Part of our theodicy for the problem of evil includes the point that it was logically impossible for God to create a world in which humans enjoyed free will (a good thing), and yet were unable to use that freedom to choose evil as well as the good. I accept that as true, and yet Christianity proclaims there is coming a day in which there will be a world consisting of humans with libertarian free-will, who will never choose evil: heaven. The future hope of Christians seems to undermine one of the central premises in our theodicy. Can this be reconciled?
Some have suggested that we will not sin in heaven because we’ll be in the beatific presence of God. Presumably, the angels exist in the beatific presence of God, and yet many of the angels chose to rebel against God in that state. This alone, then, cannot explain why humans won’t sin in heaven.
Others have suggested that we will not sin in heaven because God will glorify our humanity. But this is not a solution; it is an admission of the problem. Glorification is being put forward, not to show that such a world cannot exist, but rather to explain how it will become a reality. If in the future God is able—through glorification—to make human beings such that they have free will, and yet will not choose evil, then it falsifies the claim that God cannot create a world in which humans enjoy libertarian free will, and yet never choose evil. Indeed, He will do so in the future. In light of such, we might ask why God did not do this from the onset. Why didn’t He create humans in a glorified state to begin with, if glorified humans can exercise free will and yet not choose evil?
If God knows every choice we’ll make from eternity past, doesn’t that mean our choices are not free – that God has caused us to do what we do? No. Knowledge is not a cause. Knowing what someone will choose to do in advance of their actually doing it does not cause them to do it. While it’s true that if God knows X will happen, X will most certainly happen, but it’s not God’s knowledge of X that makes X happen. It’s our choice to do X. God merely knows what we will freely choose in advance. While God’s knowledge is chronologically prior to our acts, our acts are logically prior to God’s knowledge. If we would have chosen A rather than B on October 12, 2006, God would have known A rather than B. The reason He knew B would happen from eternity past is because He knew we would freely choose B from eternity past. God’s foreknowledge does not determine our choices, but is informed by our choices. In other words, God’s foreknowledge is not the cause of our actions; our actions are the cause of God’s foreknowledge.
Only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead can explain why Christians believed Jesus was divine. It also gives credence to the fact that Jesus claimed to be God.
When someone supports abortion on the basis that “nobody knows when life begins,” my immediate reaction is to immediately correct their misinformation with the
A simple reflection tells us that something must be eternal. After all, if you start with nothing, you’ll always end up with nothing. But we ended up with something, which means we must have started with something. Put another way, since something exists now something must have always existed. There could never be a time when absolutely nothing existed. Something must be eternal, but what is that something?
Could the human population have originated from two people? Many say science has proven this to be impossible and are reinterpreting the Biblical narrative to fit the current scientific thinking. In this
I recently finished reading Greg Koukl’s new book,
When it comes to neo-Darwinian evolution, the question isn’t whether Darwin’s proposed mechanism of biological change is true – we know it is because we observe it in nature. The question is whether it can explain what Darwin thought it explained: the diversity of life.
Liberals love to label those who have ethical objections to cloning, doubts about man-made global warming, and the like as “science deniers” and “climate change deniers.” Matt Walsh suggests that we start calling those who deny that one’s biological sex determines their actual gender as “biology deniers.” And in this case, the term is an accurate description rather than a derogatory, non-descriptive insult. Those who want to normalize transgender thoughts are truly denying biology. They affirm that someone who is biologically male is actually female.
Those who are opposed to state and federal defunding of Planned Parenthood argue that these dollars are not paying for abortions, but contraception and other female-related health services. So why would pro-lifers want to defund this? Do we just hate women? Do we want to ensure that more women are “punished” for premarital sex by getting pregnant? Of course not. What we understand is that the grants Planned Parenthood receives for their non-abortion services indirectly funds their abortion business. To see why, imagine for a moment that the government provided grants to churches to pay for all of their office supplies, marriage counselors, city permits, and building repairs. Would the pro-Planned Parenthood-funding crowd agree with the government that this is not supporting religion? Of course not! They realize that the money a church saves by not having to pay for those government-funded items will be redirected to evangelistic efforts. So while the government’s funds would not be directly funding Christian evangelism, they are indirectly funding it. The same is true of federal funding of Planned Parenthood. While these funds are not directly responsible for aborting babies, they are indirectly responsible because Planned Parenthood can use all of the money the government saved them and direct it to their abortion business. And when
Great op-ed