Notes
The most convincing and thorough treatment of this issue that I have read the book by Jonathan Edwards called, "A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will, which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame," found in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Banner of Truth, 1995 reprint), volume I, pp. 3-93. This article uses many of his arguments, but does not do any justice to the probing analysis given by Edwards. I suggest that anybody who seriously wishes to go in greater depth on this issue, and is willing to put in lots of hard work, read Edwards.

For my analysis of of why God's sovereignty over sin is not equivalent with being the author of sin, see part one of this article, The Sovereignty of God Evil.

1. Jonathan Edwards, considered by many to be the greatest theologian America has ever seen, said something very important about how it is inconsistent to say that X caused Y if X did not make it certain that Y would occur. In other words, if upon the occurrence of X, event Y may or may not happen, then it would be improper to say that X was the cause of Y. "For an event to have a cause and ground of its existence, and yet not to be connected with its cause, is an inconsistence. For if the event be not connected with the cause, it is not dependent on the cause; its existence is as it were loose from its influence, and may attend it, or may not; it being a mere contingence, whether it follows or attends the influence of the cause, or not: and that is the same thing as not to be dependent on it. And to say, the event is not dependant on its cause, is absurd; it is the same as to say, it is not its cause, nor the event the effect of it; for dependence on the influence of a cause is the very notion of an effect....If we say, the connexion and dependence is not total, but partial, and that the effect, though it has some connexion and dependence, yet is not entirely dependent on it; that is the same thing as to say, that not all that is in the event is an effect of that cause, but that only part of it arises from thence, and part some other way" (Freedom of the Will, p. 24). For those interested in being as precise as can be, the technical name for what Edwards is speaking of is efficient cause. When I proceed to argue in the article that every event has a cause, I am speaking of efficient causes. I argue that everything which happens has an efficient cause, and nothing can happen without an efficient cause.

2. Clifford Williams, Free-will and determinism: A Dialogue, (Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), p. 59.

3. Sometimes one may say, "I don't know." But that doesn't mean there was no cause, just that he was unaware of the cause.

4. It is important to understand that this does not mean that we always choose what really is most preferable. Rather, we choose what appears most preferable to us. But our perspective may be wrong. Thus, the thing that we have the greatest preference for may not necessarily be the option that really is best. I may prefer the chocolate cake, but when I bite into it discover that it would have been better to have the white cake.

5. I hope that nobody will think that I am ignoring an obvious objection to the fact that the weaker cannot overpower the stronger. I am aware that sometimes weaker things do overcome more powerful things. For example, weaker armies have sometimes beaten stronger armies in wars. But examples like that do not disprove the fact that the weaker cannot overpower the stronger. For the reason the weaker army won is because the stronger army was prevented from exerting all of its strength such that the weaker army was exerting more strength than the stronger. The army that was objectively stronger lost because it exerted less power than the other army. If the stronger army had exerted all of its power, then it would have won. Perhaps the best example which proves the truth the greater always overcomes the lesser is that when you put 100 pounds on one side of the balance and 50 pounds on the other side of the balance, the 100 pounds will always make its side drop because it is stronger.

6. J.A. Crabtree, "Does Middle Knowledge Solve the Problem of Divine Sovereignty?" in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware, p. 444. The fact that all people are born sinners because of Adam's sin is an important truth to keep in mind so that we have a proper view of why we are all born sinful when God determines our characters. God cannot be blamed for our sinful natures because He originally created humans entirely good and without sin. By our own accord we fell in Adam. While this was according to God's plan, it was nevertheless our fault. The fact that all people are born sinners is a result of our sin in Adam--God is simply letting the human race continue according to the ruin that we brought upon ourselves. There is great hope, however, in that God is active to change lives through Jesus Christ. He does not leave everybody to let them continue in their sin. He commands all to repent, and through the power of His Spirit and word, He changes the hearts of His chosen people and brings them to faith in Christ. In Christ we are saved from the penalty of our sins, and God progressively works in our lives to make us more and more holy. Humans by nature are on a downward spiral because of their sins. But by His grace, God has put Christians on an upward climb to less and less sin and greater holiness. At death the Christian is totally purified from sin. One day God will condemn all unbelievers and renew the heavens and earth for His elect to live in forever, making it so that sin never again enters creation.

7. This organization is taken from Edward's Freedom of the Will, p. 12.

8. John Feinberg, "God, Freedom, and Evil in Calvinist Thinking," in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, p. 469.

9. "The Free-Will Determinism Issue is a Pseudo-problem," in Philosophy: An Introduction Through Literature, p. 592.

10. Williams, p. 56.

11. Philosophy: An Introduction Through Literature, p. 596.

12. Feinberg, pp. 469-470.

13. Williams, p. 51.

14. John Piper, "A Response to J.I. Packer on the So-Called Antinomy Between The sovereignty of God and Human Responsibility," unpublished article, March 1976, p. 3.

15. Piper, p. 3.