IS GOD REALLY THE AUTHOR OF SIN?

[We do not agree with some of the sentiments in this post.  But for the sake of a peaceful and calm discussion we post it.  For more information on this subject we recommend a book from Welsh Tract Publications: The Origin of the Term "Author of Sin"- ed]

Dear Brothers in Christ who labor under the idea that God must be the author of sin to have dominion over all things such as evil and sin.

First, let me express how honored I am by the honesty and courage of many brethren in sharing their thoughts on such a sensitive topic—one that has divided so many of our brethren since its recent introduction historically. I deeply value the friendships and the good works many have done in such circles in many other areas, despite this egregious error.

Emails I have received of this faction reflects the depth of their thoughts and convictions. I will endeavor to respond in a way that, Lord willing, honors their inquiries and, by God's grace, bring light and edification. Only the Lord can provide the ultimate clarity we seek on any topic, so let us pause for a moment in prayer and look to Him for wisdom and guidance as we explore this topic together.

 
A Prayer for Guidance

Oh Lord, Thou art the Almighty! There is no God but Thee. Thou hast ordained all things and established dominion over all creation according to Thy good will and for Thy glory. This very conversation was appointed and predestined before the foundation of the world, and its outcome is fixed in Thy sovereign plan. May this discussion glorify Thee and edify Thy people. Open our hearts to Thy truth, and may Thy Spirit guide us to understand and rejoice in Thy Word. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
 

Definitions for Clarity

To begin, let us define key terms, keeping them forefront as we explore this question:

Sin: The transgression of God’s laws and His righteousness; anything that is not of faith (1 John 3:4; Romans 14:23).

Author: One who originates, creates, or directly and efficiently causes something.

• Samuel Johnson (1755): "The first beginner or mover of anything; he to whom anything owes its original."
• Noah Webster (1828): "One who produces, creates, or brings into being; as, God is the author of the universe."

https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/Author

This distinction of causation is vital. Let us consider the difference between direct and indirect causation:

1. Direct (Positive) Causation: Immediate and active, with no intermediary (e.g., pushing a glass causes it to fall).

2. Indirect (Negative) Causation: Effects arise from the withdrawal or absence of necessary conditions (e.g., neglecting to tighten a screw leads to malfunction).

BY DIRECT PROOF

Okay, let’s look at the scriptures which say that the human heart is universally, in its present natural totally depraved condition, "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can know it?" (Jer 17:9). And that we naturally have hearts that are "adamant stone" (Zech 7:12), which means they are unmovable and impenetrable objects with such density and weight that they are unstoppable, except by God’s restraint. 

The heart of man is a deep cesspool of liquid filth that defiles, for out of its putrid source proceeds all sorts of vile evil intents and blasphemies from unbelief and corruption (Matt 15:19-21, Gen 6:5, Prov 20:5, Heb 3:12). They are dark and men love the darkness because they and their deeds are evil.

Let’s further delve into each example of analogies used in the bible of spiritual things by physical similes we are familiar with.

AS WATER

When the Lord turns such hearts from the highest king to the lowest pawn, he need not work any evil into it, for it has absolutely all the evil it ever needs to accomplish His will. 

God merely turns the evil hearts to direct, contain and bind them and unleash their evil darkness in judgment thereby creating the exact amount of evil and darkness that flows from such wicked sinful creatures, no more, no less, and the remainder that does not praise Him, He shall restrain. (Prov 21:1, Ps 76:10). 

Water naturally finds its own level. God need not work any additional evil into it nor forcibly cause evil. Evil and sin is suffered in judgment and in love and always for a good and righteous purpose and end.

AS DARKNESS

Darkness is the absence of light. (Mat 6:22-24) God need only shut a door, and that space and heart is fully dark and so hardened. God need not infuse evil or sin into any sentient being. It was already there from the first turn. And we all would turn again if set upright again as we do every second of every minute of every day of our lives if the Lord does not work good in us and put Himself in us the hope of glory. God does not work evil in His creatures.

How can the good God, of infinitely pure unadulterated Light, the Father of lights and giver of good gifts, work evil IN us or INTO us? For Him to be the penman and author of sin He would have to be a corrupt tree to produce corrupt fruit and seed that would infest His creatures by tentacles with Stygian ink. God never anywhere in scripture works internally evil as such into men's wills. Search the scriptures brother. He always works externally and negatively hardening, turning them over to their own reprobate minds and giving them over to their own evil delusions and removing His hand, hedge and light opening the entrance to evil spirits, again, in righteous JUDGMENT.

