The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Evolution and Theodicy:An article

Hi all,
I thought I’d post a link to this article by a Ross L. Stein to generate some discussion.
quodlibet.net/articles/stein-theodicy.shtml

Evolution is a fascinating subject for me; one aspect of the the so-called “book of nature” providing insight into God and his ways. A character in George MacDonald’s What’s Mine’s Mine puts it this way:

Evolution particularly must tell us something about God’s “thoughts” and “intentions”. Too often, theology has gotten in the way of truth. In another MacDonald novel, Paul Faber-Surgeon, Thomas Wingfold the local curate (who I believe speaks for MacDonald here) and the atheist, Faber, are discussing abiogenesis.

Evolution was created by God and we have to get over the notion of evolution being the exclusive domain of atheists.The more we learn about it the messier it seems. Who knew that most of us have Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA (we don’t even know what they looked like) as well as as Homo Sapien DNA? Our theology needs to take facts like that into account (which really doesn’t need to be that difficult).

A few disclaimers: I have minimal knowledge of formal philosophy and makes no claims about the quality of the paper presented. It does seem very accessible for a philosophy paper and didn’t make my head explode :wink: (which I was sure was going to happen when taking philosophy in college) The author, as far as I can tell is a biochemist and not a philosopher.

As far as theodicy goes, I doubt it’s ever much comfort for anyone experiencing real pain, however, a bad theodicy can make things worse, i.e. feeling the pain is God’s “punishment”, due to lack of “faith” or because God just doesn’t care.The theodicy in this paper is a version of the Free Will Defense similar to that presented in Tom Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God.

So to whet your appetite, a few quotes from the article:

and finally…

Other life forms? Daleks?..Timelords?..hmmmm

What do you think?

Steve

Compared to infinity, 15 billion years is an instant!

In physics, useful work is done when energy moves downhill from hot to cold, light to dark etc. Some energy is lost on the way as low-grade heat.

In Genesis, God’s light moves downhill into darkness, doing useful stuff on the way. I wonder if pain is like waste heat. Perhaps “No pain, No Gain” is a universal truth.

Good point,Allan!

So often we humans want what we want NOW! Is God patient because time means nothing to him? Is the end result with the reconciliation of all is present to him NOW?

Good analogy with pain being “waste heat”. It appears to be the price God is willing to pay to accomplish his purposes. As a physician, it’s fascinating to me how soon patients forget pain once it’s gone. I’ll remember how miserable someone was with various conditions but once it’s gone, they often forget how bad it was. (usually they have something new they’re focused on) :slight_smile:

Steve

It’s amazing to me how people forget pretty much any pain once it goes away. The thing about emotional pain though, is that it doesn’t go away until the relationship is healed. That’s why ECT and eternal bliss are completely incompatible. Sorry – somewhat off-topic but I had to open my big mouth . . .

It always feels better once it stops hurting.

Great post, Steve.

I have long believed traditional theodicies to be failures. Theodicy is one of the most powerful reasons why I am a Universalist. Only a Universalist theodicy, for me, gives a satisfactory answer to the question of why God created a universe with so much pain and suffering in it. Only if the whole of creation is one day going to be gloriously redeemed can His original creative fiat - by which he knowingly brought the possibility of evil and pain into being, while not formally actualising those states himself - be legitimised, in my opinion

I’ve only skimmed the article thus far, but this statement of Stein’s leaps out:

“Out of love God, gave humanity freedom of choice and nature freedom of process.”

That gets a big tick from me. To me it is blindingly self-evident that nature is ‘free’ to produce earthquakes and hurricanes and cancer cells and tsetse flies and acephalous babies. It is blasphemously ludicrous to suggest - as the Calvinists do - that God deliberately wills these things.

It is also, in my opinion, blasphemously ludicrous to suggest that God could snap his metaphysical fingers and prevent them from happening, but chooses not to do so for his own inscrutable reasons. No, the only rationale that makes sense is that these evils are somehow *intrinsically necessary *to the world God has created, the best of all possible worlds, a world in which genuinely free beings can develop in a genuinely independent, morally neutral environment - and in which all things will ultimately come together in everlasting joy for all creatures, and all suffering will be transmuted into glory.

And just in passing, I’ve heard it suggested (by the self-styled world’s most outspoken Bible scholar Martin Zender, for example) that evil and suffering are deliberately created by God for the purposes of contrast! How any thinking person can believe such blasphemous garbage is beyond me.

