Something I’m learning is that when you question things that are usually just taken for granted, it’s easy for people to assume the reason that you are asking the question. From there you can either be shortly entertained with answers that don’t address your question, or you are dismissed because you’re assumed to be just like all the others before you that asked the same question but for the wrong reasons.
As I continue to explore the idea of evil in regards to God’s sovereignty and His eternal will, let me just say the following:
- I am NOT trying to prove that God shouldn’t be worshipped
- I am NOT trying to prove that God is guilty of sin
- I am NOT trying to prove contradiction in the Scriptures
- I am NOT trying to prove that God is not sovereign
- I am NOT trying to prove that humanity is not responsible for its actions and motives
So now let me give you some background on where I’m coming from.
I spent a good part of my life assuming things about why things are the way they are. I was taught that God was in complete control of everything except for humanity’s free will — otherwise God wouldn’t be fair and a “true relationship” could not exist between God and humanity. Yet at the same time, I firmly believed that everything happens for a reason. I never stopped to realize that if God won’t violate humanity’s free-will then He’s not really in control of much of anything — not to mention that He can’t claim eternal purpose or reason in anything involving people.
I’ve sense been introduced to the Doctrines of Grace which made sense out of so many things that were avoided by my spiritual leaders growing up. I’ve come to realize that in the process of justification, God doesn’t “try” or “attempt” — the words themselves imply “failure”. In my earlier days I would say that God was desperately trying to get my lost friends to believe in Him (and also claim that He has a plan and is in control). But now and even though I don’t like it, the idea of unconditional election explains what I observe in Scripture and in the real world.
So here’s the rub, as I listen to teaching that embraces the Doctrines of Grace, I see inconsistency when it comes to applying the same idea to the process of sanctification. It is often said that “justification is monergistic (all God) while sanctification is synergistic (both you and God). The God that is sovereign and never failing in salvation is all of a sudden doing His best to try to get His children to be more like Christ — sanctification.
Which leads me to another rub. What does sanctification involve? Trials. And what do trials involve? Temptation and evil. For someone to be refined by a trial or persecution, someone else has to be in a situation to be tempted and actually commit the sin. We are quick to acknowledge God’s purpose of refinement in trials but when it comes to the other parties involved and their sin, we say that God no longer “purposes” or “causes” that, but merely “allows” or “permits” it.
For the martyrs to endure their trials, someone had to persecute them. For God to show you that you were putting your music above Him, someone had to break into your car and steal your iPod. Was God fortunate that the opportunity arose to make you more like Christ? If we are going to assign Divine purpose to the good effect of someone’s sin then we must also assign Divine purpose to the act itself. Otherwise God is just a cosmic fortune teller that plagiarizes the will of all humanity — merely predicting the future and taking credit for all the residual good that occurs from the evil that He has nothing to do with.
This is essentially the question of, “Did God create/cause sin?” This is where you’ll Google and get the Augustinian argument that sin is like darkness or cold, it is not a thing but the absence or light and heat. It sounds good at first but if you are going to accept that then you also have to accept that God didn’t create/cause darkness or cold — they just happened as some cosmic side-effect that God had to accept as if He was under the law of nature.
I think the more accurate question is, “Did God purpose sin in His eternal-mind?” I have no other answer but yes. On day three as God was creating plants, Christ was already crucified and a remnant was already preserved in the mind of God. Which also means Adam and Eve had already rebelled, and Judas had already betrayed Jesus in the mind of God. Making it a bit more personal, let’s say you have a Christian friend that was conceived out of wed-lock. That means that your friend’s parents’ fornication was already in the eternal mind of God as God was creating the plants.
If you are a professing Calvinist, this is where the “God looked down through the corridors of time and knew that humanity would sin” answer is tempting, but if it doesn’t work for salvation then why should it work for the fall as it makes the eternal will and purpose of God contingent on an external agent?
Psalm 139:16
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.Acts 4:27-28
…for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
