The twofold usage of the word 'determine' in our language is an

interesting example of the difference between what is mechanical and what is

'I am determined to face the wind'.

'Dust is determined to go with the wind'.

In the first case a resolution is made after due consideration, a

definite choice arrived at after pondering alternatives.  In the second case

there is no choice, and there can never have been an alternative.

It is obviously foolish to speak of a 'will' apart from the person that

wills, and it is equally absurd to talk of evil as though it existed

somewhere in the universe as a thing in itself.  Moral evil cannot be

created, or come into existence, apart from moral beings who actually do what

is wrong.  When we discuss the existence of evil apart from the actions of

those who act wrongly, we are inventing difficulties which have no real

existence.  The problem of evil is the problem of personality.  If a moral

person, who is held accountable for his actions, transgresses a prohibition

and thereby comes under a penalty, it is utterly wrong to charge the One Who

lays down the prohibition and inflicts the penalty with the creation of the

evil thus punished.  If such a state could be conceived, anything would be

possible, and the whole groundwork of truth would dissolve.  Under such

conditions nothing would or could matter.  To speak of predetermined sin

would be a contradiction, for sin is the transgression of a law, and a

predetermined act is itself of the very essence of law.  Obedience and

disobedience in this case would be quite irrelevant.

In the story of the garden of Eden, we must not imagine some insidious

trap, definitely placed there so that man should fall into it.  We must

realize, rather, that man, as a moral creature, had to be tested.  In the law

we read:

'If ye will not be reformed by Me by these things, but will walk

contrary unto Me; then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will

punish you yet seven times for your sins' (Lev. 26:23,24).

'If', 'Then'.  These words would mean less than nothing if it had

already been predetermined that Israel would in fact 'walk contrary'.

Indeed, if it had been decreed that Israel should act in this way, then their

so-called 'contrary' actions would actually be in 'agreement' with the Divine

intention, and sin would become an impossibility.  'To be forewarned is to be

forearmed', and the very knowledge of what in the natural course of things

will inevitably happen, becomes by the interposition of moral agency a means

of falsifying such apparent predetermination.

It is possible that an objection may have formed itself in the minds of

some of our readers in connection with the statement made above that evil

cannot be 'created'.  In Isaiah 45:7 we read:

'I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil:

I the Lord do all these things'.

The word translated 'evil' here is the Hebrew ra.  So far as its usage

is concerned, there are about an equal number of passages where the word

means 'moral evil' or 'sin', and where the word means 'evil' in the sense of