Taking A Hard Look At Ourselves: Chapter VI of Laudato Si

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Humanity's Relationship With God, Neighbor and Creation: Thoughts on Chapter II of Laudato Si

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Was Man Set Up to Fail? A Look at God Creating Man as He Was (Article II)

Recap of the Last Article

Last time I discussed some general Christian Beliefs about God, Creation and the Fall in regards to the question, “Did God set up man to fail?” To recap, the premise of the challenge is that God knew man would fail, yet created the situation where free will, the serpent (the Devil) and the Tree of Knowledge existed. Therefore God set man up to fail.

In my article, I stated that man did have the ability to refuse, yet chose to act against God, knowing it was forbidden. As a result, man and his descendents fell from what God created them to be.

So let us now look at some of the questions of why God made us in such a way which we could fail.

On The Nature of Triangles

One of the common questions intended to stump believers is to ask whether God could make a triangle with four sides. The supposed dilemma is: If God can make it, it isn’t a triangle. If He can’t make it, He isn’t all powerful.

The problem with this dilemma is that it assumes that the nature of things comes before God, and not that the nature of things comes because of God.

If God wills to make a triangle, He wills to make a thing with three sides. If He wanted a thing with four sides, He wouldn’t make a triangle to begin with, because the essence of a triangle is that it has three sides and the total interior angles total to 180 degrees, whether it is scalene, isosceles or equilateral.

Things like the lengths of the sides and the degrees of each angle depend on the type of the triangle it is. A triangle is not less of a triangle because it is scalene and not equilateral for example. However, once you add a fourth side or make the angles of the interior > 180 degrees, you no longer have a triangle, but something else entirely.

So the answer to this supposed stumper is that it is nonsense to ask whether a four sided triangle can exist, because a four sided object is not a triangle to begin with, and the question can be rewritten “Will God call a four sided object a triangle?”

The answer is no, because to call a four sided object a triangle is to speak falsely, which would mean God was not perfectly good.

So what does this have to do with the creation of human beings?

On the Nature of Men

From the point above, we need to consider what the human person necessarily is. The Human person necessarily possesses certain characteristics in essence, where if you remove them from the idea of “human” what you have is no longer human.

As Christians, we believe that all people are created with an immortal soul. No soul, no person. Or to state it in the opposite way, if one is a human being, he or she has an immortal soul. We also believe that God created man with the potential for free will. So what is the significance of this?

Because man is created with an immortal soul, he will not end with death. Because he is created with free will, the consequences of his choices will exist beyond death. Because he is created with free will, he does have choices he can make, for which he is responsible.

(Excursus: The Question of the Mentally Disabled

I would like to pause here to address the issue of the insane or mentally disabled, who through birth defect or accident or age, are unable to make use of the free will which exists in all men. Does this mean such a person is not a human being?

I would say this would be as wrong as to say that a female who, through birth defect, injury, old age or disease, is unable to bear children is not a woman. The potential is there, though some individuals wind up with the inability to make use of such things because of these circumstances.)

So Why Did God make Man with Free Will?

The common claim here is that if man had not been created with free will, then he would not have been able to sin. Perhaps this is the case. However, man would not have been able to do good either. Essentially we would be not much more than two legged cattle.

Now, if God is perfect (which Christians do believe), then it follows God does not need anything. If He needed anything, it would indicate a lack. Yet the deist concept of the Divine Clockmaker is also illogical. If God merely sets the clock in motion and then ignores everything, the question then arises, “Why make the clock?”

We need to remember the statement, “God is love.” (1 Jn 4:16). Now love is not sentimentality and indulgence. It desires the true good for the beloved. Sometimes this must involve “tough love” to help us. Now since man was created with an immortal soul, it follows that the good God desires for us must take this into account.

Christians believe that God created the universe with the human person in mind, and that He created the human person out of love with the desire of giving us the eternal good, not temporal goods.

The Lover and the Beloved

Now, if this good is something which must be received, it cannot be achieved by man’s own effort because man is a finite creature. Only by being offered the eternal from the eternal God can it be received. If it is to be offered and not forced, it requires a free acceptance of the gift God offers.

So why does God not simply remove free will and give us this eternal good? This is because love is not a one way street. There is the lover and the beloved. Scripture uses many images of God as the lover wooing us, the beloved. The lover never forces himself on the beloved. If the beloved spurns the lover, God will not force the beloved to accept Him. However, with this in mind, the beloved who spurns the Lover has no cause for complaint when they have no part of the life of the Lover. Since God is the eternal lover and we are created with an eternal soul, if we spurn His love, we must spend eternity apart from Him.

So in short, God gave us free will, because we are not merely constructs of God, but people whom He loves and wants to share in His love.

This is the divergence between the one who says God set man up to fail and the Christian belief. We were not given free will so we could choose sin. We were given free will so we could choose to accept what God offers.

Parent and Child

In terms of creator and created, God does have the authority to make behaviors required of us.  However, a parent can at times leave to the discretion of the child when one wishes to teach responsibility as opposed to standing over the child with the immediate readiness to punish.  CS Lewis discusses this in his work Mere Christianity:

…anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another.  It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy up the schoolroom every night.  You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.'  Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate.  That is against her will.  She would prefer the children to be tidy.  But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy.  The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school.  You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it.  This is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.

