatively speaking, the gap is narrower if we assume the reference in the Psalm is plural and that it speaks of heavenly beings (the council). See Hebrews 2:7

Hebrews 2:7 ESV

You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor,

Angels — heavenly beings - -council .... quote

So Gen 3:5

Genesis 3:5 ESV

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

like heavenly beings (not big G god)… Adam and Eve will be like elohim — knowing good and evil. Notice that the phrase is “knowing good and evil,” not will be capable of good and evil. As free-will beings, Adam and Eve were already capable of disobedience (because they did disobey). Like God’s holy ones in council (from Job last week) they were imperfect. But Adam and Eve had not yet experience evil - either by their own commission or as bystanders.

This phrase appears in Hebrew in other places and helps us grasps its meaning

Deuteronomy 1:39 ESV

And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.

The little children referred to here are the generation of Israelites that would arise after the original generation that escaped from Egypt at the exodus. That first generation had been sentenced to wander for 40 years until they died off for their refusal to enter the promised land (see Numbers 14). The new generation did not know good or evil and would be allowed entrance into the land. But they were born after the fall .... if this is about the entrance of a sin nature they already have it.... conflict ....

morally accountable

the meaning is clearly that the second generation was not held morally accountable for the sins of their parents. Though as children they were under the authority of their parents, they had no decision-making authority in the matter and were thus not willing participants. Therefore they were not considered liable. They were INNOCENT.

This same perspective makes sense in Genesis 3. Prior to knowing good and evil, Adam and Eve were innocent. They had never made a willing, conscious decision to disobey God. They had never seen an act of disobedience, either. When they fell, that changed. They did indeed know good and evil, just as God and the rest of his heavenly council members — including the nachash (the serpent).

Evil and Foreknowledge

Acknowledging God’s foreknowledge and also the genuine free will of humankind (not discussing salvation here ), especially with respect to the fall, raises obvious questions: Was the fall predestined? If so, how was the disobedience of Adam and Eve free? How are they truly responsible?

Since we are not told much in Genesis about how human freedom works in relation to divine attributes like foreknowledge, predestination, and omniscience, we need to look elsewhere in Scripture for some clarification. Let’s look at 1st Samuel 23: 1-13

1 Samuel 23:1–13 (ESV)

Now they told David, “Behold, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are robbing the threshing floors.” Therefore David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go and attack these Philistines?” And the Lord said to David, “Go and attack the Philistines and save Keilah.” But David’s men said to him, “Behold, we are afraid here in Judah; how much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?” Then David inquired of the Lord again. And the Lord answered him, “Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand.” And David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines and brought away their livestock and struck them with a great blow. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

When Abiathar the son of Ahimelech had fled to David to Keilah, he had come down with an ephod in his hand. Now it was told Saul that David had come to Keilah. And Saul said, “God has given him into my hand, for he has shut himself in by entering a town that has gates and bars.” And Saul summoned all the people to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men. David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod here.” Then David said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” And the Lord said, “He will come down.” Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the Lord said, “They will surrender you.” Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition.

In this account, David appeals to the omniscient God to tell him about the future. In the first instance David asks God whether he should go to the city of Keilah and whether he’ll successfully defeat the Philistines there. God answers in the affirmative in both cases . David goes to Keilah and indeed defeats the Philistines.

In the second section (with highlights) David asks two questions: 1) will his nemesis Saul come to Keilah and threaten the city on account of David’s presence? And 2) will the people of Keilah turn him over to Saul to avoid Saul’s wrath? Again, God answers both questions affirmatively: “He will come down,” and “they will delivers you.”

Neither of these events God foresaw ever actually happened. Once David hears God’s answers , he and his men leave the city. When Saul discovers this fact, he abandons his trip to Keilah. Saul never made it to the city. The men of Keilah never turned David over to Saul.

Why is this significant?

This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination. God foreknew what Saul would do and what the people of Keilah would do given a set of circumstances. In other words, God foreknew a possibility — but this foreknowledge did not mandate that the possibility was actually predestined to happen. The events never happened, so be definition they could not have been predestined. And yet the omniscient God did foresee them. Predestination and foreknowledge and separable. But can also be connected.

