Is God the Author of Sin?

[SIZE=+0]Sure I can. God has some laws that He enforces absolutely. They have no consequences because there is no way for them not to be fulfilled. Then He also has some laws with consequences that He simply gives and we decide if we will obey. In the case of Adam God did not permit Adam to sin anymore then if a child is given permission to drive and they go speed. They had no permission to speed. The permission was to drive, not speed. I have permission to shop at walmart. I do not have permission to rob Walmart. Yes they know i could but it is not by permission. We really need to be ever so careful how we choose our wording.[/SIZE]
Knowing a possibility is not permission.

 

You're not getting it.

God has the power to prevent Adam from sinning. If Adam was to sin God must have permitted it.

You are confused about the terms. We are not saying he gave him PERMISSON to sin. We are saying that he PERMITTED or allowed Adam to sin.

Even Arminians fully agree with this statement.

 

No. Saying something is so is not an argument. It is a claim. It is only the first step toward becoming an argument. You cannot stop short at claim and call what you are doing making an argument anymore than I can go to the refrigerator and stop and say, "I am pouring you a glass of tea"

 

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[SIZE=+0][SIZE=+0]I don't agree with Armenians either. I do not believe that just because someone has the ability to stop something that it can be said that they permited an event to happen because they do not intervene.[/SIZE][/SIZE]
At this point I an developing a theory on this. By the way you are offing me a theory. It will take a few days to develop it and I will share it after i do some research it i find what i think i will.
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If I am watching you and I can stop you and I don't, what does that mean I did?

It means I permitted it, plain and simple. I can either stop it or permit it. By not stopping it I am permitting it.

 

So when the Nuns on the playground turned their backs whenever I got into a fight with another kid, they were permitting it? Those penguins were playing God? :tear:

 

BINGO- I think...

 

Now come on! How do you play bingo on the playground? There an again, those Nuns were pretty smart back then....LOL:smilewinkgrin:

 

It would depend if it was your responsibility to stop that something. Ability does not always constitute action or responsibility because of nonaction. Here is an example. I fish a lot. I know the law on bag limit. I see another man fishing and see him hit his limit, but he does not stop. Let's say that I have the physical ability to stop him, but I don't. He gets caught and arrested. Did I permit him to break the law? NO! That is the other mans dominion not mine. God gave man dominion over all the earth. He was made in God's image. We could say that man was god of the earth. Man was responsible for everything within his own dominion including his own actions as well as the consequences. God told the man what would happen if he did a certain thing, but man was ruler of his dominion. God was not responsible to stop the man. The man was responsible to stop himself. God did not permit the sin since man was in his own dominion given by God. Yes I am suggesting that God relinquished His responsibility to stop the sin thus He did not permit that which was not His to stop. For God to interfere in man's God given dominion then God would be overstepping the bounds that He gave another. It was not God's place to stop the sin so He did not permit anything.

 

No, brother, it does not. If I can stop it and I don't then I permit it.

Yes you did. You permitted him to break the law. You had two choices. Prevent him or permit him. Now you were not responsible to prevent him but it does not change the fact that you DID permit him.

Did you allow him to fish on? Yes. Look up synonyms for "allow". You will find the word permit.

Now, did you allow him to fish on or not?

Yes, you did. It would have been silly to try to prevent him because it is not your responsibility. Responsibility has nothing to do with whether or not you prevented him.

 

[SIZE=+0]Your logic is flawed, and your theology is flawed. I sense by your own flawed logic that you have a whole lot of accounting to account for before God by not intervening as you claim you should. Every persons life that you pass by without intervening means you permit their actions. That makes you a partaker of their sin by your own flawed logic You can say God permitted, caused or what ever, sin all you want, but I categorically reject even the slightest possibility of that based on what I read in scripture.[/SIZE]

 

That's right; we sure do. We just don't believe God ordained or caused sin. He only foreknew and permitted it.

 

Point out the flaw.

Show me a middle ground between preventing and permitting. You can't.

I permit people to sin because it is not my responsibility to prevent them from sinning.

That does not change the fact that I am permitting it if I really have the power to stop it.