More soon.

Cheers

Johnny

Hi Cindy,

So true! Emotional pain is much more difficult to deal with and longer lasting. I think the pain people with PTSD experience is probably related to the emotional pain (fear, anxiety, sense of helplessness, shame etc) that they experience and not so much the physical pain they experience. With emotional pain related to the loss of a loved one, it may not be completely relieved until the next life when we are reunited with them. The fact that physical pain is so quickly forgotten, and the emotional pain is so much longer lasting makes me hopeful that the pain animals experience in the prey/predator interactions evolution contains is not as bad as we, as humans, would think. The mother rabbit probably doesn’t grieve much when her young one is killed and eaten by a fox and the wildebeest eaten by a lion probably has only a brief moment of fear and pain before it’s death (and arrival in Wildebeest heaven?) :wink: I do think that abused animals (almost solely at the hands of humans) experience psychological pain and the neuroses and behavioral problems of dogs, horses and zoo animals etc are testament to this.

So glad you like the post, Johnny.

Well said! I think also, that God* likes* this world with the randomness of evolution, the saber tooth cats, dinosaurs, electric eels (and, yes, even tape-worms) that are “brought forth”. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” The evolutionary dead-ends are loved as much as those that persist and lead to new species. Surely God loves the infertile or childless humans as much as those with children. I don’t think that God sighed and begrudgingly accepted that he had to use evolution in this fashion to accomplish his purposes. I think he likes this REAL world where actions have consequences and creatures act freely and without constraint. Surely he grieves at the evil men do but I doubt he sees this as an “evil world”.

Stein only mentions an afterlife briefly:

but I think the addition of universal reconciliation to this theodicy (or ANY theodicy) as in Tom Talbott’s argument is the only way to make it acceptable. Would wonder what Stein thinks of UR?

All the best,

Steve

I just came in from dehorning kid goats. I’ve done 11 kids over the last couple of weeks, cauterising the horn buds with a tool that looks like a giant soldering iron and glows red when it’s hot. It’s quite painful, but after it’s done they recover within minutes and don’t hold a grudge. :sunglasses:

Sonia

I have a theodicy issue with God using evolution as it is in order to end up with what He wanted. I’ll go along with the intrinsic goodness of process, journey, freedom, adventure, self-unfolding etc. but it seems quite clear to moral intuition and biblical witness that death and suffering are ‘bad’ destructive and intrusive forces into creation.

To say God chooses freely to endorse and actualise a world which will inevitably utilise pain and death on a huge scale for some end result is to say that God justifies horrific means for a good end - a view of morality I cannot accept. If God uses evil to create good He is evil.

I think that would depend on a couple of things. First, is the good achievable in any other way? A good doctor can use an evil means to bring about a good result. (eg. cut off a leg to save a life.) I also think it would depend on how the sufferer feels about their suffering after the good thing is achieved. Will the amputee thank the doctor for saving his life, or curse the doctor for removing his leg ? (The gangrene would have killed him…)

Hi pog

I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think it necessarily follows that if God uses evil to create - ‘bring about’ would be my preferred term - good, then he must be evil himself. And I don’t think that tells the whole story anyway.

If it is the case that the manifold goods of our world - and the world to come - could only be realised through a creative act which ‘lets in’ the possibility of evil and suffering; if these goods are such that every single created thing will one day praise and thank God for their existence, and declare unequivocally that they are glad God created them the way he did, despite the pain and suffering they have experienced - then surely God is justified in creating as he has done?

Let us not forget that he both shared in our suffering, and is working through us to alleviate it where he can. That includes using evil to bring about good - but that isn’t the same thing as deliberately creating evil.

And anyway, what are the alternatives? That God somehow failed to foresee the existence of evil? That we actually live in some sort of Manichaen universe in which evil is self-existent, and God powerless to overcome? Or worst of all that, as the Calvinists and the Zenders tell us, God deliberately wills suffering, pain and evil; in which case he is indeed evil - and hence neither worthy of our worship nor even our belief. If when I die I find myself standing in front of that God I would curse him and be damned. But I’m not remotely bothered by that possibility, because such a God is a moral and logical absurdity.

