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Friday, September 05, 2008

Is God the source of sin?

Paul Copan has written a little critique of R. C. Sproul Jr. on the problem of evil:

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/09/taking-calvinism-too-far-rc-sproul-jr’s-evil-creating-deity/

For the most part I’m not going to comment directly on Copan or Sproul Jr. I’m more interested in questioning one of the underlying assumptions.

1. Before we get to that I will comment on one of Copan’s statements:

Sproul Jr., however, wants to get to the bottom of the matter and weigh in on what he takes to be the source of evil: God! Shocked? I certainly hope so.

Whether this is shocking or not depends on how you define your terms. The simple fact that God is the Creator of the world makes him the ultimate source of evil in the derivative sense that, if he hadn’t made the world, the fall would not have taken place. This conclusion is unavoidable whether you’re a libertarian or determinist.

It’s a necessary (albeit insufficient) condition for evil to occur. And God alone is responsible for that condition.

If, however, you mean that God is the sole source of evil, the sufficient condition, then that would be false.

“Source” is very vague. There are different ways of causing things to happen. We can all dream up hypothetical examples in which a certain type of cause would render the agent morally complicit.

On the other hand, we can also dream up hypothetical examples in which a certain type of cause would not render the agent morally complicit.

I’ve discussed this many times in the before, so I won’t repeat myself here. I’m just pointing out that this objection suffers from fatal ambiguities.

2. Let’s move on to something new. Copan quotes a passage from R. C. Sproul Sr.:

Herein lies the problem. Before a person can commit an act of sin he must first have a desire to perform that act. The Bible tells us that evil actions flow from evil desires. But the presence of an evil desire is already sin. We sin because we are sinners. We were born with a sin nature. We are fallen creatures. But Adam and Eve were not created fallen. They had no sin nature. They were good creatures with a free will. Yet they chose to sin. Why? I don’t know. Nor have I found anyone yet who does know (Chosen by God [1986], p. 30).

The problem here is that this is also ambiguous. What does it mean to have an evil or sinful desire? Let’s take something we all understand: sexual desire.

Consider the hypothetical case of a sinless husband.

i) Is it possible for a sinless husband to find other women (i.e. women other than his wife) desirable?

I don’t see why not. Isn’t what makes them desirable a natural good?

ii) But isn’t that an evil desire? An adulterous desire?

Adultery is sin. If he finds another woman desirable, isn’t his desire sinful? Illicit?

He desires something that God forbids. Isn’t that paradigmatically evil?

iii) Not necessarily, because, once again, this is ambiguous. It confuses psychology with logicality. Sin involves sinful motives.

Logically speaking, if you desire something that God forbids, then you wish to break God’s law, which is evil. Your desire is logically illicit.

But psychologically speaking, the husband doesn’t wish to break God’s law. Breaking God’s law is not the object of his desire. The object of his desire is the woman.

It’s the woman he finds attractive or unattractive, not the prohibition. He desires the woman. He has no desire to violate God’s law in the process. That is not his motive.

One desirable woman happens to be his wife, while another desirable woman happens to be single, someone else’s wife. Their marital status is incidental to his desire. That’s not what makes them desirable or undesirable.

Or let’s take a less loaded example. A single woman who wants to be a mother. She sees other women with children, and she finds their children desirable.

Is that an evil desire? Does this mean she wants to kidnap their kids?

That would be a very convoluted charge. There’s nothing wrong with a woman finding another woman’s children desirable. That’s a natural good. A perfectly normal, healthy maternal instinct.

iv) It is, of course, quite possible for someone to want to defy God’s law for its own sake. There are situations in which breaking God’s law is the object of desire.

In that sense, human beings are quite capable of entertaining evil desires. Some sinners revel in breaking God’s law just because it’s God’s law.

There are also men who want to commit adultery. Not merely that they find another woman appealing. They find adultery appealing. For them, adultery itself is part of the appeal. That, too, would be an evil desire.

v) My point is that we need to distinguish an evil desire, which involves a desire to commit evil, from desiring a forbidden good.

Once we draw that distinction, I don’t find the fall of Adam and Eve, or Lucifer, all that mysterious. God doesn’t need to give a sinless agent a sinful desire to kick-start the possibility of sin.