It is probably the same in the universe.  God created things which had free will.  That means creatures which can go either wrong or right.  Some people think they can imagine a creature which is free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot.  If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad.  And free will is what has made evil possible.  Why, then, did God give them free will?  Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the thing which makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  A world of automata — of creatures which worked like machines — would hardly be worth creating.  The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.  And for that they must be free. (pages 47-48)

The parent who wants a thing to be done can of course stand over the child with a whip and make sure it is done this way.  However, the parent who wants the child to understand the importance of doing a thing so the child chooses to do a thing of his own free will must take a different course.  We believe this is the case in our relationship with God.  Since God loves us and wants us to choose the good, He must make us free if doing good is to have any meaning at all.

The Error in Denying that Free Will Exists.

Now it follows that if Love is a choice we must make, the possibility of spurning God is there. The risk of rejection is always there in love. God being the perfect lover will not betray us, but we can betray Him. Adam and Eve did, and so do we. He will always offer it, but will not force us to accept it.

Certain groups of Christians fear the idea that if man has to accept, it means God is not fully in control, and it puts the emphasis on man (Calvin and Luther for example seem to have leaned this way). Such individuals try to argue that the one who God chooses has no say in the matter, and the one who God rejects can never be saved because he was rejected from the beginning. Such a view [known as Double Predestination] is, I believe, blasphemous, as it makes God responsible for all evil done.  If one is predestined to be saved, we cannot call his actions good.  If one is predestined to be damned, we cannot call his actions evil.  Such a one is merely doing what he is predestined to do.

It also confuses the issue by ignoring that without God’s acting to begin with, the man has nothing to choose to accept. What God offers is so far beyond the ability of man to do on his own, that unless God offers it, man cannot receive it.

I think it would be interesting to see whether the "God set man up to fail" argument had its roots in the claims of double predestination.

Misusing Free Will Has Consequences

Now, if will is free, it follows that a person may choose to act in a way which is in violation of what was intended to be. He can do this in the sense that nobody forced him to do something in violation of what he chose to do. However, this does not mean it is good to do so, and in acting against what we were called to be, we do ourselves harm. Sometimes in the temporal realm, sometimes into eternity.

I am able to drive drunk if I choose to. However, it is not permitted for me to do so, and if I do, there will be legal or even life threatening results which will affect me in time or even eternally (if it kills me). I cannot say in response that the law, in not physically preventing me from driving, is to blame for the result.

Likewise, our using our free will to act against God is possible, and because He made us with free will, He recognizes some of us can use our free will for evil instead of for good. However, it is not God’s fault we do evil, because He gave us the ability to think on our own.

The Flip Side of Freedom

What is often forgotten today is that freedom is part of a package deal. The other side of the coin is responsibility. If a person has free will, the person has the responsibility to use their free will in a way which does not harm themselves or others. He, and not the lawmaker, is to blame for failing to act responsibly. The idea of responsibility indicates it is something we can control. If a person slips on the ice, nobody blames him because the law of gravity forces him to the ground. It is only when the circumstances are things we can control that we can be blamed for failing to do so.

Looking at Adam and Eve

Now Adam and Eve were given free will, and they were given the responsibility in using it rightly. Moreover, with original grace, they had the ability to resist temptation to do evil. In other words, they had the free will to control their own actions, and they had the responsibility to make the right use of those actions. With the ability to resist the impulses to choose wrongly, Adam and Eve could not claim that their actions could not be helped. The reason they were judged was because they were able to resist but chose not to.

So from this, we can see that in failing to resist temptation, their actions were because they could have but did not refuse the lies of the devil.

Conclusion: The Direction Next Time

I have given a demonstration of why Christians believe we have free will. However some individuals have a hard time contrasting God’s omnipotence with our free will. If God knows what we will do, does this not mean we are fated to do these things?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer will be covered in part III of this series.

Was Man Set Up to Fail? A Look at God Creating Man as He Was (Article II)

Recap of the Last Article

Last time I discussed some general Christian Beliefs about God, Creation and the Fall in regards to the question, “Did God set up man to fail?” To recap, the premise of the challenge is that God knew man would fail, yet created the situation where free will, the serpent (the Devil) and the Tree of Knowledge existed. Therefore God set man up to fail.

In my article, I stated that man did have the ability to refuse, yet chose to act against God, knowing it was forbidden. As a result, man and his descendents fell from what God created them to be.

So let us now look at some of the questions of why God made us in such a way which we could fail.

On The Nature of Triangles

One of the common questions intended to stump believers is to ask whether God could make a triangle with four sides. The supposed dilemma is: If God can make it, it isn’t a triangle. If He can’t make it, He isn’t all powerful.

The problem with this dilemma is that it assumes that the nature of things comes before God, and not that the nature of things comes because of God.

