Systematic Theology - Sin

The Origin of Sin

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 02

Dictation Name: 01 The Origin of Sin

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

“The Origin of Sin.” This is a very lively topic in many theological circles and there are unhappily too many efforts to defend God from the charge of being the author of sin. Such a defense is neither wise nor necessary.

When we discuss sin, all that’s necessary is to try to understand what scripture teaches. The Bible never speaks to the abstract theologian. It always speaks to the sinner and to the redeemed man—nobody else! It doesn’t see us as intellectuals or as critics. It sees us as men who need the Word of God. Now the Word of God is not abstract so that the question, “Is God the author of sin?” both the yes and the no have some serious defects.

Now many texts have been used to declare that God cannot be seen as the author if evil and that He hates sin. I shall read some of these classic texts:

Job 34:10, “…far be it from God that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity.”

Deuteronomy 25:16, “For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the Lord thy God.”

Deuteronomy 32:4, “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.”

Psalm 92:15, “ To shew that the Lord is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

Psalm 5:4, “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.”

Psalm 11:5, “ The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

Zechariah 8:17, “And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the Lord.”

James 1:13, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.”

Now as against these verses, Isaiah 45:7 is very often cited, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Now the Hebrew word here for evil is used in Genesis 2:9, 17 with regard to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is used in a number of passages in Genesis. Calvin, in commenting on the Isaiah text, Isaiah 45:7 wrote “Making peace and creating evil; by these words light and darkness, He (God) describes metaphorically not only peace and war, but adverse and prosperous events of any kind. And He extends the word peace, according to the custom of Hebrew writers to all success and prosperity. This is made abundantly clear by the contrast, for He contrasts peace not only with war but with adverse events of every sort. Fanatics torture this word evil as if God were the author of evil, that is of sin. But it is very obvious how ridiculously they have used this passage of the prophet. This is sufficiently explained by the contrast, the parts of which must agree with each other, for He contrasts peace with evil, that is with afflictions, wars and other adverse occurrences. If He contrasted righteousness with evil, there would be some plausibility in their reasonings. But this is manifest contrast of things that are opposite to each other. Consequently, we ought not to reject the ordinary distinction, that God is the author if the evil of punishment but not of the evil of guilt.”

Now, Calvin’s point is a very interesting one and it has some merit to it. But basically, he misses the point, because what God is there saying when He says, “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things,” was to strike out against an opinion that was very common in the ancient world: Dualism; Polytheism, the belief that there are many sources for things, that certain things came from one God and certain things from another. But God says, “I the Lord do all these things.” I am the source of everything that happens.

The ancient Hebrew commentators knew that this was the meaning, and as a result they concluded, “Man should bless God for the evil which occurs in the same way that he blesses Him for the good.”

Now as we go further with this argument, because I’m going into this matter of is God the author of sin so that we might know how to deal with this question when it is raised. It is often said that sin is not a thing, and hence not a creature, nor a creation. Again, very true. Sin is a relationship, or rather a ruptured or a broken relationship. We can never look at anything and say it is a sin, this particular thing. When God created the heavens and the earth, He looked upon His creation and said it was very good. Now we may not like certain things (like rattlers) but that does not make a rattle snake a sin. Things may be bad in relationship to us, but in terms of God’s creative purpose, they all have their place.

Now, sin thus is not a part of the creation by God, but rather a disruption of the relationship between God and man, and man and man. The [Westminster] Shorter Catechism, no. 14 in defining sin, says, “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of the Law of God.” But we must go further to be able to answer this question. The plain fact is that God is the definer of all things. God is not defined by anything in creation. He defines all things, so that that is evil which God dislikes. So there is no way—no way whatsoever—we can look at anything and say here is the standard in terms of which God could be judged. There is no way we can form a criterion, a standard and say this that God did is bad, or good in terms of a standard outside of God. We cannot judge God. God is the yardstick in terms of which all things in heaven and on earth are judged. So to say that God is the author of sin is to violate that fact. We are saying that we define what is sin and we define the relationship of God to sin. But sin is a relationship or a disrupted relationship to God so that God cannot be the author of sin.

He is the source of all definition. We can never define sin and righteousness abstractly, and this was the great fault of Greek philosophy, of Greek religion. Greek philosophy defined the good, the true and the beautiful abstractly, as though they were some ideas floating around in space. Of course, they were ideas that the philosophers defined and then said they are out there somehow, judging God, the gods and men. If we try to answer the question pro or con, is God the author of sin or is He not, we are saying there’s a test up there that God can be subjected to and the question has no legitimacy.

