The Eternal Manifestation of God’s Glory and Evil

In this Article I will make a strong case for why God from all eternity decreed that Evil and Sin would come into existence. Too many people jump for easy answers or assume that human freedom release’s God from accountability for its existence. If one is to have a true understanding of God and his purposes we must find our authority in his word the “Bible”. To accuse the Bible of being wrong or that it must be interpreted differently by a standard coming out of Greek philosophy or the traditions of Man is to place a standard higher than the Bible. This is what the Apostle Paul warns us about in Colossians 2;8, that being “not to be cheated through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ.” Therefore my defense shall be from the Bible.

The Eternal God

God the creator has lived from eternity being eternal. He is the first uncaused cause of every finite entity that exists. Before anything else existed God existed. God from eternity under no compulsion or need chose to create a universe into being according to his will and purposes. God is a God of purpose and infuses meaning to all that he does. Ephesians 1;11 tells us that God works all things according to the counsel of his will. So God by his eternal freedom created a universe. He then created finite being’s Angels, Adam and then Eve. These beings were good as God created them in the capacity of being good. But then some Angels fell lead by Lucifer and after that from the Serpent’s temptation to Eve, Adam and Eve then fell in to sin.

The problem that this next raise’s is where did this sin come from? Some say because Angels and Humans abused their free will, but I think the question goes a little deeper. Is sin and evil all due to the abuse of finite creatures abusing their freewill. Yes finite creatures did abuse their free will, but the infused sin nature that Adam and the rest of humanity has must of come from some where. The capacity to feel pain which guides us back to the good must have come from some where. The curse on creation must of come from some where. Romans 8; 20 says that the creation was subjected to futility, not willing, but because of Him (God) who subjected it in hope. Therefore the cause of the curse on creation came from God and so does our capacities and talents, and so does the gift of freedom (free will). Therefore if God is the creator of all things he is the cause of our free will, he has shaped us and fashioned us to act in certain ways.
The three questions we will next need to look at is ‘What is the nature of free will”, “What is God’s foreknowledge” and “Where does evil come from”.

The Nature of Free Will

Any one who has done any theological study would have come across the battle of understanding God’s sovereignty and Man’s freewill. Many Christians struggle over understanding how these two opposing concepts could both be true. But the truth is that they are, but the concept of freedom is not Libertarianism from Greek philosophy. If God is the cause of all finite things then he is the cause of our freedom.
Let us first establish that God is the first cause of all things.
Rev 4;11 “Our Lord and Our God, you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power because you created all things and by your will they exist and were created.”

Col 1;15-17 “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible or invisible, weather thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.”

The concept of Libertarianism is the view that all our actions are absolutely free. Some how in this view God is the cause of every finite thing, but our freedom is independent of any relationship with God’s will. Some how the “will” just comes into being from nothing and runs on it own.

John Frame in his book “The Doctrine of God” says
“Libertarian’s emphasize that our choices are not determined in advance by God. On their view, God may be the first cause of the universe in general, but in the sphere of human decisions, we are the first causes of our actions. We have a godlike independence when we make free choices.”


R.K McGregor in his book “No place for Sovereignty” says that,

“Consider the doctrine of creation, which all evangelical Arminians presumably believe. If a freewill exists at all, it is necessarily a created aspect of our human nature. But if created, it must have a complex set of qualities that are collectively its nature. That is, in order to exist as a temporal entity, it must consist of a set of properties that distinguish it from other things. If it has no such characteristics, it has no discernible nature-it would not exist. If it does have such properties, they determine its nature and thus its behavior, which would mean that it is not random at all. But if the will acts according to its own previously existing properties, its actions are to some degree being caused. The problem can not be avoided by merely insisting that God created the will with the property of freedom.”

McGregor is right, when he says that if the will was created with properties according to its created nature, then the will’s action will have been caused in some way. It is God who has given us our natures, our gifts, our talents, and our weaknesses. It is God who makes the blind, mute and wise. All our characters come from God as he is the potter who shapes the clay.

Our actions are not self-caused, but are predestined by God’s will in to our natures so we act them out freely what God wants us to do. We are not independent of the creation. We are responsible creatures because were bound by God laws of judgment. If we find ourselves in a world we did not create and are a part of it, then when we feel the responsibility in us, it is because of God’s fixed reality of his moral laws. It is because of these laws that cause us to feel responsible. This is the cause off our actions and also our environment influences us too. It is because of other objects, that we make choices, so our choices have causes.

The freedom, which the bible gives us, is an ethical relationship, not an innate ontological attribute. How could the “will’ be free from the creators hand, if all things come from God and God is the sovereign writer of all history. Freedom is a property created and shaped and we act out freely what we have been predestined to do by the will of God. The finite can not complain to the eternal God, as the finite could not get started without God’s plan of reality (Romans 9; 18-24).

Total freedom is in the hands of God. Does not the potter have the power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. The creature is never on the same level as the Creator.
What is God’s foreknowledge
In this section we will look at does scripture teach that God is sovereign over our actions. Then we will look at the objection that God’s sovereignty knows what we will do because of his foreknowledge. He has foreseen what free creatures are going to do.

But first I want to deal with the word “Foreknown” as many try to convert this word to mean “Foreseen”. The easiest way to study this is to answer these two questions,

1. Does God’s foreknowledge determine what he decrees or does God’s decree determines what he foreknows?
2. Does God foreknow because he foreordains or does he foreordain because he foreknows?

The answer is quite simple, if all who has existed from eternity was God, then everything created has been made and planned according to how God has decreed it (Willed it to be).

To often is the “God looked into the future and saw who would choose him statement made. But this is false as this would portray God as passively taking in knowledge from an out side source. Romans 9;11 tells us that election has been done before anyone had done anything good or bad or were even born.
But in eternity God was all there was, he was not influenced in his will. God decrees what he wants. Also the word foreknow does not mean to foresee. The verb speaks of a personal choice on the part of the subject. It refers to the choice to enter into a relationship with someone.

James White in his book “The Potters Freedom” says,

“It has always been recognized that God either bases his election and decrees on what he foresees in free actions of creatures or his decrees and election determines what takes place in time. In the first scenario, the creatures are by default the sovereigns of the universe, since their wills and actions are ultimate. God becomes a mere servant of the creatures, reacting rather than reigning.”

John Feinberg in his book “The many Faces of Evil” says that the word foreknowledge does not mean to for-see what will be done independently from God’s will.

“If incompatibilists claim that God knows the future, they must explain how God could know it. Hence with incompatiblism, there is no future to know, because knowledge requires true belief, but prior to an act’s occurrence, there is no true belief about it. Foreknowledge can be thought of along the lines of ordinary perception of an object. The difference here of course is that the object is a future, which doesn’t yet exist. Simple foreknowledge portrays God as making his decisions about what to do in our world after viewing the future.”

How God knows what will come to pass before it happen is because He has ordained them to come to pass according to his eternal will. The rejection of this understanding is why many have embraced Open Theism. This view holds that God cannot know what will happen until it has happened and then he must chose if he will step in. This is not the God of the Bible. Some try and get around it by saying God permits free creatures to sin to escape the charge for God ordaining the willing of sin. But this does not work either.

Robert Raymond quotes Gordon Clark as saying,
“Gordon H. Clark has noted that bare permission to do evil, as opposed to positive causality does not relive God of involvement in some sense in man’s sin, inasmuch as it was God, after all who made the world and man with the ability to sin in the first place …The idea of permission is possible only where there is an independent force (beyond the permitter’s control). But this is not the situation in the case of God and the universe. Nothing in the universe can be independent of the Omnipotent Creator, for in him we live and move and have our being. Therefore the idea of permission makes no sense when applied to God.”


Robert Raymond goes on to quote John Calvin,
“They have recourse to the distinction between will and permission. By this they would maintain that the wicked perish because God permits it, not because he so will’s. But why say “permission” unless it is because God so will’s? Still it is not likely that man brought destruction upon himself through himself, by God’s mere permission and without any ordaining. As if God did not establish the conditions in which he wills the chief of his creatures to be.”

The truth from these two thinkers is ‘what is the difference between permission and willing. Doesn’t God still have to will to permit or is that out of his control as well.

Can a Good God bring Evil into existence?
Some may object that if God is the cause of all things then we have no free will and God must be evil if he is the cause of it. The question of do we really have free will I will answer latter in this article. So can God who is good bring evil into existence? The answer is that yes he can. If God is all good then he has a morally good reason for evil’s existence. Now that does not mean “evil’ is good in it self. But if God can use evil for a higher manifestation of his goodness and glory then he is morally good.

Is God to be blamed for Evil?

Some may be quick to say then, So God must be the author of sin, who is responsible for it. But as Jay Adams says in his book “The Grand Demonstration”
“Decreeing the existence of sin makes God neither. God decreed water, dry land, mountains, birds of the air, but God is none of the above. Decreeing sin does not make him a sinner. He decreed the entire creation, but must be distinguished from it.”

God has decreed the existence of sin in such away that men themselves freely uncoered and in accord with their own natures become the author of their sin. Some might say that if God has predestined all men’s actions, he would be responsible for their sin. But God is not responsible for what they do, They are. That is the kind of people that God created; persons who would be responsible for their actions.


Jay Adams say’s again,

“To whom could God be held responsible? The thought is absurd. There is no one but himself, to whom God must answer, which means that he answers to no one. To be responsible to one’s self totally defeats the concept of accountability inherent in the word. There is no one who can call God on the carpet. He does as he pleases, and he is pleased with what he does. Surely God is not responsible to us!”

Because God is the highest standard and the only reference to what can be good and perfect (God’s nature). If this is what God has willed, that second causes be established by his first cause, then this is not evil. We have to get it in to our heads that the Creator is not on the same level as the creature. It is God’s sovereignty that establishes human freedom.

“Is God the cause of Evil”?

If we mean by “Did God decree that evil would exist in humans and in nature” the answer is “YES”. The Bible gives many verses that clearly detail this point.

The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?" (Exodus 4:11)

Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:37-38)

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)
When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it? (Amos 3:6)

“Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity (Job 2; 10)

The Biblical notion of Freedom

The Bible nowhere suggests that men are free from God’s decretive will or providential governance. It teaches that God’s purposes and his providential execution of his eternal purpose determine all things. As scriptures reveals,

The LORD works out everything for his own ends – even the wicked for a day of disaster. (Proverbs 16:4)
In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps
. (Proverbs 16:9)

A man's steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way? (Proverbs 20:24)

The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases. (Proverbs 21:1)

Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed. (Job 14:5)

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?" (Daniel 4:35)

For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13)

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." (James 4:13-15)

If God has decreed all that comes to pass, and if God, by his most holy, and powerful providence, governs all his creatures and all their actions in order to accomplish his own holy ends, how is one to understand all this so that God is not made the author of sin and man is left responsible?

For us to be biblical, it is important first to say again that God has ordained whatever comes to pass. God is the sole ultimate “First cause” of all things. The reason why God is not to blame for evil is because God has decreed that all things will come to pass according to the nature of second causes. This means that God is the cause of the second cause, but he has decreed that his judgments will be charged to the second cause.

Far from God’s decree violating the will of the creature or taking away his liberty or contingency, God’s decree establishes that what they do they do freely.
Some may not like this, but it is biblical and it is what Paul meant in Romans 9 when he said about the second cause being established by the first cause (God). The Apostle Paul was answering the question that people were asking, that being, Why God would blame Pharaoh if he was doing what God willed him to do,


Paul replied,
“You will say to me then, Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his Will? . But indeed O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor.” (Rom. 9;18-21)

The fact is, God finds fault with Pharaoh because as a created creature he is responsible for his actions, Pharaoh acted out freely what he was created to do according to God’s will. The simple logic is that there has to be a cause for the creation and a plan and destiny for this formed matter to act out. Rational matter has to come into being following a rational plan!

We may not like the concept, because it is to close to thinking we are robots, but scripture compares us to simple potter’s clay,

“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, What are you making? Does your work say, He has no hands? Woe to him who says to his father, What have you begotten? Or to his Mother, What have you brought to birth? This is what the Lord says, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker; Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands.” (Isa 45;9-11)

“But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor” (Rom 9;21-22)

“But now, O Lord, You are our Father, we are the clay, and you our potter and all of us are the work of your hand.” (Isa 64;8)

Can Compatilbilism answer the objection from the book of James, which says God, tempts know one to do evil?

“Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown brings forth death.” (James 1;13-15)

I believe Compatilbilism can correspond to this objection,

1. God is the first cause of all things according to the counsel of his will (Eph 1;11).
2. Once God has created his creatures, they act out their own desires, as long as there is no force outside their will forcing them against their desires, they are acting freely.
3. God does not tempt anyone, as his causing was down outside the reality of the created world play. The Creator must bring the creation into existence!
4. God cannot be tempted by evil, God works all things for good, even acts that are evil in them selves (Gen 50;20). Also God cannot be tempted by evil as he is eternally perfect and Holy.

The Bible makes it very clear that God is sovereign and has created all things and owns all things, and causes all things. By his eternal power and providence God sustains all things, this includes his creation, human history, human, lives, human decisions and human sins.

Is creation a mockery, No but it is a creation!

If God is the first cause of all things because he is the only eternal uncaused being and creator does that mean that creation is a mockery. The answer to this is No! But it is a creation. A creation is a story told by an author who some how stands out side of it and also comes into his own story. Creation is a shadow of ultimate reality.
Are we just meaningless robots. The person who makes this charge must demonstrate that there is a robot that is like humans, that is conscious, rational, has a soul that feels and is moved by deep emotions of love and sorrow. Humanity is the one thing that science will never be able to reduce to just being computers. Science will never take impersonal chemicals and produce humans, therefore the charge that we are robots fails. We do have freedom but it is not an irrational uncaused fate driven by chance.

Why God decreed evil?

Before we answer this question I want us to understand what sin is. Sin is a corrupting power. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. Sin is wrong choice, but it is also a power that possesses humans and creation. If it is a power or an entity or a relationship with a standard it is something. Therefore it has to be created and Col 1;15-17 says clearly that as God, Christ, he created all things by Him and through Him and for Him. So if sin and evil are something, then God decreed it and created it into being… it came through Him and for Him. That fact that it says “For Him” shows that God has a purpose for it. The reason why God decreed the existence of evil into being was that its existence would manifest the fullness of God’s attributes. His creation is a canvass for him to manifest his full nature to reflect his glory. That is manifesting and demonstrating his unconditional Love, Mercy, Patience, Forgiveness and Justice and Wrath. But the ultimate reason why God decreed sin was that the manifestation of “Grace” is greater than a love that just loves love. Creation exists to display his infinite beauty and immeasurable worth. He created the universe good but human freedom missed the mark and fell. It is only in our weaknesses and tribulations that we can experience and demonstrate God’s loving attributes back to people and taste their power.
The manifestation of Christ’s Grace and Glory is worth more, treating people infinitely better than they deserve, giving himself for the everlasting joy of the worst sinner who will have him as their highest treasure.

Why didn’t God Wipe out Satan the day he fell?

If half our problems in this world are due to Satan inflicting us and tempting us to sin, why didn’t God wipe him out the day he fell. I mean God has the power to tell the wind what to do and calm storms by a word and also to drive out demons, why didn’t he just bind Satan up and throw him in the lake of fire. That because God’s waits with his longsuffering holding Satan on his leash to display the fullness of Christ’s Glory. The reason why God is longsuffering is He will be honored and more deeply appreciated and loved in the end because he defeats Satan and all evil powers through his longsuffering, patience, humility, servanthood, suffering and decisively through his own death. A single sudden and infinitely holy display of power to destroy Satan immediately after his fall would have been a glorious display of power and righteousness. But it would not have been the fullest possible display of all the glories in the Son and the Father. The Death of Christ on the cross was the greatest murder, but it served to show the greatest glory of Christ and obtain the sin conquering gift of God’s grace. God did not just over come evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst to evil.
As Christ’s church is his body, so does his church have to demonstrate to the universe the defeating of evil through grace and love to others, bearing all things.
An undeserved love (grace) which counts no wrongs against those who hate is greater to manifest than a love that just loves those that love.
Heaven and Hell
There is a time coming when final judgement will come to the earth. It will be a time of ultimate Glory and Justice. For those who have endured their redemption struggle’s and sufferings, to grow in wisdom and character to manifest God loving heart. There reward of holding on to their faith though Gods’ grace will be completed and they will shine in perfection in the unconditional love of eternal Love, where there is no pain and suffering or tears or death. God will have demonstrated his glory through a body of people who have overcome, through humbleness and serving for the love of other.
Either way we look at the subject of Hell it does not make it any easier to understand it. Even if we look at Hell from a libertarianism view. Hell is still real and eternal. It is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth and disgrace and everlasting contempt. The best good is to be with God, but the worst evil is to have to accept the absence of God.

Marilyn Adams says, that the unbelievers of this world find it hard to accept that the absence of God can be so bad, but that is because,

“The whole earth is full of the glory of God. When we appreciate a beautiful mountain scene or immerse ourselves in Mozart or are lost in a Cezanne painting, we are experiencing God shining through the mask of his creatures. When humans share deep, satisfying intimacy, part of the joy they taste is God in the middle of it. And this is so whether or not he is recognized there. Since ordinary human experience is thus “God infested”, we are in no position to imagine the horror of a creation in which he was entirely hidden from view”

Hell is the absence of God’s loving attributes, it is a place where evil and sin will serve under God’s Justice and Wrath for eternity. God ultimate Justice will shine from eternity to eternity. Some may say how can finite creatures suffer an eternal punishment. The answer is because in Hell they don’t stop sinning, they still have their sinful nature. The only good thing that I can see (if I can even call it good) for a sinner in Hell is that The Bible does teach that there are degrees of punishments. So maybe for many their punishment may be bad, but not as bad as others.

Some May Reject This
For many and even for my self thinking about Hell spins my mind and soul around, but God the creator is the Judge of the earth. We must remember that everything that exists from the moment of creation exists by Grace. God owes know one anything and the fact that we are in heaven is because of his Grace. Some might say well why didn’t God give people real choices, he did (Biblical Freedom). But even if Libertarianism was true and people believed because the truth was that obvious, people would still complain that God made some with minds that could not understand it. If God had then created people with the same mind power so that all people understood, would people have a true choice? If I was to hold a gun to your head (symbolizing an offer) and say come or you will be in pain for eternity, what will you do? Most rational people would come, they would have no other choice. It is a choice that is imposed so strongly, that many would just take it, there is no motive of love, but just safety. This universe has been set up to neutralize any pride or deception in the hearts of people. But then again who say’s that I have the final word or answer to the problem!