Why did God Create us Knowing We Would Sin?

In this post, I want to address—as concisely as I can—why God would create us knowing we would sin? Usually, the question is framed like this: if God knew we would sin before he created us, and created us anyway, then we were set up, as it were, to fail. God’s act of creation ensured that we would fail. And then God gets to swoop in and rescue us, with God being the good guy and us being the bad guy—when we were guaranteed to fail in the act of creation (since God knew we would before creating us).

So how do we address this?

There are really two questions, to my mind anyway, to address here when this question gets asked:

1.) Is it fair for God to judge us given that he created us knowing we would fail?

2.) Why would God do this—essentially ensuring the Fall in the act of creation?

We need to disentangle these questions since they have very different answers and mutually clarify each other.

Is it fair for God to judge us knowing we would fall?

First, we need to unambiguously state that God is not the author of sin (the direct or culpable cause), even though he created the world knowing it would happen. How is this the case?

We can give a rough analogy for how this might happen. Suppose a teacher overhears her student, Timmy, is going to cheat on the next quiz she will give. She gives the quiz anyway, deciding that she will not stop Timmy from cheating. In this scenario, the teacher brings about the conditions in which Timmy will cheat and decides that she won’t stop Timmy (thereby deciding that the event of Timmy-cheating-on-the-test will occur); and yet, it cannot be said that the teacher made Timmy to cheat. Timmy cannot say to the teacher “I only cheated because you decided that my cheating would be”, as that would be absurd.

Even if the teacher received a blast of foreknowledge, such that she knew Timmy would cheat if given the quiz, giving the quiz is not therefore made the cause of Timmy cheating. Timmy can never pawn off his choice to cheat, claiming he was caught up in a grave misfortunate. So he is still fully culpable, since sheer foreknowledge that an action will occur does not cause that action to occur.

(To put it in more technical terms, if God foreknows x will happen, and a teacher later participates in that foreknowledge and comes to infallibly foreknow x will happen, the foreknowledge itself isn’t the cause of x happening in either case)

But, I’ve heard it replied, didn’t God create the nature of the creature? And so doesn’t that relevantly differentiate God from the teacher in this scenario? I don’t think it does. Only if one assumes that one’s nature determines their choices would it differentiate God from the teacher. God did cause the nature (humanity) to be instantiated in any given human. That doesn’t mean, however, that he therefore causally determined all the choices a creature might make. Free will, rather, is the ability to make a choice that isn’t causally determined by external factors. Those external factors may be necessary conditions for your choice, but they are not sufficient.

Okay, while that establishes creaturely culpability, it still doesn’t address the question of why God would do this. In the scenario above, for instance, suppose the teacher gave the quiz foreknowing Timmy would cheat, get expelled, and then become a degenerate member of society. Why would she do this?

Why Did God Create the World?

Suppose the teacher knew that, although Timmy would cheat, this would lead to a ripple effect. Other students would be inspired to not cheat, and some would go on to become doctors that then eliminated AIDS, cancer, etcetera. She would have a justified reason to bring it about that Timmy would cheat, even though she was not the cause of Timmy cheating. The analogue, here, is that even though God gave something to creatures he knew creatures would abuse, that doesn’t mean that such foreknowledge itself is the cause of their cheating. The teacher, in other words, would be justified in giving something to a student she knew the student would abuse if she saw some overriding good come out of it.

That we may permit evils we know will happen for some overriding good is not an appeal to consequentialism, since I am not saying that the overriding good is the sole justificatory factor for moral action. There is a moral difference between stealing $5 from someone because you know it will ripple out and bring about overriding goods (maybe you see it will set off a chain in history that will end AIDS, cancer, etcetera), and simply permitting it to happen. Rather, I’m drawing a moral principle from moral experience and then applying it (e.g. when there is an overriding, worthwhile good, it is permissible to permit evils necessary to the realization of that good).

So, why did God create the world knowing precisely what would happen? If we permit that axiom in human moral experience—that it is permissible to permit an evil, but not do that evil, if it is required for the realization of an overarching good—then it would seem to be applicable to the Source of all moral reality.

