In my previous post, I briefly discussed reasons why Christian theology must necessarily affirm the ontological non-existence of sin. I concluded that if sin is assigned a substantival nature; and if God is to be spoken of as source and sustainer of all that has existence; then one must unavoidably conclude that God has not only willed–per the good pleasure and desire of the divine will–the existence of evil, but has moreover been disingenuous in either calling creation "good", or condemning sin as something damnable and other than good.

As part of this conclusion, I noted that one of the major benefits that can be seen to accrue is that one circumvents, in a philosophically honest manner, the quagmire of the relation of the divinity to sin. As was shown, if sin lacks ontological existence, it is no bit of philosophical gymnastics to affirm that God has not created sin, for how can it be said that God created that which lacks existence? Therefore, by speaking of sin not as a "thing," but rather as privation of good, it is possible to not only deny the primal origin of sin in the Godhead (which is ultimately necessitated if sin has a substantival existence), but furthermore one can honestly affirm the goodness of God's creation without having to make embarrassing exceptions to account for sin.

As often happens, however, answering one point of a philosophical problem creates problems from other angles, or at least raises new issues that must be subsequently resolved. Our discussion here is no exception. I would assert that there are least two (though many others could be properly identified, as well) primary issues that must be tackled when speaking of sin as privation, rather than sin as objective reality.

The first involves the related issues of divine omniscience and foreknowledge. Simplistically stated (and without attention to the myriad nuances that can and must be pursued in a deliberation of these issues), these divine attributes are characterized by exhaustiveness–that is, if God is God, and God has knowledge, then God has knowledge of everything, without exception.

In appealing to this, the detractor of the argument herein pursued may question whether or not God has knowledge (or had fore-knowledge) of sin. In another way, the interlocutor may suggest that surely God must have had foreknowledge of sin before creation, for how could God be called "omniscient" unless this were so? At first glance, the position seems compelling. After all, how could such a disasterous aspect of creation be missed by the supposedly exhaustive knowledge of God?
Although it seems compelling off the cuff, if the conclusions outlined previously are applied, the answer is self-evident: God did not foreknow sin, nor did God create with foreknowledge of sin's inevitable effects. How can this be? As outlined above, sin can only be properly spoken of in reference to the diminuition of good, in reference to the "un-creating" of God's creative work, as experienced in the movement from existence towards non-existence. Lacking ontological existence, and being known only in negation of existence, sin is not that which brings about the diminution of the good; rather, it is the diminution of good. So how does this relate to knowledge? To begin, it is self-evident that knowledge can only apply to those things that attain existence; knowledge of that which does not exist is non-sequitur, and is a futile path for speculation. Therefore, as only that which has ontological reality is the proper object of knowledge; and as sin is lacking in such substantival existence, being known and understood merely as the privation of that which does exist (the good); it necessarily follows that sin cannot be properly understood as the object of divine knowledge, be it "fore" or otherwise.

But as seen before, rather than creating an insurmountable barrier to thinking about the nature of the divinity, such considerations solve significant problems. For example, as seen before, stripping sin of ontological existence relieves the necessity of speaking of the Godhead as primal origin and causal nexus of sin. That is, as sin does not exist in an ontologically meaningful way, it is not appropriate to speak of it as an object of God's creative work. In the same way, these conclusions support the position previously established when applied to divine knowledge. As seen, if sin lacks substantival reality, it cannot be spoken of in reference to the (fore)knowledge of God. Moreover, as the foreknowledge of God cannot properly have sin within its purview, the philosophically shallow questions of why God would create a world in which God "knew" sin would attain to reality are shown to be entirely without basis: God did not "know" that sin would attain reality, for not only is sin lacking in ontological reality (thus being unable to attain reality), but moreover sin cannot be the proper object of divine foreknowledge. Even as one would balk at a detractor blaming God for not preventing non-existence when God "knew" non-existence would happen (which is obviously an absurd question that misunderstands the categories being spoken of), so too questions of the propriety of God "allowing" sin when God "knew" sin would happen are equally ensnared in the utmost of philosophical obtuseness.

For the careful reader, the second major front of attack against such an argument is obviously the omnipotence and sovereignty of God. Of the two, this is potentially the stickiest for the detractor, for one wonders how it is possible that God can be spoken of as "sovereign" over the whole of creation if sin cannot be spoken of as the proper object of God's omniscience. However, the way forward is clear now, and follows straight in line with the conclusions already outlined. One can speak of God's sovereignty meaningfully only in relation to that which has existence. For example, to say that God is sovereign over "non-existence" is obviously misguided. First, such a notion clearly misunderstands the nature of "non-being." When spoken of in relation to being, non-being is not a category capable of comparison. To repeat an example already given, comparing being and non-being is not like comparing two apples, an apple and an orange, or even two peices of fruit. As has been established already, sin, non-being, etc. are only meaningful in the sense that they speak of the diminuition and negation of goodness, being, etc. They are not categories that are legitimate independent of their antithesis; rather, once one leaves off speaking about goodness, it is categorically impossible to speak of sin; when the topic of being has been extinguished, there is no further rhetorical space for non-being, and so on.

