f evil. He distinguishes between the wicked man and the sinner. In both cases, the evil man is not expressing evil as an element of God, but rather as an aspect of the freedom which man has given to God.
Buber writes, for example, "Sinners again and again miss God's way, the wicked oppose it in accordance with the basic attitude of their constitution. The sinner does evil, the wicked man is evil . . . Since the wicked man has negated his existence he ends in nothing, his way is his judgment" (Buber 59).
The question then arises whether even the wicked man is
excluded from God's way. If it were so, then God could not be said to be fully offering man the freedom, which it is argued that he has offered.
Buber writes in this context "Is the way, then, closed to the wicked? It is not closed from God's side . . . but it is closed from the side of the wicked themselves. For in the distinction from the sinners they do not wish to be able to turn" (that is, to turn away from evil and toward God) (Buber 60).
What of the relationship between God a
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