Isaiah 45:7 WHAT?!?!?

[Rubia Warren]

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, AND CREATE EVIL: I the Lord do all these things.


What does this mean? Please please tell me that God did not create evil... does this mean that He created the evil which caused Satan's rebellion, and man's fall, too? Tell me I have misunderstood. Please?

[tizzidale]

Isa 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.


Perhaps the version you are reading is causing the confusion. I've seen non-believers use this flawed argument too many times.

[Rubia Warren]

So, what does that mean?

[tizzidale]

From what I've read of this particular verse, in context it applies to God creating calamity for the enemies of Israel.

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I believe that's true.

[Gavin]

God has soveriegnty over all human affairs.

"Shall we accept good from the Lord, and not bad?" -Job

[Rubia Warren]

Today @ 01:46 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
Gavin:

God has soveriegnty over all human affairs.

"Shall we accept good from the Lord, and not bad?" -Job

So, then why create evil, then, in the first place?

[Socrates]

Tizzidale is right -- the King Jimmy is misleading here, as it is in so many places. The Hebrew ra can mean natural evil, and this is the best translation because of the antithesis with peace (shalom). This passage is not talking about moral goodness or evil.

But this natural evil is part of God's curse on His fallen world (Genesis 3:19) -- see, for example, AiG's take on Terrorists and Death (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/20010911_wtc.asp).

[tizzidale]

This in no way clears Yahweh from foreknowledge of aforementioned evil. There has always been the philosophical/theological debate about the presence of evil in an omnipotent god's creation. And I suspect it will continue to be an issue.

[Gavin]

Space does not permit a theodicy. This is not the only verse in the Bible which shows that God has sovereignty over good and evil.

Just brief thoughts.

[dizzle]

God allows evil to happen. He is declaring there that there is nothing outside of His control. Evil does not catch Him by surprise nor is He scrambling to catch up after an evil thing happens.

[dizzle]

Tizzi your comments were very fair, thank you for that, especially since this not really a theist/atheist debate area. Your discretion is noted.

[tizzidale]

I appreciate your appreciation. :tongue:

[Rubia Warren]

Today @ 05:25 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=#post)
Dee Dee Warren:

God allows evil to happen. He is declaring there that there is nothing outside of His control. Evil does not catch Him by surprise nor is He scrambling to catch up after an evil thing happens.
But did he purposely CREATE evil? Where did evil come from?

[dizzle]

Rubia, evil is not necessarily a "thing" on its own but rahter the absence of a good thing. He created free will. That allowed the possibility of evil.

In a neutral example... water is a good thing. But the existence of water allows for the possibility of drowning.

I am not much of a philosopher I admit right up front. But in creating a world with free will, the possibility of evil was present.

[Rubia Warren]

So, I guess, when He separated the light from the darkness in the beginning, the darkness was the absence of the "light" (or goodness), but He didn't necessarily sit down and CREATE on purpose every kind of evil imaginable, and He didn't set Satan up or make him rebel.... but just by leaving darkness around gave way for anyone who made the choice of darkness, the absence of the light would make their goodness become all, like, mutated, and twisted and perverted, but in order to have free will, the darkness had to be at least available... am I right? Sorry if that sounds kinda rambley- I'm just thinking aloud, it probably doesn't sound very good.

So, what about the verse that I gave? What is that verse referring to? Because it talks about Him creating evil, does that verse apply also to before the fall, or does it only mean that He causes calamity for a punishment on Isreal?

[Berean]

Hey La Rubia :hi:,
So, what about the verse that I gave? What is that verse referring to? Because it talks about Him creating evil, does that verse apply also to before the fall, or does it only mean that He causes calamity for a punishment on Isreal?
I agree with Socrates that "evil" in this verse, since it is contrasted with peace, means "calamity."
R.C. Sproul has some very helpful comments in his book Knowing Scripture:
One of the most fascinating characteristics of Hebrew literature is its use of parallelism. Parallelism in ancient Near Eastern languages is common and reletively easy to recognize.
...Parallelism may be defined as a relationship between two or more sentences or clauses that correspond in similarity or are set with each other
Sproul identifies three types of parallelism:synonymous, antithetic,
and synthetic. Isaiah 45:7 is an example of antithetic parallelism. Light and darkness, peace and evil (opposites). It seems that calamity is the correct meaning of evil here.

