All right, so we just considered the doctrine of divine concurrence and arguing that God is the unmoved mover, the cause of all causes, the immediate agent who causes even the connection between secondary causes and effects. This naturally raises the question immediately and not a subtle question, what about evil? natural disasters, and particularly moral, and I want to focus on the moral in particular. A couple of texts to frame this for us as we begin, Providence and Evil. Maybe a quick preparatory comment. There's no possibility that all of your questions, or even a fraction of them, get answered in the time that we have. There's the high possibility that I create more questions for you, and maybe even more objections. If you're going to throw tomatoes, let's do it out on the patio. No dueling. If this offends you, we've already learned about that. I'll be patient with you if you're patient with me. These are very, very difficult things to work through, but things that our faith requires us to look at and to consider, and I would argue that if we're patient, we'll find that our fathers in the faith, reflecting on the scriptures that we have, have given us at least some things, if not utter comprehension about the riddle and mystery of sin, at least some things to say about it, and also a number of things not to say about it, so as to impugn evil to God, or to deprive God of his causal activity. How do we do this? This is my feeble attempt. Lamentations 338, is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and ill go forth? Actually, quite literally, it says, do not the evil thing and the good go forth from the mouth of the Lord? It's rhetorical, and in the context, the answer is yes, both do. Exodus 912, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not listen to them, that is Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses. Difficult words for us, I confess. Second London Confession, 5-4. The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in his providence that his determinate counsel extends itself even to the first fall and all other sinful actions, both of angels and men. And that not by a bare permission, which also he most wisely and powerfully binds and otherwise orders and governs in a manifold dispensation to his most holy ends. Yet, so as the sinfulness of their acts proceeds only from the creatures and not from God, who being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin. how to coherently hold this together. I think it's a good confession to think through it in our own minds as to how to hold those together and to characterize it as a bit of work. To that then we turn ourselves. First, it's necessary that we lay to rest any doubt of God's concurrence in the production of evil outcomes by considering the broad and consistent biblical witness to his providential work both in natural and moral evils. I'll look at the latter more emphatically. Let us consider then just a few passages about God binding, ordering, and governing even evil events. I start with just three with regard to the natural order or the non-volitional order. Isaiah 45.7, God is the one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these. Amos 7, 1, Thus the Lord God showed me, and behold, He was forming a locust swarm when the spring crop began to sprout, a contingent cause that was going to cause a famine to come about. Amos 9, The Lord God of hosts, the one who touches the land so that it melts, all of those who dwell in it mourn. God caused the natural disasters, caused the crops to fail, caused even the locust swarm to come to devour the product of man's labor and hand so much for natural evils, creating calamity. I, the Lord, do these things. 2 Samuel 24, 1 and 10, this one we know well, and perhaps it gives you not a little bit of pause and difficulty. 2 Samuel 24, 1, now again, the anger of the Lord burned against Israel and it incited David against them to say, go number Israel and Judah. Recall that there was an explicit divine precept to not do exactly this thing. And the text says that God incited, another text says that Satan did, but this text says that God did. I take it that that's concurrence, demonic secondary cause and primary divine cause. Now verse 10, now David's heart troubled him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. The text says God incited him. David says, I have sinned. What to make of that? First Kings 22, 23, now therefore behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets, and the Lord has proclaimed disaster against you. This is Micaiah talking to Ahab, do you remember this? And all the false prophets are telling Ahab, go to battle, you'll win. And Micaiah tells him this story about God in heaven with his ministers on the right hand and the left saying, who will go for me to deceive the prophets? I need someone to go and mislead men so as to then lead Ahab into destruction. And finally, one of the creatures, I think on the left, says, I will go. God sends him, says, go and deceive them. And Micaiah says, therefore, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in their mouth. Lamentations 2.17, this is the triumphing of Israel's enemies over the people in Jerusalem right after the Chaldeans had come and decimated the land and there is ruin and carnage and smoldering buildings and piles of rubble and dead bodies laying about. And yet Lamentations 2, and you're thinking to yourself, no way did God do this. His own holy temple lies in ruins. He says in Lamentations 2.17, the Lord has done what he purposed. He has accomplished his word, which he commanded from days of old. He has thrown down without sparing. Watch this. He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you. He has exalted the might of your adversaries. Were the enemies doing evil? When they did what they did, yes, did God cause them to prevail in their evil actions? Yes. I leave it there. Amos 3.6, if calamity occurs in the city, has not the Lord done it? So I make no pretense that these are simple and easy questions for us to ponder, even if we feel compelled to recognize the truth of them. Romans 9.18, so then he has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires. First Peter 2.7 and 8 talks about the precious cornerstone that is good for us who believe, honor for you who believe, First Peter 2.7 and 8, but for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble because they disobey the word. as they were destined to do, not by themselves, but by God. In fact, the word for destined here is actually the word for them placed. And it's the same, it's a variation of the same word that Simeon uses when he tells Mary, this one was appointed for the, for the fall and the rise of many in Israel. It's the same word used about the cornerstone here. And it's the same word used about the stumblers. It's the idea, it's the word tithami. It means to place a thing with a purpose. He places the stone with the purpose that many would fall, and praise God, many would be built up. That should be us in Christ Jesus. And then Peter uses the same word to say, he doesn't just place the stone of stumbling, he places the stumblers to stumble. And perhaps one of the most difficult, but we hear so little about it, Revelation 17, 17. Speaking about those who gather together and give their devotion to the beast, it says, for God has put it in their hearts to execute his purpose by having a common purpose among themselves. What's their common purpose? To serve the Lord God in the day of adversity? No. He put it in their hearts to have a common purpose by giving their kingdom to the beast. until the words of God are fulfilled. It says that God put it in their heart to collectively give their devotion to the beast. I read these only to say that if I have some