Concurrence

Though the natural virtue of doing a sinful action be from God, and supported by him, yet this doth not blemish the holiness of God. While God concurs with them in the act, he instills no evil into men. … The physical goodness of the action depends on God, the moral evil on the creature.

For understanding this point, how the providence of God reacheth to and is concerned in sinful actions, we are to consider, that God neither puts evil into the hearts of men, nor stirs them up to it: for, says the apostle, Jam. 1:13. 'God cannot be tempted with evil; neither tempteth he any man.' And therefore he is not the author of sin.

For two things are to be considered in evil actions: the action itself, and the ἀνομία [anomia, lawlessness] of the action. The action itself, as a natural motion, takes place by the efficacious working of God; but the anomia or wickedness takes place by the active permission of God. … for as in a horse the cause of the motion is one thing and the cause of the limping another, so it is one thing to be the cause of the action and another to be the cause of the wickedness cleaving to it.

Although the premotion of God is extended to evil actions, it does not on that account make God guilty of the fault or the author of sin. It only pertains to actions inasmuch as they are material and entitative (entitative), not however as they are moral, i.e., to the substance of the act, but not to its wickedness. … The magistrate is the cause of the death inflicted on the guilty person by the executioner, but is not the cause of the cruelty exhibited in that execution; the harp player is the cause of the sound, but not of the dissonance arising from the strings; and he who drives a lame horse is the cause of the motion, but not the lameness.

In evil actions, however, he so concurs as neither to effect, assist, nor approve of them, but to permit and efficaciously direct; not by infusing wickedness, but by so determining rational creatures physically to the substance of the act in the genus of being, that they (when left to themselves failing from the law) move and determine themselves to bad actions in the genus of morals, performing them freely and voluntarily (hekousiōs). Hence the guilt rests upon them alone.

Yet we are able to reconcile them easily enough, if we distinguish within sin its material element, namely, the habit or act that is the substrate of the wickedness, with which, inasmuch as it is physically good, God is not able not to concur as the efficient cause, without casting aside his own independence (Acts 17:28; Rom. 11:36), and its formal element, lawlessness (1 John 3:4), through which the act or habit is sin, whose author he cannot be, because the one set above all law cannot transgress the law.

God by his influence is indeed the principal cause of the act itself, but man is the sole cause of the sin itself, which is in that act. … Nor can even one theologian be shown who has said that God is the author of lawlessness, or of sin insofar as it is sin.

But we teach that the action of God and of men sinning is the same, according to material being, but not according to moral being. … But truly the action of God and of men is not the same according to moral being; because God acts justly from all four causes, while he punishes the Church through sinning instruments; but the action of the instruments is morally unjust and vicious. … But we teach that God is not the cause of the malice, although he is the cause of the act.

Every action, as such, is undoubtedly good, it being an actual exertion of those operative powers given us by God for that very end; God therefore may be the Author of all actions (as He undoubtedly is), and yet not be the Author of evil. … Suppose a boy, who knows not how to write, has his hand guided by his master and nevertheless makes false letters, quite unlike the copy set him, though his preceptor, who guides his hand, is the cause of his writing at all, yet his own ignorance and unskilfulness are the cause of his writing so badly. Just so, God is the supreme Author of our action, abstractedly taken, but our own vitiosity is the cause of our acting amiss.

The power of action is from God, but the viciousness of that action from our own nature. As when a clock or watch hath some fault in any of the wheels, the man that winds it up, or putting his hand upon the wheels moves them, he is the cause of the motion, but it is the flaw in it, or deficiency of something, is the cause of its erroneous motion. … Our motion is from God,—Acts 17:28, 'In him we move',—but not the disorder of that motion.

There is a fallacy of the accident in the minor proportion; for the actions of the wicked are sins, not (per se) in themselves, in as far as they are actions; but by an accident on account of the want of righteousness, and of the perversity of the will of the ungodly, who do not observe this so as to follow in the action the will of God.

The influences of divine providence concur with every action, be it what it may, as an action, since all live, and move, and have their being in God; every action, as an action, is from God; but the obliquity, irregularity, and sinfulness of the action, is from the creature: wherefore God is not the author of any sin.

As to the pravity or sin that is in actions, as God decreed the futurition of sin, or permitted it to take place, and did not hinder it; so all the sin or vitiosity that is in actions proceeds entirely from the creature, and the evil lusts and passions that are in his heart. Thus a man's taking up a stone, and throwing it, is a natural action, which the providence of God enables him to perform; but his throwing it at another man with an intention to kill him, is permitted by God, otherwise it could not take place.

As there is a vast difference between the sun being the cause of the lightsomeness and warmth of the atmosphere, and the brightness of gold and diamonds, by its presence and positive influence; and its being the occasion of darkness and frost, in the night, by its motion, whereby it descends below the horizon. The motion of the sun is the occasion of the latter kind of events; but it is not the proper cause, efficient, or producer of them; though they are necessarily consequent on that motion, under such circumstances: no more is any action of the Divine Being the cause of the evil of men's Wills.

He who uses as an instrument a man freely failing, to effect what is good, is not the author of the failure. … The wicked, while they sin, are not properly instruments of God moved, that is to say, without an internal principle of motion, but metaphorically, moved in such a way that they freely move themselves.

We thus see that there is no inconsistency in attributing the same act to God, to Satan, and to man, while, from the difference in the end and mode of action, the spotless righteousness of God shines forth at the same time that the iniquity of Satan and of man is manifested in all its deformity.

To make God the author of sin is such foul blasphemy, that it can never enter any Christian man’s mind without a shudder. It is indeed true that God had made man mutably good, had infallibly foreseen his sin, had foreordained the permission of the sin and given man no doubt sufficient strength to shun sin, but inoperable without His influx; that meanwhile He had inflowed into man’s faculties for natural actions by not inflowing into the moral entity of such actions. … But it is not less true, that God neither is nor could in any way become the author of sin.

Although all the power of the creature to act is from the Creator, and there is a providence of God always extended to every creature, and to every action of the creature; yet we judge that the final corruption of the creature, and the sinfulness of the creature’s action, is from the creature, and not from God; and that it is a great sin to say that God is the author of sin (Eccl. 7:29; Hab. 1:13; James 1:13–15: 1 Cor. 14:33; 1 John 2:16).

God does not infuse malice into the wills of evil men, as He infuses goodness into the hearts of the godly.—In one and the same work of the godly what is a good and just action proper to God is to be distinguished from the defect and vice of the ungodly. The sin of the wicked is their own; their doing this or that by sinning is of God’s power,—and so in the same work God is ascertained to be righteous, man to be guilty.