Thus, God is beyond definition and beyond judgment. He is infinite. He is the absolute source of all things and the definer of all things. God is beyond man’s judgment. He is the judge, not a prisoner standing before the court where man is the judge. God’s Law is the expression of His being. God says I am the Lord, I change not. We are told also that He is the same yesterday, today and forever. God’s being is righteousness. Sin is our relationship to Him, not something apart from Him, or over Him. There is no law above God in terms of which God can be called a sinner.

Now the origin of sin is in God’s creative purpose, in His eternal decree. But this does not make God responsible for sin. Sin is a revolt against God and His Law. We can never ascribe the concept to God. There are some passages in the scriptures which tell us that sin is man, or the angels departing from their true relationship to God. For example, Jude 6, “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” The term ‘first estate’ is one word in the Greek and it means the beginning or rule or principality. The beginning and the rule of the angels was to serve God in their appointed place. They sought independence from God to be their own god and to seize the throne of the universe. Man’s calling as scripture defines it in Genesis 1:27, 28 and Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:24 is to serve God in knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion. When man sins, what he does is to depart from that calling.

Now, knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion are not only man’s calling, but the image of God in man. We are to imitate God’s moral nature summed up in those things. But what man the sinner tries to do is to imitate God’s doing—to be as God; not to be like God morally, but to be another god metaphysically. And this of course, is sin.

In I John 3:8 we read, “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” Again, we have this, ‘the devil sinneth from the beginning,’ the same word. In fact, what this tells us is that the devil’s origin and estate are seen as almost identical with the sin, so that revolt and desire for independence from God mark Satan almost from the very beginning.

The purpose of Christ’s coming is to destroy this independence, which is sin and death and to replace it with life and with righteousness. The atonement is the beginning of that destruction. We are to fulfill it in all our being by our calling. Sin has its origin in eternity, in the fall of the angels. John 8:44 tell us, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” Sin here is equated with murder or death and with lies. Sin results in death because it is the antithesis of life and therefore of God. It is the antithesis of truth and therefore of God who is the truth. Sin is separation and a broken relationship with God and hence, hell is its conclusion.

Now sin is thus clearly a God-centered fact. It has relationship to God. We are sinful or we are righteous in terms of how we stand in relationship to God. Sin is man’s attempt to be his own god and to separate himself from god and to say I will determine what is the truth, the way and the life for myself. Thus, we cannot appreciate the meaning of sin until we see that it is more than acts, it is a faith in the heart of man.

Now we’re going to analyze what that is in the heart of man. Let me just say because we’ll go into this in some length at later meetings, one of the things that sin does to us is to make us very sensitive people. We pride ourselves on our sensitivity. But what is sensitivity in, let us say 9,999 cases out of 10,000? It’s making ourselves the center and being hurt because the world doesn’t turn around us and meet our wishes.

What is sin? It’s making ourselves the center and then feeling there’s something wrong with other people and with God because everything doesn’t revolve around us. Because we place our self in the center and the center belongs only to God. And this is the problem every one of us must wrestle with. We give ourselves a place in our lives only God can have. We’ve warped life and the universe. We become hurt, we become offended. We become touchy because the world does not move according to our desires.

Consider for a moment this fact. We are living now at the beginning of what may be the most fateful decade in all of history. The whole of the world’s economy is hanging in the balances of disaster. This is the first time an economic disaster has faced all of history. We may have, some feel, the threat of nuclear war. We are facing a tremendous legal confrontation and battle between Christianity and anti-Christianity. And what do most people fuss about? Trifles. The world is hanging in the balances and trifles concern us. But you see—and here is the point—they are not trifles to them. If you and I make ourselves the center of the universe then the least little thing that crosses our path that we do not like is more important than all these weighty matters because we are gods in our own thinking, and therefore, a little trifle we are more sensitive about than the requirements of God.

Now this is sin. Thus, what we shall be doing in the successive meetings is to analyze the effect of sin on our own being and upon our society. We are the only people who can do something about sin because we are the redeemed of God. The unregenerate cannot do anything about sin. They are given over to the pursuit of one thing: death. Proverbs 8:36 says, “But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” They love death! But we who are in Christ love life—Christ. Therefore we are the only ones who can do something about sin because we have the power of the Spirit and therefore as we analyze sin in ourselves and in society, we are arming ourselves though the Word of God to cope with sin.

Are there any questions now?

Yes..

[Audience] Dr. Rushdoony, you were talking about these theologians, they’re {?} questions God authored sin. Would you say they’re looking at the idea of sin and righteousness as {?}

[Rushdoony] They’re looking at it from a Greek perspective as though there were some criterion outside of God that they could use to judge God, you see. Which cannot be done. In other words, God can never be judged by anything outside of God. So to try to judge God by something outside of Himself, you’re looking at it from a Hellenic, Greek, a pagan perspective, and of course ultimately, that perspective does reduce everything to brute factuality.

Yes..

