God is the author of evil, meaning it, allowing it, intending it for good.
#ToChristAlone
Discussion
Doing evil and allowing it for just purposes is quite different. God cannot do evil because he is all good. But he can’t force humans to be good (free will) and if he killed everyone who does evil there would be no humans. Therefore he uses evil but doesn’t create it.
Everything in Creation is of God's plan, including evil.
God is not surprised when Adam eats of the fruit, He knows it will happen, in fact He intends it for good.
Agreed, I feel like the above is poorly framed. I pray it isn’t for engagement and will convey benefit of the doubt.
It is a harsh reality. God's plan for Creation includes temporary evil in order to bring about His greater purposes.
“Allows” is the key word here because of Free Will. Evil exists. God is not the “author” or evil.
Did God create the snake in the garden or did Free Will?
This is a good question and I see where it is leading. I would contend that God created snakes. I would not contend that God created the Devil.
Some of these questions are beyond our earthly reasoning. I just abject that “God is the author of evil.” I agree that God uses evil to his glorification as the master of all.
The rest unknown I humbly lay at his feet until it is revealed to me.
He created the tempter and a choice with the tree. In essence, he created freedom to choose good or evil. But creating an opportunity doesn’t mean he created the evil.
And free will shouldn’t be capitalized. It’s just a gift that God gave humans to not love, and therefore to truly love. Without choice, there’s no love.
Again, you don’t have to throw out sovereignty and omnipotence to have free will if God created the freedom and designed a world where he directs our freedom to his ultimate good.
Strict Calvinism seems to imply God is only super duper powerful if he dictates everything a creature does. This fails to account for the fact that he may have the power and desire to create fully free creatures. This doesn’t make him less powerful, it makes him a person who wants relationship with non-robots.
God is not subject to time. He is not operating in time.
This view of God is very much not the God of the Bible.
While it makes sense in transcendent categories (God’s omniscience), that is not what Christ said at any point in His ministry. Nor what He said to Moses or any of the prophets.
God has granted us free will, and it transcends rationality— the solution to the free will debates (like all of these kind of theological debates) are resolved in the life and person of Christ, who is 100% God and 100% man, and our free will is God-given and good (existing prior to the fall), but time as we understand is not (because time in our world is inseparable from death)
I believe that God may "allow" things to happen, even seemingly evil things. And we may not fully understand why he allowed those things. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His way is higher than our ways. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Evil is instrumental to God's plan of bringing about an Elect people.
We don't understand exactly why that is the case, but we can discern that it is.
God is not "in a war" with evil, Man is.
Do you think that Satan would not cease to exist the second God wills it?
Therefor, Satan is instrumental to God's plan. That doesn't mean Satan is good, but that God's plan seems to require him for His plan for reasons He has not spelled out to us.
One can deduce that, God raising a truly concious and seperate Elect people to be Christ like after the end of this world, that a temporary existence of evil and Sin is necessary to that end.
Therefor, God authored evil into Creation, and is the author of evil.
May I ask if you're a Calvinist? I ask because I notice your belief seems to hold that God is the ultimate determiner of all things and that free will doesn't really exist. If so, I'd understand where you're coming from.
Yes, evil is not outside God's sovereignty. But I wouldn't say God "created" evil? I don't think that's the correct way to put it.
"Evil is designed by God."
-John MacArthur
"God didn't just permit evil, He ordained it."
-RC Sproul
Evil is instrumental to God's plan of bringing about an Elect people.
God "authored" evil into the story of Creation for this purpose.
God is not "in a war" with evil, Man by way of his affection to Sin, and that is by design.
Evil is not some unfortunate consequence of Creation that "got away" from God, but a vital rebellious force that God ultimately intends for good.
#ToChristAlone
God is explicitly not the author of evil.
Evil is not a thing per se, not part of the creation that He saw and proclaimed to be “very good”.
Augustine and other church fathers explained evil as the privation or absence of good, that evil has no being — similar to how darkness is the absence of light.
If you imagine evil has a substance or being you end up in gnostic heresies.
What we call evil has no power or being, hence it cannot create but only corrupt or destroy that which is good.
This is also why God is 100% responsible for all that is good, including our redemption. And that man is 100% responsible for sin and the evil of turning away from God.
This is true in reformed and orthodox theology.
The goodness of God is such that He can bring good out of evil, but this is like a light shining in the dark, not to be confused with God authoring evil, only fallen man is responsible for evil.
How did the snake of the garden, which embodied the evil rebellious spirit against God, come into existence?
Fwiw I understand where you’re coming from (having said many of these same things), but this is contrary to the Bible. The reformers (including Calvin, and even Zwingli) rejected this, as did all church fathers.
The only support you’ll find for this is in the gnostic heretics that also denied Christ’s divinity.
It’s part of a larger free will debate. And I highly recommend going down that rabbit hole as ultimately it brings one closer to Christ.
This debate was also one of the main differences between the Pharisees and the Essenes and the Sadducees … it’s not a topic solved within man’s rationality, but can only be solved by the dual nature of Christ (as both God and man).
🤝
Here’s a short article with some scriptures supporting this orthodox view that God is not the author of evil: https://www.gty.org/articles/A189/is-god-responsible-for-evil
He allows evil but I’d prefer to say it this way….its called “compatibilism”, the idea that God’s sovereignty and human moral responsibility are compatible, even if we can’t fully understand how.
