SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
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Guest, Join Papa Zoom today for some uplifting biblical encouragement! --> Daily Verses
Does God control sin?
- Thread starter electedbyhim
- Start date
See post #20
SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
If God "controls" sin as defined in the OP, not what theologians say the word means, then He IS the author of sin. Period!
Just for Clarification.
Words: The Theologian’s Tools
Therefore, there has been much discussion among theologians as to what verb should best describes God’s agency in regard to evil. Some initial possibilities: authors, brings about, causes, controls, creates, decrees, foreordains, incites, includes within his plan, makes happen, ordains, permits, plans, predestines, predetermines, produces, stands behind, wills. Many of these are extra-scriptural terms; none of them are perfectly easy to define in this context. So theologians need to give some careful thought about which of these terms, if any, should be affirmed, and in what sense. Words are the theologian’s tools. In a situation like this, none of the possibilities is fully adequate. There are various advantages and disadvantages among the different terms. Let us consider some of those that are most frequently discussed.
SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
God ALLOWS / PERMITS sin. and that is all. nothing else can remove Him as the author of sin
I believe that God is the author of reality. If God has not created, there would be no sin.
I am not certain if you read the post, and that is fine.
What Scripture are you referencing that God is not the author of sin?
Agreed.
Actually they go together. If God controls sin, then God controls man's will.
SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
UTTER BLASPHEMY!!!
SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
the idea that God "controls" sin as in the OP, is nothing short of BLASPHEMY!
You cannot change the meanings of words to suit what you believe!
Sola, just because you say it is blasphemy does not make it so.
Please prove this from a Biblical perspective.
Did you ever meditate on what was going on there. God creates a very good creation, puts them in a Garden and then tells them not to eat from one particular tree. Do you understand the psychology behind telling somebody to not do something? And then boom, there is the liar, deceiver right there to tell them that God is a liar because He wanted to keep them from "being all they could be." You don't see the set up there? They were destined to fall.
This is understood by theologians as Felix culpa the fortunate fall. Why do you think it says that Jesus was "slain from the foundation of the world?" Rev. 13:8
Meditate on Romans 9:22-23
Rom 9:22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
Rom 9:23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory
God wanted to show or make known attributes of Himself. The fall and redemption of a multitude of fallen people were for this purpose.
We think in our wisdom "I could think of a lot better way of doing that than being responsible for all this sin!"
Isa 55:9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
I have said all I have on this in the OP. I have nothing further to add
jasonc
Member
He puts an end to sin and death .
In that time I guess freedom to sin ends because He charged our nature to not want at all to sin .we simply can't choose it .
It's a reality that none can fully grasp until raised in Glory .
I don't need a gun in my church because we defend the innocent by preaching the gospel.i don't need it because their won't be any murder .
If we can always sin then we can and God can't help but to let it and the bible doesn't teach that .it won't be anymore.
He ends it !
In that time I guess freedom to sin ends because He charged our nature to not want at all to sin .we simply can't choose it .
It's a reality that none can fully grasp until raised in Glory .
I don't need a gun in my church because we defend the innocent by preaching the gospel.i don't need it because their won't be any murder .
If we can always sin then we can and God can't help but to let it and the bible doesn't teach that .it won't be anymore.
He ends it !
SolaScriptura
2024 Supporter
so you are sinless?
jasonc
Member
Did I say I was glorified .
Can the apostle Paul sin in heaven ?
Would he want to ? No
When the ressurection occurs there will be no sin desire in mAn
P
Knowledge for anyone who is intereseted.....
Consider now the term permits. This is the preferred term in Arminian theology, in which it amounts to a denial that God causes sin. For the Arminian, God does not cause sin; he only permits it. Reformed theologians have also used the term, but they have insisted that God’s permission of sin is no less efficacious than his ordination of good. Calvin denies that there is any “mere permission” in God:
From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.34
God’s permission is an efficacious permission. Heppe describes it as voluntas efficaciter permittens and quotes J. H. Heidegger:
Nor whether He is willing or refusing is God’s permission like man’s permission, which admits of an eclipse which he neither wills nor refuses, as the Lombard and with him the Scholastics assert. It is effective, mighty, and not separate from God’s will at all. Otiose permission of sin separated from God’s will is repugnant both to the nature of the First Cause and to the divine and almighty foresight, to His nature and to Scripture.35
If God’s permission is efficacious, how does it differ from other exercises of his will? Evidently, the Reformed use permit mainly as a more delicate term than cause, suggesting that God brings sin about with a kind of reluctance born of his holy hatred of it.
