Dallas Willard on Evil

[Steven Carr]

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=30
'If a child is never permitted to do wrong, it will never become capable of developing a nature or character that resolutely chooses the good.'

Why does God allow children to starve to death as babies, when Professor Willard knows that such a child will never develop the character or nature that God so prizes?

[Jamie_L]

Originally posted by Steven Carr
'If a child is never permitted to do wrong, it will never become capable of developing a nature or character that resolutely chooses the good.'

This is absurd.

First, do people allow or encourage their kids to do wrong, in an effort to make sure that they develop the "nature or character that resolutely chooses the good"? No.

If someone has never committed murder, do they lack the character to resolutely choose not to murder?

Jamie

[Stew]

Originally posted by Steven Carr
http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=30
'If a child is never permitted to do wrong, it will never become capable of developing a nature or character that resolutely chooses the good.'



And who is alleged to have set up this system, that produces such results, in the first place? Set up such a system knowing the end result beforehand.

Besides that, I would challenge the premise anyway. How is such a thing known?



.

[Jobar]

So, just how much wrong must a child be permitted to do? Surely it's an individual thing. Seems this could be used to excuse the worst of monsters; just allow them to learn a little more, and they will start resolutely choosing good.

Yeah. Right. :rolleyes:

[wiploc]

Originally posted by Steven Carr
http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=30
'If a child is never permitted to do wrong, it will never become capable of developing a nature or character that resolutely chooses the good.'

If Eve was not capable of resolutely choosing the good in the form that god created her, then it isn't fair for god to punish us for her crime of not resolutely choosing the good.
crc

[luvluv]

Sometimes I feel so good I just got to jump back and quote myself. HEY...!

Were any of you around for this argument? I'm too lazy to go through the whole thing again. I made similar points to Willard in an argument about this many moons ago.

Read all about it here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28957&perpage=25&pagenumber=10

This links to the tenth page, when I hopped in by making a similar point to Willard's.

(And was this thread the first post of the Biff, as in Biff the unclean? Or was that another Biff?)