If God wills to make a triangle, He wills to make a thing with three sides. If He wanted a thing with four sides, He wouldn’t make a triangle to begin with, because the essence of a triangle is that it has three sides and the total interior angles total to 180 degrees, whether it is scalene, isosceles or equilateral.

Things like the lengths of the sides and the degrees of each angle depend on the type of the triangle it is. A triangle is not less of a triangle because it is scalene and not equilateral for example. However, once you add a fourth side or make the angles of the interior > 180 degrees, you no longer have a triangle, but something else entirely.

So the answer to this supposed stumper is that it is nonsense to ask whether a four sided triangle can exist, because a four sided object is not a triangle to begin with, and the question can be rewritten “Will God call a four sided object a triangle?”

The answer is no, because to call a four sided object a triangle is to speak falsely, which would mean God was not perfectly good.

So what does this have to do with the creation of human beings?

On the Nature of Men

From the point above, we need to consider what the human person necessarily is. The Human person necessarily possesses certain characteristics in essence, where if you remove them from the idea of “human” what you have is no longer human.

As Christians, we believe that all people are created with an immortal soul. No soul, no person. Or to state it in the opposite way, if one is a human being, he or she has an immortal soul. We also believe that God created man with the potential for free will. So what is the significance of this?

Because man is created with an immortal soul, he will not end with death. Because he is created with free will, the consequences of his choices will exist beyond death. Because he is created with free will, he does have choices he can make, for which he is responsible.

(Excursus: The Question of the Mentally Disabled

I would like to pause here to address the issue of the insane or mentally disabled, who through birth defect or accident or age, are unable to make use of the free will which exists in all men. Does this mean such a person is not a human being?

I would say this would be as wrong as to say that a female who, through birth defect, injury, old age or disease, is unable to bear children is not a woman. The potential is there, though some individuals wind up with the inability to make use of such things because of these circumstances.)

So Why Did God make Man with Free Will?

The common claim here is that if man had not been created with free will, then he would not have been able to sin. Perhaps this is the case. However, man would not have been able to do good either. Essentially we would be not much more than two legged cattle.

Now, if God is perfect (which Christians do believe), then it follows God does not need anything. If He needed anything, it would indicate a lack. Yet the deist concept of the Divine Clockmaker is also illogical. If God merely sets the clock in motion and then ignores everything, the question then arises, “Why make the clock?”

We need to remember the statement, “God is love.” (1 Jn 4:16). Now love is not sentimentality and indulgence. It desires the true good for the beloved. Sometimes this must involve “tough love” to help us. Now since man was created with an immortal soul, it follows that the good God desires for us must take this into account.

Christians believe that God created the universe with the human person in mind, and that He created the human person out of love with the desire of giving us the eternal good, not temporal goods.

The Lover and the Beloved

Now, if this good is something which must be received, it cannot be achieved by man’s own effort because man is a finite creature. Only by being offered the eternal from the eternal God can it be received. If it is to be offered and not forced, it requires a free acceptance of the gift God offers.

So why does God not simply remove free will and give us this eternal good? This is because love is not a one way street. There is the lover and the beloved. Scripture uses many images of God as the lover wooing us, the beloved. The lover never forces himself on the beloved. If the beloved spurns the lover, God will not force the beloved to accept Him. However, with this in mind, the beloved who spurns the Lover has no cause for complaint when they have no part of the life of the Lover. Since God is the eternal lover and we are created with an eternal soul, if we spurn His love, we must spend eternity apart from Him.

So in short, God gave us free will, because we are not merely constructs of God, but people whom He loves and wants to share in His love.

This is the divergence between the one who says God set man up to fail and the Christian belief. We were not given free will so we could choose sin. We were given free will so we could choose to accept what God offers.

Parent and Child

In terms of creator and created, God does have the authority to make behaviors required of us.  However, a parent can at times leave to the discretion of the child when one wishes to teach responsibility as opposed to standing over the child with the immediate readiness to punish.  CS Lewis discusses this in his work Mere Christianity:

…anyone who has been in authority knows how a thing can be in accordance with your will in one way and not in another.  It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy up the schoolroom every night.  You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.'  Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate.  That is against her will.  She would prefer the children to be tidy.  But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy.  The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school.  You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it.  This is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.

It is probably the same in the universe.  God created things which had free will.  That means creatures which can go either wrong or right.  Some people think they can imagine a creature which is free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot.  If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad.  And free will is what has made evil possible.  Why, then, did God give them free will?  Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the thing which makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  A world of automata — of creatures which worked like machines — would hardly be worth creating.  The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.  And for that they must be free. (pages 47-48)

The parent who wants a thing to be done can of course stand over the child with a whip and make sure it is done this way.  However, the parent who wants the child to understand the importance of doing a thing so the child chooses to do a thing of his own free will must take a different course.  We believe this is the case in our relationship with God.  Since God loves us and wants us to choose the good, He must make us free if doing good is to have any meaning at all.

The Error in Denying that Free Will Exists.

Now it follows that if Love is a choice we must make, the possibility of spurning God is there. The risk of rejection is always there in love. God being the perfect lover will not betray us, but we can betray Him. Adam and Eve did, and so do we. He will always offer it, but will not force us to accept it.