difficult things to say, it's because scripture has difficult things to say to us, things that are very hard to order. We began with the goodness, and our confession repeatedly keeps that theme going of the goodness of God, and yet the goodness of God is manifested even in the wrath of man, even in the evil of man. The wrath of man shall praise you. Bad for man, but good for the glory of God. So then, let us consider this with regard to evil. Can we say that God, let me be very careful, I know I walk on eggshells and this is very difficult. Can we say in any respect that God is the cause of evil? I said in any respect. In some respect, that seems unavoidable to us. Shall not the judge of all the earth deal justly? The answer is yes. Romans 9.14, what shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be. Herman Boving says this, just as a father forbids a child to use a sharp knife, though he himself uses it without any ill results, so God forbids us rational creatures to commit the sin that he himself can and does use as a means to glorifying his name. That doesn't make all my questions go away, but it is kind of a nifty word picture. God can intend to use evil as a means to glorify his name, but you cannot intend to use evil without incurring multiple guilt, and as it were, cutting yourself. How come God gets to bring about wicked results and has no moral guilt or defilement? But if I do it, I am morally defiled. Has anyone felt that I'm, I hope that I'm, I hope I'm putting my finger on the pressure point on this question. I take it that I'm not speaking words to you that you've never thought in your own heart. I want to look at these squarely, giving you every answer, making every mystery go away, certainly not. Ordering our way of thinking about these very difficult theological questions, that I hope to do. First, let's begin with a few comments on the nature of evil, and I'm particularly interested here in moral evil, moral corruption. If we're to rightly conceive or understand God's providence in the occurrence of evil, and God is providentially active, as our confession says, even in the first fall and every subsequent act of sin by demons and men, okay? If we're to understand that, then it's necessary that we characterize evil correctly. If we do not understand, even in a sort of elementary way, what evil is, what it consists of, then we may misunderstand how God can be at work in the occurrence of evil things, moral and natural. So what is evil? Very simply, I will say this, all evil is the absence of good where good ought to be. Yes, this is the privation account of Augustine and of Aquinas and of our own reformed tradition. That all evil is the absence of good where good ought to be. It's not the absence of good whatsoever. For instance, if I were blind, that would be a kind of natural evil. That would be a privation, a deprivation of my sight. And the reason that would be a natural evil is because by nature I should see. Now, this water bottle has no eyes and does not see, but is this water bottle blind? In a certain sense, no, because by nature it ought not see. In other words, there's no good of seeing that should be here that isn't. But if I were blind, there would be a good of seeing that by nature should be here that isn't. Hence, it's not merely the absence of good that makes evil evil. It's like the absence of good sight is not in the bottle. It's the absence of good where it ought to be. that makes evil, evil. Bobbink says this then, sin is a no thing. And immediately, I can remember for years recoiling at this. That sounds like you're saying sin is nothing, you know, like it's just a state of the mind. No, it's, he puts, the translators do a good job. They put the hyphen in the right place. It is a no thing. That is to say, it's not a substantial something. When God created the heavens and earth and all that is therein and pronounced it very good, sin wasn't one of those things, okay? Sin is a no-thing. It can only be a privation or a corruption of the good. Sin is a defect, a deprivation, an absence of good, or a weakness, imbalance, just as blindness is a deprivation of sight. This bottle is not blind because it was not deprived of sight that it naturally ought to have. It's sightless, but it's not blind. Does the difference make sense? This can be a failure in terms of commission insofar as one aims at some good in either an illegitimate or idolatrous way. These are sins of commission, which are aiming at goods and basically aiming at the creature as if it were the creator and serving it. All sorts of sins of commission and idolatry consist in this way, absence of good, absence of seeking the good that is God and reassigning that to the creature. It can also be a failure of omission insofar as one neglects to seek the good and to do the good that's required of him. So sins of commission are seeking goods in a disordered or idolatrous way or a disproportionate way. Sins of omission are failures to seek goods that you ought to seek. Love of neighbor, love of God, to sort of give you the big you know, banner category, failure to do that, or doing that in a misdirected, disorderly way, sins of commission and omission. Both are ways of missing the mark. Disordered doing or failure to do are both ways of missing the mark, the good that you ought to intend and seek. Where there is no good that ought to be, there can be no evil. The origin of mystery is a riddle, and in a certain sense it doesn't have an origin because it's not a copy of some sort of exemplar type. It really has a beginning. Sin is included within the decorative will of God, and yet it stands against his moral precepts. Yes, I will say this. Does God decree to bring about things that he morally prohibits? Yes, he does. I know this troubles, at this point, some are ready to find the exit. You have assigned moral corruption to God. This is inappropriate for God to do. This is terrible. Stay with me for a moment. Bovink sets out this mystery in very clear terms. And I think he walks the line quite carefully here. He says, we must be satisfied with a straightforward account of scripture. The possibility of sin is given with creation, but the fall is essentially distinct from it. That man could fall, or that angels could fall, is a possibility in the original order, but it doesn't mean that the original order was already defective. It could be defective, there could be a defection, but it wasn't defective. The possibility of sin is not an evil. That's what Boevinge is saying. Otherwise, God would be the author of evil, if just merely creating possibilities of sin were themselves evil. He says, sin was brought into being by the will of the creature, first in heaven, then later on earth. It does not belong to the essential being of creation, that is to say, creatures as they are, angels, men, other things, are not essentially evil, but it came by way of disobedience. It is unlawfully there, but its existence is no accident. In terms of the law, precepts, it ought not be there, but it's not, he says, an accident in the sense, he says, to the extent that it clearly falls within God's purpose and will, we could say that up to a point, and in some sense, it had to be there. I pause, because the decree is immutable and infallible, and if the decree includes that wicked events will in fact transpire, the first fall and all subsequent acts of iniquity should fall, then immutably and invariably sin will come about because the decree has ordered that the world should unfold in this way. You're thinking to yourself, he's the author, he's the author. Okay, best hold your horses on the author thing for a second, okay? Is there a sense in which decoratively God stands over all things ordering them, including even the disorder