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3. IT MAKES GOD THE AUTHOR OF SIN.
This, if true, would naturally be an insuperable
objection, for God cannot be the author of sin. This follows equally from Scripture, Ps. 92:15;
Eccl. 7:29; Jas. 1:13; I John 1:5, from the law of God which prohibits all sin, and from the
holiness of God. But the charge is not true; the decree merely makes God the author of free
moral beings, who are themselves the authors of sin. God decrees to sustain their free agency,
to regulate the circumstances of their life, and to permit that free agency to exert itself in a
multitude of acts, of which some are sinful. For good and holy reasons He renders these sinful
acts certain, but He does not decree to work evil desires or choices efficiently in man. The
decree respecting sin is not an efficient but a permissive decree, or a decree to permit, in
distinction from a decree to produce, sin by divine efficiency. No difficulty attaches to such a
decree which does not also attach to a mere passive permission of what He could very well
prevent, such as the Arminians, who generally raise this objection, assume. The problem of
God’s relation to sin remains a mystery for us, which we are not able to solve. It may be said,
however, that His decree to permit sin, while it renders the entrance of sin into the world
certain, does not mean that He takes delight in it; but only that He deemed it wise, for the
purpose of His self-revelation, to permit moral evil, however abhorrent it may be to His nature.
II. Predestination
In passing from the discussion of the divine decree to that of predestination, we are still dealing
with the same subject, but are passing from the general to the particular. The word
“predestination” is not always used in the same sense. Sometimes it is employed simply as a
synonym of the generic word “decree.” In other cases it serves to designate the purpose of God
respecting all His moral creatures. Most frequently, however, it denotes “the counsel of God
concerning fallen men, including the sovereign election of some and the righteous reprobation
of the rest. In the present discussion it is used primarily in the last sense, though not altogether
to the exclusion of the second meaning.
A. The Doctrine of Predestination in History.
Predestination does not form an important subject of discussion in history until the time of
Augustine. Earlier Church Fathers allude to it, but do not as yet seem to have a very clear
conception of it. On the whole they regard it as the prescience of God with reference to human
deeds, on the basis of which He determines their future destiny. Hence it was possible for
Pelagius to appeal to some of those early Fathers. “According to Pelagius,” says Wiggers,
“foreordination to salvation or to damnation, is founded on prescience. Consequently he did
not admit an ‘absolute predestination,’ but in every respect a ‘conditional