Certain groups of Christians fear the idea that if man has to accept, it means God is not fully in control, and it puts the emphasis on man (Calvin and Luther for example seem to have leaned this way). Such individuals try to argue that the one who God chooses has no say in the matter, and the one who God rejects can never be saved because he was rejected from the beginning. Such a view [known as Double Predestination] is, I believe, blasphemous, as it makes God responsible for all evil done.  If one is predestined to be saved, we cannot call his actions good.  If one is predestined to be damned, we cannot call his actions evil.  Such a one is merely doing what he is predestined to do.

It also confuses the issue by ignoring that without God’s acting to begin with, the man has nothing to choose to accept. What God offers is so far beyond the ability of man to do on his own, that unless God offers it, man cannot receive it.

I think it would be interesting to see whether the "God set man up to fail" argument had its roots in the claims of double predestination.

Misusing Free Will Has Consequences

Now, if will is free, it follows that a person may choose to act in a way which is in violation of what was intended to be. He can do this in the sense that nobody forced him to do something in violation of what he chose to do. However, this does not mean it is good to do so, and in acting against what we were called to be, we do ourselves harm. Sometimes in the temporal realm, sometimes into eternity.

I am able to drive drunk if I choose to. However, it is not permitted for me to do so, and if I do, there will be legal or even life threatening results which will affect me in time or even eternally (if it kills me). I cannot say in response that the law, in not physically preventing me from driving, is to blame for the result.

Likewise, our using our free will to act against God is possible, and because He made us with free will, He recognizes some of us can use our free will for evil instead of for good. However, it is not God’s fault we do evil, because He gave us the ability to think on our own.

The Flip Side of Freedom

What is often forgotten today is that freedom is part of a package deal. The other side of the coin is responsibility. If a person has free will, the person has the responsibility to use their free will in a way which does not harm themselves or others. He, and not the lawmaker, is to blame for failing to act responsibly. The idea of responsibility indicates it is something we can control. If a person slips on the ice, nobody blames him because the law of gravity forces him to the ground. It is only when the circumstances are things we can control that we can be blamed for failing to do so.

Looking at Adam and Eve

Now Adam and Eve were given free will, and they were given the responsibility in using it rightly. Moreover, with original grace, they had the ability to resist temptation to do evil. In other words, they had the free will to control their own actions, and they had the responsibility to make the right use of those actions. With the ability to resist the impulses to choose wrongly, Adam and Eve could not claim that their actions could not be helped. The reason they were judged was because they were able to resist but chose not to.

So from this, we can see that in failing to resist temptation, their actions were because they could have but did not refuse the lies of the devil.

Conclusion: The Direction Next Time

I have given a demonstration of why Christians believe we have free will. However some individuals have a hard time contrasting God’s omnipotence with our free will. If God knows what we will do, does this not mean we are fated to do these things?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer will be covered in part III of this series.

Set Up to Fail? Reflections on Creation and the Fall (Article I)

Preliminary Note: This will be a series of a few articles, as the topic is too broad to deal with at once.  People wondering why I didn't address topic X in this first article should wait until I finish the rest before claiming I ignored the issue.

This article is devoted to establish the framework of the Christian belief of the nature of God, the nature of creation, and the view of the fall.  The idea of why God created us in this way will be addressed further on in this series.

Please note that being an article and not a textbook, this article must necessarily be simplified, and should not be considered the definitive and final word on the subject. Just because I draw conclusion X on the subject does not mean I reject other conclusions the Catholic Church brings forward.

Note on Linguistics: Some readers may note I make reference to man and he.  This is not due to chauvinism, but rather because the term "man" reflects the Latin humanis (person) and not viri (male).  The English language is more limited than Latin in expressing itself.  In terms of philosophy and theology, "man" refers to male and female both, while the use of male or female would be used to speak of a certain gender.

Introduction

Awhile back, an atheist visitor to my site asked if I would write about whether God set man up to fail.  Unfortunately the individual never clarified what was meant by this so I needed to go search for the topic on line [So, if this individual is reading this, my apologies if if I didn't answer your specific concerns here].  The question is a valid one I think, though the answer is never merely a direct rebuttal.  Rather it requires a set up of what we as Christians believe as a starting point.

The Premises of the Challenge

Scanning various atheistic sites and challenges posted on Christian sites, the basic premise seems to be as follows (this isn't a syllogism by the way, so I won't be evaluating this part as if it were.  I'm just laying out the points the objection makes):

1. God is all knowing and all powerful and all good
2. God Created Adam and Eve
3. God Created the Tree of Good and Evil
4. Because He was all knowing, He must have known that Adam and Eve would have eaten the fruit of the tree.
5. Therefore God set man up to fail.
6. Therefore He either isn't all knowing, all powerful or all good

I hope this is a fair recreation of the objection.

Now, I would unconditionally agree with points 1-3.  I would conditionally agree with point 4 (my problem is with the post hoc fallacy it assumes).  I would reject point 5, and because of that, point 6 would remain unproven.

