"The Bible clearly teaches that God judicially abandons men to their sins, giving them up to a reprobate mind, and He therein is most just and holy. It is not true, therefore, that an agent is responsible for all the certain consequences of his acts. It may be, and doubtless is, infinitely wise and just in God to permit the occurrence of sin, and to adopt a plan of which sin is a certain consequence or element; yet as he neither causes sin, nor tempts men to its commission, He is neither its author nor approver. He sees and knows that higher ends will be accomplished by its admission than by its exclusion, that a perfect exhibition of his infinite perfections will be thereby effected and therefore for the highest reason decrees that it shall occur through the free choice of responsible agents. Our great ground of confidence, however, is the assurance that the judge of all the earth must do right. Sin is, and God is; therefore the occurrence of sin must be consistent with his nature; and as its occurrence cannot have been unforeseen or undesigned, God's purpose or decree that it should occur must be consistent with his holiness" (Systematic Theology, 1:548).
Saturday, August 02, 2014
More from Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology (Foreordination)
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Mr. Hodge is mistaken, sin exist because of free will. Not because God purposed sin, but he did purpose free will. While the expression free will never occurs in the bible, the idea of choice does. Yes we have a choice to purposely sin or not to.-Joshua 24:15. Jehovah loving gave us free will, even in our imperfect state we can be considered righteous. Jesus sacrifice will eventually remove the effects of Adamic sin. Yet it can seem all so convenient, that it might be foreordained that way. But, no there are an finite amount of decisions to make. All of them easy for an omnipotent God to see coming and even say prior to the events leading up to the actions one takes, this is how it is going to go down, and this is what I am going to do about it. Even with the law of averages an imperfect person like me will be right 50% of the time. But Jehovah God will be right 100% of the time. Thus it appears he is causing it, but not really, he just know which way it will go. We humans often do the same based on the finite directions something will go in. And we get it right, sometimes my wife says, you did that, as if I caused it or willed it so. No, that is not true, but it certainly can appear that way. Finally,God does say in the bible that he intervenes, and when he does, he did cause it to be so. Like the case of Jeremiah, he was Jehovah's choice.-Jeremiah 1:5.
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