Major
Psalm 115:3 .........
"Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases."
And that includes that it pleases Him that some creatures (some orders of angels and humans) have a will of their own (otherwise Satan did not rebel God made him do it and thus God is the author of all evil and Adam and Eve did not fall thus invoking the consequence of spiritual death but rather they did as God willed against His own command to NOT do this)
Ephesians 1:11 ........
"In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
And it was His purpose that after He initiates we must rightly respond which was laid out in the verses Calvin ALWAYS avoided (13 and 14) which is Paul’s summary/conclusion regarding the previous 7 or 8 verses.
Isaiah 45:7 ..........
"I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord, who does all these things."
When a volcano erupts and kills 1,000 people or so and everyone is running about and there is much destruction we call it chaos and judge this event as something evil but it is not. It is simply something natural that God made into the world so that it would function in such a way to optimize the best for life for the maximum number of persons. So why do people always go and rebuild cities at the feet of volcanoes? I cannot figure that one out. Anyway, we may call this event evil, but God would call IT good, because if there were no volcanoes relieving the building pressures within the earth the whole planet would explode and then we all would be dead.
Now next we must look first at the context of Isaiah 45:7 and then clarify a couple of the words. The chapter is speaking about the saving and restoration of Israel. Jeremiah 25 tells us about the coming 70 year captivity under Babylon. One year for each of the 70 Sabbath years they ignored during the 490 years of idolatrous Kings. Isaiah here alludes to this captivity and then tells us that when the time was right, the Lord would raise up Cyrus the Persian (even naming him 200 years before he was born) to rescue them and send them back to the land. Verses 7-9 is actually describing the fact that the Lord is going to engineer all the circumstances from inviting Nebuchadnezzar to his defeat under Cyrus and all for His purpose (Isaiah 45:13).
Now for the words. The word the used for "create" in Isaiah’s passage is not translated correctly. Create is "bara" (to call forth from nothingness) and this word is "
yatzar" or "make" (to form or give form to) and so is saying that the Lord,
from the circumstances and according to the personalities of these people and these two men (hence in His foreknowledge), will bring His final intent to pass. Yes, He works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and He continually had warned them that the wages due for sin is death. For example, if you jump off a skyscraper without a net, will you not plummet into sidewalk splat? Sin, or transgression of the law, is like the consequence of transgressing gravity or any other immutable law. You know you should not do it and lovingly someone has taught you “Thou shalt not jump off the skyscrapper" but in our self will we will not have anyone telling us what to do and we jump anyhoo (the consequence of the fall is in the desire to be lord of our own life we do what is right in our own eyes)! So the children of Israel had transgressed the law (just as immutable as gravity) and their demise was inevitable. Nebi was going crazy to take over the world anyway. Only this time the Lord was not going to intervene, in fact He encourages Nebi to conquer them using those circumstances and conditions which were already present...
Next, the word for “evil” here is actually not speaking of moral or spiritual evil (and most translations bear this out...especially the Masoretic), it is speaking of sorrow and disaster as opposed to shalom or peaceful wellbeing (as you have said “calamity”).
These continuously rebellious idolatrous Israelites would receive the consequence of their willful actions in violation of God's immutable laws. See the warning of love detailed in Deuteronomy 28. So God is not saying He is the originator of evil, He is
allowing the disaster that is about to come upon them by simply not doing anything to stop it. He will not look upon them, after all this time (many centuries), with mercy and grace. In Jeremiah, He tells the prophet
not to even pray for this people He will not listen. He has given them grace on top of grace over and over and they mock His effort to bless and take all the glory and live a life of debauchery....this is "the arm of the Lord" you do not want to experience. But in the end (again in His foreknowledge) this will cause them to return unto Him and seek Him, and then, He will save them. So it is not that
He created "evil" because evil is not a thing in and of itself, it is simply the absence of all good (ultimately Him), just as cold does not really exist but as the absence of heat and darkness the absence of light.
If evil is God’s will and
then He commands us to be against it and overcome it, by logical extension God would be commanding us to be opposed to Him and violate His will (a self -negating scenario for God is a logical absurdity).
God alone saves (no one but God has this power or ability, the option is totally His to save whoever He wants to save OWING NO ONE ANYTHING FOR ALL HAVE SINNED…it is totally by grace)…He has Sovereignly determined to require the appropriate response on man’s part to be the criteria (though faith...John 1:12)…God always initiates...all commands to
turn, believe, repent, accept, receive, etc., are in the
imperative mood which means the capability to do so exists...God speaks or motivates in the spirit and then God requires this of man’s free will just as Augustine taught, but John Calvin ignored. He has sovereignly determined this to be His way with and for mankind.
In His love
Paul
