Amen. Who created Satan? Does Satan run amok of his own free will, thwarting God's purposeful demands of His creation? Is Satan that powerful?
This is where a belief in licentious free will takes us. If we can thwart God's intentions, then so can Satan. All God's creation can stall His desires and deny Him anything and everything.
God becomes one big doofus, scrambling to have people pay some attention to Him, yet losing ground with every day that passes. But that's not the God of Scripture.
Now Moses called all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land— the great trials which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great wonders. Yet the LORD has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear, to this very day." -- Deuteronomy 29:1-4"These are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.
And still men insist they understand and believe by their own good free will. But Scripture tells us even when we see the glory of God and witness His "signs and wonders," we remain in the dark unless He gives us a "heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear."
"Pride is still my favorite sin" -- Al Pacino as Satan in "The Devil's Advocate."
Which men? Free will is a gift from God.
I really don't want to commmit theology here, because Our Good Lord knows I don't have the capacity for it. But as I understand the free-will argument, it goes like this: Evil came into existence by the free, but bad, beguiled or mark-missing will. This infant evil then resulted in Adam and Eve being banned from the Garden, and the free-willed but bad fruit of this evil, then rushed headlong on the whole of mankind, either in the form of Original Sin or a patrimony of sickness.
God did not author the evil only permitted it, but God did author the banishment and the attendant Sin or sickness. But permission bears no authorship and as such no responsibility, it is strictly passive.
Satan, ostensibly free to prowl but really under God's control, was allowed to gain a foothold through Adam's sin. And that foothold would not be loosed as the sons and daughters of Adam retained the stain. That stain was earned in advance of being born and actually engaging the free-will and missing the mark, sinning, etc.
If I'm correct that's one heck of an ungainly philosophy!
The idea of man's total depravity doesn't seem to me to have originated with Calvin, it can be seen readily in St. Paul's Epistles. And history sure seems to bear the truth of this depravity out.
For me, one of the many points of genius of the indefatigable Calvin and his advocacy of God as Father, is his system of thought on the Divine imprint on human beings. He says the following:
"Humankind have within themselves a workshop Graced with God's unnumbered works, and at the same time, a storehouse overflowing with inestimable riches...They feel in many wonderful ways that God works in them; they are also taught by the use of these things what a great variety of gifts they possess from his liberality. They are compelled to know-whether they will or not-that these are the signs of divinity; yet they conceal them within. Indeed there is no need to go outside themselves, provided they do not, by claiming for themselves what has been given them from heaven, bury in the earth that which enlightens their minds to see God clearly."
It's beautiful, isn't it?
I learned of man's depravity all by my lonesome. What I needed desperately to learn of was God's Love, and that I wasn't past the point of no return. He made that known to me.
How I always loved the Scripture which speaks of God having knitted us in the womb.