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Jonathan Edwards: Is God the Author of Sin?
September 27, 2007 |
Posted by michaelp · Filed Under Theology
“If by the author of sin, be meant the sinner, the agent, or the actor of sin, or the doer of a wicked thing; so it would be a reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin. In this sense, I utterly deny God to be the author of sin; rejecting such an imputation on the Most High, as what is infinitely to be abhorred; and deny any such thing to be the consequence of what I have laid down. But if, by the author of sin, is meant the permitter, or not a hinderer of sin, and, at the same time, a disposer of the state of events, in such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and purposes, that sin, if it be permitted, or not hindered, will most certainly and infallibly follow;—I say, if this be all that is meant by being the author of sin, I do not deny that God is the author of sin, (though I dislike and reject the phrase, as that which by use and custom is apt to carry another sense), it is no reproach for the Most High to be thus the author of sin. This is not to be the actor of sin, but on the contrary, of holiness. What God doth herein is holy, and a glorious exercise of the infinite excellency of his nature (Freedom of the Will, vol. 1 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards.” [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957], p. 399).
HT: Preach the Word
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You know… this Edwards guy… he just might be on to something here. It looks like he may actually have thought about this stuff. ;^)
Steve, I think if John the revelator was alive today, he would have to agree
I was waiting for Michael to pull out an endorsement from Edwards for TTP. ;^)
Ah, then he accepted the idea that God does not meticulously pre-ordain every event (even though he fore-knows them), and allows events to happen freely and naturally, which will necessarily include evil and sinful events. I see no problem with that at all.
His “Freedom of the Will” is an excellent essay, one of my favorites.
Most Arminians have big issues with it though, being that he says God is allowed to stack the deck such that the person will sin, so that God can sovereignly use it for His glory and such that God does not sin. My understanding is that they feel this violates the libertarian view of the freedom of the will. Is that not the case?
From above, from his essay:
“But if, by the author of sin, is meant the permitter, or not a hinderer of sin, and, at the same time, a disposer of the state of events, in such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and purposes, that sin, if it be permitted, or not hindered, will most certainly and infallibly follow;—I say, if this be all that is meant by being the author of sin, I do not deny that God is the author of sin, (though I dislike and reject the phrase, as that which by use and custom is apt to carry another sense), it is no reproach for the Most High to be thus the author of sin.”
For me this makes perfect sense and resolves the charge against the reformed view of Sovereignty of God and man’s responsibility.
-steve
“a disposer of the state of events”
What a magnificent phrase. Edwards’ dispositionalism at its finest. He expressed God’s primacy in all events within the created order in such a way that God is immediately the Creator, now! The idea of the disposer is that everything is disposed according to its nature as it was created and purposed to be for the purpose it was intended to fulfill. It was for this that he was called a heretic by those who opposed God’s Soveriegnty. This is still the controversy, for if God is not Author in the sense of the disposer of all things as the first causal agent and efficient disposer of all eventuality, then he is not God. Three-hundred years before a formal open theology was developed, Edwards rightly saw what is the end of any diminished soveriegnty of God.
If God did not create evil, who did? Did the devil create something God had no knowledge of? Did God know what evil was before it was found in Satan? How did God permit what did not exist? I figure if Satan created something that God didn’t, this line of thinking could lead to a form of dualism. No, I think God has a plan and He had it from the very beginning. I think sin is a part of that plan. Think of trying to love a perfect child. Now think about loving a child who made a mistake and was sorry. Love, compassion, mercy all go hand in hand. I think we were created imperfect as part of His plan. Yep, I’m a strong believer in the sovereign will of God
God is not the “Authour” of sin? What does that MEAM? Well, it cannot mean that God had “NOTHING TO DO” with it[evil] coming into existence. If that is true, then God is not Omniscient. Isaiah 45:7 states :”I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Evil here is more than your newer translations would lead you to believe…it is more than just “calamity”. RA is the Hebrew word and if you look that up and it’s usage throughout the Old Testament…you will find it covers a host of moral wickedness as well as sin.