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Let us never ascribe to God the idea that He is the author (the doer) of sin and evil...
Evil is not something sitting in the corner smoldering as in some substance or spiritual essence. Evil has no substantial, ontological existence.
Matthew Henry is helpful here:
The tree was not evil, nor good. It was a tree with no special properties apart from being set apart by God for holy use.
The knowledge of good and evil, has a distinct meaning in the Old Testament. It refers to the ability to determine for one's self what is good and evil, what is helpful and harmful. In 1 Kings 3:9 Solomon prays for it so he can rule well. In Deuteronomy 1:39 little children don't have it yet. In 2 Samuel 19:35 senile people have lost it (Note: it is translated "discern between good and evil," but when we look at the Hebrew word behind "discern", it is the very same word as used in Gen 3:5 to mean "knowing" [good and evil]. So, there is no difference between the two.)
In fact, both Trees were sacramental in nature; but as with later sacraments, the two sacraments functioned differently. Concerning Gen.2:15-17, Keil & Delitzsch summarize the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen.2:15-17):
The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil; and, according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accomplished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming eventually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntary resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good.
By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e., to one in accordance with his own likeness to God. He would have detected the evil in the approaching tempter; but instead of yielding to it, he would have resisted it, and thus have made good his own property acquired with consciousness and of his own free-will, and in this way by proper self-determination would gradually have advanced to the possession of the truest liberty. But as he failed to keep this divinely appointed way, and ate the forbidden fruit in opposition to the command of God, the power imparted by God to the fruit was manifested in a different way. He learned the difference between good and evil from his own guilty experience, and by receiving the evil into his own soul, fell a victim to the threatened death. Thus through his own fault the tree, which should have helped him to attain true freedom, brought nothing but the sham liberty of sin, and with it death, and that without any demoniacal power of destruction being conjured into the tree itself, or any fatal poison being hidden in its fruit.
Within Scripture, evil and sin are never considered as "things" or "not things." They are considered to be actions and consequences. Per the full counsel of Scripture evil is relational, not material.
Evil is a broader category than sin. Sin creates and leads to evil. Cancer is a great evil that is the result of sin generally (not anyone's sin in particular save Adam's, e.g., John 9) but is not sin. All sin is evil, but not all evil is sin.
Sin is the action (lawlessness, e.g., 1 John 3:4) and evil is its consequence.
Satan denied the goodness of God in his rebellion. Said denial of the good is evil. Evil is an ethical state of said denial, thus, the privation of the good. The temptation of Satan brought Adam into this evil state. When Adam partook of the fruit he engaged in an ethical act of rebellion. Hence, the fall of Adam and all his progeny is not some ontological event, but an ethical event. Adam embraced no substantial thing called "evil". Instead when Adam turned from God and the good, he denied the good. In that denial of the good lies the ethical act which was evil—a want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.
From Scripture we see God on display as such a great and good God that evil acts do not defeat Him (Gen. 50:20; Romans 8:28), rather God uses evil to bring about the greatest good, as especially in the death of Our Lord, wherein lies the death of death for God's people. God's supreme wisdom is such that in both the use and defeat of evil He brings about more in Christ Our Lord than we ever lost in Adam.
From the Belgic Confession...
Whatever we do, let's not try to "rescue" God from the problem of evil via false theodicies, as do the open theists and others. Every time we try to make God's actions completely "reasonable" (to our finite minds) we run roughshod over the Book of Job and the cross.
God is not morally liable for evil, but we cannot say exactly what His relations are—it is beyond our capacity. Nevertheless, there is much we can say from James, causality, etc., but we can't give an exhaustive answer. How this all works we leave to the mind of God which is, as WCF 2.1 and elsewhere says,"incomprehensible."
At this point, we trust in God's goodness. Let's remind ourselves that we can know that what God has done is right and good, because God did it. The thought that we would have done things differently shouldn't function as an indictment of God, but as a grateful reminder that God is the judge of all the earth, that God is goodness itself, that (in a word) He is God, and we are not. And so where we cannot explain or where we do not understand, we can still rest and resist our itching ears for things contrary to Holy Writ. God has given significant help to the weakness of our faith in this regard by making clear that He is not the author nor the approver of sin.
AMR
Evil is not something sitting in the corner smoldering as in some substance or spiritual essence. Evil has no substantial, ontological existence.
Matthew Henry is helpful here:
Spoiler
The tree was not evil, nor good. It was a tree with no special properties apart from being set apart by God for holy use.
