32. Suppose God Had Banished Adam

Suppose God Had Banished Adam

Suppose that God should now banish Adam and Eve from His presence forever, seeing that is what they themselves want, as shown in running from Him. Then suppose He puts another order of moral beings on earth in their place. Could such a God as reason demands do a thing like that?

If God had done that, He would thus have confessed that, since His first attempt was a failure, He was now trying again, in the hope of better success. Such a thing would have meant that His first attempt was less than perfect, and that therefore He was less than omnipotent.

It would also have been a confession that He had not foreseen the fall of Adam and Eve, which would have been an acknowledgement that, since He had not foreseen the end from the beginning, He was not omniscient. But worse even than such confessions, it would have meant an acknowledgement that He was not love. For though now confronted by the greatest possible opportunity for His love to go into action and bring back within the realm of its operation those who had stepped out of it, His banishment of them would have been a confession of His unwillingness to undertake such a work. And this would have made it impossible, from then on, for any moral being ever to believe any profession of His love which He might make.

Such a God as reason demands must be One who can be trusted, and therefore One who is able to find a way to bring man back within the reach of His love. Only thus can He make known to His universe that no matter what situation may ever arise anywhere at any time, He is fully able to meet it. In no other way can the confidence of the universe be established in His love, and in His power to carry out its utmost demands.

If God finds a way, therefore, to establish forever the welfare and happiness of those who are already in His will, and a way which also opens to those outside of His will the most gracious and appealing invitation that can possibly be given to accept His way freely and be eternally happy, the whole universe will then forever proclaim Him to be infinite in knowledge, wisdom, power, holiness and love, and thus faith and love will give a response to Him that nothing can ever disturb.

Since God did not banish Adam and Eve and put others in their places, but since instead He went at once to their res-cue, we can then go on to the problem of the basis on which such a rescue could be made possible, and the method by which it must be accomplished.