James 1:13
James 1:13
Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
God tests people concerning sin, but does not tempt people to commit sin. That’s a critical difference. To test is to measure, but to tempt is to try to get someone to do something. God does not try to get anyone to sin. God may use man’s sin, but God does not try to get man to sin. But, if, as alleged by Calvinists, that God has a particular “purpose in sin,” and not just any random sin, but very precise sins, then He has a need, both for those precise sins to be enacted, and the means by which to get them enacted, which would otherwise need to be through a temptation.
Dave Hunt comments: “God allows evil and can prevent, control, or use it, even for good (Genesis 50:20), but He doesn’t even tempt anyone to evil (James 1:13), much less decree it.” (Debating Calvinism, p.327, emphasis mine)
According to Calvinism, God did decree sin, and sin is a something, and God decreed everything:
John Calvin writes: “But the objection is not yet resolved, that if all things are done by the will of God, and men contrive nothing except by His will and ordination, then God is the author of all evils.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.179, emphasis mine)
Calvin writes: “Thinking that the difficulty here may be resolved by a single word, some are foolish enough serenely to overlook what occasions the greatest ambiguity; namely, how God may be free of guilt in doing the very thing that He condemns in Satan and the reprobate and which is to be condemned by men.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.179, emphasis mine)
Calvin writes: “We learn that nothing happens but what seems good to God. How then is God to be exempted from the blame to which Satan with his instruments is liable?” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.180, emphasis mine)
Calvin writes: “What I have maintained about the diversity of causes must not be forgotten: the proximate cause is one thing, the remote cause another.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.181, emphasis mine)
Calvin writes: “Certain shameless and illiberal people charge us with calumny by maintaining that God is made the author of sin, if His will is made first cause of all that happens. For what man wickedly perpetrates, incited by ambition or avarice or lust or some other depraved motive, since God does it by his hand with a righteous through perhaps hidden purpose--this cannot be equated with the term sin.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.181, emphasis mine)
Asserting a “remote cause” does no more to exonerate God in allegedly architecting sin, than it did in exonerating David when he ordered his general to have Uriah killed in battle against the Philistines.
Furthermore, if God predetermined whatsoever comes to pass, having scripted whatsoever comes to pass, then it follows that He is the cause and origin of all that is, which James 1:13 says that He is not.
Adrian Rogers explains: “Now God will test you, and God will prove you, but God will never induce you to do evil. God gives us tests to make us stand; Satan gives us temptations to make us stumble.” (Flawed Appetites and Fatal Attractions: James 1:12-15)
Question: That, of course, becomes the issue. If God doesn’t tempt anyone, how, then, could He have decreed it, as per Calvinism, or at least, the deterministic variety of Calvinism?
Answer: According to deterministic Calvinism, God decreed whatsoever comes to pass, inasmuch as having scripted everything, and for all time. So how could God think up the concept of sin, evil and temptation, deem it good, or at least useful, for His glory, as the story goes, and render it certain by scripting it, decreeing it, foreordaining it, ect., if God doesn’t do the thing that which He originated, planned, and scripted? In other words, if sin is ultimately, dare I say it, God’s idea, and temptation is God’s means of bringing to pass His idea, then it seems odd to deny it as being His own doing, and that’s Dave Hunt’s point. In other words, God doesn’t tempt people to do what He’s unchangeably scripted and put in their heart to do. Does that make any sense? Deterministic Calvinism is left with such double-talk, as is often the case, and is part of the reason why many people reject it.
