Theology with Tersia Voskuil, M.Div.

 Psalm 82 Psalm 82 is a courtroom scene where God stands “…in the congregation of gods; and in the midst of gods, he examines” (Ps. 82:1, ABP). God is in the midst of the divine council, rebuking angelic rulers for their corruption. Right here I want to stop and point out that God is not a Calvinistic-god. If God were the Calvinistic-god of whom Martin Luther said, “the devil is God’s devil”, implying that God gets the evil done that He wants done, but doesn’t want to do it Himself, he lets "his devil" do it – if that were true, then why would God be rebuking the angels to whom He gave authority over nations, for becoming corrupt. Surely no rebuke would be required if they were being "his devil" and doing what He wanted done anyway? The deterministically-in-control Calvinistic-god would be pleased that the corruption is getting done by one other than Himself. But on the contrary, we see in Psalm 82 that the God of the Bible is deeply empathetic and moved for the pli...

 Martin Luther said the devil is God's devil! In light of this conversation one of my peers pointed out to me that Herbert Livingstone said, Isaiah 45:7 is often quoted as proof that God creates evil, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things (KJV).” Sometimes this Hebrew word, raʿ (רַע) is sometimes translated as “disaster” (NASB), “trouble” (NIV), or “calamity” in an effort to lesson the force of the word.  I looked up Isaiah 45:7 in the Apostolic Bible Polyglot. The Septuagint translates the word as bad things. This phrase has been translated as "evil" at times, and also in other ways. We should notice, however, that the Hebrew style of parallelism is being used when God says: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace , and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." So, if the translator/team used the word " peace ", then he will pit it against " evil " If the transl...