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In a debate against Dr. Ray Bradley, William Lane Craig was asked why God didn't just create heaven as the world and forego the rest.

Craig responded:
"No,Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility."

Dr. Bradley:
"You're saying, in effect, that when I characterize heaven as a possible world in which everybody freely receives Christ, I'm wrong insofar as that had to be preceded by this actual world, this world of vale of tears and woe in which people are sinful and the like."

Dr. Craig:
"I'm saying that it may not be feasible for God to actualize heaven in isolation from such an antecedent world."

Idle speculation in order to prop up the "free-will" philosophical paradigm.

~IF~ Adam had freely chosen to obey God, there would be no need for Salvation because there would have been no fall. Craig's presumption seems to be forgetting that Adam and Eve were already in Paradise!!!!!

God had already created everything ~good~ and ~perfect~.

"Heaven" for us, in reality, will be a New Earth -a new creation! The new "Eden", if you will.

The difference being that Adam was corruptible, we will not be "corruptible" in the New Earth.

Craig's comments are ultimately irrelevant to my point as your author insists that "evil" is a necessary "side effect" of creating a world with "love".

Your author also makes the contention in the very next sentence that "a world possessing both evil and love is superior to a world where neither is possible"

In the New Creation, there will be no possibility of "evil".

Thus, according to your author's argument, there will be no "capacity to choose" in the New Creation.

And, according to your author's argument, a world without the "capacity to choose" is incapable of "real" love and is inferior to the one we have.

Thus, if I am to hold to the position that "evil" will not be possible in the New Creation, I must conclude, according to your author's argument", that there will be no "real" love in the New Creation (since we don't have the possiblity to "choose" which is necessary for "real" love) and I must condlude that the New Creation will be inferior to this current creation.

Jean