We are! This is because God did not want them to sin and hoped to influence them not to by bringing to their attention the negative consequences of such a choice. Adam would be the victim of God’s eternal and secret bullying. He has real pains and real pleasures. Jesus even mourned over Jerusalem and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. The distinctions between various kinds of causes are long-established differentiations—elementary concepts of truth and logic that go back at least as far as Aristotle. 33:11; Zec. God wants us to get drunk!” She thought that God wanted her to sin! The Bible says, “For every creature of God is good…” (1 Tim. “Yea, they have chosentheir own ways” (Isa. They assume that if God brings about evil in any sense, he must therefore approve it and deserve the blame. (In fact, it seems like EVERYTHING is subordinated to glory and power.) 6:7; Mic. “Who… can say, Thou hast wrought iniquity?” (Job 36:23) To “wrought” iniquity, in the Hebrew, means to “make” or “ordain” it.46 How could we say “I will…ascribe righteousness to my Maker” (Job 36:3), if God is the maker of sin? Nobody would ever call such a man benevolent or good. That is an utterly absurd claim on the face of it, for if God never acted by permission in any sense, there would be no such thing as "second causes"—a phrase found in practically all classic Calvinist confessions. He said “God… effects, and moves and impels all things in a necessary, infallible course…”16 He also said, “This is the highest degree of faith – to believe that He is merciful, the very One who saves so few and damns so many. To illustrate that someone or something can be the "final cause" of an evil act and yet not be held morally responsible for it, consider these examples: In examples 2 and 3, the perpetrator wants to transfer blame from himself, the efficient cause, to someone else, the final cause in each case. John Calvin; edited by Paul Helm (Crossway Books, 2010), 92. God wants us to be sinful none of the time. The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches the very same view I have defended here: That's what Calvin himself taught, and that's what authentic Calvinism has always stressed. I’d consider arch-archon, but I don’t think the Gnostic concept really works that well here. It does not solve the problem to say that God has a “revealed will” and a “secret will.” For if holiness was God’s revealed will, but sin was God’s secret will, then God is insincere in His commands, His revealed will is a lie, and His secret will is His actual will. While I was street preaching outside of a club in OttawaCanada, a girl said to me “God wants us to be out here and have fun. Unless their actions were caused or created by their own free will, they could not loathe themselves in their own sight. You can forget about praying, “…lead us not into temptation” (Matt. God created a perfect being… He gave that perfect being perfect freedom. Calvinism teaches that God prefers sin over holiness in every instance that sin occurs. It does not mean that God created moral evil. Thus they can “recover themselves out of the snare of the devil” (2 Tim. 20 He has never commanded anyone to be wicked or given anyone permission to sin. 3. God is the author of the author of sin, He cannot be the author of sin itself, for sin is the result of a rebellion against God. Someone might say, “But the Westminster Confession says that God’s decree of sin does not take away second causes, so that He is not the author of sin even though He decrees all sin.” Yes, their confession says that. 15:22; Mk. Every sin that is condemned is the condemnation of the work of God! Sermonides of Amorgos said, “Zeus controls the fulfillment of all that is, and disposes as he will. But if Calvinism is true, God is not only the author of confusion, but He is the author of everything! James White is a modern apologist for the Reformed or Calvinist faith and he gave us an example of the “right and just works of God.” He was asked, “When a child is raped, is God responsible and did He decree that rape?” James White answered, “Yes.”65 All sinful actions, according to Calvinism, are the just and right works of God. If God has a secret will, which is contrary to His revealed or declared will, then that secret will would be “wrong” because His revealed or declared will is “right.” If God tells us that He doesn’t ever want us to sin, but he secretly wants us to sin every time that we do sin, then we cannot trust God because He is a liar. So the argument that God is the author of sin boils down to the proposition that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass???!! Contrary to the teachings of men like Luther and Calvin, that God is the cause of all sin, the Bible explicitly says that God is not the author of everything. 5:3). We are told about Lucifer “Thou wast perfect in all thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee” (Eze. If heresy is teaching that man is to be blamed for sin, not God, then call me a Bible believing, happy heretic! Is this indeed the common teaching of classic Calvinism? 