of sin? The answer to that we have to say is yes, otherwise we will get into a cosmological dualism. We want to avoid that. Back to Bovink, he says, in a certain sense, then it had to be there, he means according to the decree, but then it certainly always had to be there as something that ought not to be there and had no right to exist. And you're thinking, Bovink's as confused about this as I am, okay? What he means by had to be there is by the force of the decree. It couldn't be otherwise because it was eternally decreed to unfold in this way. You know, the defection of man from the law given to him in the garden and the redemption of man through Christ's death at the hands of evil men. That was eternally decreed to be the way it would be. But then it ought not be there in the sense of morally this is still a violation of his divine precepts. The place we can go, and perhaps I should just turn there even now just to allay the immediate sort of knee-jerk reaction to this idea, is Acts 2 and Acts 4. And Dr. Fesko took us there ever so briefly last night. In Acts 2, Peter, preaching about the crucifixion of Christ, says that this man was delivered over, that is to death, according to the predetermined plan and for knowledge of God. You nailed to the cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. Is the crucifixion of Christ at the hands of godless men according to the predetermined plan of God? He says it is. Acts 4, 27 and 28, in this city were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do evil things. Most certainly. In fact, the most high-handed evil thing in the history of the world, the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory, listen to what he says, they were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur. The crucifixion of the Lord of Glory at the hands of godless men is according to the plan and predestination and purposes of God. Does God decoratively will that certain things would transpire through courses of evil events? And the answer is yes he does, however so difficult that is for us to sort of situate. So in what exactly does the evil of any, evil and tenor action consists. Okay, so there's an evil action, but where exactly is the evil in evil wills and in evil acts? This is a very difficult question, inasmuch as pure evil never exists in its own right. Remember, evil is always a deprivation of good. Where there is no good to corrupt, there is no evil there. Evil is a parasite. It cannot exist independent of some host. Evil is a corruption, it is a perversion, but there has to be good in order for there to be perversion. Does that make sense? There can be no pure perversion where there is not a twisting and a maligning and a corrupting of something good. Therefore, evil presupposes good and can only be where there is some good to be depriving of good. Very difficult. Historically, the answer given to the question is that evil, the evil of sin, does not lie in the material action of sin itself, but rather in the form of it. I'm gonna bring us down this path. It's gonna be very difficult, I confess. It took me some time to gather, to think about, and I'm putting out here to maybe introduce you to this idea. But the idea is simply this, that the material action of any evil event, as a material action, is not in itself evil, rather it's the, intentional form, it's the heart and the intention of man that actually makes a good physical action into what we would judge to be an immoral or evil action. In so much as creatures are creatures, they are good. In so much as creatures move, it is good. In him we live, move, and have our being." Bovink again. He says, with regard to this, creatures as creatures and actions as actions are good. Fallen angels and humans as creatures are good and remain good and exist from moment to moment only by and in and for God. Sin has power to do anything only with and by the means of the powers and gifts that are God-given. Sin cannot do its work apart from power given by God. This is the whole thing with Assyria. Assyria does much evil, but God is wielding them. Boving further explains the challenge of characterizing and understanding sin. He says, because sin is always concrete and occurs as the wrong form of an act that is essentially good, it's hard to separate matter and form. In other words, I'm gonna illustrate this, because otherwise you'll just get lost in the abstract here. And I'm gonna use a strong example. If I were to take a knife and plunge it into the chest of a man so as to end that man's life, would that be an evil action? And the answer is, it depends. There are certain contingencies that could justify that action so that the evil of the action, which you might call homicidal, is only evil homicide if the form of my heart and intentions are evil, but the evil does not lie in the material act itself. Me being is an evil, Me holding a knife isn't evil. Me holding the knife with white knuckles isn't evil. Me moving so as to lift my hand above my head is not evil. Me bringing down the knife is not evil. Me bringing down the knife into the chest of a living man is not evil. Me doing so with the intention to kill him may not be evil either. It may be that, you know, every dad has had this thought. It may be that a home intruder is in your house, and he's going for your children, and this is the nearest thing you have at hand that's of lethal force that could stop him, and judging that lethal force is the only thing possible to stop this man, you proceed to undertake just exactly this action, and it would be, and God forbid you ever in that situation, but it would be, in fact, a just act It would be looking out for the well-being and the interests of others, namely your children that are asleep in the house and in danger from this intruder. So that what we're trying to get at is, it's not the material, I mean, I could say the same thing and we could go on all day multiplying things. I will put this one out there. Adultery. Lying with a woman in sexual union, or a man, is not, in terms of the material action, an evil thing. In fact, in the right context, it is a good thing. a blessed thing, a special and God-given gift, and yet the same thing done in a disordered way and to illegitimate or unlawful ends becomes the sin of adultery. So that the sin is not in the physical action as physical action, and the sin is not in the creature as creature, the sin is in the form of the creature's will, matter and form. This is the distinction. There is no material evil that is evil just in virtue of its material being or action. It's the form given by the will to Bovink then. He says, it's very hard to separate these things in our mind just as at any given time the heat of a stove cannot be separated from the stove. Yet just as the stove is not identical with its heat, so the being or act to which sin is attached cannot be identified with sin. Do you get this? The physical act of lying with a woman cannot be, as physical act, identical with the sin of adultery. The act of taking a knife and plunging it into the chest of a man cannot be identical with the sin of homicide. Something else is what makes those material events evil. He goes on, he says, in the case of blasphemy, the power needed to express it and the language in which it is couched are themselves good. Words are good, men speaking words are good, insomuch as that's a movement, it is from God. He says, what makes it and all things wrong and sinful is the deformity. the departure from divine laws. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says, question 17, answer, sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of, that's the disorder of the law of God. 1 John 3 verse 4, sin is lawlessness. Bobbink says a little more on the corruptive character of sin. If transgression is the very character of sin, then the character cannot lie in the nature or essence of things, be they matter or spirit, men or angels if you will. For things, oh, there is essence and existence to God alone, he who is the fountain of all goods." In other words, sin cannot be something in your essence or in your existence because these are holy from God. And if that were the case, then God would most certainly be the author of evil. He says, the evil can therefore only come after the good. There can be no evil where there is not good, because evil is necessarily a perversion, a corruption, a deprivation, hence depravity, of good. It can only exist through the good and on the good, and can really consist of nothing but the corruption of good. Where there is no good, there is no evil. But the inverse is not true. There can be good with no evil, but there can be no evil without good. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a corruption. It wouldn't be a deprivation. It wouldn't be depravity. He says, even the wicked angels, although sin has corrupted their whole nature, nevertheless, as creatures, are and remain good. In so much as God made them be and continues to make them be, it is very good. In so much as they sin, they are evil. It can't be their being or essence that makes them evil. Moreover, the good, in so far as it is the essence and being of things, is not annihilated by sin, though bent in another direction and abused. Man has not lost his being, his human nature, through sin. He still has a soul and a body, reason and will, and all kinds of emotions and interests. And in so much as these are naturally created and caused by God, they remain good. in so much as they are bent in the wrong direction, failing to seek the good that they ought to, or performing good in a disordered way so as to harm others, they are evil. Here's the critical distinction, though. The sinfulness of sin is not in the being or the movement, per se, of sinful creatures. Otherwise, we could rightly charge God with the authorship of sin in so much as all creatures live, move, and have their being in and through God. Rather, sinfulness lies in the absence of moral good that the creature ought to seek and to exhibit. With that, then we turn to the question of authorship. Third point, then, meaning of authorship. It's a Christian commonplace to say that God is not the author of evil. In fact, though, we might wonder how this is the case, given that God decrees all things and works all things after the counsel of his own will, and concurs with all second causes as their primary and superior cause. What gives? How could God not be the author of evil if everything lives, moves, and has its being from God, and He decrees the end from the beginning, and all things in between, and works all things after the counsel of His will, and that certainly includes many evil things. What do you mean He's not the author? Didn't He write the book? You know, that's authorship. Surely, if God had willed for there to be no moral evil, there would be none. Is this possible? Could God have willed a world in which there was no fall? Yes, certainly, we shouldn't even hesitate. Of course he could, it is in his power to will precisely such a world. Has he? No, he hasn't. And sin only exists because God willed it to have a place within his perfect plan for creation. At least this is the way a consistent Augustinian is compelled to put it, even if the open theist would argue to the contrary. So how can we seriously contend, as our confession does, that God is not the author of sin? We're gonna have to define authorship perhaps somewhat more narrowly than causality generally, okay? We're gonna have to define authorship, and I would submit this is what the confession is doing. It's defining authorship in a very particular and narrow sense. One way in which theologians have sought to avoid ascribing authorship of sin to God is by defining authorship in a narrow sense as formal, not efficient, but formal causality. I'll try to unpack this. In this respect, we might say that God is the efficient cause of the creature's action as movement, but he's not the formal cause of the sinfulness in that action. So does God cause the sinful action? Yes. Does God cause the sin of the sinful action? No. Sounds though, I pause for just a second, it sounds like there's something in the world caused to be that God didn't cause to be and therefore it sounds like we have another set of primary agents. Stay with me though. Boving says, but because the primary cause and the secondary cause are not identical and differ essentially, the effect and product are in reality totally the effect and product of the two causes to be sure, but formally they are the effect and the product of the secondary cause. He illustrates it this way. Wood burns, and it is God alone who makes it burn, but the burning process may not be formally attributed to God, but must be attributed to the wood as subject. So wood, you know, we were at Sam's last night, and the wood is smoldering there in the fire pit, and God causes it to smolder, but God isn't smoldering, okay? God causes you to believe, but God isn't a believer. Is that scandal? God is not a believer. We are. God doesn't have faith. We do. Does God cause faith? Yes. Does God have faith? No. He's the efficient cause of it, but he's not the formal cause of it. Does God cause repentance? Yes. Does God repent? No. The formal cause of repenting is you repenting. The efficient cause is God making it so that you would do so. Efficient formal distinction, if you will. Human persons speak, act, and believe, this is bobbing still, and it is God alone who supplies to the sinner all the vitality and strength he or she needs for the commission of sin. Nevertheless, the subject and the author of sin is not God but the human being. Okay, this seems to be, I mean, we're not explaining it all away, but we're at least characterizing it and qualifying it, but we need to focus the question a little more. This might seem plausible as far as it goes, that God is not the author of sin, but how is it the case if he decrees that it should occur? Acts 2, Acts 4, for instance, that we just read. And is the agent who applies the power of the creature to action not culpable in that action? Because we don't just say that God makes it possible for us to move. We say, with Thomas and our own confession, that God applies us to action. He doesn't just make it possible that we move, he makes us move. Some of our movement is morally defiled movement. Does God not then have to sort of bear his part in the moral culpability and fault in our sinful actions? In attempting to answer this question then, We have to go back to the character of evil. It's a lack of good where good ought to be. Moral evil follows from, this is, I'm being very careful and technical. I'm giving you my best attempt at a distillation. I'm giving it to you in the next two minutes. I feel like it took me some years to kind of be okay with what I'm about to say to you. So if this doesn't, set well with you or seems incomplete to you, I understand. Nevertheless, moral evil follows from the lack of a form of goodness in a subject's will where such good is morally expected of him. It's a lack of goodness in his will, and it could be one of omission or commission, failure to seek the good that he ought, or seeking goods that are really good in a disordered way, such as to produce idolatry and hatred of neighbor and that kind of thing. Could be sin of omission, could be sin of commission. And this lack of good form is precisely a lack in the creature, not in God, and this is the key. So all evil is the lack of good where good ought to be. The question then is, where