I often hear that we are free because God created us from nothing as actual beings. Since we are created, actual beings, we must act. Our actuality dictates it.
Yet before we act, we must choose between good and evil (the Free Will Doctrine).
I also frequently hear that the only way a perfect omnigod could create authentically free beings with the potential to choose love, reason, and goodness was to grant them the possibility of choosing error, sin, evil, and death.
If that possibility to choose evil were not present, we would not really be free because the lack of a choice for evil amounts to a logical contradiction, like a married bachelor or a four-sided triangle.
Put another way, to make us authentically free actual creatures, omnigod had to allow for the possibility of evil choices and actions; otherwise, our freedom would not be really free.
Whenever I hear such arguments, I can’t help but wonder why said omnigod did not simply create authentically free beings who always freely choose love, reason, and goodness.
Such creatures would still be free agents in the sense that they would be performing acts. They would not be hammers. Nor would they be push-button automatons or slaves.
They would be free agents liberated from the burden of having to ponder good and evil choices.
The above does not entail that they would be actualized beings that possess all possible knowledge. They could still learn.
Instead of negative learning, their lives would be filled with nothing but positive learning. All change would be nourishing, life-affirming change. They would grow continuously in love and goodness.
So, why didn’t an all-knowing, all-seeing, all powerful omnigod create such actual creatures?
The common rebuttal states that omnigod could not create such creatures because they would be perfect in the same way he is, and perfection cannot create perfection; hence, imperfect but still free actual creatures.
However, that doesn’t really fly. Aside from definitional games involving the word “perfection”, there is nothing inherently illogical in creating free agents who lack the possibility for evil choices — and since omnigod can do anything logically possible, he should have been able to create a world brimming with free agents who did not err and always chose good.
The potential to choose evil is not indicative of freedom, nor does it define freedom. Quite the contrary. It signifies slavery of the worst kind.
Another common rebuttal is that the omnigod did create such “good” beings to start with, but Adam and Eve disobeyed God, ate the forbidden fruit, and caused the Fall.
Okay, but why did omnigod tempt them with his warning not to eat from the tree?
Tempt them? Wait a minute, wasn’t it Satan who tempted them? God commanded them not to eat from it.
Yes, but Satan’s temptation may have been far less enticing had it not been preceded by God’s explicit command to avoid the evil choice.
In fact, you could argue that Adam and Eve may have remained blissfully unaware of the existence of the forbidden fruit had omnigod not drawn their attention to it in such an explicit manner.
So, why did omnigod reveal the choice for evil to them?
And on the matter of evil choices, where does the “stuff” for such choices originate?
If everything was created ex nihilo, then God not only created us, but he also created our freedom — defined mainly as the potential to choose evil — and the conditions for all of our choices and actions, including, I assume, the conditions for evil choices.
Of course, the very definition of omnigod as perfectly good negates the possibility for creating such conditions, yet the conditions are there. And let's not get into non-human kinds of evil like natural disasters and disease. Whatever causes those, it certainly couldn’t be omnigod, that’s for sure.
Now, I understand that all of the above can be explained in all sorts of intricate and acrobatic ways . . .
No, let me back that up.
The very fact that much of the above requires intricacy and acrobatics to make sense is all I need to know.
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