What seems to us to be a long, drawn-out divine plan to restore that which was fallen was equally necessary. It might seem that God could have just stepped in after the fall and eliminated free will and the divine and human rebels who had abused it. Eden would be ensured and that would be that. While that would produce the desired end, the original means—free participation in God’s creation by God’s free-will agents, designed to be like him—would have been abandoned, amounting to a very flawed idea and spectacular failure. A resolution like that isn’t fitting (or desirable) for the God of the
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