The Preliminaries to the Case

However, before we get to the argument, we need to understand how the Christian understands God, omnipotence, omniscience and being pure good.

First lets look at that which God is.  Non Christians and atheists may disagree with these things.  However, if one wants to understand the Christian view of the fall, one needs to understand how we view the God who created everything.  This is of course a very simplified and truncated view.  For fuller details, one can consult St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles.

1. God is Eternal.  He is not a very old being.  God is outside of time itself.  Time came to be when God began creation of the universe we know.  Whether one holds to Young Earth Creationism or to evolution, the theist holds that before the beginning of creation, there was no time, but God still existed.  This is why we call God Eternal.  He isn't going to change His mind some time in the future about good and evil, or on how gravity and light functions.  Thus He is unchanging.
   1. Because of this, it would be error to think of there being a difference between the God of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament.
2. God is All Knowing (Omniscient).  Despite claims from people like Vox Day, God is not surprised or unaware of what goes on in the universe.  Some Christians who know God is not evil will try to meet the challenge of evil in the world by denying omniscience so they don't have to deny He is all powerful or All Good.  Theologically this is nonsense however.  A God who is not all knowing is therefore limited and therefore not all powerful.  God does not learn something new about His world, us or morality.
3. God is All Powerful (Omnipotent). Nothing happens against the direct will of God.  If He wills that event X will happen, it cannot be thwarted.  God will not be defeated.  Nor will what He decrees fail to happen as He decrees it to be.
   1. This is not the same thing as sin being against what God requires of us.  Below we will look at free will of man, which is in fact what the issue is really about.
4. God Is Perfect and Perfectly Good.  This is necessarily a trait of an all powerful God to lack nothing in His own nature.  This is because evil is not a positive force in itself.  With the exception of the mentally deranged, nobody chooses to do evil solely on the grounds it is evil, but because there is a good end which one chooses to achieve in a way which is harmful or unjust to oneself or others.  If God could choose to do evil, he would be choosing something less good, which would deny the other traits of God.  [That is: Either He did not know it was wrong, or He did not have the ability to do good]
   1. Dawkins' claim of omniscience and omnipotence being in contradiction is also theologically nonsense.  Dawkins' claim, paraphrased, is that because God is all knowing, He can't change His mind.  Because He can't change His mind, He can't be all powerful.  Theologians reject this on the grounds that because God is all knowing, He already knows the best solution for the situation at hand.  Changing one's mind would be to go from a worse to a better or from a better to a worse.  Both would be a sign of imperfection in God.
5. God is Fully Present Everywhere (Omnipresent).  Unlike pantheism, God is not all things nor in all things as a sort of a mist or presence that is spread out partly here, partly in Russia and so on.  That would make Him dependent on matter.  Rather it is the case that God is fully present everywhere without limits.  He is always fully present, and not merely partially present.

To sum up, we can knock down the idea that God is merely a more advanced form of sentient being.  God is not a being who is more knowledgeable than us.  He is the fullness of knowledge.  God is not merely a being who is more powerful than us.  He is the fullness of power.  He is not merely more moral than us.  His nature reflects what is good, and that which goes against His nature is evil.

So any view which looks at God as merely a "greater person" is looking at God in the wrong way, and if he or she judges God from this assumption, the judgment comes from a flawed assumption.

The Nature of Evil

Evil is visualized in a dualistic vision to be a positive force, and sometimes this view of evil leads to a distorted view of God, creation and what is good.  Christians do not accept this view of evil however.  We do not think that evil is a positive force, but is a lack or a misapplication of a good God has given us.

For example, a person who is valorous, but lacks compassion may do brave things, but this bravery will most likely lead to acts of cruelty in war because he lacks the ability to understand the suffering of others.  This would be one type of evil.

Another type of evil would be choosing to suppress something which a person possesses at the wrong time.  The idea of seeking to improve the prosperity of a nation one rules is generally a good thing.  However, if this desire comes at the expense of depriving other nations of their own prosperity, freedom or life, it is generally considered evil.  Hence there is a difference between a nation which seeks to improve its infrastructure and creates mutually beneficial trade with neighbors on one hand and the invasion of Poland in 1939 for Lebensraum.

Because of this, we do not see the Devil as an evil being who was created evil by God.  The devil is not some sort of evil God.  Rather, we consider him a rebellious being, who because of a willful choice to use the gifts God had given Him, put Himself in rebellion with God.

As I mentioned above, nobody chooses evil because they want to do evil (unless the person is extremely disordered), but because they see a good they want while lacking the discipline to seek it in context of what is right or else want what they see as a good at the expense of others.

God and Creation

Now some readers may grumble that I am over 1000 words into this article and have not addressed the Fall yet.  Quite true.  However, before we can understand the relation of God and man, we must show how we understand God and things which are false before we can understand why God created the universe He did.

Principles of Creation

Now, when we recognize that God is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, perfectly good and omnipresent this sets some boundaries to the understanding of Creation:

1. The Creation of the Universe was not by chance
2. It was created as God willed it to exist
3. It was not created haphazardly
4. Nothing which exists came to be without God willing it to exist.
5. God cares about His creation
6. What He created was GOOD.

