However, I do not enshrine EVERYTHING they say into a credal point which must be defended at all costs....scripture I will defend at all costs
Nor do I. You know this.
Some of your heros indulged in a great deal of speculation....
While I do find some of the past divines of the church and others worthwhile, none would be my "hero". That some are gifted as teachers, per Scripture, obliges us to pay attention to them, not make them our regula fidei.
Can you point me to anyone within our tradition that echoes your position? I would like to read their efforts.
If there is no positive evil then there is no positive good....is that what you will have? it is the very doctrine of the lattitudinarians, the libertines.
Not sure how this bears on the matter. "Positive" is not some ontological category.
Now I say there is God and then there is everything which God created, I deny that they have any existence "in their own right" they have existence insofar as God allows them.
That includes angels fallen or elect, of Satan, Lucifer, it is said "until sin was found in him"
I was afraid when I wrote "in their own right" you would misunderstand. I was infelicitous in my choice of words. I agree with you here. My only point was that these are actual entities. They have ontological being. You cannot say the same about evil.
But evil was already in existence, and it was God who planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden.
It is there, it is in the midst, at the heart of creation.
The tree was not evil, nor good. It was a tree with no special properties apart from being set apart by God for holy use. The partaking of it by Adam and Eve gave them knowledge of their sinful act, and the evil consequences therein. The tree can be no more evil or good than a can of gasoline. It is the use made of the thing by moral agents that comes good or evil consequences.
The knowledge of good and evil, has a distinct meaning in the Old Testament. It refers to the ability to determine for one's self what is good and evil, what is helpful and harmful. In 1 Kings 3:9 Solomon prays for it so he can rule well. In Deuteronomy 1:39 little children don't have it yet. In 2 Samuel 19:35 senile people have lost it (Note: it is translated "discern between good and evil," but when we look at the Hebrew word behind "discern", it is the very same word as used in Gen 3:5 to mean "knowing" [good and evil]. So, there is no difference between the two.)
In fact, both Trees were sacramental in nature; but as with later sacraments, the two sacraments functioned differently. Concerning Gen.2:15-17, Keil & Delitzsch brilliantly summarize as respects the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (on Gen.2:15-17):
The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil; and, according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accomplished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming eventually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntary resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good.
By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e., to one in accordance with his own likeness to God. He would have detected the evil in the approaching tempter; but instead of yielding to it, he would have resisted it, and thus have made good his own property acquired with consciousness and of his own free-will, and in this way by proper self-determination would gradually have advanced to the possession of the truest liberty. But as he failed to keep this divinely appointed way, and ate the forbidden fruit in opposition to the command of God, the power imparted by God to the fruit was manifested in a different way. He learned the difference between good and evil from his own guilty experience, and by receiving the evil into his own soul, fell a victim to the threatened death. Thus through his own fault the tree, which should have helped him to attain true freedom, brought nothing but the sham liberty of sin, and with it death, and that without any demoniacal power of destruction being conjured into the tree itself, or any fatal poison being hidden in its fruit.
You have claimed
a great void and darkness covered the face of the deep represent evil. The initial description of the earth as being without form and void (Gen. 1:2) , a phrase repeated within the OT only in Jer. 4: 23, implies that it lacked order and content. This expression describes the world before the creation of life, before there was even a background or context in which life could flourish. The reference to
darkness … over the face of the deep points to the absence of light. This initial state will be transformed by God’s creative activity: the Spirit of God was hovering. I have heard of some who claim this verse shows that the earth is being remade following some cosmic battle between good and evil forces. I hope you are not drawing upon this view for your assertion.
Of course I think I am right...you can defeat me with scripture
This is not some competition where one is defeated. I am only hoping to show you the plain meaning of things. See above and note that evil and sin are never considered, in Scripture, as "things" or "not things." They are considered to be actions and consequences. Per the full counsel of Scripture evil is relational, not material.
AMR