Hence, the initial answer is something like this: God created the world knowing that evils would come of it because those evils would lead to the realization of worthwhile goods, the realization of which were not possible apart from the permission of those evils.

Now, so far, I’ve said things the vast, vast majority of Christians could agree on. Even if I haven’t defined what those overarching goods are, that doesn’t actually show that an omniscient God could have no idea of such goods.

But, given that I write from within a particular tradition—even a particular tradition within Anglicanism (a broadly Reformed-Augustinian form of Anglicanism), I’m happy to offer a more particular answer.

Reformed-Augustinianism: God Created the World to display the divine nature

Whenever God does some action for some purpose (or some end), presumably God seeks that end because he deems it a good end to seek. If God moves me to serve my neighbor, it’s presumably because he thinks it a good thing to establish in the world that I would serve my neighbor.

But what, exactly, does it mean for God to consider some end “good”? How does God adjudicate a certain end as “good”? If God’s own being is the source and summit of all goodness, that means that anything is “good” just insofar as it conforms to God’s nature. Just as sunlight is only “sunny” insofar as it communicates something of the sun, so anything in this world is good only insofar as it communicates the divine nature. And hence, if God adjudicates a certain end as good, and “goodness” just is “that which communicates/displays the divine nature”, then it follows that God adjudicates a certain end as good because it communicates/displays the divine nature.

So if God’s ultimate aim(s) in creation are chosen because they are good aims, it follows that God—who is the source and standard of all goodness—chooses these aims because they are God-reflecting or God-communicating aims. From which, it follows that if God created the world for the sake of Goodness, God created the world to display/communicate the divine nature.

And that means, then, that God governs history towards the display of God’s nature. Hence, any given evil God permits is permitted because it leads to the realization of a good that displays God in a worthwhile way. The paradigm of God’s relation to evil is the Cross and Resurrection—”felix culpa”, as the term goes. The glorious display of self-giving love Christ enacts on the cross would not have been possible without the permission of Pilate and Herod’s acts of cruelty. And yet, most of us who are Christians are glad that the cross and the resurrection are part of the story of history—they tell us who God is in a far deeper way than would otherwise have been told. And yet, the cross and resurrection are the capstone, as it were, which answer a history of sinfulness.

The wounds of Christ remain with him even in the resurrection as part of his glory. And hence, in Christ’s own body, there is an icon for how God will deal with every evil: not only will he overcome every evil, but he will so overcome them as to make them servants that bring about the display of the excellency of the divine nature.

In JRR Tolkien’s Silmarillion, Tolkien imagines the beginning of the creation of middle earth in terms of a conflict of song between Eru Illuvatar (God) and Melkor (the enemy figure, or the Satan figure). Melkor attempts to thwart Illuvatar’s song with a discordant theme of his own, but it proves futile: not only does Illuvatar thwart Melkor, but actually sings in such a way that Melkor’s themes are interwoven to Illuvatar’s and, as happens in the resolution of a harmony, become part of the theme. Tolkien describes it as such:

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: “Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”

The evils that happen in the world are permitted so as to bring about particular displays the divine nature which would otherwise not have happened—like the death and resurrection of Jesus, whose body bears his wounds into glory. In Jesus, the future of the world opens up to us. The wounds of history will be summoned up into the new creation, and become part of that eternal theme which reveals the most valuable thing in reality: the beauties of the divine nature.

Further Reading

Now, I’m aware that raises other questions. I’ve attempted to deal with them in my published work, available here.

For instance, is there a comprehensive way of thinking about the interplay between divine sovereignty and human free will? I think there is:

Molinist Thomist Calvinism

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But if evils in history are necessary to the display of the excellencies of the divine nature, does that mean that evil is somehow constitutive of those excellencies as they exist in the divine nature? In other words, if good as it exists in God is good-without-evil, why would God then need to permit evil in creation to bring about a corresponding display of that good? I’ve answered that question here:

Beatific Governance And The Problems Of Evil

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Okay, but if God creates all things for the display of his divine nature, doesn’t that make him either an egotist or unloving? I don’t think so. I’ve published on that here.

Against Divine Amorism

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If you read these and/or want to talk to me about them, go ahead and email me at anglicanaesthetics@gmail.com or leave a comment below!