Cheers

Johnny

Hi Allan/Johnny:

Regarding ‘what if there wasn’t any other way?’:

If the omnipotent God was limited to only being able to actualise a world where good could only be achieved at the expense of horrific suffering over millions of years then He wold be morally obliged not to create in the first place. Ends do not justify means if the means are intrinsically evil in themselves (else one can justify the Caananite Genocide etc.). If the cost of my entry to heaven is pain and death of billions of babies then I’m not sure that even with heaven for all (the only possible way of making this argument) it is worth it - maybe one is morally obligated to return one’s ticket, so to speak.

Though I realise that universalism could argue that the highest good for all is worth the cost - I’m not so sure, and I’m reticient to adopt what amounts to a cosmic utilitarianism (after all, one could justify any act by positing the greatest good for all).

I also see a big difference between actualising a world where there exists the possibility of evil, and actualising a world where evil is guaranteed. If evil was either guranteed or certainly foreknown then we still have the moral problem of a God actualising evil for the greater good - the problem above. And if God is wholly good He cannot actualise anything intrinsically evil even for a greater end benefit - else, again, we can say God can do anything and there is no real distinction between good/evil other than its end purpose. This is a big part of why I’m an open theist (that and libertarian freedom + FWD + bible + conditional prophecy etc.). Even if the risk was in the favour of evil (more likely than not) God would be in difficult moral waters with actualising that kind of world.

I think it better all round to hold to God being wholly good and actualising a world with a possibility for suffering/evil/ death and taking a calculated risk based on the intrinsic goodness of freewill (knowing He could always sort it out via universalism) than saying God was limited to having to use evil tools (like death and suffering) in order to bring about good. After all, I cannot see what is limiting God’s ability to simply create beings in a heavenly state and skip the evil evolutionary process other than the intrinsically moral good of freewill and creative choice & empowerment of the other.

Hope that makes some sort of sense … :slight_smile:

Is that you Ivan :wink:

Your argument, Pog, and Ivan’s are something I can’t answer. Is the price too high? I could argue that the suffering of animals, particularly lower animals is not as bad as it appears, I could argue that death is not evil (and I actually think a good case can be made for that), but the suffering of children, of innocents is the sticking point. Will have to ponder this…

I can’t accept that God didn’t know evil and suffering of innocents would occur when he brought forth this world. I can’t believe he took a cosmic gamble and lost. I also do not see how he could create independent, free creatures “in a heavenly state” that cannot do evil without them being, in essence, projections or offshoots of himself…of the same divine substance (like the Godhead). I wonder if even angels, assuming they exist, have gone through a similar process to humans?

Much to think about…

Steve

Hi Alecforbes (Steve?),

Yeah, you pretty much got where I’m coming from. :slight_smile:

I find that extending the FWD into the angelic sphere, thus cosmic warfare theodicy, is the only thing that can resolve the difficulty (that I’ve come across). But, for the theodicy to really work it also has to be held with universalism and open theism …

I don’t want to de-rail the thread or start another debate, but I’m curious as to why you can’t accept that God took a risk and lost? In what way is it any different to saying that God risks my freewill and loses every time I sin?

Hi Pog,

I’ve been thinking about your posts while at work today and actually have some thoughts. By the way, I love this conversation and the mental and (hopefully) spiritual insights I’m gaining as I’m being stretched.

I’ll start first with your last question:

First off, this post can go a number of ways and I don’t think this question derails it at all. That being said, I have a hard time believing God set in motion such a system (evolution by way of the Big Bang etc.) without recognizing the degree of freedom the creatures brought forth by this would have and the potential for evil. I can accept the open theism idea of God not knowing the future or what any individual may do, but the thought that he didn’t expect or think it likely that some individuals with this freedom would commit unspeakable evil and atrocities is hard to accept. The idea that he didn’t know what any individual creature would do is very reasonable and actually an attractive idea to me. The thought of him thinking there is unlikely to be “horrendous evil” by someone is problematic. I picture a 3 year-old with a match about to light one of those cartoon bombs labeled “BIg Bang” thinking “hmmmmm, I wonder what this will do?” Such a dim God is hardly worthy of worship. We could add him to the pantheon of Christian Gods: “Calvinistic God=unloving, Arminian God=weak, Open Theism God=dense”. I must admit, I haven’t read much of open theism literature. What I’ve read (on wikipedia, of course) is attractive in many ways and has piqued my interest. I suspect I am totally misrepresenting the thought process here. :confused:

