How can God be the cause of actions and events that are evil and sinful—things which God Himself prescribes against—and yet not be rightly charged with unrighteousness?
How can God be the cause of actions and events that are evil and sinful—things which God Himself prescribes against—and yet not be rightly charged with unrighteousness? Some people answer this question by appealing to the notion of divine “permission.” In other words, though God is ultimately in control, He doesn’t ordainevil; He merely allows it. I don’t find this kind of explanation convincing for two reasons. God’s Decree and Divine “Permission” The first is: I find the concept of divine permission to be inconsistent with the biblical teaching of God’s decree outlined in the previous post. The fundamental meaning of “permission” is “not to hinder what has, or appears to have, a tendency to take place” (Edwards, Concerning the Divine Decrees). The concept of permission is used this way in Scripture (e.g., Mark10:14; Acts 16:7), and even the etymology of the English word testifies that it has the idea of “to allow to pass through.” In fact, Arminian theologians treat the