These are important things to remember.  Denial of any of these points would be considered heretical.

If one comes to look at Creation from the view of unguided evolution, there are points which are often assumed which the Christian does not believe.  Such as, one may assume the view of God as the divine clockmaker who sets the pendulum into motion and then left it alone.  Or one may assume that God merely started evolution with no idea what the end result would be.  Or, one might be tempted to take a dualistic view which holds matter is evil and spirit is good.

These are views foreign to Christianity, and any attempt to view Creation or the Fall by these views will be a view which is not Christian.

The Creation of Humanity

With the principles above we can also apply to the nature of the human person.  Man was not a product of chance.  Man was created in the nature God intended him to have.  Man was not created through a slapdash work, but was the pinnacle of His creation.  God cares about man and created Him to be good.

Now, one of the common misconceptions is that some think of Adam and Eve as the stereotypical "cave men" who were extremely primitive and limited in knowledge.  Christians would reject this view.  We would believe that when God created man, he possessed the state of natural grace and being free of sin.  Adam and Eve were not inferior to us as cave men.  They were not merely our equals in the sense of having the same concupiscence we have.  They were created as God intended them to be, free of sin and possessing mastery over their emotions and passions.

The Fall of Man

It is when we consider this, that we can see what the Fall meant.  It was not, as Phillip Pullman has said in his wretched (both in the theological and literary sense) Dark Materials books, a "fall upward."  Adam and Eve possessed the knowledge of good, and had the grace to resist the temptations the devil offered them.

Man was not forced to sin.  Nor were Adam and Eve deceived into disobeying God without realizing it.  Rather, the devil appealed to their pride arguing that God was holding them back from something good:

^1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”

^2 The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;

^3 it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”

^4 But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die!

^5 No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” (Gen 3:1-5)

^The temptation was to become equal to God, instead of recognizing that God is superior in power and knowledge.  The "knowledge" of what was good and evil was not the theoretical knowledge as some have claimed.  Adam and Eve had knowledge of what was good, and one could deduce what was evil through recognizing what departed from this good.  Rather, this "knowledge" was nothing more than the practical experience from doing evil.  It's like the arguments today that to understand the evils of drugs, we have to have first tried drugs, pure nonsense which assumes that experiential knowledge is the only form of knowledge which exists.

The devil's seduction of Adam and Eve was an appeal to their pride, encouraging them to think of themselves as being the equal of God, and being able to be independent of God.

The result of this (God's punishment) is not God arbitrarily taking away from man things He had given Adam and Eve.  Rather, the sin of Adam and Eve caused the break in the relationship with God and His creation.  God is telling them "Because you have done this…" X will happen.

Man has chosen to make himself God's equal, which is an impossible thing.  In choosing such a path, and rejecting God, man has chosen a path which makes him subject to the evil he has knowledge of.  It is important that this was not inevitable or fated.  Adam and Eve were free to refuse the devil's offer.  They specifically chose against God's will, knowing it was against God's will and having the ability to choose God's will.

Conclusion: The Subject for the Next Article

Now that we have set this framework, we can move on to the main part of the "God set man up to fail" argument, which seems to be "why did God make man this way?"  To answer this, we need to understand what God intended man to be, and remember that God still intends for us to become.

Of course, what He intends for us to become is not something we can do on our own.  We can lower ourselves into a well under our own power.  This does not mean we can raise ourselves up from what we got ourselves into.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself, this is ultimately why we need Christ as Savior who can deliver us, and why God needed to become man.  It is impossible for a man who has broken the relationship with God to restore it under his own power.  It takes God to restore the relationship which man has broken, though it requires man to repay what He has broken.  This is also why Christians must believe no other religion can save.  No founder of any other religion can do what Christ did.  Other religions have a glimmering of the truth in recognizing that evil exists, and/or recognizing that the Divine exists.  They do not have within them the salvific act which Christ performed for us.

So next time, a look into why God made us as He did in terms of free will.

Set Up to Fail? Reflections on Creation and the Fall (Article I)

Preliminary Note: This will be a series of a few articles, as the topic is too broad to deal with at once.  People wondering why I didn't address topic X in this first article should wait until I finish the rest before claiming I ignored the issue.

This article is devoted to establish the framework of the Christian belief of the nature of God, the nature of creation, and the view of the fall.  The idea of why God created us in this way will be addressed further on in this series.

Please note that being an article and not a textbook, this article must necessarily be simplified, and should not be considered the definitive and final word on the subject. Just because I draw conclusion X on the subject does not mean I reject other conclusions the Catholic Church brings forward.

Note on Linguistics: Some readers may note I make reference to man and he.  This is not due to chauvinism, but rather because the term "man" reflects the Latin humanis (person) and not viri (male).  The English language is more limited than Latin in expressing itself.  In terms of philosophy and theology, "man" refers to male and female both, while the use of male or female would be used to speak of a certain gender.