Having pondered Ivan’s argument I have a couple thoughts. First, I think his conviction that the reconciliation of all would not justify the horrendous evil committed against innocents may be due to a lack of imagination. We really don’t know the END of the story. Our human intellects and imaginations cannot conceive of the glory of what God has in store for us. Images of clouds and harps and a static, boring eternal existence are, I am sure, nowhere near what God has planned. Given his apparent love of the dynamics of evolution, I suspect the end will not be an unchanging state of bliss but something with novel challenges and experiences and I suspect work of some sort done for the Lord. Perhaps the creatures of this universe will have work to do for those of another and assist in it’s redemption? The glory of communion with God, fellowship and love of our fellow creatures is, I suspect, unimaginable.

Another thought regarding pain and evil—“Which is the better story?” —This is taken from Yann Martel’s book, The Life of Pi and though it’s a bit out of context, I think it applies here in a sense. Comparing the safe, pleasant world without pain, without death and without change that skeptics propose God should have created to the beautiful, unpredictable and definitely unsafe world we have (albeit with universal reconciliation as the postscript) which would you choose?

All the best,

Steve

God told me one day maybe 4-5 years ago, “I will restore the years the locusts have eaten.” (Yeah, I know I’m not the first person He’s said that to.) I couldn’t help it – my eyes filled up and I wasn’t good for anything for several minutes. Really? How could I be hearing Him right? The years the locusts have eaten? That was all of it my fault. How could I think He would or could fix and restore all the things I’d lost by my own idiocy? But that is absolutely what He said, and that’s what He said to Israel too, who had also messed up big time.

So whether He created with evolution or whether He didn’t, I think this is probably the big answer to the suffering question. His grace works in all directions. He heals the hurts, and we get to keep the progress and maturation occasioned by the suffering.

I probably can’t defend this logically (I’m way more on the right-brain side), but instinctively I know that no one and nothing can develop into a mature and free person if that person doesn’t undergo and understand suffering. It’s a requirement for developing any kind of true character. God hasn’t even excluded His Son, who learned obedience by the things He suffered. All the heroes we admire (whether in the “real world” or in fiction) have been tempered with suffering. It’s part of the Story. It’s part of us. Now as to why some suffer so very very much, and others suffer relatively little, I think we must trust Him that first, He’ll redeem the suffering of all who suffer, and that He will also attach to it a corresponding weight of glory, and second, He knows what we need – all of us – to become precisely the person He means us to be.

He may not choose to know or even be able to know everything that will pass in our lives. Nevertheless, I do believe He knows what He’ll make of us. When I start making, say, a vase, I know how tall I intend it to be, what shape, how thick the walls should be, whether I’ll carve it, etc. I don’t know whether there’ll be a rock in the clay, or an air bubble I didn’t get out, or whether the clay will be equal to becoming as tall and thin as I desire without letting it stand a while to firm up, whether the glaze will be mottled in this or that way, or whether this time the color will be brighter or deeper (depends on the speed of firing, atmospheric pressure, etc.) But I DO know what I will make out of that lump of clay, unless I have to throw it back in the recycle – then it might turn out to be anything.

So He starts out with an intention, I believe, when He creates a person. We will each of us embody some facet of His never-ending glory – we will each reveal to one another something of Him. And that particular revelation may require differing life experiences, and our different weaknesses and vulnerabilities will also require different treatments to heal us, develop us, and mature us. Of course there are other factors in place which He didn’t ordain to be there, but with which He works to form us into the persons He intends us to be.

Isn’t He amazing? He works all these little individual wills, the whims of nature, the opposition of the enemy, the opposition even of one another, into a perfect tapestry that not only looks like the Son of His love, but to see that “tapestry” isn’t to see a portrait of Christ, but IS to see Christ Himself, just as to see the Son is to see the Father.

But suffering IS evil though it works together in His hands for good, and though it’s necessary for us to grow up and not be like the Eloi but be the sons and daughters of the House of Yahweh, fully figuring and representing Him to the world, and because suffering is evil though it forms that which is good, He works backward in time to eliminate it once its work has been completed.

Now it seems as though perhaps eliminating the suffering in the past would eliminate its present benefits. That’s a question I don’t have an answer for and maybe it dooms my entire hypothesis. But I don’t think so. I do believe this is what He’s revealed to me, and that I simply don’t understand all the factors.

