Originally posted by marketsurfer
for some reason most christians dont like to admit it, but god had to have created evil and evil could not exist without god. it would be inconsistent in our minds to think otherwise. ofcourse, this is barring occurences and "logic" that is removed from human ability to comprehend which is a possibilit.
Surfer:
I gladly admit that God holds ultimate responsibility for all events that happen within creation. 'The buck stops with God' means the full dollar, not 99 cents.
Even if God does not have direct responsibility, he has passive responsibility. Like a lifeguard who could stop someone from drowning but chooses not to. He did not cause the drowning, but he could have stopped it.
There IS a clear distinction between authorship and responsibility (if i create light and then place an object in front of that light, did i create darkness or did the object create darkness or neither), though responsibility is the clear divisive issue. I was drawing up to that distinction but was cut off by someone impatient....
And guess what: God does not deny responsibility in any way shape or form. In fact, he embraces total responsibility with no bones, no ifs ands or buts. The bible clearly and explicitly states that God is 100% sovereign and has 100% control over all things past, present and future. God does not shy away from His own sovereignty.
The ONLY reason that SOME Christians try to take responsibility away from God is because they have caved in to the sniping of the world and distorted their theology in an effort to make it more palatable. In doing so, they have only watered down the truth and caused intractable problems embedded in their view.
This is precisely where the division between Calvinists and Arminians arose a few centuries ago. God's iron hand over all good AND all evil was always understood, that all things work for His good purpose and that if we don't like the short term, tough. But after getting a lot of rotten eggs thrown at them around the time of the renaissance, Arminius and his followers decided they could not handle a God 'mean' enough to allow for evil, so they tried to absolve him of responsibility and thus started the bogus movement that you cite. This is bad theology practiced by a portion of Christians, not a mark on the true teachings of Christianity itself.
True understanding does not deny God's sovereignty over all creation. It recognizes that God is God whether we like it or not, and that his ultimate answer to pain is the same as the one he gave job, or the one he gave in romans: 'I have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will harden whom I will harden.' Ack! That's so harsh, that's so mean! That's reality. God is God.
p.s. I really was trying to answer your authorship question, Commisso, as I hope you can now see. As you know, context is important and I was trying to build some.
