A Brief Thought on the Origin of Moral Evil

 

The origin of moral evil has baffled many Christian theologians throughout the ages. For many years, I have been thinking a lot about the topic of theodicy. If God is good, why is there moral evil? Many Christians have concluded that God is the creator of everything except sin or moral evil because the infinitely good God cannot be involved with sin in any way. Satan and man are the sole causes, founders, and creators of sin. For many Christians, that’s the safety mark.

This article is by no means an exhaustive treatment of the subject and it is also by no means to give anyone a license to sin. This article is nothing but a meagre attempt to explain the most controversial eternal metaphysical working of God which I believe the Bible has revealed.

Many theories have been thought of in the attempt to protect the goodness of God from the stain of sin or moral evil. However, many have intentionally or inadvertently denied His omnipotence and omniscience. 

 

Moderate or hypo- Calvinism is the most common (unhistorical) form of Calvinism in most of the reformed circles today. The moderate Calvinists say that God has eternally decreed evil to happen without causing and creating it i.e., He merely permits or allows it. How does the omnipotent and omniscient God eternally decree something by merely permitting it without the act of creation and causation? They would appeal to mystery. Did God create man and then just merely and passively permitting man’s will to run independently of Him? The moderate Calvinists do not have problem in saying that God is the cause of election, salvation, and good thoughts and actions of men, but they have difficulty in saying that God is the cause of reprobation, damnation and sinful thoughts and actions of men. I am not denying that it is the will of man that immediately sins, however who ultimately caused the existence of evil inclination in men? Is it out of nothing and totally self-determined? If man wills anything out of nothing with total self-determination in any way, God has lost control. Most moderate Calvinists also do not have problem in believing that God is the cause of natural evil such as earthquakes, Tsunami, diseases, etc. The Westminster divines, however, explicitly said that God is the first cause of all things (without exception) and His providence extends even to the first fall and all other sins of angels and man, and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation. The late Dr R.C. Sproul always claimed ignorance to the origin of moral evil. He famously shared that his late mentor John H. Gerstner (who was unashamedly a High Calvinist) rebuked him for being arrogant i.e., thinking that he has reached the climax of his knowledge on the origin of moral evil (R.C. Sproul: What Is Evil & Where Did It Come From? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzrC7KuMj6o).

 

The most common theory is libertarian free will i.e., man has the power to will anything independently of God’s control. Man is totally autonomous. God has zero say over man’s will. God, even if He can, will not violate and control man’s will. However, I am very sure that the libertarian free-willers have at least once asked God in prayer to open up the hearts of their friends or family members that they may be saved. Their theory and practice are contradicting one another.

 

I have also heard another theory (an extension of the libertarian free will theory) from my conversation with someone, that is either close to, or is Deism. God allows the universe to run by itself. He even likened the universe and the will of man to his autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner. He cannot believe in a God who is micro-managing. To him, salvation is just a contingent plan (plan B) of a God who was not in control of the fall of man. All occurrences in the universe and their consequences are nothing but a result of nature and man’s free will acting independently of God’s control. 

Can a God who has the power to stop evil but does not stop it be any less culpable? If I have the cure for cancer but does not give to my own mother who is dying of cancer, what does that make of me? If I (as the lead mechanic) know that there is a defect in one of the aeroplane’s engines that may cause a fatal accident, and yet I intentionally do not tell anyone about it and declare that the plane is safe for travel, and because of it the plane really crashes killing all the passengers, what will that make of me? Let not the moderate Calvinists, free-willers, deists, Molinists, and Open Theists think they have the best answers.

I would like to propose a theodicy that only few throughout history have held, but by no means unbiblical. God is the one who created moral evil. He is the ultimate and first cause of sin or moral evil. He did all this for a purpose. It is just a truth that is hard to swallow, and man’s emotion cannot take it. If God did not create evil, then who did? What independent force out there that created sin? Satan and man did not sin ex-nihilo or out of nothing. Sin did not come out of nowhere in Satan and man. God was the one who put the sinful inclination in them and decreed that they would succumb to that inclination for His glorious purpose.