AS STONE


This stony heart is cold. The removal of God's warmth of love and grace freezes them over to such a hardness it becomes like adamant rock, resistant as a recalcitrant mule. This rock has such potential energy packed within; it is like a dark star with gravitational forces of colossal proportions. The force can dash anything in its wake to bits if not constrained by Christ, through whom all things are held together. God need not force anything but release it to its own weight and natural force.

Evil arises inherently from creation’s mutability and inevitable change without the Creator's eternal restraint.

Or, like an old c preacher aptly put it,

The thing made is necessarily less [inferior] than the thing that made it.


MUTABILITY - THE ROOT CAUSE OF SIN

I want you to say that slowly with me once again as you consider each word: 
“Evil arises inherently from creation’s mutability and inevitable change without the Creator's eternal restraint.” 
Think about that for a second. God cannot create God or God would no longer be God. God alone is infinite in all His attributes. Creation comes with the Pandora's Box and paradox of inherent mutability and finite wisdom and knowledge which makes the rise of sin inevitable with sentient life given any leeway of motion and not frozen for all eternity. 
Sin is a transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). It originates from the creature, not the Creator. Even when we examine 1 Corinthians 14:33 as a literal, word-for-word translation of the Koine Greek in the Textus Receptus—the basis for the KJV, Tyndale, and Geneva Bibles—we see this distinction clearly. In the original Greek, without the added helper words like "the author" or "is" (which pious and highly skilled linguists added in italics to convey the proper meaning in English), the phrase [γάρ ἐστιν ἀκαταστασίας ὁ θεὸς, genitive feminine singular] still communicates that confusion is not of God.

As a corrupt tree can only produce corrupt fruit, and a good tree can only produce good fruit (Matthew 7:18), God works only good in His people. He does not bring evil into any creature because: 1) God is wholly GOOD and LIGHT, and 2) the darkness and evil already exist apart from Him.

Romans 9:21-23 says God's primary purpose was the vessels of mercy to redeem them from the concomitant mutable and inevitably corrupt clay, and he suffers with much long suffering the vessels left and fitted to destruction. God takes no pleasure in wickedness (Ps. 5:4) and the death (Ez. 18:23. Ez. 33:11) of the wicked for its own sake but for His just judgment over that wickedness that was necessary to bring many sons (and daughters) to glory. 

Hebrews 2:10
“For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

God so eternally desired and loved people for Himself that He became one to save them because none else could. He only endured the wicked, though as a loving God with loving-kindness, sustained them in life with rain and sun and providence and breath and movement and being (Acts 17:28). But He loves the apple of his eye (Zech. 2:8) that is His Seed in Himself and He in them (Gal. 2:20) working only GOOD (Phil. 2:13) in them and all the evil in the world is worked for the good of His people (Rom. 8:28-31). All His ways are judgment (Deut. 32:4) and all His ways are love. (1 John 4:7-10) Love for His people in a special way (Jer. 31:3; Rom. 8:35), love for all creatures in a providential way (Matt. 5:45) and love for His own righteousness and justice in judgment. (Ps. 11:7, Heb. 1:9)


Romans 7:24-25
“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

The saint could not possibly grieve over something that God overruled directly as evil and sinful and forced us to do as the efficient cause unrighteousness. It was our own wicked hands. It is our own deceitful hearts. It is our own sin.

Matthew 1:21
“…and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”


BY INDIRECT PROOF

 
The Mechanical Turk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk

Assume for a moment, as you apparently do according to your email, that God is the Author of Sin. What follows from this premise? First, we would deduce that God actively instills sin within His sentient creatures. This would not be a mere external ‘force’ akin to a Zugzwang in chess, where a Master Chess Player, knowing all permutations and combinations of every possible move, orchestrates events from the outside to fulfill a perfect will and purpose. Instead, this would imply something more intrusive—a scenario like the Mechanical Turk Chess machine, with a hidden operator inside each person. In this analogy, God would be the concealed operator, directly causing sin, inventing it, and actively working evil within His creation.
However, if God were the direct author of sin, sin would no longer be sin, as it would be the act of a perfect, holy being. Such actions could not be judged as sinful, rendering the concepts of guilt, salvation, and a Savior unnecessary. This conclusion contradicts the entirety of Scripture. Therefore, the initial premise—that God is the author of sin—must be false. By both direct and indirect proof, it is evident that God cannot be the author of sin.

