These blog posts seem to be getting further and further between. Still working on getting the next podcast published, we recorded two in one night and had some audio trouble with the both of them which is causing some issues getting them mixed. Hopefully those will be up soon. In the meantime, I hope everyone has been enjoying the audiobooks I've been recording, I still have a lot planned with that which includes some very large works in the future.
Our subject today is a response to an ever common assertion that, in Calvinism, God is the author of sin. As the thought goes, since in Calvinism God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, then that must also mean that he also is the primary cause of everything that happens. When a sin occurs, or more specifically, when Satan or Adam fell, God was as much responsible as they were, if not more so, because he caused them to sin.
This usually gets branded as "determinism," but really isn't; determinism has to do with the existence or non-existence of possibility outside of what is actual. In the case of determinism, the accusation is along the lines of, "If God foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, then we have no choice because it is already decided." This a different, albeit related, subject that I won't be getting into. (If you're interested, click the link to the podcast on the right and listen to my class titled "Possibility.")
For a Calvinist, the subject hinges on what we call the "Creator/Creature distinction." God, as creator, is above, and therefore not subject to, the laws of his creation. There is therefore an eternal distinction between God and his creation. That said, the question must be asked:
How does God act?
1) Nothing at all like creation
2) Exactly like creation
3) Like creation, but different
We have three words to describe these three possible choices:
1) Equivocal
2) Univocal
3) Analogous
Of the three, the Calvinist (and really, all Christians) chooses the third. The reason is fairly simple. If God's actions are equivocal, then there is no possible way to understand him at all, his ways are completely separate from ours, and he has not, and cannot, communicate himself to us. That cannot be the answer, by the simple wording of Scripture. The second answer must also be dismissed. If God's acts are exactly like ours, then we have the possibility of exhausting our knowledge of God, because his ways, and the way he has revealed himself, are completely exhausted in creation. This basically makes God part of creation, and says that there is nothing more to be known about him outside what we see. Statements like the psalmist's proclamation, "How unsearchable your ways," seem to make the idea of exhausting the knowledge of God's character impossible.
The only option is that God's actions are both like what we see in creation and unlike what we see in creation. We call this analogy. We can know God after a kind, or a type, but we cannot know him as he is, because that would mean we have exhausted his character, and the creator/creature distinction would be dissolved.
Back to our original topic- is God the author of sin? Our discussion of the nature of God's actions forces us to say no. This is because God's actions are both alike and dislike actions as we see in creation, because God's actions are analogous to ours. Which means that when he causes things to occur, his causation of those events is both like our understanding of the "cause and effect" relationship, and dislike it. It's not exactly the same, because that would be a univocal understanding of God's causation, and we've already dismissed that as a possibility. That immediately raises the possibility that God could potentially cause things to happen without being responsible for them directly. How?
Let's think about cause and effect for a second. When a cause establishes an effect, that cause is the direct reason for the actuality of the effect. We call this cause the "efficient cause." Within a chain of causes and effects, we can also have secondary and tertiary causes, all the way back to the first cause, which in our case would be the creation of the world. We as Christians therefore refer to God as the First Cause. Since he is the First Cause, that necessarily means that he is outside of the cause and effect chain. He is himself the cause and yet is neither a cause himself, nor an effect of a different cause. Instead, he is the cause-er. This puts his being before any cause/effect relationship and means that he is not bound by the law of cause and effect, and can therefore act outside of the bounds of that law. Said another way, the only reason cause and effect exists is because creation exists, and if God is the reason creation exists, then he must also be the reason cause and effect exists; if creation has no essential impact on God's being, then neither does the law of cause and effect.
So, God is not bound to act the same way we act. When he "causes" things to happen, this does not mean that he is necessarily the efficient cause of the effect. So when Adam sinned, God was not necessarily at fault. He theoretically could be, but Scripture says this is outside his character, and so must be ruled out. The only thing we are left with then is that God caused the fall, and yet caused it in a way that did not make it his fault. Nor does it mean that he "forced" Adam to sin, because he isn't bound to causing things to occur in a way that is univocal to creation. He caused Adam to sin, but not in a naturalistic "cause and effect" way.
So the Calvinist is exonerated from the charge that God is the cause of sin, and is done so by simply confessing what all Christians confess: that God is not bound to his creation, but Creation derives its existence from him.
God bless,
Mike Senders
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