Creation

I liked this chapter of Plantinga's book because it tells us what creation means, not just what creation is. It does that by presenting 8 different meanings of the Christian Doctrine of Creation. My idea of creation has in a nutshell been that God simply created man in his image and gave us a world to take care of (which we are not doing), but I had never really considered the implications. The first thing I had not considered is that God created the heavens and the earth out of his own "enthusiasm for being." I do not think we can really explain it any other way. We know that God is love, and this would be my best guess as to why he created us. The other thing that I found interesting was that "St. Francis of Assisi and his kin show us how to love the natural world without worshipping it." (37) This is where idolatry comes into play. I'm sure we all have some things in our lives that we give too much of ourselves too, myself included. This is something we really have to watch ourselves on because it is extremely easy to convince ourselves that we have not made something an idol.
However, for some reason the question that came to me while reading and discussing this was whether or not God knew man would fall to sin, or if he in fact intended for us to. On one hand, God knows everything before it happens and knows us better than we know ourselves. On the other hand, why would God create us in his image if he knew we would fall. I do not understand why God would do that. I know that God wants us to come to him and accept his gift of everlasting life, but if God "hates" sin, why would he create us with the ability to fall to sin at all. I know he loves us more than we can imagine, but why would he let that happen? I know the Devil is extremely powerful and deceptive, but the fact remains that God is more powerful than all else.