What explanations are there for God's lack of culpability for the sin that was a part of the plan of salvation?
score:4
The answer to your problem lies in God's perfect foreknowledge:
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: - Isaiah 46:9-10
The entrance of a sinful disposition into the fabric of humanity is clearly presented in the Bible as the result of human choice and, contrary to some philosophies, the Bible does not present perfect foreknowledge as ruling out the actuality of human choice. Nor is it required philosophically.
Holding on to the understanding that God foreknew what choice Adam (the first man) would make and how that choice would affect and influence every person following and coupling it with the Scriptures which indicate that, in God's economy, the Lamb of God (Jesus) was crucified from the very beginning:
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you - 1 Peter 1:18-20
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. - Revelation 13:8
leaves a picture of God, foreknowing everything, first offering up His Son and then creating. As surely as God foreknew Adam would sin even before He created anything (rendering it an actuality in God's economy) so was the Lamb of God crucified prior to the creation of Adam (again in God's economy) and prior to sin's actuality in time.
This magnifies God's justice and mercy in providing the rescue prior to the necessity and magnifies His great love in that the immense personal cost to redeem us was paid up front.
Thus, if one desires any blame for the existence of evil to be attached to God it would have to be blame for creating anything at all but, C.S. Lewis has astutely said, "It is no good talking about the benefit or detriment of non-existence.". To do so is to surmise that God, knowing the end from the beginning and the fullness of all possible creations, has chosen to implement something that is less than the best. Of course we, as mere parts of creation, have no ground to stand upon in making such judgements:
“The greatest barrier I have met is the almost total absence from the minds of my audience of any sense of sin... The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers, whether Jews, Metuentes, or Pagans, a sense of guilt. (That this was common among Pagans is shown by the fact that both Epicureanism and the mystery religions both claimed, though in different ways, to assuage it.) Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably the Evangelium, the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy. The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.” - C.S. Lewis "God in the Dock:Essays on Theology and Ethics"
We can accept Divine revelation or revile it ... human choice once again (and it's attendant consequence) but with what folly does the finite judge the infinite and the temporal the eternal.
Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? - Romans 9:20b
Upvote:-2
These passages and others DO clearly indicate that salvation through the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus was the plan from the beginning.
The plan God is executing is based on choice. He began with two new humans and the serpent/evil force/influence. God is responsible for the sin that has cursed man for a time and he has provided a perfect and wise solution.
God could have disallowed this influence but he did not. The whole deal is to be able to compare one way of life with a totally different way of living. So in the end, when everyone will be able to choose 'life or death' as the Israelites were offered, they will know what the way of sin and evil leads to.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. Deut 30:15
v19 Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live
We have to understand one important reality. One cannot possible choose life while they remain under the influence/grip of evil. Jesus said that the Jews were children of the Devil because they did what he did. John 8:44
God is the one who opens the heart and mind to see a new reality that he is the true God and not any other god.
God will provide ample opportunity for every person alive or dead to know the truth and to compare with what they knew. That is why the devil will be silenced during the time after the 1st resurrection and then loosed again so the newly raised dead (who knew not the truth about God or his messiah) might be offered their choice (not a second choice). If they still want to choose evil, they will suffer the second death and that will be the end of them.
God in his wisdom has planned that we can only be trusted to enter the kingdom for eternity with eternal life as Jesus now has, is if we have made a proper and firm choice between good and evil. That is why there will be no more sin in the new age to come.
No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 1 john 3:9
(unfortunately the matter of being 'born from above' has been confused but that is another Q/A entirely)
Upvote:0
The verses you cite do not require God to be responsible for the evil. Merely to know of it.
In the Catholic Cathecism
(311) Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:
For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.
312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive." From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more", brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.
Upvote:1
As with your previous question this is a philosophical enquiry not an enquiry based on the need of a sinner seeking salvation from the only source of salvation - almighty God.
Your enquiry is this : that God is the author (sic) of sins.
Thus you take no culpability yourself for the sins you have committed, nor do you seek salvation from God, who is righteous.
No, you state that it is your 'logical conclusion' that he is the author and you demand that he show 'culpability' for the sins that you, yourself, out of your own volition, have done.
(Assuming, of course, that you do have sins to confess.)
This kind of enquiry is answered within scripture.
Firstly, it is answered in the most ancient book of the bible, arguably the first scripture ever to be written down, namely the book of Job.
And God answers :
Shall he that contendeth with the almighty, instruct him ? Job 40:2.
Wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous ? Job 40:8.
Secondly, such enquiries are answered by the treatise of the apostle Paul, commonly called 'Romans' in which Paul spends two chapters disposing of such enquiries.
We are sure, he says, Romans 2:2 that the judgment of God is according to truth.
And later in his epistle, the apostle answers the enquiry of one who (hypothetically) queries why God finds fault with the sins of men saying,
Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it "Why hast thou made me thus", Romans 9:20.
Thus are the answers to your enquiry.
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