ANCIENT LANDMARKS

I hope these thoughts and scriptures can be of use and are edifying and bring joy to your heart. Many in the name of protecting our landmarks have moved them beyond where God placed them fearing erosion or movement to the other side by Calvinists, Calminians, Arminians, Conditionalists, Conditional-Time-Salvationists, Limited Predestinarians, Two-Seeders, and other like work-mongers or heretical apostate cults. God has this all under control. He can still be the good God he is and reveals Himself to be and still be in control of all things and determine all things before time ever was without being the author of sin, for He is not and cannot be such and has revealed this to us in his holy bible and our conscience and creation and all our forefathers knew where that ancient landmark line was drawn. 

Let's take one slight detour before parting to survey that ancient landmark we are never to move:

J.C. Sikes on Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility
The Instruments of Works, Both Good and Bad
J.C. Sikes writes:
"Every sin that has ever been committed from that day to this has been the work of Satan who, through that enmity, is striking at the Seed of the woman—the blessed Son of God. Not itemized and declared separately, but in the one short sentence [Gen 3:15] is contained all things, both good and bad, that have since that time and shall ever take place in time, 'yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein' (London Baptist Confession, Chapter 3, Paragraph 1)."


God Uses Men, Both Good and Evil, To Perform His Counsel
Sikes comments:
"God did not put in his heart to do it [Isaiah 10:5–7], for it was already in his heart to do that to any nation whenever opportunity was afforded him. Water will freely run downhill when it is not restrained from doing so, and so will the wicked."
He further explains:
"But it does not follow that God works in them to disobey as He works in His children 'both to will and to do of His good pleasure,' which is well pleasing in His sight through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are often accused of believing this, but the accusation is false. It is stated very plainly in Ephesians that the 'prince of the power of the air' works in the children of disobedience [Ephesians 2:2]."
Objections to God's Decree and the Predestination of All Things
Addressing predestination, Sikes asserts:
"God had predetermined or predestinated what these men did. That is a fact. And we cannot deny that they did it wickedly, and that they did it! [Acts 4:27–28] From this we are forced to acknowledge that God can, and has, predestinated a thing and He not be the author of sin nor His predestination be the cause or admit that He was the author and His predestination the cause of the blackest crime ever perpetrated by mortals upon the earth."
 
Stanley C. Phillips on Predestination and Divine Decrees
God's Determinate Counsel, Creative Decree, and Comprehensive Predestination
Phillips clarifies the relationship between God's decrees and human sinfulness:
"In that first transgression, and every transgression since then, God did not infuse sin, nor force sin upon any man. Man acted freely according to his nature before the fall, and men act according to their fallen nature since the fall. God cannot be the 'author of sin,' simply because if He commands anyone to commit an act forbidden by His published law, that act is not now forbidden to him, and hence cannot be a 'sin.'
On the language of the London Confession, he writes:
"God hath decreed all things whatsoever comes to pass" (London Confession, Chapter 3). The expression 'God hath decreed' utilizes a word often misused. For instance, many say, 'God has predestinated all things whatsoever comes to pass,' believing that this is what the Confession meant. It has also led to the belief that predestination is causative. But this is not the case."
Phillips also emphasizes the role of human responsibility:
"The decree of God does not in the least create the wicked motives that drive depraved men to evil! Sin is not a created thing. It is a transgression of the law: 'But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin' [James 1:14–15]."


Now, you can trace the landmarks in the Welsh, English and American Regular Baptist confessions of 1644, 1646, 1689, 1742 and forward and see the splits of those who moved in either direction from that sacred line past Spilsbury, Collins, Drapes, Gill, Keach, Beebe, Durand, Smoot, Trott, Wilson Thompson, Sikes, and others. You can trace back into the dark ages of antiquity to the Waldensians hid in the wilderness and to the disciples of the disciples of Jesus Christ in the apostolic church and the same line is there. Thus, with such an historic precedent of our landmarks, once can only deduce that within the last 35 years this doctrine crept in among us that "God is the Author of Sin" (GAS Theory). It is not orthodoxy or biblical or historical precedent of Regular Baptists.

But brethren, I leave it to the court of your conscience and God's word and Spirit to decide.

Your friend, as always, in Christ,
A voice crying in the wilderness