Is it possible to reconcile the existence of evil with the Sovereign LORD Yahweh who is Love who is impeccably good?
Calvinism emphasizes the absolute sovereignty and predestination of God, therefore must maintain the Sovereign has predestined everything, including ordaining the existence of evil. While they insist this does not make God the author of sin or evil although it serves God’s purposes, this raises questions about God’s goodness if everything, including evil acts, is predestined by God.
Arminianism, on the other hand, with its emphasis on human free will attributes the existence of evil to human free will and the consequential nature of human choices rather than God’s direct decree. But this raises questions about the extent of God’s sovereignty and control over the world if human choices can contravene His will.
Does a “Grand Theory of Everything” exist that can reconcile the Sovereignty of the God of Love and Good, with the existence of evil that both John Calvin and Jacob Arminius didn’t know?
I believe there is, and it can be deduced from the paradox of Election:
How can individuals be “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God” (1 Pt. 1:2) when their Election occurred before they were born “neither having done any good or evil” (Rom. 9:11 KJV).
For both statements to be true, two versions of the Elect must exist, and they must be forever separate and distinct. Version #1 resides in God’s Foreknowledge and never came into existence, while Version #2 is what became actual, coming into existence through one man, Adam after he sinned (Rom. 5:12ff).
The Grand Theory proposes God foreknew everything, including who everyone would be if the fall never happened. Where Version #1 was truly free, their response to God not affected by sin and delusion. Those who responded to God’s Love, with love were elected, predestined unto salvation lest any of them be lost in this fallen world of sin and delusion:
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (Rom. 8:28-30 NKJ)
As Version #1 exists solely in God’s omniscience, nothing Version 2 does in this life was a factor in God’s selection. Individuals can be elect according to the foreknowledge of God, yet not according to their works in this life they may do.
So how does this result in a “Grand Theory of God’s Love?’ God loves His children whom He foreknew so much, He is willing to endure with much patience and long suffering the fallen realm, and all its vessels of wrath who have fitted themselves to eternal destruction:
22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, (Rom. 9:22-23 NKJ)
For the greater good of enjoying eternity with Version #1, whom Version #2 will become when all things are restored in Christ. God permitted the fall of creation. Otherwise Version #1 would never spring into existence.
Another aspect of this Grand Theory, is to acknowledge the infinity of God (1 Kings 8:27), that our matrix exists in the infinite Mind of the Word, who verbalizes God’s bringing it into concrete existence:
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built! (1 Ki. 8:27 NKJ)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (Jn. 1:1-3 NKJ)
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Col. 1:15-17 NKJ)
“for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said,`For we are also His offspring.’ (Acts 17:28 NKJ)
Jesus is God the Son, Second Person of the holy Trinity, and cannot be a lesser deity as some suppose. No one but God Himself can be the Glue holding everything together much like electromagnetism holds atoms together “bound by light” so they have the appearance of being solid”:
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:20 NKJ)
Our spacetime continuum, past present future exists in timeless infinite God. From His perspective, the elect are already seated with Christ in His kingdom, but to finite creatures this reality will become known in the coming ages:
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:4-7 NKJ)
Divine Holiness is separateness from all evil. Evil occurs in the Matrix caused solely by the actors in the Matrix, much as in the movie “The Matrix”. God cooperates with created things by sustaining the reality in which it exists, but this “concurrence” doesn’t mean that God is the direct cause or author of evil.
Satan and fallen humanity are the blame for the existence of evil, but lest the “greater good” not come into existence God permits it be so for now.
Does that “Grand Theory of Creation” satisfy the “problem of evil?” What say you?