So, my little carrot for the stone soup. :wink:

Cool thoughts alecforbes and Cindy :slight_smile: Rather than addressing individual points, I think it might be easier if I just throw in my 2c and see what can be made of it, perhaps by doing so I’ll respond to some of your concerns alec:

God created the universe. Being utterly good this creation was constrained by His nature: it had to be inherently good itself, and this means that it could not include the direct creation of evil (like satan) or severe suffering and the like. The reason for a physical world was to provide a shared medium of relationality - a shared space where free willed beings, including God Himself, could develop relationship. However, it should be noted that the possibility of non-God is the logical ramification of God Himself: if x exists, there is always the logical possibility of non-x. Simply by allowing ‘other’ to be, God was taking a risk (unless He simply predestinated all things - which has a whole host of moral issues).

Freewill is intrinsically good, but it’s creation/allowance meant that God had to self-limit (kenosis?) to allow for genuine ‘other’ (the gift of freedom had to be meaningful and irrevocable - thus carry risk), and the shared medium (our universe) had to be to some degree intractable (to permit certain virtues, like patience and co-operation, and to make relationships equal). [On a purely speculative side-note, if creation flowed from God’s nature then I suspect there never was a time when creation was not, that prior to space-time there was no time, that God and creation might be chronologically, though not causally, co-existent - but at this point my brain melts].

At this point my cosmic-warfare model kicks in. God, being good, actualised a universe where control for its physical laws and self-unfolding nature was, in part, given over, delegated, to others (angels). God, being good, works through empowerment, participation, co-operation and servant-leadership. So there was a universe with embedded self-unfolding principles within it (creation coming at the edge of chaos) and creatively governed by permanently free-willed, irrevocably empowered angelic ‘others’. Allowing meaningful freedom by less than perfect beings was, of course, a risk – and God obviously knew that things could go extremely pear-shaped. But, being good He had to take this risk, and yet, also being good, He could not have taken too great a risk (it must have been more likely that the angels would have done a good job than not and there could be no chance of irredeemable extreme evil, like damnation or universe destruction); must have had a contingency plan (God was sure of His own power and wisdom to turn any evil into eventual greater good); and, being good, He could not have actualised a state of affairs where He was guaranteeing evil and suffering, either by decree or foreknowledge.

Of course, some (and, perhaps, this is a fluid and still continuing state of affairs) of the angelic beings fell, rebelled, chose evil, made poor (or incompetent) decisions etc. Thus was a wholly good universe made less than perfect – the rest of the story is one of battle: a kenotically self-limited God (to see that He is self-limited just ask ‘Can He change the past?’) versus irrevocably empowered angels. God tames the sea; God pierces the gliding serpent; God fights Leviathan etc. The devil messes with the partly intractable medium (physical universe) to bring about non- (or anti-) God, with its inevitable suffering, while God continues to move to subvert and redeem suffering. The devil introduces the red-in-tooth-and-claw element to nature, God uses that to make wondrous and beautiful creatures. Evolution is what the struggle between good and evil looks like: amazing beauty and wisdom, yet also hideous suffering and ugliness.

At some point, there is humanity. Of course, even though all this is a genuine struggle for God (He embodies certain virtues like fortitude, sacrifice, love in the face of evil, intelligence, creativity – the kind of things you can’t get with a scripted puppet-show or with meticulous foreknowledge) He always retained enough power and wisdom to bring about His good purposes – and indeed, even utilize the very tools of evil to bring about an even greater good (one that couldn’t have existed without evil, even though He never chose the evil Himself).

Death and suffering is what gave God the ability to crucify Himself as a sacrifice for the good of creation (If the evil powers had known what they were doing …) – God uses the very weapons of the enemy against him; God subverts evil (like He did in the creation accounts, the OT laws, human history etc) to make the even greater good. For now we see the true depths of God’s nature in the cross – and it this revelation that will eventually drag all beings to Him (universal reconciliation).

And so, in the end as at the beginning, there will be a perfectly good universe with a degree of intractability for us to explore and journey into and grow in, moving ever closer to God, forever and ever … Only this time, having now exhausted the potential for evil and suffering, those things will never be nor have the possibility of being actualised.