is the lack? exactly where, in terms of the agency of any action, creaturely or divine, of the two agents, creature and divine, and let's say that the outcome is an evil one, or an evil action, who is it that, so this is a bad way of saying it, who is it that supplies the depravity? Who is it that supplies the lack? I know you can't supply a lack, but you know what I'm saying. In other words, in whom is good missing so as to make this action evil? It is precisely a lack in the creature and not in God who is hypsombonum, goodness itself. It would also, it would only be a privation, and so evil in God, if God were under some kind of natural obligation to move the will of every creature to every good required of it. In other words, the only way you could, as it were, pull God in to some moral fault is if God were obligated to move every act of human will to every good morally required of it. Now the open theist and the Arminian will generally say, if God has the power to do that, then he's obligated to do that. Kind of like a good Samaritan law. If you have the power, if you see someone in need and you have the power to do good to them and you withhold that, you are morally culpable. Is that law applicable to God? Many will say, yes it is, and therefore God has to do his best, do everything he can. I will simply say, I'll submit this now and try to develop it a little bit later, no he is not. God is not obligated to give every good to every creature. He's not. It is not something depraved in God when he withholds good, that is to say, goodwill or action from the creature. Still, the lack is not in God, the lack of good is in the creature. And wherever there is a lack of good, we must say that God did not efficiently will good to be there, otherwise it would be there. Where there is a lack of goodwill, would there have been goodwill if God willed there to be goodwill in that place? And the answer is, yes, there would. So in one sense, can we say that the lack, so to speak, in the creature is a lack that God willed to be, so to speak, a willing permission, so to speak. The answer is yes. Is that morally culpable on God? No, because God's under, in other words, there's not something God ought to be doing that God isn't doing when he doesn't make you better than you are. In not placing the form of moral good required of the creature in the creature's will, that is to say, not making all of us holy angels, so to speak, We may say that God causes an evil outcome to result, but he does not author that evil outcome for at least two reasons. Does he intend it? Yes, he incited David to number the people so that he might judge them. Yes, he put it in the hearts of those people to have a common cause to give their allegiance to the beast. Does God intend evil? Yes. Is intending evil the same as doing evil? Our knee-jerk reaction is yes, it is. The answer is, no it's not unless God is failing to will a good that he ought to will. Alright, two reasons though why God is not the author. First, it is not from God's lack of good form or some deformity in him that the evil thing results, but rather from the lack of good form in the creature, particularly in the creature's will. The creature's deformity alone provides the formal reason for the evil of any action. You could think of this as like formal causality in a negative mode. Basically, a failure to place a good form where a good form ought to be placed. And in that respect, the only failing to place good is a failure in the creature. You know, we can all say, yeah, but wait, God could have acted so as to give them a form of good. Of course he could. That's what he does in you. Do you do good things? Do you choose to do good things? Do you do them successfully? Yes, yes, yes. And is it all of God? Also, yes. Could God make it such that you do more good than you do currently? Of course it's within his power. Could God make it such that someone else do less good? than they currently do or that you currently do. Also within his power, but that's not a forcing, it's not an authoring. I'll come to that in a second as to why. Second, since divine non-determination, that is to say, a will not to place good, a will not to make something be, is not itself a positive cause. In other words, for God not to will a good that could be or even morally should be is not to, in a certain sense, positively cause anything. To not make something isn't a cause of anything. It's a non-causing of something that should be, at least should be, for the creature. John Norton makes this point in his Orthodox Evangelist in what I, at least for me, is the most illuminating passage that I've read, maybe ever, on the question of divine authorship and evil. And you may wonder in just a moment why I think this is illuminating and it may be, it may enshroud your mind in more darkness. Stay with me and let's work through it. He says this. I'll try to comment as I go through it. He says, as often as the will of creatures does not will, God has not determined it to will. Can we say that? In other words, if you don't will, then God didn't determine it to will because everything God determines comes about infallibly and immutably. So if your will doesn't do any willing, then we can say, God didn't will your will to do any willing. Will in the sense of decree, not in the sense of precept. In the sense of precept, he says, thou shalt and thou shalt not. In the sense of decree, he may or may not give you the form of good to carry out the precept. In terms of the determination of will. He says the non-determination, that is to say, the not willing of God to make a good in the creature, or suspension of the determination of God, is the antecedaneous cause. I love that word, antecedaneous. Never used it, first time ever going public with that. Antecedaneous, the prior, the superior cause in respect of God. This cause cannot be positive. Here's why. A positive cause cannot be terminated in non-being. In other words, what is the absence of good? It's a no-thing. No-things aren't produced by positive causal actions. They are the absence. They are the not-causing. So in this respect, does God bring about that evil occurs? Yes, but not by positively causing evil, but rather not by causing good where good could be, okay? Already you can hear people tempted to push the weight off their shoulders and say, I'm not responsible, I'm not responsible, I'm not responsible because God could have made me better than I am. We'll come back to the question of responsibility in just a bit. He goes on. It must therefore, he says, be suspensive. This is what he calls suspensive. Basically, bringing about an event by not bringing about an event. Bringing about evil by not bringing about good. But this isn't a positive causing, it's God freely not causing. The necessary suspension or the withholding of the influence of God without any positive action, if we let that go on, suffices to the annihilation of the creature. I mean, at a certain point, if God stops willing good to the creature, the creature stops being, okay? So that if God should suspend the willing of good all the way down to the level of existence, we would just pop out of existence, right back to nothing, so to speak. He says, therefore, the suspension of the determination of God with regard to moral good suffices to the preventing of that operation of the creature. In other words, this is a way of hardening the heart. It makes the heart not soft by not placing softness there. It leaves the stony heart stony by not placing the softness and fleshiness there, Ezekiel 36. He says, this suffices to the preventing of the operation of the creature, which yet is not. What did God cause when he didn't cause anything? Do you get the, this is the idea. So what, how are we