The knowledge of good and evil, has a distinct meaning in the Old Testament. It refers to the ability to determine for one's self what is good and evil, what is helpful and harmful. In 1 Kings 3:9 Solomon prays for it so he can rule well. In Deuteronomy 1:39 little children don't have it yet. In 2 Samuel 19:35 senile people have lost it (Note: it is translated "discern between good and evil," but when we look at the Hebrew word behind "discern", it is the very same word as used in Gen 3:5 to mean "knowing" [good and evil]. So, there is no difference between the two.)
In fact, both Trees were sacramental in nature; but as with later sacraments, the two sacraments functioned differently. Concerning Gen.2:15-17, Keil & Delitzsch summarize the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen.2:15-17):
The tree of knowledge was to lead man to the knowledge of good and evil; and, according to the divine intention, this was to be attained through his not eating of its fruit. This end was to be accomplished, not only by his discerning in the limit imposed by the prohibition the difference between that which accorded with the will of God and that which opposed it, but also by his coming eventually, through obedience to the prohibition, to recognise the fact that all that is opposed to the will of God is an evil to be avoided, and, through voluntary resistance to such evil, to the full development of the freedom of choice originally imparted to him into the actual freedom of a deliberate and self-conscious choice of good.
By obedience to the divine will he would have attained to a godlike knowledge of good and evil, i.e., to one in accordance with his own likeness to God. He would have detected the evil in the approaching tempter; but instead of yielding to it, he would have resisted it, and thus have made good his own property acquired with consciousness and of his own free-will, and in this way by proper self-determination would gradually have advanced to the possession of the truest liberty. But as he failed to keep this divinely appointed way, and ate the forbidden fruit in opposition to the command of God, the power imparted by God to the fruit was manifested in a different way. He learned the difference between good and evil from his own guilty experience, and by receiving the evil into his own soul, fell a victim to the threatened death. Thus through his own fault the tree, which should have helped him to attain true freedom, brought nothing but the sham liberty of sin, and with it death, and that without any demoniacal power of destruction being conjured into the tree itself, or any fatal poison being hidden in its fruit.
Within Scripture, evil and sin are never considered as "things" or "not things." They are considered to be actions and consequences. Per the full counsel of Scripture evil is relational, not material.
Evil is a broader category than sin. Sin creates and leads to evil. Cancer is a great evil that is the result of sin generally (not anyone's sin in particular save Adam's, e.g., John 9) but is not sin. All sin is evil, but not all evil is sin.
Sin is the action (lawlessness, e.g., 1 John 3:4) and evil is its consequence.
Satan denied the goodness of God in his rebellion. Said denial of the good is evil. Evil is an ethical state of said denial, thus, the privation of the good. The temptation of Satan brought Adam into this evil state. When Adam partook of the fruit he engaged in an ethical act of rebellion. Hence, the fall of Adam and all his progeny is not some ontological event, but an ethical event. Adam embraced no substantial thing called "evil". Instead when Adam turned from God and the good, he denied the good. In that denial of the good lies the ethical act which was evil—a want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.
From Scripture we see God on display as such a great and good God that evil acts do not defeat Him (Gen. 50:20; Romans 8:28), rather God uses evil to bring about the greatest good, as especially in the death of Our Lord, wherein lies the death of death for God's people. God's supreme wisdom is such that in both the use and defeat of evil He brings about more in Christ Our Lord than we ever lost in Adam.
From the Belgic Confession...
Spoiler
Whatever we do, let's not try to "rescue" God from the problem of evil via false theodicies, as do the open theists and others. Every time we try to make God's actions completely "reasonable" (to our finite minds) we run roughshod over the Book of Job and the cross.
God is not morally liable for evil, but we cannot say exactly what His relations are—it is beyond our capacity. Nevertheless, there is much we can say from James, causality, etc., but we can't give an exhaustive answer. How this all works we leave to the mind of God which is, as WCF 2.1 and elsewhere says,"incomprehensible."
At this point, we trust in God's goodness. Let's remind ourselves that we can know that what God has done is right and good, because God did it. The thought that we would have done things differently shouldn't function as an indictment of God, but as a grateful reminder that God is the judge of all the earth, that God is goodness itself, that (in a word) He is God, and we are not. And so where we cannot explain or where we do not understand, we can still rest and resist our itching ears for things contrary to Holy Writ. God has given significant help to the weakness of our faith in this regard by making clear that He is not the author nor the approver of sin.
AMR