OK, your first statement is perfectly accurate. But, the conclusion doesn't follow. I think we get into dangerous territory when we start assuming what God's motives and purposes are when they are not explicitly stated. That is especially so when common sense doesn't even give a clear answer. In no way does common sense call for God creating satan because He was impotent in power, and so He NEEDED satan. That makes no sense to me. God in His sovereignty obviously decided that this is the existence that He wanted us to have, and that includes the role that satan plays.
In other words, is this the best the Reformed God can come up with?
Yes, this is the best God can come up with to accomplish God's wishes. Our assent or agreement is neither asked for nor required. If you believe God has chosen poorly, then you can take it up with Him. :)
Surely you don't presume God does anything that He doesn't deem absolutely necessary and that what happens is the best possible choice He will come up with.
Yes, but I don't frame it as putting God in a box with only one choice. As you have pointed out God does have choices. Common sense tells me that the choices He makes are the BEST ones in order to accomplish His overall plan.
So, yes, according to this mindset, the Reformed God created the world with evil as a, no pun intended, being a necessary evil.
That is perfectly fair as long as it doesn't mean that God is the author of evil. God created the circumstances such that evil would occur, but He did not instill evil into any being.
Kosta: Now you are telling me that God absolutely hates this absolutely needed accomplisher of God's "plan" and that, in fact, God created His own enemy" not only to use but also to hate!
FK: LOL! OK, from now on I will consider the Orthodox God as a satan lover. I will also assume that the Orthodox version of Christ died on the cross FOR SATAN!!!
Kosta: Where are you getting this from?
From your post. What else could you possibly mean but that God loves satan if you are criticizing me for saying that satan is God's enemy?
Who said anything about God loving Satan? You called Satan God's enemy. Well, God didn't create His enemy so He can hate him.
He knowingly created what would become His enemy. I'll let you say it in your own words, how does God see satan today? Does He love satan, does He hate satan, or is He indifferent?
Wait, is this the same God who sends "perverse spirits?" You call that Christian?
YES and YES! The Bible is filled with examples of God using the lost to accomplish His plan. The only way around these many many passages is to disregard them.
The potential for [satan's] evil was his free will, which the Reformed deny. We choose our own perdition by rejecting God.
What do we deny? God created some angels knowing they would always remain loyal to Him. He created other angels knowing they would break away. He could have created all of one kind or the other, or no angels at all. He created what He wanted. From satan's POV he chose, even though all was predestined by God. It is the same with people, so we would agree that (in most cases at least) people choose their own perdition by rejecting God.
And I submit that it is dangerous territory to claim that God wrote the Bible.
I am simply going by the "type" that Reformed Christians call God. If there is evil, God must have thought it necessary for evil to exist. He created conditions for evil to exist and, by His irresistible will, made it happen.
It can be debated if one can have a will without a need, in which case even the Biblical "will" of God is but an anthropomorphism.
If all your needs are satisfied, what drives you? We can infer into this because the Bible says we were created in His image and endowed with reason so that we may understand. But then the whole thing is thrown out the window when God says "your thoughts are not my thoughts." So, what is there to "understand?"
Of course, we can't imply that God's creation was a senseless act, but a determined one. Thus, if God willed evil into the world, which He hates (!), then it must be inferred that it was absolutely necessary that evil exist, and if there were a better way God would have chosen that.
But the Bible reminds us in Isaiah that it is (the Hebrew) God who creates evil (actually calamity) to happen to us. So, right from the Old Testament, Isiah tells us that God creates evil, and you are denying it. What gives, FK?
Then comes Christ, our God, and he overturns the money changers' ables in the Temple. If this is not telling the Jews they had it all wrong I don't know what is. But you will tell me that He came to fulfill the law and the prophets. Sure he did, but what is law and the prophets?
Mat 7:12 tells us what that is, and it's not what you seem to imply. The verse says
Not Jeremiah, or Joshua, smiting everything in their path, or God creating "evil," BUT use your own standard of what you would not want done to you! Leaving it up to us to decide?
How can you believe in an omnipotent and controlling God if you also believe Matthew 7:12?!? Is this not your objection that that the "Apostolic" God is a weak God acting to accommodate men? Well, that's precisely what Mat 7:12 tells us. How come you never mention that verse?
In Rom 13:8, Paul says
Is this the same law, as witnessed by Moses in Leviticus? If your son or daughter are disrespectful, Moses' law says you can kill them. Because you love them?!?
And get this, in Galatians 5:14, Paul says:
So, when you speak of the Law you mean Leviticus; when Orthodox Christians speak if the law, they speak of love of God, and this was unknown to the Jews. St. Paul says that the "righteousness of God apart from the law, has been made known." (Rom 3:21)
Kosta: Where are you getting this from?
FK: From your post. What else could you possibly mean but that God loves satan if you are criticizing me for saying that satan is God's enemy?
I never said He loves Satan. I simply questioned your assertion that God made His own enemy. Since there is nothing good in satan, there is nothing God can love in him. But He didn't create Satan with a purpose to hate him, because that would imply that God, who is love, was motivated by hate.
YES and YES! The Bible is filled with examples of God using the lost to accomplish His plan. The only way around these many many passages is to disregard them
Yes, if they fail the Christ-like test of the Gospels, is you can't find the love your neighbor as yourself in them. Christ preached peace and love, something that irritates and is quite opposite of the Zeus-like God of the OT the Protestants believe in.