The theological point can be put his way:

That which never happens can be foreseen by God, but it is not predestined, since it never happened.

But what about things to do happen? They can obviously be foreknown, but were they predestined?

Since we have discussed that foreknowledge in itself does not necessitate predestination, all that foreknowledge truly guarantees is that something is foreknown. If God foreknows some event that happens, then he may have predestined that event. But the fact that he foreknew an event does not require its predestination if it happens. The only guarantee is that God foreknew correctly, whether it turns out to be an actual event or merely a possible event.

The theological point can be put this way:

Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined.

This set of ideas goes against the grain of some theological systems that have not really considered that many of their systems do to the holiness of God. Some of these presume that foreknowledge requires predestination, and so everything must be predestined — all the way from the Fall to the holocaust, to what you will choose off a dinner menu. Others dilute foreknowledge by proposing that God doesn’t foreknow all possibilities, since all possibilities cannot happen (limits the power of God). These ideas, both of them, are unnecessary and contrary to the totality of the Biblical texts. Remember 1st Samuel 23 and there are other passages that echo the same fundamental idea: foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination.

Things we have already discussed allow us to examine this further. God may foreknow an event and predestine that event, but such predestination does not necessarily include decisions that lead up to that event. In other words, God may know and predestine the end - something that is going to happen— without predestining the means to that end.

We saw this precise relationship when we looked at decision making in God’s divine council. The passages in 1st Kings 22: 13-23 and Daniel 4 informed us that God can degree something and then leave the means up to the decisions of other free-will agents. The end (the result) is sovereignly ordained; the means to that end may or may not be.

Implications

An ancient Israelite would have embraced this parsing of foreknowledge, predestination, sovereignty, and free will. He would not have been encumbered by a theological tradition. She would have understood that this is the way God himself has decided his rule over human affairs will work. They are YHWH’s decisions, and we accept them.

This has significant implications for not only the Fall, but the presence of evil in our world in general. God is not evil. There is no biblical reason to argue that God predestined the Fall, though he foreknew it. There is no biblical reason to assert that God predestined all the evil events throughout human history simply because he foreknew them.

There is also no biblical coherence to the idea that God factored all evil acts into his grand plan for the ages. This is a common, but flawed, softer perspective, adopted to avoid the previous notion that God directly predestines all evil events. Check this: This position unknowingly implies that God’s “perfect” plan NEEDED to incorporate evil acts because — well we see them every day, and surely they can’t just happen, since God foreknows everything. This flawed view therefore says evil acts (and God cannot be evil at all) are they way God decided to do history (note this position says God decided on an evil action).

God does not NEED the raped of a child to happen so that good may come. His foreknowledge didn’t require the holocaust as part of a plan that would give us the kingdom on earth. God does not need evil to accomplish anything. If you need evil you are evil.

God foreknew the Fall. That foreknowledge did not propel that event. God also foreknew a solution to the fall that He himself would guarantee, a solution that entered his mind long before he laid the foundation of the earth. God was ready. The risk was awful, but he loved humanity too much to call the whole thing off.

Evil does not flow from a first domino that God himself toppled. Rather, evil is the perversion of God’s good gift of free will. It arises from the choices made by imperfect imagers, not from God’s prompting or predestination. God does not need evil, but has the power to take the evil that flows from free-will decisions - human or otherwise - and use it to produce good and his glory through the obedience of his loyal imagers, who are his hands and feet on the ground NOW.

All of this means that what we choose to do is an important part of how things will turn out. What we do MATTERS. God has decreed the ends to which all things will come. As believers we are prompted by his Spirit to be the good means to those decreed ends.

But the Spirit is not the only influence. The experiences of our lives involve other imagers, both good and evil, including divine imagers we cannot see. The worldview of the Biblical writer was an animate one, where members of the unseen realm interact with humans. Loyal members of God’s congregation (council) sent to ministers to us (Hebrews 1:14) have embraced God’s Edenic vision — we are brothers and sisters (Heb. 2: 10-18).

Other supernatural imagers oppose God’s plan. The original dissident takes center stage next week.