Foreknowledge by Joel Hayes - Library of Theology

But does God really intend every special voluntary action which man performs? it may be asked.
Certainly; how can it be otherwise? Through the medium of the emotions and the judgment he necessitates
every action; then how can it be said that he does not intend it? If an action is the result of my free volition,
and if at the time of its performance, I could have prevented it or caused it to be different, can it properly be
said that I did not intend it? It must be remembered, however, that it is not said that men's voluntary actions
are unconditionally intended by God. He usually merely intends them under the conditions which obtain. God
intended, for instance, that, if Adam should choose to gratify his appetite and his desire for wisdom rather
than the love of God, he should partake of the forbidden fruit, just as he intended on the same condition to
drive him forth from the garden of Eden. But, if the condition had been different, if the love of God had been
Adam's chosen pleasure, God's intention would have been different. In that case, Adam would neither have
partaken of the forbidden fruit nor been expelled from the garden.
Both reason and the word of God, then, seem to teach that whatever may be our lot, whether of joy
or grief, fortune or misfortune, whether it happens to us through the operations of inanimate nature or is the
result of the voluntary actions of man, that lot is appointed to us by the hand of our Heavenly Father, "who
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." (Eph. 1:11) "I form the light, and create darkness: I make
peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isa. 45:7) "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord
hath not done it?" (Amos 3:6)
But this, it may be said, is to make God the author of sin. Not by any means. God is the author of
natural evil and suffering, but not the author of sin. He controls and in a certain sense brings into being the
voluntary actions of mankind, whether righteous or sinful, but he is not the author of the righteousness or
sin of those actions. The same actions which be sinful in man are not necessarily sinful in God; voluntary
actions, I mean, not free volitions. It is sinful in man, for instance, to take another man's life, because he
thereby violates the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." But this law does not apply to God. He can and
does take away men's lives without violating any law or in any degree transcending the bounds of the most
absolute right. It is sinful in man to take another man's property without his consent. But the cattle upon a
thousand hills are God's. (Ps. 1:10) "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." (Ps. 24:1) If God,
therefore, takes away what men call their property, he only takes his own, and his action is lawful and right.
Now, if it is right for the Holy Father to do these things, is that right abrogated by the employment of wicked
men as his instruments, their wickedness not being due to him, but being projected into existence in the
exercise of their own free wills? Certainly not. It was right for him to use the Assyrian as the rod of his anger
to punish Israel. "I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give
him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets."
Yet was not the Assyrian thereby justified, for "he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is
in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few." (Isa. 10:6,7)
But it may be said that although God does not commit sin by such actions, yet does not this doctrine
make him the author of men's sins. A certain voluntary action, for instance, is sinful. Now, if God produces
that action, is he not the author of a sinful action? Perhaps, in a certain sense, he is; but he is not the author
of the sin of the action, that is, he does not cause the man to sin. The fountain of sin is not created by him;
the stream is merely directed into a channel of God's own choosing.
President Edwards adduces the Scripture texts mentioned above, together with some others, as
proofs that God is "the disposer and orderer of sin." This opinion of his was referred to on page 19, where
it was shown that, if these texts prove that God disposes and orders the existence of sin at all, he is its real
agent. But Dr. Whedon thus replies to President Edwards: "Edwards next proceeds to the Scripture
Argument. He adduces the cases of Pharaoh, of Joseph's brethren, of the king of Assyria, of
Nebuchadnezzar, and of the crucifiers to prove--it is not very clear what. These passages, it is at present
sufficient to say, have terms of causation that seem to ascribe the authorship of sin to God. These passages
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