13:16; 1 Jn. This video refutes the blasphemous charge that God is the author of sin, made by Calvinism, Lutheranism, Paganism, and Islam. Far from being removed from sin, Calvinism results in God being the conceptual designer, author and determinative cause of all sin! Adam’s sin was the result or product of his own volition or choice. “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness” (Ps. God’s eternal decree for sin was “thou shalt not” (Exo. God was completely sincere in His command. Any view that makes God the author of sin does indeed turn the object of our worship into a moral monster. The fact of God's sovereignty does not alter any of this; nor does it make God morally responsible for evil. If their secret activity is revealed, their rescue work doesn’t seem so wonderful anymore. God is the final cause; not the efficient cause of evil. But if they sacrificed their children to idols because of God’s fatalistic plan, God could not charge them with polluting themselves since He was really the one who polluted them. 2:17) It is not the God of the Bible which is the author or cause of sin. Invite Jesse Morrell To Preach In Your Church Or Area, Is God the Author of Sin? 92:15). It would make no sense to rebuke sinners for their sin and call them to repentance and obedience if they were already doing the will of God. 20:13; Ecc. If this is so, the God of Molina and Arminius seems to be as implicated in the fact of evil as much (or as little) as the God of the A-C perspective (p. 159).I agree with Craig that the A-C view does make God the author of sin. In other words, we are not portraying God as reluctantly suffering that which He is powerless to forestall. But to be angry and grieved with the existence of sin, but not to be angry and grieved with the one who caused the existence of sin, would make no sense. paragraph III.1 from the Westminster Confession: "the distinction between will and permission. God could have decreed righteousness in those situations, but He chose to decree sin instead! How could anyone praise God for His holiness, saying “holy, holy, holy” (Rev. 8:44), this references his lie in the garden. We are supposed to pray “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” because God’s will is better than what is occurring on earth, not because everything that happens on earth is already God’s will! If they are upset with me rejecting Calvinism or for my theology, they would be upset with the secret, immutable, irresistible, and eternal will of God! Sin is the result of man’s free will, not the effect of God’s predetermination. If Calvinism is true and God causes all things, then God causes all temptations and all confusion. Stop! As a Calvinist, I'm not worried about the author of sin question either. Clearly, God did not force them to do His will but let them go their own way. hits. The Calvinistic interpretation of God hardening the heart of the Pharoah , so that he ends up sinning , makes God the author of sin.Similairly , by hardening the hearts of majority of humans and allowing them to remain in the sin of unbelief , God becomes the author of sin according to Calvinism. Sin is not self-existent. He would be the author of sin, which is far worse than confusion! The best criminal defense a person could have in court would be, “It’s not my fault. Among the caricatures of Calvinism is the widespread claim that it renders God the author of evil, suffering, sin, and even the fall of humanity itself. Dr. John Edwards said, “If God by his decree did force men’s wills, and so necessitate them to be vicious and wicked, then he might justly be called the Author of Sin.”21 He then went on to say, “The eternal decree is the cause of the necessary futurition of evil acts, for the acts inevitably follow on the decree.”22 And “God did from … Before assigning their consequences, God said that it was their own fault. We do sometimes use the language of "permission" to describe God's sovereign control over evil (as in the case of Job, or Peter in Luke 22:31). If sin is the work of God, then God is a worker of iniquity. Paul said, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace” (1 Cor. God cannot lie (Tit. But we are not appealing to "bare permission" in the sense Arminians use the expression—that is, making an artificial distinction between "will" and "permission." For example, if a man uses a gun to kill another person, the courts will hold the man accountable, not the gun! But if God publicly favors righteousness, for appearance or reputation sake, but secretly favors sin, what kind of being is He? It is not saying that Satan was a liar from his creation. God does not take pleasure in sin but is grieved and angry with sin (Gen. 6:5-6; Ps. I can hear the pain in God’s voice and the grief of His heart as He asked, “What is this that thou hast done?” (Gen. 3:13). Is God’s activity contrary to the well-being of His universe that He needs to hide, or keep secret, His will? Jesus stated a self-evident truth of reason when he said “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Matt. NO Absolute Evil in the Universe. 28:15). In fact, when he decided to rebel against God, he said in his “heart” “I will” five times. NO Absolute Evil in the Universe. 1:2), because there is a blessing for those who overcome (Jas. If God secretly decrees sin, God would secretly be sinful! 7:30). You can decide whether you will be loyal to him or not. But if all things are the will of God, the reason that millions worship idols is because of “the good pleasure of His will.” It would be completely empty of any meaning or value for God to say that they did what “he commanded them not” if they were doing what He had decreed. If God causes all things, Paul would be lying by saying He is not the author of confusion. Are we to credit to God’s “Sovereignty” or “the good pleasure of His will” all of the tragedies of our world? Just as Lucifer sinned against his nature, not because of his nature, but by his own free will, so the sin of Adam and Eve was not the result of their nature but was caused by their free will. Calvinism makes God out to be a moral monster equal to the devil himself and appeals to mystery in order to extricate God … It was not arranged for “his own pleasure.” God was deeply upset with mankind’s sin because that is not what He had planned for us! 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