Hello Aly,
Justice
Justice cannot be a simple moment when someone is given his or her due, what they deserve. Absent of that moment, the idea of what is just remains, even if never fulfilled. The Good, Plato may have said, is not realizable here on earth but it doesn’t have to be for it is as idea that it perdures.
As an idea, justice is in every action of our will. As Socrates may have said, we do what we think (idea) is just. We do what is right. So justice can and does permeate every movement of a being. You may not see it as justice because I think you are moving into a strictly judicial process model. But that should not be the definition we use. God is much broader and so should the ideas we associate.
Justice need not come only after a deed has been committed (an eye for an eye…) for as Jesus taught, it could be everything we will (do onto others…) which would require your thoughts into everything you do and even how you think. In Jesus view, even thought becomes a deed, so when are we not under judgment? When are we free from the idea of justice?
As for Grace, I must admit that I myself thought of editing my last response to talk about it. Here is what I would say. Grace is of God. Grace is a Gift. Nothing in us earned us God’s favor. It was His Grace. And if a man lacks this blessing, God’s Grace, you could say that he is cursed. Grace is the good in itself. So too should we see the suffering of innocents as an unconditional evil- if I cannot justify why something bad is happening to me then it is not just something bad (like falling off a bike), but something evil, for we do not know why or why not, for it strikes us indiscriminately.
Satan/the satan.
You say that my “rebel at heart” description of Satan lacks textual support. That is fine. It was just a characterization of Satan, or how I think the Bible presents Satan. In the OT his role is more passive. You might even say that he is a lackey of God, an angel who nonetheless has a very strange role as an accusser. But as we roll along to the NT Satan does take on a role much more indenpendent of God. Long gone are the little chats between the two. Now you have a comming war between the forces of Satan and the forces of Jesus. But from Genesis to Apocalypse, what I see is a being that stumps the plans by God. He temps, successfully, Adam and Eve; he challenges, and some might say with reason, the distinction of righteousness as something other than vulgar self preservation; and in an epic conflagaration we find him as the adversary of God, not just the accusser of man.
This is how I see it, but I think that I have better scriptural support to draw this characterization than you do in drawing the duality “satan/Satan”. And we already discussed this before for your thesis.
Natural ‘evil’.
I understand how you, that there should be a connection between evil and a human heart behind it…but is it really that different? Suppose a man that takes a baby and smashes his skull against a wall because the baby is a jew…now would be a deed beyond justification. Nothing that man could say could justify his deed. It is a deed that comes from a heart that is hardened against the image of God in the child, the child’s spirit and most importantly, the child’s innocence. Now we look at Afrika and that starving child sucking on a dried tit. We could say that the lack of rain is not evil in itself and that it is just a weather pattern consistent with the region and the time of year, or even greater cycles. Maybe we are simply going through a periodic 50 year dry spell in a 200 year cycle. If God could do nothing about then there is no evil, and God is just impotent. But if God is capable of changing even this pattern and does not then he is responsible for that child’s suffering. That is the argument in it’s purest form. Able but unwilling, or unable and willing. Weak or Callous, take your pick, but neither one is usually accepted and so the POE.
Wildness.
I agree with your characterization of creation as something that perhaps contained properties not created by God, and that it is something meant to be subdued. For a time I thought that this could explain Satan as a virtual emanation from that wild material, pure brio, pure wildness. But the more I studied the Bible what I saw is Satan as a materialists, as a sophist, using reason against itself, bringing up the contradiction of the world…Satan speaks about what is in fact the case. God speaks of what is available only through faith.
While it is attractive to speak of subduing something in us, like Paul, I have come to the belief that this was never meant for us and that we treathen our health if we try to subjugate that other part of us, that natural brio. That if you lose it you live a life in shadows, in grey hues rather than in the full spectrum of the raimbow.
Plato asked once who was better: A man who could do no wrong or the man who could. I think that God would have agreed…otherwise why use clay at all? Why a race of men instead of a race of angels? Something is in us that is wild, but it should be tempered by reason, yet not eliminated compleately by it.