supposed to explain? So, so whose fault is it in terms of where exactly is the absence of good where good ought to be? Is it in God? No. If there is no obligation on God to make every creature as good as every creature can possibly be, in other words, that God is naturally obligated to give all good to all creatures. In toto, if there's no such law, I submit to you there is no such law, then the absence of good in the event of evil is not in the efficient cause, who is God, it is in the formal cause, and I would say almost like a de-formal cause, formal in a negative sense, the failure to produce the form of good where good ought to be is precisely a lack in the creature, not in the creator. Obviously, this entire argument that God is not the author of sin only works on the assumption that God is not naturally required to give every moral creature every moral good, even if he requires, by way of command or precept, such goods from us. If it suits his purpose to withhold any form of goodness, even if this results in the moral corruption of particular men or angels, then he is free to withhold it. Can he withhold a soft heart from Pharaoh? Yes, because he has no natural obligation to give him a soft heart. Can he withhold whatever good would have led those people away from the beast in devotion to the lamb in Revelation 17? Can he withhold that good? Yes, because there is no natural obligation for God to give every good to the creature. This is arguably the epicenter of the conflict. If we boil it all down, it comes down to this. Do you believe that God is naturally obligated to give every possible good to every creature of whom good is required? If you think he is so obligated, you're up against the dilemma. How is it that they happen not to have every good? It limits the power and the decree of God. On our side, the challenge is otherwise. But it seems like they don't have good because God didn't give it. Therefore, because he could have given it, and it was in his power to give it, and he didn't give it, the creature's off the hook. And we still say to that, no. The reason we say no is, again, because the only place that we can locate the reason for evil is in the absence of good in the creature, not in God. That is sufficient to establish the creature's moral culpability, even if God could have made that creature morally better than it is. Summary then of this, we will revisit the question in a few moments, but suffice it to say for now that God is not the author of sin in so much as sin does not result from a lack or probation of goodness in God. If you can say that, then the authorship of sin question with regard to God is in that respect answered. That said then, let's talk briefly about the will. Does this mean that free will is determined? In a sense, that might sound like jumbo shrimp or something like that, you know, an oxymoron. Determined free will. This is my fourth point, determined free will. All moral evil is located in an act of the will, either in its failure to seek the good ought or to seek real goods in a disordered way. This disordered way of seeking goods is evil because it treats non-ultimate goods, that is God himself, as though they were, or non-ultimate goods, creatures, as if they were ultimate goods, resulting in idolatry. or because it seeks the goods selfishly and at the expense of other goods to which it's obligated. In other words, the reason you ought not commit adultery is because of the command to love your wife, and because you are one flesh with her, and a host of other reasons, including explicit and positive law prohibiting you from committing adultery. So that the physical act of committing adultery is not where the evil lies, it's in the disordered seeking of a good in the context in which a higher good is required of you. There is failure to seek the good that you ought that would have moderated this physical good. We could go on and on about the probation account. What ordinarily makes choices morally culpable is when the act of the will is the best natural, among created causes, explanation for the action performed. If we can establish that some other natural necessary cause or contingent circumstances better accounts for the action, the will is usually exempted from moral blame in that instance, since it was not sufficiently free in its operation. I pause for just a second. This is what troubles us so much with regard to free will. When we say free will, we mean free from other causes. And I agree with that. Free from contingent causes, at least sometimes free from contingent causes and necessary causes. And to the extent that your will is free of those other causes, it is to just that extent that it is free and morally culpable. So for instance, I use this illustration. If you're driving down the road, and in a fit of world-loathing homicidal rage, you cross the double yellow line and hit an oncoming driver and kill that driver, that will be a case of vehicular homicide. You will be charged and accounted if it can be shown that you did that intentionally. Now let's imagine that you're driving down the road and the exact same action occurs, but this time it's because you're rooting around down on the floor below the steering wheel looking for something and you, you know, negligently went across the median. Will you be held accountable for the death in that case? Yes, but probably as what we call involuntary manslaughter. We have these gradations of basically how much your will seems to be the primary explanation of your action. Why do you still get charged with vehicular manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter even if you didn't mean to do it? It's because you should have been more intentional about your driving and not rooting around down on the floor. So you're still going to get some trouble for that. But we can imagine a host of other scenarios in which the same physical event, your car crosses the line and hits the oncoming traffic in a way that would totally exempt you if you had a seizure. and you didn't know that you were prone to seizures, and you weren't under doctor's orders not to drive or on medication, simply a seizure for the first time ever, such as you lost consciousness and then the exact same result came about, if you can prove that, there will be a contingent cause that better explains your action than a voluntary cause. It's a terrible event, but you're not going to go to jail or probably be fined for that. You can think of another contingent cause. You're going along, and let's just say that it's not you who has the seizure, but how about the person in the lane next to you? Has the seizure, slumps over the wheel, bashes into the side of your car, totally beyond your control, pushes you across the line, same result. Are you going to be held accountable? The answer is no. The way that we establish, in our mundane world down here, moral culpability, is by identifying, as best we can, a relative autonomy of the will, freedom from other potential natural causes, contingent or necessary, forcing or compelling that action. If we can show that, so that among created causes, the volitional cause becomes the best explanation for the action, it is just then, and only then, that we can convincingly establish moral culpability. moral badness, and therefore proceed to, you know, actually bring out the full weight of the law against that. So the feeling might be that if God determines my will, that's like another natural cause determining my will. It's overriding my will, and every time my will is sort of subjected and overridden by some other natural cause, a seizure or some other event that takes place, I am immediately not culpable. So if God causes my will to move and to be, and he's even the primary cause and I'm the