If God knew Adam and Eve would sin, why create them?
God knew the whole story before Adam drew his first breath, and He made him anyway. That fact troubles people, because it seems to make God either careless or complicit — so the writers below take the question head on: was God surprised, was He the author of the sin, and what could possibly be worth it?
Foreknowledge Without Surprise
The first thing the commentators refuse to concede is that the fall caught God off guard. One writer puts the foreknowledge and the permission side by side, and insists the permission was deliberate:
James BoydNeither the fall of angels nor of men has taken the blessed God by surprise. Everything that would enter into the universe, and all that creation would come to, were well known to God before His works of old. And the evil that has come in was by Him permitted. He could have kept it out had He so pleased, but He allowed it to enter that it might serve His purpose; and He has made it, and will continue to make it, serve to the fulfilment of His counsels of love.
Permitted, Not Authored
There is a line the writers guard carefully. Allowing evil is not the same as producing it, and the distinction is not a technicality — it is what keeps God's purpose intact:
James BoydIt must not for a moment be supposed that He was the author of sin, or that He brought it into the world. Had He done either His purpose never could have been effectuated. It was by one of His creatures it was brought into existence, and by another of His creatures it found entrance into the world.
Commentators differ over how far to press God's decree here. One writer argues plainly against saying God decreed that sin should enter: God "had to leave the entrance of sin a distinct possibility" to leave man intelligent and responsible, and though "God foreknew how it would be resolved," that does not mean "man had to sin" (Paul Wilson).
A Creature, Not a Machine
Behind the question "why create them?" lies another: why make a being who could fall? The answer offered is that a creature unable to choose wrong would not be the creature God wanted:
F. G. PattersonBecause, if He would create a glorious creature — man, after His own image, and in His likeness, free to choose either good or evil, and not a creature governed by a mere chain of instinct, as the birds and beasts around him — He must leave the entrance to him of evil, a possibility, though not a necessity.
The same writer adds the sting: if man could not choose evil, "he had no choice at all," and would be no more virtuous in doing good "than the mere animal which follows the instincts of its nature." Another puts it as a matter of God declining to prop up what He had made good:
William KellyHe made everything good, but He was not pleased to put forth His power to keep everything good. He was pleased to put the creature to the proof... If He kept everything from falling, there could be no such trial at all. All would be mechanical or chemical.
The Fall Gave Grace a Stage
If the fall was foreseen, then redemption was never an emergency repair. And the ruin itself became the setting for something creation alone could never have shown:
C. H. MackintoshThe enemy, no doubt, imagined that he was gaining a wonderful victory when he meddled with man in the garden of Eden. In point of fact, he was only giving occasion for the display of God's eternal counsels in connection with the work of the Son. There was no basis for those counsels, no sphere for their display in the fields of creation. It was the meddling of Satan — the entrance of sin — the ruin of man that opened a platform on which a Saviour-God might display the riches of His grace.
One writer gives the shortest reply on record to the person who complains about being born into a fallen race:
J. N. DarbyEvil came in by the devil; with man, by temptation. God was over it: this is the reason why He suffered evil and the fall - in view of a greater good to come in. My answer to him who asks it is, "why, you foolish man, if you had not been a sinner, you would not have had Christ at all."
Where the Question Should Land
One writer walks straight into the objection as a real person would raise it, and then turns it around:
James BoydWe cannot suppose that God did not know that Adam would fall, and that we should be fallen with him. Perhaps you say, Why, then, did He make him?... You say, I am involved in the resultant ruin. You are, but He has made a way of escape from the judgment to which you have made yourself liable on account of your sins.
Summary
- Foreseen — the fall took God by surprise at no point; He permitted evil rather than producing it, and could have shut it out had He pleased.
- Free — a being who could not choose wrong would have no choice at all, and would be no more virtuous than an animal following instinct.
- Permitted — God was not pleased to use His power to keep everything good, because then there could be no trial, and all would be mechanical.
- Purposed — redemption was no afterthought; the ruin opened a platform where a Saviour-God could display the riches of His grace.
- Personal — the argument ends where the escape begins: without being a sinner, you would not have had Christ at all.