Some Thoughts to a Friend on the Nature of Foreordination and Evil

Here are some thoughts on the subjects that I once hashed through with a friend-

The foreordination is a very deep issue, and it is no surprise to me that you have incomplete understanding of it. (I know that I have an incomplete understanding as well.) Did God cause sin? Is He the Author of wickedness? I won't try to pretend to be the great master of all knowledge in this issue. Let me ask you to evaluate some of the things that you said. You said that God is good and cannot create evil and because sin is evil God can't have created evil. Where did sin come from? Well, if we take Augustine's opinion to be accurate, as many thinkers have throughout the years, sin is a negation or privation of that which is good. Therefore it is not created in the same sense as other products of God's special creation. It does not have a positive or efficient cause, but a negative and deficient one. Good itself is not a created thing in the sense that there was a time when it did not exist, for it has existed for as long as God Himself has. Evil is a negation or privation of good. Now the question to ask is how is an action constituted evil? Puritan Jerom Zanchius spoke wisely when he said, "By proceeding from a wrong principle, by being directed to a wrong end, and by being done in a wrong manner." Something else to toss into the pot is that fact that whatever God wills and does is not willed and done because they were in their own nature previous to God willing them just and right, or that God ought to will and do them, but they are just, right and proper because He who is holy wills them and does them. (This is a paraphrase of Zanchius as well.) We often miss this perspective when we consider such things as God's eternal decree.

Does God create sin? No. God is not a negative or deficient cause with respect to good. God cannot twist what He is, for in doing so He would no longer remain what He is. (I hope that this is not causing an Exedrin headache, or horrible flashbacks of me explaining natural revelation to Stirling!) This contradicts the very plainly taught doctrine of God's immutability. Can we ever say that God does things from a wrong principle? No. Can we say that He does things directed toward a wrong end? No. Does he do things in a wrong manner? No. He does all things well. Now when God moves an unsaved man to do something, is that action going to be good? No, for he is destitute of faith. He has no desire for the glory of God. These actions are done for all the wrong reasons (mentioned above) and are thus to be properly deemed evil. So God moves the man to do something. When the man performs the action, it is evil. But is God the author of that evil? Without God, the man would never have done anything at all for in Him we live and move and have our being. But does that mean that God is the cause of sin? In the sense that He is the Supreme Author of all mankind's action, perhaps; but when we see what makes an action evil there is a great gap between that and what God is and truly does. We think of Christ delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God slain by the wicked hands of men. Was the act evil? Absolutely! It goes without saying that to murder the Son of God is evil. Was God's act evil? In no way. I hope that this is not too complicated and boring to you.

Now just a note on the origin of evil. Was God evil to create Satan? Was God evil to give Satan the very ability to sin and draw away a third of the angels with him? Was God evil to give him the power to tempt Eve and thus bring Adam's race to sinful ruin? This is a very hard topic, but we must remember that God has created all things yea even the wicked for the day of judgment. I don't have problem when a person says that God allows sin, but when you really get in to thinking that whole matter through, there is more to it than people usually mean. Are only the hearts of good kings in the hand of the Lord? and on and on the questions could follow.