Introduction

Awhile back, an atheist visitor to my site asked if I would write about whether God set man up to fail.  Unfortunately the individual never clarified what was meant by this so I needed to go search for the topic on line [So, if this individual is reading this, my apologies if if I didn't answer your specific concerns here].  The question is a valid one I think, though the answer is never merely a direct rebuttal.  Rather it requires a set up of what we as Christians believe as a starting point.

The Premises of the Challenge

Scanning various atheistic sites and challenges posted on Christian sites, the basic premise seems to be as follows (this isn't a syllogism by the way, so I won't be evaluating this part as if it were.  I'm just laying out the points the objection makes):

1. God is all knowing and all powerful and all good
2. God Created Adam and Eve
3. God Created the Tree of Good and Evil
4. Because He was all knowing, He must have known that Adam and Eve would have eaten the fruit of the tree.
5. Therefore God set man up to fail.
6. Therefore He either isn't all knowing, all powerful or all good

I hope this is a fair recreation of the objection.

Now, I would unconditionally agree with points 1-3.  I would conditionally agree with point 4 (my problem is with the post hoc fallacy it assumes).  I would reject point 5, and because of that, point 6 would remain unproven.

The Preliminaries to the Case

However, before we get to the argument, we need to understand how the Christian understands God, omnipotence, omniscience and being pure good.

First lets look at that which God is.  Non Christians and atheists may disagree with these things.  However, if one wants to understand the Christian view of the fall, one needs to understand how we view the God who created everything.  This is of course a very simplified and truncated view.  For fuller details, one can consult St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles.

1. God is Eternal.  He is not a very old being.  God is outside of time itself.  Time came to be when God began creation of the universe we know.  Whether one holds to Young Earth Creationism or to evolution, the theist holds that before the beginning of creation, there was no time, but God still existed.  This is why we call God Eternal.  He isn't going to change His mind some time in the future about good and evil, or on how gravity and light functions.  Thus He is unchanging.
   1. Because of this, it would be error to think of there being a difference between the God of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament.
2. God is All Knowing (Omniscient).  Despite claims from people like Vox Day, God is not surprised or unaware of what goes on in the universe.  Some Christians who know God is not evil will try to meet the challenge of evil in the world by denying omniscience so they don't have to deny He is all powerful or All Good.  Theologically this is nonsense however.  A God who is not all knowing is therefore limited and therefore not all powerful.  God does not learn something new about His world, us or morality.
3. God is All Powerful (Omnipotent). Nothing happens against the direct will of God.  If He wills that event X will happen, it cannot be thwarted.  God will not be defeated.  Nor will what He decrees fail to happen as He decrees it to be.
   1. This is not the same thing as sin being against what God requires of us.  Below we will look at free will of man, which is in fact what the issue is really about.
4. God Is Perfect and Perfectly Good.  This is necessarily a trait of an all powerful God to lack nothing in His own nature.  This is because evil is not a positive force in itself.  With the exception of the mentally deranged, nobody chooses to do evil solely on the grounds it is evil, but because there is a good end which one chooses to achieve in a way which is harmful or unjust to oneself or others.  If God could choose to do evil, he would be choosing something less good, which would deny the other traits of God.  [That is: Either He did not know it was wrong, or He did not have the ability to do good]
   1. Dawkins' claim of omniscience and omnipotence being in contradiction is also theologically nonsense.  Dawkins' claim, paraphrased, is that because God is all knowing, He can't change His mind.  Because He can't change His mind, He can't be all powerful.  Theologians reject this on the grounds that because God is all knowing, He already knows the best solution for the situation at hand.  Changing one's mind would be to go from a worse to a better or from a better to a worse.  Both would be a sign of imperfection in God.
5. God is Fully Present Everywhere (Omnipresent).  Unlike pantheism, God is not all things nor in all things as a sort of a mist or presence that is spread out partly here, partly in Russia and so on.  That would make Him dependent on matter.  Rather it is the case that God is fully present everywhere without limits.  He is always fully present, and not merely partially present.

To sum up, we can knock down the idea that God is merely a more advanced form of sentient being.  God is not a being who is more knowledgeable than us.  He is the fullness of knowledge.  God is not merely a being who is more powerful than us.  He is the fullness of power.  He is not merely more moral than us.  His nature reflects what is good, and that which goes against His nature is evil.

So any view which looks at God as merely a "greater person" is looking at God in the wrong way, and if he or she judges God from this assumption, the judgment comes from a flawed assumption.

The Nature of Evil

Evil is visualized in a dualistic vision to be a positive force, and sometimes this view of evil leads to a distorted view of God, creation and what is good.  Christians do not accept this view of evil however.  We do not think that evil is a positive force, but is a lack or a misapplication of a good God has given us.

For example, a person who is valorous, but lacks compassion may do brave things, but this bravery will most likely lead to acts of cruelty in war because he lacks the ability to understand the suffering of others.  This would be one type of evil.

Another type of evil would be choosing to suppress something which a person possesses at the wrong time.  The idea of seeking to improve the prosperity of a nation one rules is generally a good thing.  However, if this desire comes at the expense of depriving other nations of their own prosperity, freedom or life, it is generally considered evil.  Hence there is a difference between a nation which seeks to improve its infrastructure and creates mutually beneficial trade with neighbors on one hand and the invasion of Poland in 1939 for Lebensraum.

