Replies

One of my favorite passages in the Hobbit is, "Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck just for your sole benefit?".

Just suppose all of what has been planned and purposed for us is part of a larger drama being played out cosmicly beyond our time and space and we are a part of it and maybe even the central part. Suppose that real life experience of Job was already played out with Adam and Eve and Satan had his audience with God just as He did over Job, however God had already planned the satisfaction for sin that Lucifer could never pay for his own sin. Remember Lucifer's sin was he wanted to be on a par with God and he was judged for it and lost his place, access and ultimately his freedom. He can't create but he tries to do the next best thing and that is to co-opt God's creation; turn it to himself away from God. His problem being that when man succombed to his temptation, instead of turning to Satan away from God, man turned to himself and made of himself a god. Thus his futile battle over the minds and hearts of God's elect. That our salvation is not only a display of God's justice in paying the penalty for our sin but a grand display of His grace and mercy to us and an exhibition of His triumph over Satan and his followers.

Remember Lucifer's sin was he wanted to be on a par with God and he was judged for it and lost his place, access and ultimately his freedom

And when God created Lucifer, did He predestine that Lucifer shall fall or not? Did Lucifer really have a "free choice" in his "rebellion" or was it something that, as FK says, God said must happen?

Did Lucifer have a choice to disobey God and not rebel? May I remind you that Judaism considers Satan a loyal servant of God, and not a rebel?

Do you believe Judas, then, was merely obeying what God commanded? Is Hitler, by the same logic, a mere servant of God, who "obeyed" what God "commanded?"

My impression is that Reformed Protestants either don't seem to realize that their theology implies that God is the author of sin, or they find it so threatening that they unconsciously deny it.

Just suppose all of what has been planned and purposed for us is part of a larger drama being played out cosmically beyond our time and space and we are a part of it and maybe even the central part. Suppose that real life experience of Job was already played out with Adam and Eve and Satan had his audience with God just as He did over Job, however God had already planned the satisfaction for sin that Lucifer could never pay for his own sin.

This is easy to suppose. Nothing is by accident and everything is as it has been ordained. Lucifer was toast from the beginning.