I'm not a christian, but I grew up in a Baptist household, so I have at least a passing understanding of the Bible. Lemme know if I got any wrong.
If I'm understanding the bible correctly;
God Created heaven and Earth, Including Mankind and Angels
God is all-knowing and all-powerful
Relevant to this discussion, God created Lucifer and all the angels who sided with him.
God made Man in His image, and ordered the angels to serve them.
Lucifer, prideful of his own beauty, and envious of God's (at least perceived) favoritism of Man, and of God's position, started a rebellion in heaven and was/will be cast down into the lake of fire(aka Hell).
lucifer later tempted/took the form of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden and tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.
my conclusion: God, with full knowledge of what lucifer would do/become created him and set him on the path that led to his downfall, and to the Sin of Mankind.
Or to put it more simply; God created Sin through his foreknowledge of what Lucifer would become.
I'm not trying to start a shitstorm here, but this is the logical conclusion that I find myself at.
Any Christian pedes wanna poke holes in this for me?
So then, God needed Lucifer to tempt man to sin to create the environment for freewill to flourish?
Without the temptation to sin, no choice would be made, right?
Here is the problem with applying human logic while pondering the infinite: if someone were to ask me the classic question "Can God create a boulder so heavy that even He can't lift it?" My response would be "Yes, but since He is omnipotent and there is nothing He can't do, it would break your mind upon witnessing it" And so it is with Him needing Lucifer to unfold the story of creation as we know it.
great answer.
I like that.
I take a little different route:
Contradictions are not possible. It is not an act of power to perform a contradiction.
Saying God cannot do a contradiction does not detract from his power or Nature. There are other things God cannot do: He cannot sin, He cannot force you to love Him etc…
God can do all things possible. Contradictions are not possible.
This answer broke my mind reading it. Like AZ said, great answer
The boulder question comes from a lack of understanding the difference between omnipotence and sovereignty.
This is going to sound weird, but God is not omnipotent. There are things He can't do. He can't stop being Himself. He can't act contradictory to His own nature. I personally argue that He can't violate the laws of logic because they are an intrinsic part of His being.
What God is is sovereign. That means He has complete control and command over anything else in existence. If He makes a boulder, He can manipulate it however He wishes because He is sovereign. He can't make a boulder that He can't lift, else He would immediately cease to be God.
Again, you're applying human logic to something that supersedes logic... God can do anything even if our human brains can't comprehend it. There are things we will only gain understanding when we are free from the restraints of this mortal coil.
You don't need an external source of influence.
When God told Adam and Eve to not eat of the Tree (and to keep the Garden, and subdue the earth), they could choose to follow any or none of those commands. Satan was the specific catalyst for the Fall, but it could have happened from Adam and Eve just deciding on their own that they wanted to do their own thing. Man's Fall could have happened with or without Satan.
I don’t think God “needed” Lucifer for that necessarily. Lucifer was simply making sure Adam and Eve did disobey.
Adam and Eve were fully capable of disobeying God without Lucifer’s help, otherwise Gods command to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge wouldn’t have meant anything.
Side note. I always thought it interesting that Eve wasn't freaked out by a talking serpent. Does that mean Adam and Eve could communicate with all creatures in the garden?
Here's an interesting possibility:
The word translated "serpent" just means "to hiss or whisper". The word in Hebrew is almost more of a verb than a noun.
We know from Isaiah and Ezekiel that Satan was a guardian cherub in Eden. Maybe Adam and Eve saw Satan before his fall, maybe even knew him personally.
So when Satan came whispering to Eve, she would not have seen a talking snake, but a known and (up until that point) benevolent cherub offering knowledge and godhood. Now that's a lot more tempting, isn't it?