Divine Concurrance Defended

What is Divine Concurrance? It is the doctrine that God, at all moments, sustains creation. He sustains the laws and the operations of creation, and thus holds all things together. If God did not actively "concur" with the law of gravity, for instance, it would not be efficacious. That means that in a sense, God causes the law of gravity. He operates with the law He has established. Apart from Him, physical laws would have no effects. As an Idealist, I understand that God sustains the universe by actively willing it. It is a projection of His consciousness; an emanation outward from His essence. This brings us to an uneasy conclusion, however: God sustains the laws that cause a knife to go through a victim's throat. In a sense, God causes a knife to cut open a body, because He is actively sustaining the laws that produce such an effect. So how is this moral for God to do? 

1.) Moral Responsibility and the Will
If I was under body-control, and someone controlled me to punch Lil'Timmy in the face, would I be responsible? No, because the action wasn't directly connected to MY will. God does not directly will our evil actions. He does not move our wills to do evil; that happens of our own accord. Hence, moral responsibility for rape and murder lie with the one performing the action, because those actions are directly connected to the will of the agent, not God's. 

2.) Moral Obligation
God's commands ground moral obligation on Christianity. That is to say that God's commands are why we OUGHT to do something. God has commanded us to love each other-hence, because we have a command from God to do so, we have an obligation. God, however, doesn't issue commands to Himself (besides promises He makes to man-which He intends to fulfill). Hence, God has no moral obligation to abstain from sustaining creation, or sustaining evil actions. As I've argued from 1.), God's not responsible for the action itself. Nor is it immoral for Him to sustain the action or its effects, since God has no obligation that would forbid Him from doing so. 

3.) The Good of Moral Agency
Additionally, God's concurrance with human actions renders them efficacious. This is actually a great good. God is The Good-the grounds, source, and origin of all goodness. Thus, to be conformed to God is to be conformed to goodness. God's actions have actual effects, since God is a free and moral agent. Thus, if God makes people who are moral agents, He shares a bit more of who He is with them. In other words, moral agency is part of what it means to be made "in the image of God"-to reflect God back into the world. To have the capacity to reflect God at all is a great good. Since God's own moral agency implies that His choices have actual effects, for God to render the choices of free agents efficacious makes those agents more accurate reflections of Him. The responsibility of using the good of efficacious moral agency to reflect God lies with the agent-but simply having it at all is a great good, since having it makes one more of a picture of who God is (since God has moral agency and His actions have consequences).

4.) It highlights the ugliness of sin and our need for a Savior
Having established that it is not wrong for God to sustain an evil action, or render it efficacious, I want to prove that this is good in another way than I have argued in 3). Namely, rendering our actions efficacious highlights the reality of the ugliness of sin. That we bring about such horrors by OUR will highlights the stark depravity of man. That ISIS beheads 21 Christians on a beach, sawing them in two, more clearly displays the ugliness of the actions their will has brought about. We don't live in a cartoon universe, but a moral universe with actual consequences for our actions. Those consequences demonstrate that mankind is a jacked up race. And hence, we need a Savior. We need Jesus Christ.