A Debate Over Free-Will, Part 3

The second part of my response to the free-will argument:

It also may be that satan himself asked God permission to tempt adam and eve to eat the fruit because of the way they had been created and the way he had been created. They were created without the knowledge of good and evil but satan had to be created with the knowledge of good and evil or else there would be no more logical explanation for his sin. Since he was created this way then God's justice would demand that satan be given a chance to tempt Adam and Eve to test thier obedience since they had not known sin because they had no knowledge of good or evil but satan did know right and wrong from the beginning of his creation but the problem rests in that he submitted to the evil side of his knowledge and iniquity was found in him. Now what happens to man is that after he eats of the fruit of the tree, he is seperated from God and this seperation makes him evil in nature and spiritually dead because God said that he would surely die.

First, you spend a lot of time expounding on the idea that Satan must have had a knowledge of good and evil. Now, that is speculation on your part, and as there is no Scripture which talks of the angels possessing or not possessing a knowledge of good and evil, I cannot refute that point.

I do, however, find it interesting to theorize as to why you find it necessary to appeal to Satan's supposed knowledge of good and evil in your defense of free-will. I'd welcome your explanation, but in lieu of that, I'll try to explain it for myself. In my estimation, your rationale runs thus:

a) In order for Satan to fall into sin, he must be held morally responsible for his actions.
b) In order for the will to be morally responsible for its choice, the will must have sufficient knowledge of all the alternatives from which it is to choose
c) Without the "knowledge of good and evil" which is mentioned in Genesis 3, the will does not have all the knowledge it needs to make a choice between good and evil for which it can be held morally responsible
d) Therefore, Satan must have a knowledge of good and evil mentioned in Genesis 3.

Now, I think there is an assumption inherent in this reasoning which doesn't have sufficient scriptural evidence: Point b) makes the assumption that the will must have complete knowledge of alternatives. I take this to mean that it must make a fully informed decision based on its own rationale, and not under compulsion of any kind from any outside entity. Now, I think this is guilty of the logical fallacy of begging the question; that is, one must accept your conclusion (that free-will exists) before one can accept the argument (that only a will which makes a fully informed decision can be morally culpable). It is easy to see why someone who already accepts free-will would think that moral responsibility requires full knowledge, yet it is not readily apparent why that Scripture or logic demands that we accept this. 

In fact, I think it is better to reject the assumption that moral responsibility demands a fully-informed choice without compulsion, for two reasons. First, scripture says that Eve was deceived by the serpent (i.e. her choice was not fully informed) and yet she sinned. So sin preceded knowledge of good and evil. Second, the command to not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was based on two things: the authority of God, who gave the command, and the threat of punishment if they disobeyed. God, in this sense, was imposing his will on their will. They did not have the "knowledge of good and evil" yet (and it is difficult to say of what this consists, certainly too difficult to justify basing an argument on it), they had only the knowledge of authority and punishment. In this sense, their wills were under compulsion from an entity outside themselves. Yet, they are still morally culpable. 

Now, when you say that God's Justice demands that Satan, having knowledge of good and evil, tempt Adam and Eve, who lacked such knowledge, I think the error of this becomes more apparent still. On what basis can you say that God must allow someone with the knowledge of good and evil to tempt us? We have already seen how the necessity of knowledge for making moral choice is simply an assumption that you are making. But now, you go farther still to say that God must give you what you only assume you must have.

You say that Justice demands that Adam and Eve be tested. I understand that to mean that Justice demands that God allow Satan to tempt Adam and Eve in order to test their free will, to see whether they would freely choose Him. I don't think that is the most biblical way to think, because it once again assumes that man's will is the determinative force. If God's will is the determinative force, and I think it is biblical to think so, then man's original sin was part of the original plan and decree of God. God decreed determinatively from eternity past that man would fall into sin. Certainly man is morally culpable for his free choice to sin. But to say that he was being tested implies that God did not know the result, or that the result was determined not by God, but by man's response to the testing. 

So, it is not that justice demands that God test our free will. It is that God had ordained that man would fall in order that God would show His glory to the world through his redemptive plan. Do not be too quick to demand that God must give you free will and give you a complete knowledge of the alternatives - it was God's plan that humans fall into sin. As we have seen before, God is not the source or author of sin, but he does determine that it should be.

Now, you also speculate that Satan asked God's permission to tempt Adam and Eve. Now, doesn't this demonstrate that Satan's will was not truly free? He willed to tempt, yet His will was powerless to accomplish what he had purposed, unless God allowed Him to. That is, the freedom you say the will enjoys is not inherent; God hadn't given Satan standing permission to do what he wanted, the fact that he had freedom to make a choicedidn't give him the freedom to carry out that choice, he needed the special permission of God. So, Satan's will was limited by God's will.

More thoughts later.