Mears:
I will attempt a response to two very deep questions regarding (1)the existence of good and evil, and (2) the existence of real choice amongst rational creatures. If anything I say is helpful, great. If not, consider it chaff in the wind.
Regarding the existence of evil, consider the following reply that I made on another thread:
<< Because "the Absolute" is One, evil potentially exists. If ultimate reality was found in multiple beings or principles, or even two principles (dualism), there would be no such thing as "good" and "evil" because "Good" would be "Evil" relative to "Evil", and vice versa. In other words, Good and Evil would never be more than different points of view.
Explaining a belief in a core Monad that is the source for everything else, be worshipped as Good and yet allows for Evil is the ultimate theodicy.
I think understanding evil as a dulaity, or an inner dividedness, has some insight.
Augustine, in The City of God, stated the theodicy as clearly as I have heard.
The existence of other selves made in the image of God, but not being God, makes evil an inevitable possibility. Since only God is eternal and unchanging in His core nature, only God is immune from devolving from good into evil. All other "Image-bearing selves" derive their goodness from God, the Absolute. But Christian tradition also teaches that God is "Agape" Love. We don't know much about love. In fact, scientifically, much like the existence of God, we cannot even prove that love exists. Perhaps that is one evidence of our dividedness.
But we do know that Agape Love, perhaps for now simplified as "genuine, sacrificial, altruism," has to chosen as an act of will. One's belief in the value of other selves has to outweigh our desire for self-exaltation and self-preservation for genuine altruism to occur. In other words, we cannot make anyone love us. Perhaps nothing can make anything love with "Agape" Love. Each self that has the self-awareness to choose must choose it. This choice always begins with faith because we lack the ability to scientifically prove the eternality and centrality of Sacrificial Altruism. In the end, one must simply take that leap and choose to trust.
Apparently for us, this choice is intensely difficult to carry out on a daily basis. This means that we are "diseased." The original rational creatures (call them angels) apparently were not diseased, but the choice was still a necessary one. Since they were not beyond all times and therefore not beyond change, they faced their fork in the road of maintaining "the Absolute Good/Self-exisitng Self" as the center. Or they could make their individual selves the center of their own little universe of their own little minds. Little is relative. Compared to us, "angels" are immense. Compared to the Absolute Good, they are little.
The Choice may be intrinsic to the act of the Good's creating "other selves than the Absolute Good." Hence, this universe is not (at least as far as humanity is concerned), nor ever was, intended to be the best of all possible worlds but rather a necessary world that leads to the best of all possible worlds. For us, the Choice is reflected in the seventy or eighty years that we walk on earth. If, through the leading of the Logos of the Good, we return to the Good as our center, than in one sense we discover that the Good is our True Self because we are made to reflect Him.
If we make our "little selves" the center, or even another "little self" besides the Good the center, we step backwards into further fragmentation. The stronger the "little self" the creater the evil/disharmony if it establishes itself as the center. In our diseased condition, perhaps this makes "relatively higher good" potentially more destructive than lesser good: we are more likely to mistake religion or patriotism or family as the center than we are a BMW or a dog. And, if we do, religion or patriotism or family has a much greater potential for evil than a BMW or a dog. The higher the angel, the fiercer the demon if that angel falls."
Anyway, Augustine deals with it in City of God, especially book 11 of that work. >>
Regarding the existence of God's Foreknowledge and the seeming inevitability of human freedom, I think this apparent contradiction comes from a failure to understand what "Foreknowledge" menas when it is used of God. If I use a human example to try and simply the issue, I think I can make my point.
Consider my wife and our five year old son. My wife has vastly superior knowledge than my son: she knows more about the world, and she knows him better than he knows himself. Now let us assume that my wife is out in the yard with our son and he begins to play near the road. Now my wife has warned my son a hundred times not to play in the street. As he draws near to the road, my wife says, "Trevor, if you don't get away from the street, I'm going to take you inside."
Trevor looks over his shoulder, flashes his most disarmingly mischievious grin, and turns away. My wife, because she knows Trevor, knows that trevor is going to step out towards the road. He hasn't done it yet, but he will. Does my wife then snatch him up and take him outside simply based on her superior knowledge? Or does she wait on Trevor? Isn't the important thing the volitional choice itself? Until Trevor volitionally acts on his impulse, that impulse has no objective existence. Though the choice is foreknown by my wife, it is still Trevor's choice. It isn't a real choice until he makes it.
Now think about it: my wife's superior knowledge in no way impedes the exercise of Trevor's will. Her foreknowledge is accurate, but not binding. It was Trevor's choice to disobey that was the core reality. My wife simply knew Trevor and so knew his choice even before he did; yet there is no fatalism here.
The whole point is that the enacting of the child's will really is the core reality. My wife's foreknowledge of the choice doesn't hinder or help the nature of the choice itself.
God is concerned with the nature of the choice itself. The choice is made over the seventy or eighty years that we walk on this globe.
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