 

I don't like the term "author" of sin when it relates to God. Surely God could stop all sin, but He doesn't. There has to be an answer, and it has to be better than to think that God wanted sin to take place so He could receive glory. Many believe this is the case; I just don't agree.

This verse plainly shows that sin entered the world because of Adam's sin. However, we were in Adam; he was our corporate head. God chose Adam to represent all of us. He chose the best of us to be tested for us.

God gave Adam, and in him all of mankind a choice, sin or remain holy and obey God's command. Adam, and therefore all of us, chose to sin. We told God that we did not want Him to make our choices; told him to leave us alone and let us make our own decisions.

God cannot go against his Word. He gave us the choice and he honors this choice although the result is the fallen world we live in and all the sin and misery we have created.

A man once told me many years ago that God was unfair because he said he would not have sinned as Adam did. I told him this was not true and I could prove it to him. I said that if he would not have sinned in the first place, now that he has heard about the forgiveness we have in Christ, he would be the first one to accept God's gracious gift. The fact that he would not turn to Jesus Christ now proves that he would have sinned in the Garden of Eden.

 

1 Samuel 16:14-16, "Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him. Saul's servants then said to him, "Behold now, an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. "Let our lord now command your servants who are before you. Let them seek a man who is a skillful player on the harp; and it shall come about when the evil spirit from God is on you, that he shall play the harp with his hand, and you will be well."

1 Samuel 16:23, "So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him."

 

I would certainly not claim to have any understanding of the Hebrew and would like someone who is a scholar to comment on this.. I understand some Greek, but the Hebrew is way over my head. However I did look at the Hebrew and I would point out that most of what is written in those two passages is not in the Hebrew. I could be wrong, but it seems that the translators filled in some big gaps with their own words. For instance where is says "from the Lord" only "Lord" is there, not From the Lord. it is possible that it means that the Lord permitted the evil spirit not that it came directly from Him, and I really feel that is the best way to see it, but again I would like someone who knows Hebrew to comment. The same is in every passage you gave.
It is much like with Job. God gave the permission for satan to do what he did so I guess one might say that it came from God but it could also cause an incorrect understanding. I think that is what we have in 1Sam.

 

The text says what it does. The problem is that you have bought into a theology that is not correct and does not stem from scripture. That is a problem with eisegesis and a lack of understanding the historical context. I have seen many dance around the passage and still maintain their position without ever dealing with the passage except get mad because they found out their presuppositions were wrong and the passage makes them a liar.

I believe that God created everything and in that there is evil and good. You cannot have one without the other. If you say that only some things come from God, then what other god do the other things come from? God created me with a brain and the ability to make choices. Those choices include right and wrong. He created me and gave me a brain.

In both the BHS Hebrew text and in the LXX the preposition "from" is there.

 

"Dualism" is the term when there is both good and evil. But evil, like "dark," "cold," and other terms of like nature is not "something." It is the lack of something, in this case good or more precise, God. There is no dualism with God. Therefore, your proposition does not work.

God's permissible will can allow His absence, but there is no such thing as creating evil, so there is no way that God (man, devil, etc.) could create evil.

 

What you describe are adjectives. An adjective modifies something. What does it modify?

Which is it? Is evil the lack of something or good the lack of something?

If God did not create evil then where did the ability to commit evil acts come from. Nothing?

Did God harden Pharaoh's heart or did Pharaoh harden his own heart?

A woman has a child than can do evil or good. Was that child created evil or good?

God is not limited to man's finite, logical, mind. He is limited to eternity [which God has not revealed the totality of that to man (Eccl. 3:11)]. To say that God is unable to create evil is to say God is only limited to our finite mind.

 

For now I will assume that you are a Hebrew scholar and accept what you said or certainly you would not have responed.
However your statement, from your logic, that because God created everything, then evil is included in His creation is flawed. That is like saying that because Detroit manufactures vehicles they are the creators of accidents. However that would be incorrect. If the vehicle never hit the road there would be no accidents. Accidents have nothing to do with the creator of the vehicle.The creator of an accident is the driver or some outside force, not Detroit.
In the case of God the same is true. God created and it was very good. No evil in the creation. Man then took what God created and damaged it although not by accident. So God did not create evil. Evil is the result of a bad choice on man's part. God had nothing to do with it.