It’s strange to me because I’ve always thought that one of our weakest positions, having grown up with ECT theology, is the problem of evil and hell. I’m not very good at philosophical argument but it seems to me that having a theological position where most of humanity throughout all of time end up in hell is incredibly weak! When you say that God is sovereign and that He tries REALLY hard to reconcile us, putting His big guns into it by sending His son to save us and using His Holy Spirit to convict us, but He ends up with only a tiny fraction in the end at the hands of a fallen angel who wins a vast majority of the spoil — it just doesn’t sit well (sorry for that long, run on sentence). In this scenario, evil and Satan come off looking WAY more powerful than God, and we answer by saying that it’s a mystery and that God’s ways are not our ways! In ANY OTHER SCENARIO in the real world, be it sports, finance, relationships, board games, etc. the person with the lowest score, is seen to be the loser. We counter this by saying that it is a win for God because He says that it is. Of course, since he is sovereign, he can do that, but since he is sovereign, can’t he get a higher score?!? Can’t his plan of salvation be more successful than Satan’s plan of destruction? How does all that evil that took place over the millenniums of time have any meaning other than to say that the power of evil is more successful in bringing about evil than the power of God is in bringing about good? No matter which way I slice it, it looks like Satan wins to me, in terms of winning souls. As a result, God’s plan ends up being bad news for most who ever existed. It would have been better for them to have never existed than to get to take part in God’s grand plan of salvation. That is the way it appears with ECT.
Of course God did, Scriptures are pretty clear on what God invented, all evil [RA] comes from God.
RA is defined:bad, evil, bad, disagreeable, malignant, bad, unpleasant, evil (giving pain, unhappiness, misery), evil, displeasing, bad (of its kind - land, water, etc), bad (of value), worse than, worst (comparison), sad, unhappy, evil (hurtful), bad, unkind (vicious in disposition), bad, evil, wicked (ethically), in general, of persons, of thoughts, deeds, actions, evil, distress, misery, injury, calamity, evil, distress, adversity, evil, injury, wrong, evil (ethical), evil, misery, distress, injury, evil, misery, distress, evil, injury, wrong, evil (ethical).
Lamatations 3:37-39 "No one speaks and it comes to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it. It is from the mouth of the Most High that both good and evil [RA] go forth. No living mortal, or any man, should offer complaint in view of his sins "
**Isaiah 45:6,7 **That men may know from the east and the rising of the sun and from the west and the setting of the sun that there is no God besides Me. I am the Lord, and no one else. I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and I create evil [RA]; I am the Lord, Who does all these things.
Amos 3:6 When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When evil [RA] comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?
I refuse to believe it. My God did not invent rape (which in my opinion is one of the worst expressions of evil mankind ever devised to commit). If he did, he is not worth worshiping in the least. A beast and a hypocrite.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks - if by The Word, the voice of his mouth he made sin, then sin and wickedness are abundantly in his heart as expressed attributes and he is a wicked god, an omniessential Devil and may he go into his own Hell to die forever.
God did not invent sin, there is no darkness in him.
It must mean something else other than God “inventing sin, and methods of sinning”. “Calamity” makes sense, but to have invented something that is by definition apart from him? It would be to divide God himself who is supposed to be One.
There is an infinite span of difference between a father who corrects his child with a smack on the bottom (which the child may consider an “evil”, but is actually a Good, even though it is not pleasant, and is disagreeable) and inventing a method for how to beat the royal snot out of your own child, or inventing child-abuse altogether for others to go forth and commit it only to be “blamed” by the “very inventor who told them to go forth and do it”. It would do nothing short of making God the greatest sinner.
There is nothing good in the idea that God invented Sin that cannot be achieved by a better thought.
If God must be the inventor of Sin in order to be “sovereign” I say rather that sovereignty doesn’t require puppetry - puppetry is the bastardisation of sovereignty in my opinion. God’s Kingdom is not about rulership through puppetry, but about service and servitude for the GOOD will of mankind, and God.
If we are to be like our Father (if our Father invented Sin out of the infinite Sin in his heart to even be able to express it into being), we should go about our “glorified” universe creating evil (which I define as the absence of God, absence of Goodness, wickedness, sin, and sinfulness) like the perfectly and infinitely wicked sinners we should become, or are (which is the very thing that is supposed to NOT be so, in the New Creation). Evil would never be overcome - but triumph like a festering glad worm glorified in all of its darkness - like a Hellish lie over-embellished until it was unstoppable. Evil would rule the hearts of the Perfect, and even that is an unsustainable idea; you cannot be Perfect if Evil is in you.
If God is the inventor of Sin, there is no more reason to run to him for comfort than to run to your rapist for comfort for having raped you, or your abuser for having abused you, or to the thief for having stolen from you. It turns the whole universe into an anti-divine hypocrisy, a cruel and inconsistent joke.
And these are just examples off the top of my head.
And for another note, part of the very reason I and many turn to EU is the sensibility that is pre-existent in our hearts to know; “God is not so cruel and wicked as to torture his creations”. ETC and GCE (God created Evil) are directly equitable (in my honest opinion) in their disdainful force. It ends with God = Torturer and that is thoroughly unacceptable.
To attribute the invention of Moral Evil to God is to attribute to God the adjective of being morally evil.
You can refuse to believe it and most people do, that doesn’t change the Scriptures description, nor the theological problems you create when you refuse to believe God did not create evil. To have such a discussion, a person will actually need to remove (for the moment) their emotional attachment to the words evil. So suspending our emotional understanding of evil, we can then understand logically the purpose of it, and why from God all things, both good and evil, derive.
God is not participating in the evil He created; in otherwords, God is not raping people but God did create the ability for people to rape people. From God, did such moral evil come into existence, but from God such moral evil is not committed.
