Did God create evil in Paradise Lost?
*** g89 4/8 pp. 17-18 The Holocaust—Why Did God Allow It? *** Free Will and the Issue The aforementioned Jewish publication gives a partial answer to the question, saying: “By creating human beings with free will, God, of necessity, limited His own future range of action. Without the real possibility of people making the wrong choice when confronted by good and evil, the entire concept of choice is meaningless. Endowing humankind with free will can be seen as an act of divine love which allows for our own integrity and growth, even if our decisions can also bring about great sorrow.” This opinion agrees with the record of the Hebrew Scriptures. From the very beginning, mankind has had freedom to choose—whether it was Adam and Eve’s choosing to disobey God (Genesis 3:1-7) or Cain’s choosing to murder his brother Abel. (Genesis 4:2-10) The Israelites of old also had a choice laid before them by Jehovah: “See, I do put before you today life and good, and death and bad. . . . And you must