subordinate cause, is not my culpability shoved off to just that extent? I mean, this isn't an unreasonable question, because that's how we establish moral culpability among ourselves. With regard to God then, the question is, if he causes me to will, is he not causing me coercively? In a certain sense, overriding my will. Here's the problem with that, and this is why divine determination does no violence to the creature. If we think that if God wills it, therefore my will is over-willed, we have already taken the misstep of thinking of God's causality as a cause among causes in the world. In other words, the reason that sometimes necessary or contingent causes are the better explanation of your action is because when those causes act, to just that extent, your volitional cause has to, as it were, step aside or be over-ridden, okay? So that my will isn't the reason I crossed the line, if in fact you can find some other natural causal explanation for my action. But the way that God causes us is not by, when God causes things, he does not cause things by displacing other natural causes. He does things by causing other natural causes to be causes. So that however moral culpability is established in the court of God, it cannot be in precisely the way that's established in the court of man. In the court of man, the only way that I could know the thought and intention of your heart is by reasonably being convinced that there's not another explanation of your action. Okay? Relative autonomy. Is that the same model that is necessary in the courtroom of God? Do I have to establish that I am relatively autonomous of God to establish my moral culpability? And the answer to that is that's impossible. Because in Him we live, move, and have our being. From Him we receive life, breath, and all things. He decrees the end from the beginning and works all things after the counsel of His will. That is impossible. Well then, doesn't that mean that I'm off the hook? The answer is no, because the way that God relates causally to us is not as a displacer of our causality, but as a creator of our causality. I give you this question with regard to the violence thing, is violence done to my will? Does God violently act against you when he makes you to be? God's invading my space, causing me to exist. That's insanity. There is no your space and you if God's not making it be. So if God makes you move, is God, as it were, invading your space and displacing you? No, he's creating your space and placing you. Do you get this? So in other words, we cannot use the way the moral culpability is established vis-a-vis other created causes in the courtroom of God. In other words, the way we establish culpability here, horizontally, is not the way we establish it here, vertically. Because the way God relates to us causally is not like a cause among causes that has to share space with other finite causes. He's an infinite cause. Now listen to Norton again on this. Either the will is determined by God in its operation, or else it would follow either that there were not an essential subordination of second causes to the first, that is, of man to God, which were repugnant to the nature of second causes, it being imperfect and dependent. Second causes are dependent causes. Or that the first cause were subordinate to the second, which were repugnant to the nature of the first cause, being perfect and universal. He says, the will cannot be compelled Okay, he says, the will cannot be compelled. To say that which is done willingly is done constrainedly is to affirm a contradiction, namely that that which is willing is unwilling. In other words, when God causes you to will, does God, as it were, violently force and constrain your will, in which case you would exactly not be willing. It'd be like a car bashing into the side of your car, pushing you across the double yellow line against your will. You would never choose to do that, but some other event that overpowered your ability to choose may do that. Is your will being coerced in that respect? No, your action is being coerced, but your will isn't being coerced because you are not choosing that. It's just coming upon you. The will cannot be compelled when it wills. God can determine the will and not prejudice the nature of the will, he says, because he is an infinite cause. I've read that explanation in other places before and it sounds to me like this. So if some other cause moved me, it would in a certain sense override my will and therefore do violence to it, subjecting it, okay, and actually canceling its power. But if God does it, he doesn't do violence to my will because he's just so big. He's just so big he can do stuff that doesn't even make sense to me. Well, that is true. But that's, Norton actually is making a very precise point. When he mentions that God is an infinite cause, his whole point is the reason God cannot do violence to your causality is because God causes your causality. In other words, God doesn't act against your causality. God makes your causality be and move. You know, it's kind of like, does God act against you when he makes you be? No, he makes, he acts in you, not against you. If he acted against you, it would be a kind of, it would be a kind of polytheistic God of the nations approach where certain things exist independent of God and when God acts like natural causes act, they have to displace other natural causes. That would be doing violence. God is the cause of causes and for that reason can do no violence to cause. I always use the illustration of gravity. I have some chapstick in my pocket. If I drop the chapstick onto the lectern, we might ask the question, did gravitational pull cause that chapstick tube to fall to the lectern? Everyone says, yes it did. Did God do violence to the law of gravity just now? No, he made the law of gravity be and do what it does. That's not violence, that's working in and with the nature of the thing, not against the nature of the thing. God doesn't work against our natures, he makes us have natures, and to be and to move. Back to Norton then. God determines the will suitably and agreeably to its own nature, that is freely. This is the point. No one believes who is not wanting to believe. No one repents who does not want to repent. No one resists his will who does not want to resist his will. In other words, in terms of natural causality and wanting and seeking and aiming, no one does that which is against his will. C.S. Lewis used to have this description in which he says that God dragged him into the kingdom kicking and screaming. And I know what Lewis meant, and he just meant that he had all these mental, intellectual objections to Christianity that he had to work through over a long period of time. But the way it sounds is, I didn't really want to go to heaven and God just said, you're going. No one goes to heaven who doesn't want to go to heaven. Nobody believes who doesn't want to believe. No one rejects who doesn't want to reject. God is at work in the wanting, not against the wanting, but in the wanting, making it be. The efficacy of God offers no violence, no challenge to the nature of things, but governs them according to their own natures. It reaches from one end to the other mightily, and it sweetly orders all things. The external, transient, efficacious motion of God upon the will determines the will with a real determination. The will so moved moves itself with a real and formal determination. The will moving is always doing what the will wants to move. It's willing willingly. if you can put it like that, God moves wills. Now we can get into the whole question of how God moves wills and I would say he moves wills to the power of the good because every act of will is seeking a perceived good so that God can actually