It must be emphasized that God decreeing, creating and causing moral evil is not evil. For God, the end (which is His glory) justifies the means. He is not bound by the Ten Commandments which are only for men. God has the power over the clay to make a vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour. It is simply His act of absolute and unrestrained sovereignty upon the world He created for His own glory and pleasure. The world is the arena or stage of God’s divine drama. God is the writer. We are the conscious actors. 

God is not the author of evil in a sense that He is not the actor and doer, or the immediate cause of moral evil because by definition God cannot sin and whatever that God does is righteous and just. Satan and man are the doers and actors, or the immediate cause of moral evil. God is the author of evil in a sense that He is the ultimate cause and creator of moral evil i.e., the originator of the existence of evil. However, the former is the traditional meaning of “the author of evil” and one must be careful how the term is used. I concur with the Westminster divines as far as the traditional definition of “author of evil” is concerned.

Consider God’s act of causing sins in men to fulfil His purpose in Deuteronomy 2:30 (“But Sihon king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him: for the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand, as appeareth this day.”) and 2 Chronicles 18:22 (“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.”). Psalm 105:25 says God turned the heart to hate His people, to deal subtilly with His servants. The Psalm explicitly says that God turned their hearts to hatred; He made them think evil thoughts; he controlled their decisions (Gordon H. Clark, Predestination). God, with much pleasure, moves and causes the will of man to do evil (which is a pre-ordained means) to fulfil God's next pre-ordained step in history. Think about how God moved the will of men to do the most evil thing i.e., the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the sake of the elect's justification. God has pre-ordained and caused the means (including consequences) and the end of all things.

 

Proverbs 16:4 is quite explicit: “The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil”. The LORD made everything including wicked man for His glory. One may surmise that God only made the wicked, but He did not make his wickedness. That argument is basically saying that God created everything but there is an exception. How to make a wicked man without first creating the wickedness? That's logically impossible. The wickedness which makes man wicked logically must first be created by God. Proverbs 16:4 makes no exception in God’s creative act. Still not explicit enough? Let’s take a look at Isaiah 45:7: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” The Bible says God created moral evil. Some say that the Hebrew word “ra” only means natural evil and does not mean sin or moral evil. Such an attempt at re-interpretation will only result in failure. Gordon H. Clark, in his book Predestination, did a good commentary of Isaiah 45:7. I shall quote him verbatim below:

The two theses most unacceptable to the Arminians are that God is the cause of sin and that God is the cause of salvation. In both cases the Arminians look to free will. Man is the first cause of his sin, and, still independent of God, man is the first cause of his conversion. Isaiah in this verse makes Arminianism Biblically impossible.

The Scofield Bible is a good example of how Arminians try to escape from the plain meaning of the verse. Scofield says, “Heb. ra, translated ‘sorrow,’ ‘wretchedness,’ ‘adversity,’ ‘afflictions,’ ‘calamities,’ but never translated sin. God created evil only in the sense that he made sorrow, wretchedness, etc., to be the sure fruits of sin.”

Now the most remarkable point about Scofield’s note is that he told the truth when he said, “ra… [is] never translated sin.” How could he have made such a statement, knowing it was true? The only answer is that he must have examined every instance of ra in the Hebrew text and then he must have determined that in no case did the King James translate it sin. And this is absolutely true. But if he compared every instance of ra with its translation in every case, he could not have failed to note that ra in Genesis 6:5 and in a number of other places is translated wickedness. In fact ra is translated wickedness some fifty times. Scofield could not have failed to notice this; so he says with just truth, ra is never translated sin. Since Scofield favors the word evil, a partial list of verses in which this translation occurs will be given; and second there will be a partial list where wicked or wickedness is used.

