The authorship of evil

1. Is God the author of sin? Freewill theists routinely allege that Calvinism makes God the author of sin. 

At one level, this accusation doesn’t amount to much because it’s just a metaphor. Since a metaphor isn’t literally true, calling God a metaphor doesn’t say anything unless you can define your terms. If it merely means that God is the "author of sin" in a figurative sense, then that's not unique to Calvinism. Consider the description by Thomist Ed Feser:

God as primary cause is like the author of the novel. God’s effects are therefore not to be sought merely in otherwise unexplained natural phenomena, any more than an author’s influence extends only to unusual plot points. Just as a novelist is responsible for every aspect of the story, God is the source of all causality, including ordinary, everyday causes for which we already have good scientific descriptions. 

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/12/conflict-resolution

2. Does what does the metaphor literally mean? Is it a figurative synonym for causation? If God is the author of sin, this means that God is the cause of sin.

However, if that’s what they mean, it doesn’t do much to move the ball since we then need to define “cause.”

Human beings have an intuitive notion of causality. But the problem with raw intuition is that it can either be wrong or inaccurate. Philosophers try to refine our raw intuitions. 

Here’s an attempt by three different philosophers to define causation: either the generic idea or a special case of causation.

“We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects – some of them, at least, and usually all – would have been absent as well”

The basic idea of counterfactual theories of causation is that the meaning of causal claims can be explained in terms of counterfactual conditionals of the form “If A had not occurred, C would not have occurred”.

In terms of counterfactuals, Lewis defines a notion of causal dependence between events, which plays a central role in his theory (1973b).

(2) Where c and e are two distinct possible events, e causally depends on c if and only if, if c were to occur e would occur; and if c were not to occur e would not occur.

This condition states that whether e occurs or not depends on whether c occurs or not. Where c and e are actual occurrent events, this truth condition can be simplified somewhat. For in this case it follows from the second formal condition on the comparative similarity relation that the counterfactual “If c were to occur e would occur” is automatically true: this formal condition implies that a counterfactual with true antecedent and true consequent is itself true. Consequently, the truth condition for causal dependence becomes:

(3) Where c and e are two distinct actual events, e causally depends on c if and only if, if c were not to occur e would not occur.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/

Negative causation occurs when an absence serves as cause, effect, or causal intermediary…So what is causation? What is it that positive and negative causation shares, and that misconnection lacks? The moral I would draw is that causation involves at least some aspect of difference making. In both positive and negative causations, whether or not the cause occurs makes a difference as to whether or not the effect will occur…causation has a counterfactual aspect, involving a comparative notion of difference making, J. Schaffer, “Causes need not be Physically Connected to their Effects: The Case for Negative Causation,” C. Hitchcock, ed.Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science (Blackwell 2004), 197-214.

We normally classify as natural things which nature unaided by agency if given a free hand, would do or produce, and as artificial things nature, unaided by agency, would not do or produce (or would not do via the specific means in question)…counterflow refers to things running contrary to what, in the relevant sense, would (or might) have resulted or occurred had nature operated freely, Del Ratzsch, Nature, Design, and Science(SUNY2001), 4-5.

Let’s illustrate some of these efforts to define causation. A caged predator is in an artificial state. If I cage a tiger, that prevents the tiger from doing what it would naturally do. Put another way, I prevent the tiger from doing what it would otherwise do.

Conversely, if I release the tiger, I remove the artificial impediment which hinders it from doing what comes naturally. From doing what it would otherwise do absent the artificial restraint.

Likewise, if I dam a river, I prevent nature from taking its course. Prevent it from doing what it would otherwise do if left to its own devices. 

Conversely, if I release the water, I then allow nature to take its course.

In examples of negative causation, involving a counterfactual theory of causation, events have a default setting in terms of what would eventuate absent artificial intervention. 

Let’s apply this analysis to Calvinism. Arminians claim that Calvinism makes God the “author” of sin because the decree ensures the outcome. Given the decree, the human agent could not have done otherwise. And they think that element of “determinism” inculpates God. 

But if God decreed the Fall, then does that make God the cause of Adam’s sin?

By way of answer, we might begin by asking if the decree makes a difference to the outcome? To answer that question, we’d also have to ask, difference in relation to what? A difference in relation to what would otherwise transpire had that outcome not been predestined?

But it’s hard to make sense of that answer when we’re dealing with God’s choice of merely possible outcomes. The decree doesn’t represent an act of divine intervention, whereby God prevents Adam from doing something he would naturally do if given a free hand.

Left to his own devices, there’s nothing in particular that Adam, as a possible agent, would do. A merely possible agent has no default setting. As possible agent can do as many different things as you can coherently hypothesize for him to do. And because these alternate possibilities are mere possibilities, there is no particular course of action which a possible agent would choose. 

When God decrees the occurrence of a hypothetical scenario, it’s not as if he’s making the agent do something contrary to what the agent would otherwise do, if given a free hand. For there’s no one thing a possible agent would do. 

Out of the various abstract possibilities, God is selecting one possible outcome to be the actual outcome. That divine action makes a difference in the sense that, absent divine action, there would be no outcome at all–but not in the sense that, absent divine action, Adam would do something else. 

The actual outcome corresponds to one possible outcome, which God selected from other possible outcomes. 

Some possible outcomes are random outcomes. A royal flush can be a random outcome. While a royal flush is improbable, the odds are that, sooner or later, a card player will be dealt a royal flush.

Suppose that God decrees a royal flush. In that case, the outcome is both random and certain. The decree ensures the outcome, yet the outcome which it thereby ensures is a random result. 

There is a possible world in which a possible card player will be dealt a royal flush–due to random permutations of the combinatorial variables. If God selects that world, then the actual outcome will coincide with that possible outcome. The possible outcome is indeterminate, but the actual outcome is determinate inasmuch as the actual outcome realizes one possible outcome–to the exclusion of other possible outcomes. 

The possible outcome is indeterminate inasmuch as there is more than one hypothetical outcome. There are as many hypothetical scenarios as God can coherently hypothesize.

Rolling the hypothetical dice results in different hypothetical results. Rolling the actual dice results in one, and only one, actual outcome since the very fact that it’s actual rather than merely possible means that God chose to instantiate that particular outcome. Possible outcomes could be otherwise, but actual outcomes could not be otherwise. 

And while a possible outcome could be otherwise, that doesn’t mean a possible outcome would be otherwise. Indeed, that’s nonsensical.