13 comments:

  1. Thanks Steve for sharing your keen intellect with us lesser lights.

    I saw the same thread over at Parchment and Pen. I didn't know what to make of Copan taking Sproul Jr. to the woodshed, so I let it alone.

    Your statement here cleared up the whole morass for me: "My point is that we need to distinguish an evil desire, which involves a desire to commit evil, from desiring a forbidden good."

    Thanks Steve.

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  2. Good post.

    I think people need to define their terms more often as well. My dialogue with a non-believer about the existence of evil disproving the existence of a loving God was flawed. They took one side of the story "that God allowed for us to choose between good and evil" and left out the part "we chose evil over God."

    God is the source of good. If one wants to say "sin" essentially was God's fault, is unfair. Since we have the choice to not sin, there is fault in us as well. Sins existence is the result of Adam not obeying the covenant between him and God.

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  3. "Since we have the choice to not sin"

    In your estimation, will Heavenly man (in his full, glorified state) have the capacity to choose evil?

    Will anyone be able to "fall" ever again, or was that capacity only granted to Satan and Adam?

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  4. "It’s the woman he finds attractive or unattractive, not the prohibition. He desires the woman. He has no desire to violate God’s law in the process. That is not his motive."

    How does this perspective account for sins of unbelievers? Do ignorant people still not sin?

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  5. James,

    If I may answer for Steve: "No."

    Glorified man is unable to sin.


    "The Dude,"

    Your question assumes that if one doesn't violate God's law in his motive he doesn't violate God's law in other areas. Motive or intent is only one factor. Goal and standard also come into play in a full blown analysis.

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  6. Steve,

    Thanks for this response.

    This post got me thinking of something else. How does the evidentialist using the cosmological argument account for the first cause of evil?

    Mark

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  7. I'm not Steve, but my own two cents is that most of them would say that evil is not a "thing" that would need a "cause" to come into "existence." I don't agree, but that's how I'd argue it, FWIW.

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  8. Paul,

    I did think about that angle. So wouldn't that mean the evil is uncaused?

    Mark

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  9. Steve said, "Logically speaking, if you desire something that God forbids, then you wish to break God’s law, which is evil. Your desire is logically illicit. ¶ But psychologically speaking, the husband doesn’t wish to break God’s law. Breaking God’s law is not the object of his desire. The object of his desire is the woman."

    I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Can something be logically sinful but psychologically not sinful? Is it sinful or not sinful?

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  10. Johnmark,

    Yes, that is what that means on that view. Well, they put it this way, "It needs no cause per se".

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  11. "I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Can something be logically sinful but psychologically not sinful? Is it sinful or not sinful?"

    I believe that his point was that *feeling* sexual attraction to someone is not itself a sin.

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  12. And that such a physical attraction (not a sin) could lead to an act of sin, even in a human who has no sinful desires springing from a sin nature.

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  13. _E_ELES_AI SAID:

    “I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Can something be logically sinful but psychologically not sinful? Is it sinful or not sinful?”

    To revert to my example, a desirable woman is a natural good, not an evil. For a man to see a good as a good, to see it for what it is, is not intrinsically evil. He finds desirable what God has made desirable.

    But what if he’s married to another woman?

    *Truths* entail other *truths*, but *feelings* don’t entail other *feelings*. For example, suppose I desire honey? Some people die from beestings every year (due to anaphylactic shock).

    The *truth* that I desire honey ultimately entails the *truth* that some people will be stung to death by honeybees. Does this mean my *desire* for honey entails my *desire* that some people die from beestings? No. Honey is the object of my desire, not their death by beestings—even though honey presupposes bees, and the coexistence of bees and humans makes it inevitable that some humans will be stung to death by honeybees.

    Would it be sinful of me to desire someone’s death by beestings? Generally speaking, yes (unless the victim deserved to die). Is it therefore sinful of me to desire honey? No—even though they’re logically interrelated.

    It is, of course, possible to entertain sinful sexual desires. If, say, I’m a married man and I fantasize about seducing another woman, then I’m transferring my affections to that woman, and making invidious comparisons between that woman and my own wife.

    But I’m making a different point.

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