Cool post Pog - and beautifully expressed :smiley:

Hey now St Gregory of Nyssa said something very similar - perfection (in human terms) means an everlasting moving towards a perfection that is never entirely reached/understood/exhausted etc. Maybe it’s a positive way of stating the thought that you raised on another post about the lake of fire being a place of purification that can, for some, never end :confused: .

Not too sure about the beautiful expression, sobornost - more like too much jargon bundled together :slight_smile: But thanks!

I lean towards an Orthodox-style divinisation idea, and I think that such things like learning, moral choice, adventure etc are intrinsic goods and therefore must continue forever - we journey into Godhead infinitely, always improving and growing (even in moral perfection). Since God is Himself the fire of purification, I guess in one sense we all spend eternity in the purgatorial flames of the lake of fire (or being examined by Him who’s eyes are flame) - but I do draw a distinction between the severe temporal judgement required to enable enslaved wills to repent and restore fair-togetherness (to steal Jason’s very awesome neologism; gotta love compounds), and the slow sanctifying non-hurtful educative process of apotheosis, so I wouldn’t want to push that too far :slight_smile:

Agreed Pog - yep you’ve put it in a nutshell :slight_smile:

Btw I’ve just looked up Gregory of Nyssa and -

‘He is noted for the paradoxical idea known as epektasis - that perfection consists in an endless progress towards perfection’. :slight_smile:

Some really excellent points made in these last few posts by Steve, Cindy and pog and my dear friend the Professor. But in the end I’m definitely with Cindy on this one. For me, God will truly restore all the years the locusts have eaten. And true apokatastasis requires Universal Salvation.

Ivan Karamazov’s argument, though, is hugely powerful. It demands an answer. But there isn’t one. There is no nice, pat solution to the problem of evil. I’ve quoted it before, but Bob Dylan sums it up in his song Tempest, about the appalling tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic: “they waited at the landing and they tried to understand, but there is no understanding of the judgements of God’s hand”.

We are simply not equipped with the requisite epistemological tools to be able to wrap our minds around the full parameters and complexities of this problem. Only God can do that. And ultimately we must trust him that he will make good on his promises that one day “everything bad is going to come untrue”.

Having said that, I agree with Steve that perhaps Doystoyevsky is indeed guilty of a lack of imagination in posing Ivan’s argument. We cannot know what apokatastasis will be like, or how that ultimate restoration might, as CS Lewis put it, “work backwards” and nullify, even undo all the pain and suffering we must endure in this vale of tears.

But having said that, I agree with pog - and Ivan - that the suffering of the innocents is such that our instinctive reaction is to respectfully return God the ticket. I have come very close to lapsing into apostasy because of the appalling suffering and pain that permeates creation, the sheer waste and savagery of nature. My own pain I can deal with. The pain of innocent creatures - the dreadful, painful, meaningless deaths of all those countless billions of sentient creatures who lived before human beings even evolved - is hard to stomach.

But if apokatastasis is true, no death is ever truly meaningless.

My problem with the cosmic warfare model is that I don’t believe in satan and demons, other than as metaphorical constructs. I’ve witnessed first-hand the destructive results of a literal belief in demonic possession. And I have never come across a shred of hard, credible evidence that such a phenomenon exists. For me, psychological factors can explain most, if not all, alleged instances of demonic manifestation. And I don’t need a devil to blame for my own sinfulness.

My problem with open theism - such as I understand it - is that it clashes with my understanding of God as being supra-natural. It seems to make God time-bound, whereas I believe God created time, and exists outside of it. He does not see the future in the way we might, were we able - ie by peering into some cosmic crystal ball and seeing something that hasn’t happened yet, but will; no, he simply observes all events - past, present and future - as they happen. He sees 1913, 2013 and 2113 happening simultaneously. (My brain melts with all this before time stuff too, pog :smiley: .)

Further, I think the idea of God having to come up with a ‘contingency plan’ for sin and evil does him a great disservice. I do not see God as being ‘surprised’ by anything that happens. The Bible gives heavy hints about this, in talking about Christ as the Lamb slain “from the foundation of the world”. In other words, God foresaw the problem of sin and evil in the very act of creation, and in that act made full and final provision for dealing with the problem. In begetting the Son, the Father provides the full remedy for sin, for all time.

A great discussion. Thanks for getting it going Steve.

Cheers

Johnny