Plantinga Chapter 3

In this chapter 3 of Plantinga's book, cleverly named "Th Fall", he talks about how sin has crept into our world and what the difference between evil and sin is. He says that evil is a pollution of goodness, or a corruption of goodness. He also says sin is anything not according to God's plan and that it was introduced into the world through evil. A quote that I found especially interesting was when Plantinga said that "All sin is evil, but not all evil is sin." When he talks about this statement Plantinga uses the example of a two-year-old picking up a gun and killing someone. It is definately an evil, but it isn't a sin because the child had no idea what he was doing. He then goes on to use a similar, yet different, example of a drug dealer killing someone. He says, "But a premeditatedkilling by a drug dealer of a drug enforcement officeris both evil and sinful." I agree with these two examples and what they are trying to prove. I don't believe that a two-year-old child knows enough about what is going on in the world around him to be able to pick up a gun and fully comprehend what killing someone means, but that doesn't mean he can't pick up a gun, it just means that he didn't commit a sin here, it was an accident, most likely.

Thankfully, for all of us, we have common grace. Common grace is defined by Plantinga as "The goodness of God shown to all, regardless of faith, consisting of natural blessings, restraint of corruption, seeds of religion and political order, and a host of civilizing and humanizing impulses, patterns, and traditions." This common grace is not only given to Christians, it is given to all people, both believers and non-believers.Plantinga states that we have sinned and ruined creation but the holy spirit regenerates the grace in people and preserves the original goodness in creation. God still loves us and shows his love for us in two ways. First is by being merciful, and the second way is through God's Spirit giving us conscienceness.