Many Christians cringe at the topic of the origin of evil. Where did evil come from? Many Calvinists and non-Calvinists will answer with either “don’t know” or “evil comes from the devil and man”. For the Calvinists, they agree that God pre-ordained evil before the foundation of the world, but many will deny its logical consequence that God is the ultimate cause of or the creator of evil. God is the one who created Satan and man with the potential to sin. It was so definite, according to God’s eternal decree, that they would sin. Hence, there is no way we can ever cut the link between the origin of evil and God. Even for the doctrine of eternal reprobation, many will say that it is conditional on man’s foreseen sin. But it is God who hardens hearts as He is pleased. Most are afraid of making God “the author of sin”, hence they’d rather not talk about it. John Calvin and Gordon H. Clark proposed a certain biblical presupposition that would vindicate God in His sovereignty to decree evil. I believe that if we follow this presupposition, there should not be any problem in believing that God is the ultimate of or the creator of sin. Many have not defined “the author of sin”, but Clark did well in defining it and he explains why God cannot be the author of sin though He is the ultimate cause of or the creator of evil. Below are the excerpts of John Calvin and Gordon H. Clark.
Excerpt From John Calvin's The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volume 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 2
In the first place they inquire, by what right the Lord is angry with His creatures who had not provoked Him by any previous offence; for that to devote to destruction whom He pleases is more like the caprice of a tyrant than the lawful sentence of a judge; that men have reason, therefore, to expostulate with God, if they are predestinated to eternal death without any demerit of their own, merely by His sovereign will. If such thoughts ever enter the minds of pious men, they will be sufficiently enabled to break their violence by this one consideration, how exceedingly presumptuous it is only to inquire into the causes of the Divine will; which is in fact, and is justly entitled to be, the cause of every thing that exists. For if it has any cause, then there must be something antecedent, on which it depends; which it is impious to suppose. For the will of God is the highest rule of justice; so that what He wills must be considered just, for this very reason, because He wills it. When it is inquired, therefore, why the Lord did so, the answer must be, because He would. But if you go further, and ask why He so determined, you are in search of something greater and higher than the will of God, which can never be found.
Excerpt From Gordon H. Clark's Religion, Reason and Revelation, God and Evil
Let it be unequivocally said that this view [of God’s eternal pre-ordination of all things] certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything. There is absolutely nothing independent of him. He alone is the eternal being. He alone is omnipotent. He alone is sovereign. Not only is Satan his creature, but every detail of history was eternally in his plan before the world began; and he willed that it should all come to pass. The men and angels predestined to eternal life and those foreordained to everlasting death are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. Election and reprobation are equally ultimate. God determined that Christ should die; he determined as well that Judas should betray him. There was never the remotest possibility that something different could have happened (Psalm 135:6, Daniel 4:35, Isaiah 45:7, Proverbs 16:4, Romans 9:19-21, Romans 11:22).
One is permitted to ask, however, whether the phrase “cause of sin” is the equivalent of the phrase “author of sin.” Is the latter phrase used to deny God’s universal causality? Obviously not, for the same people who affirm causality deny the authorship. They must have intended a difference. An illustration is close at hand. God is not the author of this book, as the Arminians would be the first to admit; but he is its ultimate cause as the Bible teaches. Yet I am the author. Authorship, therefore, is one kind of cause, but there are other kinds. The author of a book is its immediate cause; God is its ultimate cause. This distinction between first and secondary causation – explicitly maintained in the Westminster Confession – has not always been appreciated, even by those who are in general agreement. John Gill, for example, who is so excellent on so much, failed to grasp the distinction between the immediate author and the ultimate cause. For this reason there are some faulty passages in his otherwise fine work. Such is the difficulty of the problem and so confused are the discussions from the time of the patristics to the present day, that some of the best Calvinists have not extricated themselves completely from Scholastic errors. Not only Berkouwer, but even Jonathan Edwards, in spite of Calvin, still spoke about God’s permission of sin.
When, accordingly, the discussion comes to God’s being the author of sin, one must understand the question to be, Is God the immediate cause of sin? Or, more clearly, Does God commit sin? This is a question concerning God’s holiness. Now, it should be evident that God no more commits sin than he is writing these words. Although the betrayal of Christ was foreordained from eternity as a means of effecting the atonement, it was Judas, not God, who betrayed Christ. The secondary causes in history are not eliminated by divine causality, but rather they are made certain. And the acts of these secondary causes, whether they be righteous acts or sinful acts, are to be immediately referred to the agents; and it is these agents who are responsible.
God is neither responsible nor sinful, even though he is the only ultimate cause of everything. He is not sinful because in the first place whatever God does is just and right. It is just and right simply in virtue of the fact that he does it. Justice or righteousness is not a standard external to God to which God is obligated to submit. Righteousness is what God does. Since God caused Judas to betray Christ, this causal act is righteous and not sinful. By definition God cannot sin. At this point it must be particularly pointed out that God’s causing a man to sin is not sin. There is no law, superior to God, which forbids him to decree sinful acts. Sin presupposes a law, for sin is lawlessness. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. But God is “Ex-lex” (Above the law).
True it is that if a man, a created being, should cause or try to cause another man to sin, this attempt would be sinful. The reason is plain. The relation of one man to another is entirely different from the relation of God to any man. God is the creator; man is a creature. And the relation of a man to the law is equally different from the relation of God to the law. What holds in the one situation does not hold in the other. God has absolute and unlimited rights over all created things. Of the same lump he can “make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. The clay has no claims on the potter. Among men, on the contrary, rights are limited.
The idea that God is above law can be explained in another particular. The laws that God imposes on men do not apply to the divine “nature”. They are applicable only to human conditions. For example, God cannot steal, not only because whatever he does is right, but also because he owns everything: There is no one to steal from. Thus the law that defines sin envisages human conditions and has no relevance to a sovereign Creator.
As God cannot sin, so in the next place, God is not responsible for sin, even though he decrees it. Perhaps it would be well, before we conclude, to give a little more Scriptural evidence that God indeed decrees and causes sin. 2 Chronicles 18:20-22 read: “Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil against thee.” This passage definitely says that the Lord caused the prophets to lie. Other similar passages ought easily to come to one’s remembrance. But that God is not responsible for the sin he causes is a conclusion closely connected with the preceding argument.
Another aspect of the human conditions presupposed by the laws God imposes on man is that they carry with them a penalty that cannot be inflicted on God. Man is responsible because God calls him to account; man is responsible because the supreme power can punish him for disobedience. God, on the contrary, cannot be responsible for the plain reason that there is no power superior to him; no greater being can hold him accountable; no one can punish him; there is no one to whom God is responsible; there are no laws which he could disobey. The sinner, therefore, and not God, is responsible; the sinner alone is the author of sin. Man has no free will, for salvation is purely of grace; and God is sovereign.
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