This usage does reflect a biblical pattern. When Satan acts, he acts, in an obvious sense, by God’s permission.36 God allows him to take Job’s family, wealth, and health. But God will not allow Satan to take Job’s life (Job 2:6). So Satan is on a leash, acting only within limits set by God. In this respect, all sinful acts are similar. The sinner can go only so far before he meets the judgment of God.
It is appropriate, therefore, to use permission to refer to God’s ordination of sin. But we should not assume, as Arminians do, that divine permission is anything less than sovereign ordination. What God permits or allows to happen will happen. God could easily have prevented Satan’s attack on Job if he had intended to. That he did not prevent that attack implies that he intended it to happen. Permission, then, is a form of ordination, a form of causation.37 The fact that it is sometimes taken otherwise is a good argument for not using it, but perhaps not a decisive argument.
I am not trying to drag you back into the conversation.
Knowledge for anyone who is intereseted.....
Consider now the term permits. This is the preferred term in Arminian theology, in which it amounts to a denial that God causes sin. For the Arminian, God does not cause sin; he only permits it. Reformed theologians have also used the term, but they have insisted that God’s permission of sin is no less efficacious than his ordination of good. Calvin denies that there is any “mere permission” in God:
From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.34
God’s permission is an efficacious permission. Heppe describes it as voluntas efficaciter permittens and quotes J. H. Heidegger:
Nor whether He is willing or refusing is God’s permission like man’s permission, which admits of an eclipse which he neither wills nor refuses, as the Lombard and with him the Scholastics assert. It is effective, mighty, and not separate from God’s will at all. Otiose permission of sin separated from God’s will is repugnant both to the nature of the First Cause and to the divine and almighty foresight, to His nature and to Scripture.35
If God’s permission is efficacious, how does it differ from other exercises of his will? Evidently, the Reformed use permit mainly as a more delicate term than cause, suggesting that God brings sin about with a kind of reluctance born of his holy hatred of it.
This usage does reflect a biblical pattern. When Satan acts, he acts, in an obvious sense, by God’s permission.36 God allows him to take Job’s family, wealth, and health. But God will not allow Satan to take Job’s life (Job 2:6). So Satan is on a leash, acting only within limits set by God. In this respect, all sinful acts are similar. The sinner can go only so far before he meets the judgment of God.
It is appropriate, therefore, to use permission to refer to God’s ordination of sin. But we should not assume, as Arminians do, that divine permission is anything less than sovereign ordination. What God permits or allows to happen will happen. God could easily have prevented Satan’s attack on Job if he had intended to. That he did not prevent that attack implies that he intended it to happen. Permission, then, is a form of ordination, a form of causation.37 The fact that it is sometimes taken otherwise is a good argument for not using it, but perhaps not a decisive argument.
OBJECTION 4: THE DECREE OF GOD MAKES GOD THE CHARGEABLE CAUSE OF SIN
Response: It must be admitted that sin is a part of God’s eternal plan, for he works all things according the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11). This includes the greatest sin p 213 in human history: the murder of the Son of God (cf. Acts 2:22–23; 4:27–28). God did not merely permit the crucifixion; he purposefully and wisely ordained it unto his honor and glory. Similarly, he did not merely allow Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery in Egypt but meant their sinful action for his most wise and holy ends (Gen. 45:5–8; 50:20).
Nevertheless, while God ordains the evil choices of free moral agents, he does not thereby incur blame or wickedness, because he does not directly or efficiently cause any evil. He brings about the evil actions of man through secondary causation according to their own wicked desires. God is absolutely sovereign, and man is entirely responsible for his actions.68
John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 212–213.
Response: It must be admitted that sin is a part of God’s eternal plan, for he works all things according the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11). This includes the greatest sin p 213 in human history: the murder of the Son of God (cf. Acts 2:22–23; 4:27–28). God did not merely permit the crucifixion; he purposefully and wisely ordained it unto his honor and glory. Similarly, he did not merely allow Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery in Egypt but meant their sinful action for his most wise and holy ends (Gen. 45:5–8; 50:20).
Nevertheless, while God ordains the evil choices of free moral agents, he does not thereby incur blame or wickedness, because he does not directly or efficiently cause any evil. He brings about the evil actions of man through secondary causation according to their own wicked desires. God is absolutely sovereign, and man is entirely responsible for his actions.68
John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 212–213.