The Authoring of Sin

Last week I edited and reposted an old post examining one of the standard rebuttal phrases in theological discussion, so this week I decided to tweak and repost one of the companion posts to that one. This is a post that looks at another commonly used rebuttal phrases—an old stand-by accusation made against certain doctrines about God’s relation to sin.

What is this (supposedly) knock-out counterargument? It’s the accusation that someone’s explanation of God’s connection to the sinful acts of human beings makes God the author of sin. Often, this accusation is considered to be a whole argument in and of itself, so that once the author of sin bomb is dropped, no further comment is necessary.

But does this phrase ever actually work this way? Does this rebuttal carry any weight at all, let alone the weight of an entire argument?

To start, let me point out that although the phrase “author of sin” is regularly used in theological discussions about God’s relationship to evil, it is not a phrase found in scripture. There is no verse that says, “God is not the author of sin.” (Don’t tell anyone, but I remember that I once thought it was a quote from the Bible.)

However, although scripture does not use this particular phrase, it does tell us some things about the “nots” of God’s relationship to sin. From James 1, we know two scriptural “not” statements: God cannot be tempted with evil, and God does not tempt anyone. If you define the phrase author of sin as “one who tempts another to sin,” then it is quite right to say that God isn’t the author of sin. But if all you mean by author of sin is “one who tempts,” why not simply use the scriptural language? If you state your objection as “God does not tempt anyone,” everyone will know exactly what you mean, and arguing against your objection will be arguing against a direct statement of scripture.

Of course, the statement that God does not tempt anyone to sin is not very useful as a rebuttal in a theological argument because almost no one argues that God is in the business of actually tempting people. The clarity of the statement would limit it’s use to rarely or never. I think the reason some find the phrase author of sin so useful is precisely because there is no agreed upon definition. It sounds really, really bad, and at the same time, it’s really, really difficult to nail down it’s meaning. There are no specific criteria, then, that an assertion must meet before the author of sin rebuttal can be used. As long as our opponent’s statements about God’s relationship to the sinful acts of men appear to be too direct, this accusation can be used. And who can argue against it, if no one really knows what it means to be the author of sin?

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating when I say that there’s no agreed upon definition of author of sin, but I’ve never seen it defined and I’ve looked. I’ve found many claims that one statement or another “makes God the author of sin,” and many affirmations of the truth that “God is not the author of sin,” but none of these give an explanation of what it mean to “author sin.”

We can, however, learn a little bit about what people mean by this term when we examine how they use it. For instance, the phrase author of sin is used in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter III, Section 1.

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin….

Whatever the Westminster divines meant by the term author of sin, it doesn’t include unchangeably ordaining every single thing that will happen in human history, including the sinful acts of men. Unchangeably ordaining something, then, is not authoring it, according to those who authored the Westminster Confession. In addition, when it comes to Adam and Eve’s action in the fall, the Westminster Confession tells us that

their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory. (Chapter VI, Section 1)

This is more evidence that as far as the authors of the WCF were concerned, for God to purpose a sinful act for a good result was not authoring it. You’ll notice that they use the word permit in relation to God’s role in our first parent’s sin. He purposed their sin, but he accomplished it by means of permission. My guess is that this is where the authors of the WCF draw the line in their definition of author of sin. If God had worked to convince Adam and Eve to sin, or, to put it another way, if he had actually tempted them, then God would be the author of sin; but as long as God ordained their action, having purposed it for good purposes, and then permitted it to occur according to his plan, he is not the author of sin.

Although this phrase was used in a couple of the well-known confessions, I’m not sure that it had a standard definition even then. Jonathan Edwards, a man you’d think would know the correct definition if there were one, has this to say about the phrase:

They who object, that this doctrine makes God the Author of Sin, ought distinctly to explain what they mean by that phrase, The Author of Sin. I know the phrase, as it is commonly used, signifies something very ill. (On the Freedom of the Will, Part 4, Section 9)

He gives two possible definitions. The first is that author of sin means

the Sinner, the Agent, or Actor of Sin, or the Doer of a wicked thing.

This definition seems to be pretty close to how the Westminster Confession uses the phrase. If someone defines the term this way and truly understands their opponent’s viewpoint, they’ll likely never have a chance to use it in an argument, for it’s a rare person who believes that God relationship to sinful acts is such that he is the one doing the wicked thing. The second definition suggested by Jonathan Edwards is probably closer to the way most people who use the phrase define it. By author of sin they mean

the permitter, or not a hinderer of Sin; and, at the same time, a disposer of the state of events, in such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and purposes, that Sin, if it be permitted or not hindered, will most certainly and infallibly follow.

In this possible definition of author of sin, if God doesn’t stop a sin, but rather allows it to occur for his own wise reasons, knowing that if he allows it that sin will surely occur, then he is the author of sin.

What is it exactly, in this last explanation of God’s relationship to sinful acts that make God the author of sin? It can’t be his permission of sin, since anyone who believes that God is all-powerful and all-knowing must also believe that he permits sin. It can’t be that God’s allowance of a sin makes it sure to occur, since this, too, must be true for an all-knowing God, for if God foresees that someone, left to do as they wish, will act sinfully, but decides not to stop this sinful action, it will happen. How can it not, if God foresees things perfectly?

The author of sin accusation, then, must accompany the idea that God disposes of those events for his own reasons, or, to put it another way, that his permission of sin is a piece of a purposeful plan on his part. It’s not the permission that’s the problem, but the purpose. If God had reason for permitting a sin, the thinking goes, then he’s the author of sin, and that is “something very ill.”

If this the reasoning, then it’s reasoning that that baffles me. For those who argue that it’s the purposeful nature of God’s permission of sin that makes him the author of sin, is a supreme being who permits sin for no reason better than one who permits it for a reason? When it comes to the permission of sin, is arbitrary better than purposeful?

But perhaps it’s not actually the purposefulness of God’s permission of sin that is seen to be making God the author of sin, but the particular reason for which he permits it. Someone might argue, for example, that if God permits sin for the ultimate purpose of bringing glory to himself, as the Westminster Confession states in the second quote above, then he is the author of sin; but if his ultimate purpose for the permission of sin is the free will of humankind, then he is not the author of sin. That would mean that the term author of sin applies to the specific purpose for permitting the sin rather than the means itself or the purposefulness of the means.

There’s a problem with this thinking, too. The only way that one purpose could make God the author of sin and the other not is if one purpose is a sinful one and the other is a righteous one. That being the case, someone who argues along the lines given in the example in the previous paragraph (that God is the author of sin if he permits it for his own glory, but he is not the author of sin if he permits it so that human beings will have free will), would be arguing, underneath everything, that “to his own glory” is a sinful purpose—that God desiring and deciding things to promote his own glory is sinful on his part. This is not to say that most (or even any) people who argue this way have thought this through and intend to say this, but this is, in effect, what they are arguing.

To sum up, I’ll say that the author of sin rebuttal isn’t a good one, because, for one, it’s not a term with an agreed upon meaning. And neither one of the possible meanings makes it a useful argument, either. The first possible definition—the one tempting to sin or the one doing the evil act—renders the phrase useless because no one, as far as I know, argues that God tempts people or does evil acts; and the second one—that God permits sin for his own good reasons—makes the phrase applicable to every single view of God’s relationship to sinful acts of human beings that affirms God’s infinite knowledge, power and wisdom.