[Rubia Warren]

Thanks a lot, Berean! That helped a lot, I think I understand now.

[Berean]

Glad to be of service. :smile:

[Rubens]

Hi La Rubia (do ya really look like that??)

Here's my take, and it may not help being more boring philosophy, but...

God created us, the earth and the universe perfect but loved us enough to give us a free will. God created Heaven and angels, angels being a "higher" order of beings but also gave them a free will.

God gave Adam custodianship over this world with all it's perfection.

Satan was jealous and proud. Have you noticed scripturally how God hates pride? That's because it was Satan's pride which made him exercise his free will and tempt Adam, to bring him down, thereby setting off the fall of the human race.

The paradox is that for an all-powerful creator to be fully loving meant having to provide us with the "freedom" to ruin His perfect creation and "create" evil.

The weird part is that God knew it was going to happen. That's why His whole plan of salvation was pre-existent within the trinity of the Creator to begin with. Nothing surprises Him.

[stevencarrwork]

Yesterday @ 05:11 PM
Socrates:

Tizzidale is right -- the King Jimmy is misleading here, as it is in so many places. The Hebrew ra can mean natural evil, and this is the best translation because of the antithesis with peace (shalom). This passage is not talking about moral goodness or evil.

But this natural evil is part of God's curse on His fallen world (Genesis 3:19) -- see, for example, AiG's take on Terrorists and Death (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/20010911_wtc.asp).

Rather than cite a verse which does not include the word 'ra', why not cite the verse (Genesis 2:9) which does?

'And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.'

As you point out, the Bible is not talking here about knowledge of moral evil, but about knowledge of the natural evil that God had already created. (If it had not already been created, then it was hard to have knowledge of something that did not exist!)

[stevencarrwork]

[i]Today @ 08:30 AM

God created us, the earth and the universe perfect but loved us enough to give us a free will. God created Heaven and angels, angels being a "higher" order of beings but also gave them a free will.


Satan was jealous and proud. Have you noticed scripturally how God hates pride? That's because it was Satan's pride which made him exercise his free will and tempt Adam, to bring him down, thereby setting off the fall of the human race.



Why did God create Satan and create him to be jealous and proud? After all, God created Gabriel and Michael and never created them to be jealous and proud. After creating Gabriel and Michael (and knowing that they would never choose evil with their free will) why go on to create Satan, knowing in advance that Satan would choose evil with his free will?

[Socrates]

Stevie Carr:Rather than cite a verse which does not include the word 'ra', why not cite the verse (Genesis 2:9) which does?

'And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.'Because it wasn't germane to my argument, because in THIS case "evil" is being contrasted with "good" not "peace", so in THIS case it refers to MORAL evil.

Context, context, context! :bonk:

[stevencarrwork]

Today @ 03:00 AM

Sproul identifies three types of parallelism:synonymous, antithetic,
and synthetic. Isaiah 45:7 is an example of antithetic parallelism. Light and darkness, peace and evil (opposites). It seems that [I]calamity is the correct meaning of evil here.

Isn't the opposite of 'peace' 'war'?

[stevencarrwork]

[i]Today @ 10:49 AM
Because it wasn't germane to my argument, because in THIS case "evil" is being contrasted with "good" not "peace", so in THIS case it refers to MORAL evil.

Context, context, context! :bonk:

Do you have an instance of the Hebrew word for 'good' in Genesis 2:9 being used to mean moral good?

For example in Genesis 1:4 was the light morally good?

Or in Genesis 3:6 was the tree morally good for food?

In Genesis 15:15 were people buried in a morally good old age?

And why is the opposite of 'peace' - 'calamity' or 'disaster', rather than 'war'?

However, let us concentrate on 'ra'.

1 Samuel 16:14 'But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.' 'evil spirit' is 'ra ruach'. Did God create this evil spirit from the Lord and how can you translate it as a 'calamity spirit' or a 'disaster spirit'?

[dizzle]

Dear Steven:

This is not the section of the forum for debate between atheists and Christians or persons seeking to undermine the faith of others. Yes, this is a judgment call on my part. The purpose of this section is for frank and honest discussion of arriving at the true meaning of the Biblical text that presupposes a certain respect for the text (or at least minimally a respect for the faith of the others examining the text) and without an agenda of undermining the text or the character of God as articulated by the Judea-Christian tradition. You have free reign to do such things in various sections of this forum but others are reserved for different purposes. I hope you can respect that.

