_3_Divine Providence and Sin

Concerning the concurrence of God in the actions of moral beings (men and angels) we must distinguish between good and evil actions. As to evil actions, Scripture, in the first place, tells us 1) that God is unalterably opposed to them: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” “Thou shalt not kill,” etc.; 2) that God often prevents their occurrence, as in the case of Abimelech of Gerar (Gen. 20:1 ff.); and 3) that when they occur, they must serve His good purposes, as when Joseph was sold into Egypt (Gen. 50:20).

But now, in the second place, the question arises: How far does God concur in the performance of sinful actions? The Scriptural teaching on this point may be thus summarized: God concurs in evil actions in so far as they are acts (quoad materiale), for Scripture says that men live and move and have their being in God (Acts 17:28). But God does not concur in the evil actions in so far as they are evil (quoad formale), for Scripture says of God: “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing; the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man” (Ps. 5:6-7). — We are well aware that this distinction between the materiale and the formale peccati does not remove the difficulty our mind finds in this co-operation of God. But we also know that for the present, during our life here on earth, we human beings must confine our thinking to the limits set by this distinction. All explanations that go beyond these limits are based either on self-deception or on a denial of the two factors that enter in here. We shall have to deny either the concurrence of God in the evil acts, as far as they are acts (Pelagius, according to Jerome, did this; he declared that he could move his hand, bend his finger, sit, stand, and walk without God’s concurrence — see Quenstedt, I, 782), or we shall have to deny that there is anything evil in the human action; we make God responsible for it and deny human responsibility. Both are against Scripture and against human experience. It is contrary to Scripture. For Acts 17:28 clearly teaches the thief or the murderer cannot perform his acts without God’s concurrence; it states that all men, including the thieves and murderers, live in God, move in God, have their being in God. It is contrary to experience, for inevitably the conscience of the thief and of the murderer holds them responsible for their evil actions. All pantheistic phrases which say that man is not responsible for his acts since God is responsible for his existence and movements are refuted by the fact of the evil conscience. Rom. 2:15: “Their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.” (Rom. 1:32; Ps. 14:1, 5.) 7