This chapter explores the constraints that a commitment to the inevitability of sin places on an understanding of the existence and nature of human freedom, and the implications of this understanding for debates about divine providence. It is argued, first, that the New Testament univocally attests to the inevitability of sin, and second, that given this biblical witness, Christians should not be swayed by one reason commonly given for rejecting theological determinism: in order to preserve libertarian freedom for humans at large. Still, considerations regarding the inevitability of human sin leave untouched another common argument against theological determinism: that it makes God the author of sin. Considerations of the inevitability (and culpability) of sin, on the one hand, and concerns about divine authorship of sin, on the other, might push one toward an uncommon combination of compatibilism and theological indeterminism. However, given the apparent unfairness of punishing individuals for sins they could not have avoided committing, a position between standard compatibilism and free will skepticism is tentatively endorsed.

In this conclusion of the book, I begin by offering some advice on evaluating the positions of others, especially concerning what we might think of as their willingness to reject clear and obvious intuitions we have in the defense of their positions. I especially call attention to doing so in a way that suggests that all those who reject our intuitions about divine determinism must be willing to do anything to preserve irrational religious beliefs. Intuitions, of course, are not universally shared, and the willingness to accept what others view as implausible is not limited to religious issues. I close by reviewing the challenges to divine determinism that I have explored in this work, noting what I view as the best responses to each and highlighting those that I find the most problematic.

Critics of divine determinism sometimes claim that determinists make God the author of sin. This chapter takes up the question of whether this is true. I begin by disambiguating the claim, focusing on reading the charge as equivalent to the claim that God causes sin. I begin by considering a reply to this objection rooted in the claim that evil is a mere privation. According to this particular reply, sin is composed of the positive act of being (which God does cause) and a defect, which is a mere privation. This defect, the reply claims, is not caused by God, nor by an act of a human agent, but instead by a privation. I present three arguments for thinking that this reply is insufficient. I then suggest that divine determinists consider a more robust reply built off of the same analysis of evil and sin, but which claims that privations, lacking all being, cannot be caused at all.