Reprint of the original, first published in 1836.

“It is usual in Scripture to attribute to the Supreme Power, acts which are virtually those of his instruments, and which he merely permits.” – Charles Edward Fraser-Tytler Many false charges have been leveled at God by His critics (atheists, agnostics, satanists, etc.) due to misreading the Bible. Part of the problem has been the failure to understand the idiomatic language used in the Ancient Near East, especially among the Hebrew people, from which our God inspired Scriptures have their origin. This failure has led to more misunderstandings about God and His inspired Word than we can attest to. While the Hebrews had numerous idioms I am fully persuaded that the most neglected one among theologians and Bible translators has been what I prefer to label as “the permission idiom”. This is the idiom that, as we will learn in this study, scholars tell us is one in which God is said to be the cause of that which He merely allowed or permitted or did not prevent from happening. May the Lord use this book to help you understand Him and your Bible better.

The collections of the Advocates Library, with the exception of its legal books and manuscripts, were given by the Advocates to the National Library of Scotland in 1925.

This open access book argues, from a detailed consideration of the Christian Scriptures, that God intends that sin occur. It swims against the tide of current thinking in philosophy of religion, arguing for an unfashionable conclusion. The book begins by considering the history of views on the question, paying particular attention to the Reformed or Calvinistic tradition. The heart of the book is a detailed examination of key passages from the Christian Scriptures that, it is argued, show that God does intend that sin occur. It also discusses in detail two alternative views that could be used to reinterpret these texts, one view that God intends only that the substratum of the sinful action occur, not the sin itself, and the other that God acts because a sin will occur but not intending that that sin occur. The book argues that these interpretative strategies, even when combined together, do not produce a plausible interpretation of the texts adduced.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1843.