Going through the Bible, Scofield must have read as far as Genesis 2:9, 17; 3:5, 22; 6:5; 8:21; 44:4; 48:16; 50:15, 17, 20. The knowledge of good and evil is not simply a knowledge of sorrow or calamity; it is primarily a knowledge of disobedience and sin. Similarly, Genesis 3:5, 22 refer as much to sin as to its punishment. In fact Genesis 3:22 hardly refers to punishment at all. True, Adam was banished from the garden; but the word evil in the verse refers to his disobedience and sin.

Whatever lame excuse can be given for excluding sin and retaining only punishment in the previous four verses, Genesis 6:5 is clearly and indisputably a reference to sin. God did not see “adversity” or “afflictions”; he saw sinful thoughts. Ra, in this verse at any rate, means sin. The same is true of Genesis 8:21. In fact, sin and its punishment are separated here. God will not again curse or smite, as he had just done, for man’s heart is evil. The flood was a punishment, but the evil was the sinful heart of man.

Toward the end of Genesis ra refers to an alleged theft, many sins from which the angel had redeemed Jacob, and three times the brothers’ sin against Joseph. In 50:17 again the sin is easily distinguishable from the feared punishment.

Is it necessary to plod through all the Old Testament to show that ra often means sin as distinct from its punishment? It should not be necessary; but to show the pervasiveness of the doctrine and the perverseness of Arminianism, something from 2 Chronicles will be listed: 22:4 ; 29:6 ; 33:2,6 ; 36:5,9,12. Ahab did evil in the sight of the Lord. Our fathers have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of the Lord. Manasseh did evil in the sight of the Lord. He wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord. Jehoiakim did evil in the sight of the Lord. He did evil in the sight of the Lord.

Evil, ra, is not once translated sin. Very strange, but true.

Then there are Isaiah 56:2; 57:1; 59:7, 15; 65:12; 66:4. All instances of ra, or evil.

Now, if Scofield knew that ra was never translated sin, he must have known that it was often translated wickedness. Wickedness or wicked, as the translation of ra, occurs in Genesis 6:5; 13:13; 38:7; 39:9. Also in Deuteronomy 13:11 and 17:2. Also in 1 Samuel 30:22; 2 Samuel 3:39; 1 Kings 2:44; Nehemiah 9:35; Esther 7:6, 9, 25; and Proverbs 21:12; 26:23, 26. Nor are these the only instances.

Scofield told the literal truth when he said ra is never translated sin. But nothing could be more false than his statement, “God created evil only in the sense that he made sorrow, wretchedness, etc., to be the sure fruits of sin.”

The Scriptural meaning of the word ra has now been abundantly made clear. But there is another point too. If ra means simply external calamities, then the word peace, which God also creates, can mean only military peace. The phrases are parallel. But this interpretation reduces the verse, or this part of the verse, to triviality. Even verse 1 can hardly be restricted to purely political matters. Verse 3 speaks of treasures of darkness, hidden riches, and the knowledge of God. Jacob my servant and Israel my elect are not phrases to be restricted to politics and economics. Verse 6 speaks of the extension of the knowledge of God throughout the world. Then comes “I make peace and create evil.” Merely military peace? Not peace with God? The next verse speaks of righteousness dropping down from Heaven, not like dew, but like pouring rain. Bring forth salvation, let righteousness spring up together. I the Lord have created it.

O, Arminian, Arminian, you that distort the prophets and misinterpret them that are sent unto you; how often have I told your children the plain truth…and you would not let them understand!

There is still more in this chapter from Isaiah. Once again we find the Potter and the clay. It indicates that God is not responsible to man. Woe to the man who complains that God has made him or anyone else a a vessel of dishonor. The clay has no rights against the Potter. Nor does it have any free will to decide what sort of a bowl or jug it shall be. [end of quote]

 

This view isn't new. Let's take a look at Belgic Confession, article 8: "The Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things visible and invisible". Westminster Confession of Faith, 5.2, also speaks of the same thing: "the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly." I am sure this "all things" is literally all things without exception including evil. 

Gordon H. Clark, in his book Religion, Reason and Revelation answered some of the most common objections to this view [brackets mine]:

 

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” [Clark coming from the traditional definition]. 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.