Let me give an example. In cosmology, physicists often picture the universe as a balloon expanding. However, the caveat is immediately given that the balloon is all that can be spoken of; there is nothing outside of the universe that is categorically meaningful. Therefore, if the budding astronomer is to ask into what the universe is expanding, the answer is that the universe is expanding into nothingness. However, what must be realized is that this "nothingness" is not a substance independent of the universe that can be measured. Rather, it is merely a metaphorical way of describing the expansion of the universe. In this way, the "nothingness" of cosmology is only meaningful as it is referential to the description of the universe. Apart from this discussion, the "nothingness" into which the universe is expanding is not worth speaking of for, per its rhetorical character, it is precisely that: "nothing."

If we apply this example to divine sovereignty, it is clear that God is not sovereign over sin. But let us be careful with this language: the lack of God's sovereignty over sin has
no
thing
to do with limitation in God. It is not that God is unable to be sovereign over sin, or that sin has some power over-and-against God which would prevent God from being able to "control" sin. Quite to the contrary, the category of sovereignty is completely inapplicable to sin; sin is not an object of sovereignty. As sin lacks any meaningful ontology, so it is impossible that it could be the object of God's sovereignty. If God is sovereign over all existence, so too it must be affirmed that sin is not included in this list, not based upon any limitation in the divine nature, but merely because sin lacks any substantival reality over which God might be sovereign. Again, to assert that God is sovereign over that which does not exist is a non-sequitur assertion. So too, we must conclude, is the assertion that God's sovereignty applies to sin.

The last recourse of the detractor, then, is to wonder whether God's existence might be in some way threatened by sin. After all, if sin is not under the purview of divine sovereignty; if sin is not the object of God's control; is not God susceptible to the effects of that over which God does not have control?
Again, on the face of things, the question seems legitimate. Are not those things which are not objects of God's sovereignty outside of God's control? The answer, as we will see, is yes and no.
In the simplest way, sin is outside of God's control. As sin lacks substantival existence by which it might be properly the object of God's sovereignty, obviously sin is "outside" of the control of God. But this is a significantly qualified yes, for as has already been discussed, the category of control cannot be applied to the divine relationship between the divine nature and sin. In this way, God's lack of control over sin results not from the inability of God to manage and dictate the designs of sin. Such a perspective falls back into a substantival conception of sin, one which has already been debunked in what has been pursued thus far. Rather, the absence of divine control arises precisely from the impropriety of the categories of "control" and "non-control" to the discussion. Again, as sin lacks an ontology by which it might be properly understood as an object of the divine will, it is a categorical mistake to speak of God's positive or negative control of the same. So even the language of sin being "outside" of God's control is subtlety misleading, for the notion of "outside" denotes the consideration of boundaries of God's sovereignty. However, as God's sovereignty knows no boundaries, one must necessarily speak of it extending to all that has existence. Therefore, to speak of sin as being "outside" of the sovereignty of God returns us to the cosmological illustration–the rhetoric is only helpful to speak of a "shape" to God's sovereignty. When we leave off talking about things that belong to God's sovereignty (i.e., that which has existence), the categories of "inside" and "outside" cease to meaningful. So the only way in which we can speak of sin, lacking in ontological existence, is to declare that it is outside of the sovereignty of God while concomitantly acknowledging that the category of "outside" is not meaningful in and of itself to describe that which lacks existence apart from discussions of the diminution of that which attains existence.

Furthermore, the fear of God's existence being threatened by the non-existence of sin is now easily assuaged. As God is sovereign over existence (being necessarily self-existent in the divine nature), all things are subordinate to the divine will, existing only by virtue of God's bestowal of the force of existence. Naturally, it is only those things which attain existence which could possibly threaten the existence of God. Therefore, as sin does not attain to ontological reality, it is categorically impossible that sin could impinge upon the eternal existence of God, for it lacks any substantive reality by which it might even exist in a category relatable to the divine nature. However, even if one were to posit that somehow the non-reality of sin could be set over-and-against the divine nature, the final conclusion would be the same. As God exists from eternity, dependent upon nothing "external" to Godself, it is necessary that God exist. In this light, it is the existence of God which lays the parameters for even speculating about non-existence, for non-existence has no existence apart from the diminution of existence. Were non-existence to render the existence of God non-existent, non-existence would have no context in which to be understood as the diminution of existence. Therefore, the negation of the Godhead by non-existence would logically remove the potential for the negation of God's self-existence, thus removing the potential of such an event before the possibility of it has been raised. That is, even as the nothingness into which the universe is expanding is only intelligible in a discussion of the expansion of the universe (and becomes entirely meaningless when spoken of in isolation), so too is the notion of God's existence being threatened by God's lack of sovereignty over sin entirely non-sequitur.

What has been discussed here briefly represents but a fraction of the important conclusions which are available through understanding sin as a privation of good, rather than as an ontological reality unto itself. As I hope has been communicated, such an approach provides an intriguing approach to conceptualizing of sin, humanity, and its relationship to God. Although such has not been pursued at length, I would assert that this line of thinking represents a promising approach to apologetics, one which can answer, in a robust way, the central tenants of theodicy while concomitantly avoiding philosophically dishonest conclusions which ultimately posit the origin of sin in the Godhead.
Much more can and must be said about the points of discussion outlined above. However, I will leave the reader to digest what has been outlined thus far, and will revisit the topic as needed in the future.