Mathias321
Puritan Board Freshman
I have seen people quote this from John Calvin to "prove" he taught that God is the author of sin. Perhaps the context of this quote would clear it up, or perhaps Calvin meant something anti-Calvinists won't allow him to mean. What do you guys think?
"From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.” (John Calvin, The Eternal Predestination of God, 176).
Maybe by "evils" here he means natural catastrophes? Or by "author" he means something different than what many will jump to conclude.
"From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.” (John Calvin, The Eternal Predestination of God, 176).
Maybe by "evils" here he means natural catastrophes? Or by "author" he means something different than what many will jump to conclude.