From the KJV:
Jer 19:5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:
Jer 32:35 And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
From the Septuagint:
Jer 7:31 And they have built the altar of Tapheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom, to burn their sons and their daughters with fire; which I did not command them to do, neither did I design it in my heart.
Jer 19:5 and built high places for Baal, to burn their children in the fire, which things I commanded not, neither did I design them in my heart:
It never entered his mind/heart/being that sacrificing children should ever be done, neither was it ever commanded. yet it was done. God did not invent this evil to be done, it never entered him to come out of him, nor was in him to come out for he never commanded it, not of this sort at any rate. “Passing children through evil fire for evil gods by evil men for evil deeds and purposes.” As I would put it.
If an evil “thing” (evils are not “things”) such as this could arise that was never in God’s design to be commanded or done, then it renders such an arising “possible”, and that it is possible it be possible indeed.
The possibility in “moral evil” goes no further than creating Free-Choice, or “will” that can be abused by using that free-choice to do a thing that “misses the mark”. But God forbid he Himself ever devise methods of committing moral wickedness for the purpose of doing those morally depraved deeds.
God doesn’t invent torture techniques…
{edited by me}
Whether or not it entered the mind of God to sacrifice children to Molech doesn’t mean God didn’t create evil. What it does mean is that God does not sin and it was the men who sinned against God by doing such evil.
There is a difference between sin and evil. God created evil, and He has never sinned.
God could not have created Sin. As sin is not an entity in itself, but a lack of, or apartness from the Perfect Entity and his standard.
When I talk about “evil” I talk about “sin” and “sinful deeds” - moral evil.
“Missing the mark” is not the invention. Free-choice is the invention of which “missing the mark” is a “possibility” - Free-choice was not invented for the sake of evil. Free-choice was not even “invented” as it was already a present eternal factor in the nature of God. God has free-choice, for his will is a free-will and the freest of wills.
As Paul quoted a secular poet, “In Him we live, move and have our being.” Good, and Evil, Sinless and sinful alike.
, Luke"]… That’s a great summary [revdrew61], although it is Blocher not I who is the serious contender. I think theodicy has sometimes been a neglected area in traditional theology, but that doesn’t need to be so. Universalism makes an ultimate claim about salvation, which if true has massive theological consequences, including theodicy and so I’m surprised there hasn’t been more universalist thought in this area.
, revdrew61"]… The theodicy question certainly deserves more attention, not least because it is raised by so many non-christians. I guess universalists haven’t given it much attention because we believe we have a satisfactory and thoroughly biblical understanding of the end to the story (Isaiah 25.7-9, Rev 21.3-5 etc). We probably do need to tighten up our understanding of how God gets us there though.
, Luke"]… One of the problems with the theodicy of Universalism as I see it, is that it doesn’t account for the existence and place of evil in grand-narrative of the world because ultimately it doesn’t matter what you do, but it does (Luke 13:5). There isn’t any good news for the victim in hearing that the injustice they’ve suffered is actually for their long term good. How do you “account for the existence and place of evil in grand-narrative of the world”?
How do you account for the continued existence of evil for eternity? How is God sovereign and completely victorious if any mind is in rebellion forever?
“There isn’t any good news for the victim in hearing that the injustice they’ve suffered is actually for their long term good.” Are you sure about that?
I wish I had a simple ‘thank you’ button for some of these posts. 
Interesting. It’s certainly tricky given God know’s everything in advance, sustains everything and created everything with the potential for good or evil. e.g. If I give my toddler a knife and he stabs someone when he has a tantrum, who is responsible? I realise it’s slightly more complex with adults, but we are all like children compared to God…
On the other hand I believe God is 100% good and 0% evil because even if God was 1% evil, being also infinite that would make an infinite evil 
i.e. 0.01 evil x ∞ big = ∞ big evil
I also agree that we need to take those passages you quoted seriously, however, because there are many, many passages on the character of God (which relates to whether He can create evil), I think it’s complex to hold them all together. I also agree the understanding of what evil (& their word RA) is, particularly to the mind of the writers OT, is essential to the discussion.
Evil is created, if created, then it is not Creator.
Everything that God created was declared (ontologically) good, including evil.
That means God, who is not evil, created it with good intention and purpose.
It is the created who lack understanding and knowledge of good and evil, a tree only found in the Garden and whose path is blocked, who complain concerning it, because they do not comprehend God intention and purpose concerning all that is created.
Show me evil molecules.
Not everything created is physical in property.
Of course. Still, you got my point I think.
How about this?
In the beginning, God created primeval chaos. All was formless and void. The Spirit hovered above the water in absolute darkness. He spoke, filling the heavens (not the earth) with light before reaching into the Deep with creative power. Part of that chaos is still churning in my soul and in the world at large.
My body is God’s temple, but there are many rooms still in darkness. If the room called Truth is dark, I will be full of lies and deceit. If the room called Courage is dark, I will be full of fear. God will throw back the curtains in his good time. One day I will be filled with light, without spot or blemish. Meanwhile, I get to experience evil from the inside. This knowledge is a profound good that cannot be achieved in any other way. Thus, God is causally responsible for evil, but not morally blameworthy for it.
That is your point? Hmmmm. I think that was mine. People have hard time understanding abstract concepts.
My point was that evil is not a “thing” (like a molecule or energy or a life). As far as abstract concepts you’re correct, it is difficult to discuss Evil (moral evil) in relation to its not being a “thing”, but a “no-thing”.
That’s a good way to put it, and a good way to think about our personal experiences with “evil,” which is of course not a created thing but an absence of the God’s manifest goodness (or light, in your description).
Well said, Reverend!
Indeed, you have a hell of a lot more to offer, and a lot of hell less to offer!