Because of this, we do not see the Devil as an evil being who was created evil by God.  The devil is not some sort of evil God.  Rather, we consider him a rebellious being, who because of a willful choice to use the gifts God had given Him, put Himself in rebellion with God.

As I mentioned above, nobody chooses evil because they want to do evil (unless the person is extremely disordered), but because they see a good they want while lacking the discipline to seek it in context of what is right or else want what they see as a good at the expense of others.

God and Creation

Now some readers may grumble that I am over 1000 words into this article and have not addressed the Fall yet.  Quite true.  However, before we can understand the relation of God and man, we must show how we understand God and things which are false before we can understand why God created the universe He did.

Principles of Creation

Now, when we recognize that God is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, perfectly good and omnipresent this sets some boundaries to the understanding of Creation:

1. The Creation of the Universe was not by chance
2. It was created as God willed it to exist
3. It was not created haphazardly
4. Nothing which exists came to be without God willing it to exist.
5. God cares about His creation
6. What He created was GOOD.

These are important things to remember.  Denial of any of these points would be considered heretical.

If one comes to look at Creation from the view of unguided evolution, there are points which are often assumed which the Christian does not believe.  Such as, one may assume the view of God as the divine clockmaker who sets the pendulum into motion and then left it alone.  Or one may assume that God merely started evolution with no idea what the end result would be.  Or, one might be tempted to take a dualistic view which holds matter is evil and spirit is good.

These are views foreign to Christianity, and any attempt to view Creation or the Fall by these views will be a view which is not Christian.

The Creation of Humanity

With the principles above we can also apply to the nature of the human person.  Man was not a product of chance.  Man was created in the nature God intended him to have.  Man was not created through a slapdash work, but was the pinnacle of His creation.  God cares about man and created Him to be good.

Now, one of the common misconceptions is that some think of Adam and Eve as the stereotypical "cave men" who were extremely primitive and limited in knowledge.  Christians would reject this view.  We would believe that when God created man, he possessed the state of natural grace and being free of sin.  Adam and Eve were not inferior to us as cave men.  They were not merely our equals in the sense of having the same concupiscence we have.  They were created as God intended them to be, free of sin and possessing mastery over their emotions and passions.

The Fall of Man

It is when we consider this, that we can see what the Fall meant.  It was not, as Phillip Pullman has said in his wretched (both in the theological and literary sense) Dark Materials books, a "fall upward."  Adam and Eve possessed the knowledge of good, and had the grace to resist the temptations the devil offered them.

Man was not forced to sin.  Nor were Adam and Eve deceived into disobeying God without realizing it.  Rather, the devil appealed to their pride arguing that God was holding them back from something good:

^1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”

^2 The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;

^3 it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”

^4 But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die!

^5 No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” (Gen 3:1-5)

^The temptation was to become equal to God, instead of recognizing that God is superior in power and knowledge.  The "knowledge" of what was good and evil was not the theoretical knowledge as some have claimed.  Adam and Eve had knowledge of what was good, and one could deduce what was evil through recognizing what departed from this good.  Rather, this "knowledge" was nothing more than the practical experience from doing evil.  It's like the arguments today that to understand the evils of drugs, we have to have first tried drugs, pure nonsense which assumes that experiential knowledge is the only form of knowledge which exists.

The devil's seduction of Adam and Eve was an appeal to their pride, encouraging them to think of themselves as being the equal of God, and being able to be independent of God.

The result of this (God's punishment) is not God arbitrarily taking away from man things He had given Adam and Eve.  Rather, the sin of Adam and Eve caused the break in the relationship with God and His creation.  God is telling them "Because you have done this…" X will happen.

Man has chosen to make himself God's equal, which is an impossible thing.  In choosing such a path, and rejecting God, man has chosen a path which makes him subject to the evil he has knowledge of.  It is important that this was not inevitable or fated.  Adam and Eve were free to refuse the devil's offer.  They specifically chose against God's will, knowing it was against God's will and having the ability to choose God's will.

Conclusion: The Subject for the Next Article

Now that we have set this framework, we can move on to the main part of the "God set man up to fail" argument, which seems to be "why did God make man this way?"  To answer this, we need to understand what God intended man to be, and remember that God still intends for us to become.

Of course, what He intends for us to become is not something we can do on our own.  We can lower ourselves into a well under our own power.  This does not mean we can raise ourselves up from what we got ourselves into.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself, this is ultimately why we need Christ as Savior who can deliver us, and why God needed to become man.  It is impossible for a man who has broken the relationship with God to restore it under his own power.  It takes God to restore the relationship which man has broken, though it requires man to repay what He has broken.  This is also why Christians must believe no other religion can save.  No founder of any other religion can do what Christ did.  Other religions have a glimmering of the truth in recognizing that evil exists, and/or recognizing that the Divine exists.  They do not have within them the salvific act which Christ performed for us.

So next time, a look into why God made us as He did in terms of free will.