move us to will in a way by inducing us and moving our wills through the good. But we should say this, again, the falling short of our obligation to will other or higher goods than we do is evil that resides only in us. In other words, the absence of good where good ought to be is only in us. Now could God have created goodwill where there is no goodwill in us? Yes, that's what he, I mean, when he saved you, he removed your heart of stone and gave you a heart of flesh. I take it that God gave you, God mercifully and kindly gave you a will that currently you didn't have. He didn't act against your will, he transformed your will. That's not violence to your will, that's mercy to your will. Finally then, creaturely culpability and divine rights. And you know where we go with this. The locus classicus of this is Romans 9. We're in a position to address, cautiously, the contentious and challenging question of man's culpability and God's obligations toward the creature, if any. Romans 9, we're faced with a clear set of verses touching these very questions. We are told that God is free to do as he pleases with what is his. In Romans 9.15, Paul cites the words of Exodus 39.19, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. That, by the way, is placing the form of good, particularly morally, in the creature by an act of sovereign power. He then goes on to speak of Pharaoh, upon whom God, quite clearly, did not have mercy. He can have mercy on whom he has mercy, compassion on whom he has compassion. Well, here's this Pharaoh guy. By the way, it's not just Pharaoh's heart that was hardened. There are a bunch of other kings, and it says at one place that he hardened the hearts of the Egyptians. It's not like one time, one place, kind of a freak event, God hardened a heart. The Old Testament quite frequently talks about that with regard to many people beside Pharaoh. So he brings up Pharaoh on whom God did not have mercy. Rather, he says that God raised up Pharaoh in order to demonstrate his power, 917. And he does this particularly by judging Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and then also the Egyptian gods. I executed judgment on all their gods, he says, right? Numbers 33, 4. It's well known though, from the Exodus account, that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. One time it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart, like three or four times it says God hardened his heart. And so Paul adds this in Romans 9.18, so then he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. It's at just this point that the well-known objection is raised, 9.19, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who resists his will? And then the text responds with that stern reproach. On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Will it? What's wrong with the question in 919? First of all, it's the accusatory way in which it's asked. If God willed it, and it brought about, and it was evil that came about, well then, who is he to charge us with moral culpability? Okay? What's wrong with that? First of all, that's a question because it's impugning the righteous and holy character of God, and that is a problem on the surface of it. But it's also a problem at sort of the cosmological level, if you will. It's assuming that God could only ever establish our guilt if he negotiated his causal relationship to our causal relationship the way other finite causes have to negotiate a causal relationship to us. In other words, if natural laws or contingent effects explain your action, even in a more superior way to your will, then your will is immediately exonerated, it's overridden, it's done violence, it's subjected so as not to be operative and therefore not guilty. The question here, what's wrong with the question is not just that it implies some sort of moral ill-doing on God's part, the problem with it is it assumes that God is required to establish our guilt in His court the same way we establish guilt in a local court here in Orange County. Are we in Orange County? I think LA County, alright. But you get the point. The way God establishes guilt is the way that we establish guilt, and therefore if God causes my causing, then I'm not causing. What's wrong with this accusation is that it's effectively either pantheistic or deistic. It's that common cosmology that says God acts and the creature doesn't, or the creature acts and God doesn't. It is the whole accusation turns on a complete disillusion of the first and secondary cause distinction. To put it simply, the whole accusation only makes sense if you dissolve the creator-creature distinction and turn God into a power among powers in the world sharing causal space with us. In other words, this only works if you assume a pagan cosmology. Now, to the divine cosmology, primary, secondary causes, how does he still find fault? I'll concede that that's a very difficult question, and in terms of the mechanism of it, the text does not lead us down that path. I think we can simply say this. No one, though, is judged for any evil act of will that they did not, in fact, intend. This much is certain. I'll leave it with that. This much is certain, that anyone who does evil does what they intend. And if God judges the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, it matters not that there's a primary, secondary order of causality. The thoughts and the intentions of the heart, insomuch as they are lacking the good that ought to be, in short, depraved, is sufficient ground for him to condemn them. The question with regard to is this righteous or is this just is basically the question again of whether God is obligated to give every good to the creature that he requires. Augustine very humbly says, um, Lord command what you will and give what you command. By the way, that's not a pugnacious demand. That is a humble request. And the reason he makes it a request is because he knows God isn't naturally obligated to do it. He doesn't say, Lord, you are only allowed to command what you also give. So make sure you play by the rules. That's not what he says. Command what you will, but give what you command. In terms of the ground of culpability then, it lies in the depravity of our wills. Could God made it such that our wills were not depraved and began to seek the good that they did not seek and to have the good that they did not have? Yes, it is in his power to do so and mercifully and by his own free choice, he has given such good to us and he has perhaps withheld it from others and no charge can be taken against him. God does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth, no one can stop his hand or say to him, What have you done? When God providentially rules evil, God doesn't come in for a peer review board where the committee sits down and decides whether it was a clean shoot. You know what I'm saying? In that respect, God's ways are not our ways and his paths are not our paths. And they will, in fact, lead us with a great many mysteries. But the mystery should not be because we accept a pagan cosmology. I'll pray in conclusion. God and Father, we thank you for your kindness and mercy to us. We do praise your awesome power and we confess the mystery of your ways and even the mystery of the creator-creature relation. And yet, Lord, we confess that we are utterly dependent for all that we are, living, moving, being upon you. We thank you for your wisdom and for your power. And Lord, we thank you that even the wrath of man will praise you and that even sin is ordered to the praise and revelation of your holy justice and wrath against sin. And for this reason, even it serves the ultimate and highest good. Teach us, instruct us to humble ourselves before you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.