[Audience] Actually, the one that knows the Word and knows God and praise God as God, as you said, that wouldn’t be a problem at all, because if God created all things, everything begins and ends with Him, then sins in the world, I mean obviously it’s all in His plan, not that He created it, but it’s all in His plan, so there’s nothing to be worried about. You know? I mean there’s no problem there in itself.

[Rushdoony] It’s the abstract theologians who make it a big problem.

[Audience] {?} like the wrath of men praises God. Nicodemus… no, not Nicodemus but Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh were His servants. This is all… He’s a sovereign God and He works it, He’s the one, like it says, doesn’t the potter write over the clay to do as He, as He desires. Who are we to say he shouldn’t have done this or he should have done this, and judge Him for one thing or another, you know? It’s all in His plan; you just accept {?}

[Rushdoony] Paul there sums up in that passage in Romans 9 exactly what I’ve been saying at great length tonight.

Any other… yes…

[Audience] When you’re talking about man’s calling and how sin is to depart from that calling, I was wondering if you could elaborate further on how, how the innocent {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] I didn’t understand that {?}

[Rushdoony] The image of God in man is knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion. Now, those are the moral and communicable attributes of God, but His infinity, His omnipotence, His omniscience are His incommunicable attributes. God gives to man His communicable attributes but man says I don’t want the communicable attributes of God. I want the incommunicable ones. I want to be God in other words. I don’t want to be like God, I don’t’ want to be godly, I want to be God.

[Cough]

[Audience] What were the communicable attributes?

[Rushdoony] The communicable attributes of God, the central ones are knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion, and those are aspects of the image of God in man and they are spoken of in the following passages:

Genesis 1:26-28

Colossians 3:10

Ephesians 4:24

The Westminster Confession sums these up and has quite a bit to say about them, well, the Catechism.

[Audience] What’s the distinction [cough] between holiness and righteousness?

[Rushdoony] Yes, what is the distinction between holiness and righteousness, that’s an important question. Now, righteousness we can best understand by a more modern word, because righteousness and the word justice are one and the same words. Identical. So that when we speak of the righteousness of God and the requirement that we be righteous, we’re talking about the justice of God and the requirement that we be just.

Now holiness means separation to God, not merely from sin, that’s the negative aspect, but positively to God and dedication is used unto His purposes.

[Audience] Set apart for God’s {?}

[Rushdoony] Set apart. Yes.

Any other questions?

Yes..

[Audience] I have a question about textual criticism. I was, recently I was visiting a friend from {?} we got talking about texts and could I honor the traditional text {?} at the same time, he knew I knew more than he did, and he acknowledged that, and I was then thinking this through that what was the real issue I was dealing with? And I was wondering, you know, as you were talking about some of these things, about how theologians look at separate God, that {?} things, or judge God in terms of outside stuff, how we can relate that to you know, the call and textual criticism, {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the whole point of these people who are advocates for example, of a Westcott and Hort text, is that the very text of scripture becomes a matter for human determination, so when the question comes up, what is the true Word of God and how can we determine these texts, we don’t have a received text. We have one that scholars determined. So the scholar takes over and becomes a priest as it were and says this is, or this is not the Word of God. The King James text is a translation of the received text. All the modern translations are not translations of the received text.

[Audience] So the real issue is this {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes; correct.

Yes..

[Audience] I have a question. You said that, clarify this: you said that sin has its origin in the beginning, or from the beginning, and you said something about in eternity. I didn’t quite {?} that statement.

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. It began in eternity in Heaven with the angels, before it ever began on earth with Adam and Eve, so that prior to the Fall, there was already sin on the part of the fallen angels.

[Audience] Angels were created before the creation of the world? Or was this in the creation that included all the heavenly beings at the time that He created the earth and men and so forth?

[Rushdoony] Those are questions [audience talk-over] we don’t have too clear-cut an answer on so I don’t believe one should be dogmatic in answering that.

[Audience] I just wanted to—

[Rushdoony] Some people have said that they were all created on the first day of creation. Others, that when God created in the beginning the heavens and the earth, it means the firmament of creation, the heavenly bodies and the earth, the universe in other words; not heaven.

Any other questions? Yes…

[Audience] How would you define the fruits of the Spirit in light of being communicable attributes of God?

[Rushdoony] Well, the fruits of the Spirit manifest the holiness and the righteousness of God. They manifest knowledge of God. They manifest a godly dominion. So the fruits of the Spirit are very definitely a manifestation [cough] of the communicable or moral attributes of God.

Well, if there are no further questions, let’s bow our heads in prayer.

Dismiss us now our Father, with Thy blessing. Give unto all traveling mercies [sneeze] on their homeward way, a blessed night’s rest indeed, and joy in their labors on the morrow. In Jesus’ name, amen.