[Rubia Warren]

Steven, please please start a thread using your questions/arguments- I would appreciate it very much for this to continue, as my father uses the same arguments that you are. If you don't want to start your own thread, I started one already called, "A question to apologists" and I'd love it if you posted over there and you can get there from here:
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2717

[Socrates]

Especially as Stevie seems to labor under the fallacy that a given word must only ever have one meaning, regardless of context.

And indeed, the Hebrew shalom does NOT simply mean the absence of war. The pause between the ceasefire of the Gulf War and the recent resumption of hostilities might be called "peace" in English, but definitely does not qualify for shalom.

[Woman]

Hi La Rubia (do ya really look like that??)


LOL

Next he'll be asking, "psst whatcha wearin'?"

[Rubia Warren]

:brow:

[Sher]

Another human analogy would be medicines. Pharmaceuticals create medicines to heal and/or help people. They put labels on their products to show the proper dosages and include information regarding effects of misuse. However, people, in their infinite stupidity, will abuse and sell these medicines for evil purposes. So even with the anticipation of evil, should the pharmaceuticals not continue to produce them for the good benefits?

Of course this analogy, like all human ones, will break down the more it is analyzed, but I think the essence is there. God creates things for good, and they are blasphemed for evil.

[Sher]

Yesterday @ 11:18 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=59875#post59875)
Woman:

LOL

Next he'll be asking, "psst whatcha wearin'?" :lol: this is funny coming from someone who's avatar isn't wearing anything :rofl: :teeth:

[Blake Reas]

To use a phrase from Kiekegaard Christianity is a religion of Paradoxs! Of course I am no existentialist nor am I neo-orthodox (ala Barth) I am in fact evangelical.
Now back to my statement on Paradoxes. God is seeking his own Glory and his own good pleasure as is stated many times through out scripture the verse in question not only deals with Israel but also the world. The creating of light and darkness is a referrant to Genesis 1. This implies that it is universal in its extent. This is hard for some people to accept as the example with Stevie shows. God is soveriegn he is in control of world events and nothing happens for no reason. THere is no such thing as gratuitious ( pointless ) evil in God's universe he uses all things to his purposes as Ephesians 1 says and also as the story of Joseph in Egypt does when Joseph tells his brothers that God sent him to egypt to save them from the Famine. God does not create calamity in the sense that he does it directly there are secondary factors involved and also he uses things to contribute to his grand picture of Redemptive History. I have not good answer all I can say is that God at times uses Evil to bring about good as in the Joseph narrative and also when Jonah got swallowed by the "fish". At other times he allows evils in his sovereignty to happen. It all comes down to if you are going to allow there to be myster in the way that God governs the world. There are a lot of things that we as Christians must hold in tension Divine Sovereignty Human Responsibility, Evil, Predestination and freedom, the Incarnation, the Trinity. God makes the wisdom of the world out to be foolishness and every time some one trys to fit God into a logical box it blows upon them. I believe that Evil is some how resolved in the Cross of Christ. If God will allow his own son to be torchered in such as way then there must be some reason for it all! The cross was predetermined so God did created that evil event yet the people involved where morally responsible. It is a mystery that will only be resolved in heaven but until then we must live with it and have faith. This is what the Christian faith is all about "faith seeking understanding!

I can only refrain with the Apostle Paul in Romans 11:33-36:
11:33
Oh, the depth of the R573 riches both F193 of the wisdom R574 and knowledge of God! How R575 unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
11:34
For WHO R576 HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?
11:35
Or WHO R577 HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT F194 IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN?
11:36
For from R578 Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To R579 Him be the glory forever. F195 Amen.

Glory to God in the Highest!

By His Grace For His Glory,
Blake

[GrayPilgrim]

04-07-2003 @ 07:11 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=57819#post57819)
stevencarrwork:



Isn't the opposite of 'peace' 'war'?

The opposite of Peace, Shalom, is not War. Peace/shalom means wholeness and lack of oppression. So it is possible to not have peace and not have a war.

Moreover, "Good and Evil" is a merism to describe all moral knowledge and to look at one of the mereisms constituents would do violence to the text.

[John Reece]

Moreover, "Good and Evil" is a merism to describe all moral knowledge and to look at one of the mereisms constituents would do violence to the text.

:thumb: