I've had these same thoughts but with very different conclusions. Nothing can be revealed without the Holy Spirit. For my friends like her, I pray for them. I've tried to reason, but some of them just want to not believe in a loving God. They say they are "seeking" but it just doesn't seem like they are genuine. I could be wrong though. I don't want to be too harsh.

I know others will answer better, by I'll offer my two cents.
On original sin: First, she has committed more than just original sin. But besides that, I think a good definition of sin is doing anything that is not to the glory of God, whether it is a good thing or not. Someone who feeds the hungry because they feel guilty is not doing it for the right reasons. We should be feeding the hungry because we love God and an overflow of that love is that we love people.
She's right that she isn't born free. She was born a slave to sin. Are any slaves free? By definition, no. If there was an actual physical lot where slaves were held and all they had to do was ask Jesus to let them off the lot to be free, then they would continue to be on that lot until they asked. Right? All analogies fall short at some point and I know this one was crude at best.

On morality: Why would God create a creation that was forced to love him? By creating creatures with an option to love him, this automatically makes the option available to not love him. Is it fair that God created some people who he knew would be murderers and rapers and liars etc? God created people. Those people were given free-will. He didn't create their sin. They had options and they chose to remain in their evilness.

On the unrelated note: God is love. The trinity knows what love is. God loved so much that he wanted others to experience how truly loving and amazing he is. This would be considered arrogant unless it were true. As a Christian, of course, I think it is true that God is truly the most amazing thing ever. Even if I drink and amazing drink at Starbucks, I want everyone else to be able to drink it too. God is so amazing and created people to enjoy himself with him. For people who don't think God is so amazing, they don't know him and will think this is foolishness. As far as credit and blame, Jesus says that when a servant does what she should, she doesn't get credit (Luke 17:9). But when a servant does what she should not do, she is blamed.

On salvation: God did not create people to do evil. He created people who he knew would do evil, though. This goes back to earlier points.

well, anyway, you asked for thoughts and that's just what was off the top of my head when I read her questions.

1. Doesn't the idea that we are born in sin really more mean that we are going to sin more so than we are corrupted before we exist? Therefore you are being held responsible for the things you do because you decided to do them.
2. I don't really understand why she feels that God can't be omniscient because we have free will. That part doesn't make sense to me. Just because God knows what we're going to do doesn't mean He made us do it, but it also doesn't mean He doesn't know what choices we will make. (Maybe she doesn't understand that God is outside of time and space? )As to why God would want relationship with man, I think we are in a lot of ways, object lessons to Satan. In that we have less information than he did, yet some of us still choose God. I think that's why he hates us so much. He had all the info and chose rebellion, we have so much less info and some of us choose to believe God. I know that the Calvinist here will have issues with that, but there ya go.
3. And as to creating people who will reject truth, again we get into the fact that everyone has that choice. Just because they make that choice doesn't take away from the fact that God loves them and provided a path that wouldn't require them to make that choice. That's why it's choice.
I understand why she says resolution 1 - that if determinism were true it's hard to get around the fact that God is at least responsible for evil because in that resolution He MAKES evil happen therefore is evil - but I can't quite figure out WHY she thinks 2 follows and obviously I don't believe 3. I think she needs another one: We are free to choose, God is omniscient and knows exactly what we will choose and allows us that choice because He's God and doesn't need to force anyone to choose Him.

Bless her. Once she works through her questions, may she be closer to God than ever before. Her questions will take her awhile, if she decides to pursue the truth fully.

I hope you don't mind too much if I put her questions in an order more suited to explaining the answers.

Her tangent is where I'd want to start: "Mildly unrelated: Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God want relationships with people? this seems to be some sort of desperately lonely god or people who decided to raise themselves up to be friends of God."

I think she has reasoned from the characteristics "all-powerful, all-knowing" to the idea that God is -- or even should be -- snooty and arrogant. She overlooks the possibility that God is by nature humble and by nature loving. When God determined himself to be creator, he determined that He would love the world. Love is a joyful thing, and in creation he multiplied the goodness that existed by creating. I suspect the ultimate reason for creation is that creation is good, and life is worth living. Genesis implies that God created humanity in order to bless us: it's the first thing he does after he creates us.

On original sin: I hope to start with common ground: I have never met anyone who did not have (as she says) "tendencies" to sin. I sure have my "tendencies". "To err is human" -- so I'm sure she does too. Most of us recognize that struggle inside ourselves. Some people struggle with pride and arrogance and vanity (whether it's about beauty or intellect or any other thing in which we are gifted), some struggle with the assumption of superiority over others, some struggle against coldness and do not recognize the value of love, some struggle with the greed for recognition and admiration. Some use what gifts they have to dominate others rather than help others. The list goes on.

I think it's a little bit of a red herring to say if we have "tendencies" we're acting under compulsion. Do we always act on our tendencies? It seems not, so it's not quite compulsion. There's a lot to say on this, but I'll start here: to reason from "tendencies" to "compulsion" is oversimplifying.

The real question of original sin is: Am I basically good? And the follow-up question she asks is: Is God basically good? Because of Christ, I believe that God is good and that we are created to be like him, good; for this reason Christ came into this world to restore us and transform us to be like God again. We've already talked about our "tendencies" for various kinds of evil; Christ intends to save us from that so that we can cling tight to God and answer truthfully that, thanks be to God, we are again becoming good.

As far as God picking certain people not to exist, I'm going to tell you a true story that I'm not proud of: just a few generations back in my family, one of my ancestors was a murderer. Should God have arranged things so that he never existed? But then my great-grandmother would never have been born, and my grandfather would never have been born, and my aunt and mother would never have been born, and my brother and I would never have been born, and so on for all the generations that will come after us. When it comes to her suggestion to pick people who should never have existed, I'm not saying "separating good from evil isn't simple" -- I'm saying "separating good from evil isn't always possible" -- because good and evil can be inside the same person. It is with me; I've done things I regret. Most people have. So it may be that God, if omniscient, knows more than us about the interplay between good and evil, and whether or not a person should have ever been born. If she's a sci-fi fan at all, she may have thought about the complexities of changing things, and how there may be unintended consequences of what she suggests as a solution for God.

On salvation -- on whether God should have created people who will reject him (and truth), remember my great-great grandfather the murderer, without whom several generations of my family would not exist. On salvation itself: it is the blessing of God through Christ Jesus because of his love for us. God created us for good not for evil; he calls all of us.

Her possible resolutions are missing something:
4) She takes at least a beginner's course (Theology 101, however it's called where she is) before deciding she has considered all the possibilities.
5) If she's not quite ready to pursue her answers that far, then maybe she could read Thomas Aquinas. Now, I offer this last with some hesitation because Aquinas shares some of the same assumptions (possibly mistaken assumptions) that she does, and in that sense there are areas where Aquinas cannot help her. But on the other hand, it may be helpful to her to have someone who shares some of those assumptions from the outset. And there's the advantage that Summa Theologica is available online ...

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Take care & God bless
Anne / WF

I do think that part of the answer is simple, though it is not immediately satisfying.

I believe that we do come to a point where we realize that God's glory is the preeminent value - not our freedom, and not even our eternal destinies.

It is very natural for me to be more apt to ponder my own freedom and my own eternal destiny, and to shape my view of God around those things.

As has been alluded to here, I think we come a lot closer to "understanding" when we subjugate our desires for freedom and eternal security to a desire for God to be glorified. When we "die" to the very core things that we want and replace them with what God wants, we live.

Too much to try to give coherent answers here to all the questions she raises.

On God and relationship, I think trinitarianism is vital. The concept that relationship is inherent in God's very nature, and that an eternal relationship/fellowship of love is what/who is at the heart of the entire universe, sets the stage for talking about God's desire for relationship with people. In the words of Charles Williams, non-trinitarian monotheists "deny love to God except by means of his creation."

Has she read much/any C.S. Lewis? He attempts to address many of the questions she raises.

I might recommend Keller's "The Reason for God" ahead of even Lewis, for someone like her.

1) Original sin: I think Rand summed this one up nicely. how can I be corrupted before I exist? If that is the case - that I'm born guilty or have "tendencies," then I am not free. If that is determined by outside forces, I am not free. If I am not free, but merely acting under compulsion, how can I just be held responsible for anything I do, good or bad?

It is a common error to assume original sin to be some kind of stain on the soul. On the contrary, original sin is actually the absence of God in a soul.
Secondly, being born with original sin does not mean, as --- implies, that it is our natural state anymore than the fact that I’m born blind means that the human species is blind. It is not, which consequently means that I can be freed from it.


2) Morality: certain moral issues arise when considering the idea of creation. If God is all-knowing, he would know what we would do, whether he determines it or not, through that knowledge he could (should?) select certain people to exist or not exist. In this sense, God would have to be not omniscient (can he be god w/o omniscience?) or evil, not merely by "omission" but by actively creating people he knows will do evil. For instance, inventors of weapons. If the latter, there is no reason to worship him except maybe fear. If the former, why is he God? though, the lack of omniscience could be a product of pure freedom, in which case, I suppose that could work or it could work depending on whether or not the future exists.


The tendency here is to mistake God’s omniscience with an obligation to act or not to act. So, then, let’s consider the issue of obligation.
We always ask why God allows evil? The simple answer, actually, is that he allows it because he can draw good out of it, which shows more clearly that he is equal to the task. Look at the story of Job, St Paul, St Augustine and even the sacrifice of Our Lord, which led to his glorification.
When we want to accuse God of allowing suffering, we should remember that he has not (in a sense) exempted himself from it either, for he didn’t spare his only son.

Mildly unrelated: Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God want relationships with people? this seems to be some sort of desperately lonely god or people who decided to raise themselves up to be friends of God. The first seems illogical, the second, petty. however, this only deals with God's morality, what of that of the people? In many cases, it would seem to be irrelevant: God picked them to do certain things [leibniz: best possible world] and therefore they deserve no credit or blame.

It’s not that God wants a relationship with us. It’s actually the other way round: WE need a relationship with God. The reason is simple. All God’s creation glorify him: from the hard stone to the gurgling stream, for the exploding bomb to the man-eating lion. They glorify God because they continue to obey the laws of physics, chemistry and biology which he instituted, however nobly or ignoble the actions to which they are used. They glorify God because there is no higher purpose to which they could have been created. These are creations without life, or where they possess life, without intellect. As creatures with intelligence, then, we glorify him not just by being, but with our freely given love. Because there is no higher purpose for our existence. Failure to do this leads to unhappiness. As St Augustine says, “You have made us for yourself, o Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

In other words, God is by necessity the sun around which we all revolve.


3) Salvation: how can a moral, just, omniscient God create people who will reject his truth? Isn't that the best definition of evil - rejection of truth? Furthermore, how can he punish them if he created them to do just that? it doesn't make sense. How would he pick those who would go with him, those he would call?


It is true he could have chosen not to create people who would reject his truth, yet he chose to create them and let them make their choice. In this, God’s love is shown in its fullness, for ins spite of their wickedness, he has still given life to the wicked, just as he chooses not to destroy them.
Here, I think you underestimate the power of the gift of free will which has been given us by God.
I’m certain the same people who make Case 3- the very people who claim they represent the freedom to choose- will accuse God of greater tyranny if he doesn’t give them even the opportunity to breathe his oxygen and reject him.

Have done my best. Hope it helps.

All - great stuff! Seriously - much appreciated!

john piper says that our corrupted nature, i.e., the sin of adam, is our biggest problem. the fact that it's such a huge philosophical stumbling block to individualistic western culture (that we are born sinners) says more about us than the concept itself. scripture presents original sin, the connectedness of humanity under adam, the absolute sovereignty of god in electing whom he pleases (romans 9:14-23), and the atoning work of christ (the second adam) in very straightforward terms.

we insist on viewing ourselves as "free" when scripture says we are "slaves to sin" prior to our being saved.