I got the term “metaphysical author of sin and evil” from Vincent Cheung. See his Systematic Theology, Commentary on Ephesians, and Author of Sin for the original source. I developed my own doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty—yes, even occasionalism—on my own as a teenager from reading the Bible. It was the Word and the Spirit that taught me these things, not Calvin or Luther. Vincent helped me expand the understanding, make necessary adjustments, and make it concise. His materials also helped with the explanation of accountability below. My later Systematic Theology 2026 (Faith Edition) simply puts the same doctrine in fuller systematic form: God is the direct, absolute, metaphysical cause of all things, including sin and evil. No dualism. No independent secondary causes relative to Him.
“Metaphysical” here means reality and especially causality (ontology points even more directly at causality). We are focusing on causality. Simple illustration: I pick up my pen and cause it to write “trees are blue.” Who is the author of that sentence? The pen (the object) or me (the cause moving the object)? You separate the categories of cause and object. The pen is not the author. I am.
God directly and immediately causes a demon to tempt a person. The demon is the object. God is the cause. The tempter is still the object doing the tempting. That is precisely why God cannot tempt anyone (James 1:13). If God Himself directly told you to kill person X, it would not be a temptation—it would be a command. There is no such thing as a “secondary cause” in relation to God Himself. He directly causes all things. Creation has relative descriptions between objects (a demon tempts, a man sins, a river flows), but those are never ultimate. God is the sole metaphysical author.
Someone will inevitably object: “If God authors sin, then sinners can hurl it back at Him and say, ‘You are the real sinner!’”
What does “real” sinner even mean? If it means the object that is sinning, it is impossible for God to be a “real sinner.” God defines sin as a man breaking a command given to man (1 John 3:4—lawlessness). God did not command Himself. He commanded man. Those laws do not logically apply to Him. There is also no authority over God. Responsibility is defined by not having freedom from being under an authority who holds you to a definition. God is not under any authority. Therefore the terms “sinning” and “God” are logically impossible together. To accuse God of being a “real sinner” is to accuse Him of being a “real law-breaker under a real authority.” Fallacy. Dumb. Blasphemy.
Oddly, the same people will say God is Ex-lex (above the law) and in the next breath claim God would be sinning if He authored or directly caused someone to sin. I often feel like I am talking to brick walls when dealing with tradition. “God is above the law… but if He causes me to sin, then God is under a law, because then God would be guilty of sinning, which presupposes a law over God.” Brilliant. Mystery. Insane.
God did not command Himself, “Thou shalt not murder” or “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Those commands were given to man—not to God, not to trees, not to monkeys. It is a categorical fallacy to say God sinned. It is impossible for God to break a law that was never applied to Him. Do trees commit sin when they fail to confess Jesus the Son of God? Or is it simply irrational to smash those two categories together? It is exactly like asking, “Can God create an infinitely heavy rock that He cannot lift?” God is not physical; the category of “heavy” does not apply. The question is nonsense. The same is true of God and sin. The laws do not apply to Him.
God is not what He authors. If God creates a river, God is not a river. To call God a river because He created it is another logical category fallacy. It also smuggles in pantheism. There is no formal validity to the claim that what you create, you yourself are. Creating something else and your own being are two different categories. If I form a clay pot, I am not a clay pot. Why do I even need to say this to adults?
Likewise, God is not what He causes. If God causes a lion to go south into a valley, God Himself is not a south-bound lion. If “author” means the one who causes something to happen in a story, it is still a category mistake to say the author is what he authors. If Johnny writes in a novel that a lion walked south into a valley, Johnny is not a lion moving south. The same holds with God. If God authors or causes a river to flow north, God is not Himself a north-flowing river. This is logic at the most basic level—the law of identity.
Therefore no one can accuse God of being a sinner even though God causes them to sin or authors their sin. It would be a logical fallacy—like saying “wet dryness” or “square circle.”
The fact that a person thinks God is somehow accusable because He is the author of all things exposes how little they think of God. It shows how small God is in their minds. It exposes that they are mixing categories as if reality were their personal playdough. It exposes that they are presupposing pantheism. They play lip service to total sovereignty, but they love God’s sovereignty no more than demons love God’s power.
Some have told me, “If what you say is true, then ultimately there will be no human accountability and thus no judgment.”
That is like saying, “Because God directly controls all things, it means God does not control the weather.” Insane. Brick walls are not known for their intelligence.
It is because God is sovereign over man, and man is not free from God sovereignly holding him accountable, that man is accountable. Man’s lack of freedom relative to God, and God’s absolute and direct sovereign control over man, is the very thing that makes man accountable. Romans 9 deals with this directly—not indirectly. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and then punished Pharaoh for it. Paul gives the typical objection: “How is man accountable to God if God is the one controlling man?” Paul’s answer is: God is the Potter and man is the clay. God molds the man however He wants. God takes from the same neutral lump (not already sinful or already good) and molds one vessel for righteousness and mercy and another for sin and destruction. Paul’s answer for why man is accountable in light of God’s sovereign control is simply that God is sovereign and man is not free from that control. The one thing that is not part of the answer is “freedom.” That is the Bible’s answer. Your theology needs to include it.
Human accountability is based on God holding something accountable. The fact that a human is not free from God holding him accountable is precisely what makes him accountable. Freedom is not the presupposition of accountability; the lack of freedom from being under a sovereign God is. Men are not free relative to God’s control over them, and that is what makes them accountable. Accountability presupposes a sovereign over you, not freedom.
Tradition teaches that “the author is accountable.” Scripture says the opposite. The Potter molds the clay from the same neutral lump and shapes it how He wants. It is the sovereign freedom of the Potter and the lack of freedom of the clay that makes the clay accountable.
Such comments expose a person’s view of God. This is not a word game. People imply they have the right to hold God accountable because He is the author of all things. Defining terms is the least of their problems. Their view of God is so man-centered, pathetic, and distorted that they would hold God accountable “because He is the author of your sin.” They are so stupid that in the very context of “God is so sovereign that He causes me to sin,” they think they can still “hold God accountable for committing sin.” But if God is already that sovereign, you obviously have no justification to hold God accountable to anything. Not only are there the category errors already pointed out, but the opponent does not even have enough intelligence to apply a consistent critique to the statement. Their own critique answers their own question.
Where does the Bible say that God being the Author makes Him accountable? Accountable to whom? A man? Accountability only works if there is a sovereign over you. The only way God “as Author” could be “accountable” is if they are an author over God. The blasphemy they utter is so bad I feel polluted just repeating it. It is very telling that in order to critique the doctrine they had to put God under their feet and author Him into accountability. That is exactly what God will do to all who rebel against Him.
The clay does not get to put the Potter on trial.
[1] The last two quotes from Romans 9 was paraphrased by me.