PREFACE
PREFACE
The connection with the preceding commonplace.
§ 1. Up to this point we have been discussing the one undivided essence of God and the three distinct persons therein: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We must now consider the will of God.
The will of God is His very essence.
§ 2. The will of God is the very essence of God or God Himself who wills. For that He wills and with what He wills are not different things in God, but He utterly freely wills good of Himself. We do not acknowledge any accident1 in God; nevertheless nothing prevents us from laying out those things that should be examined distinctly because of the slowness of our understanding, things that in God are most absolutely one thing.
What about the hidden will?
§ 3. We shall consider God’s revealed will. We reject in earnest what some people are debating with respect to God’s hidden will and especially with respect to God’s contradictory will revealed in His Word. Here we repeat what Dr. Luther says in his golden explanation of Genesis 26 (vol. 6 of the Latin [Wittenberg edition], p. 353): “With regard to God, to the extent that He is not revealed, there is no faith, no knowledge, no understanding. Here we must hold to what has been said, ‘What is beyond us has nothing to do with us.’ For thoughts that go beyond and outside the revelation of God and pry into something too lofty are completely of the devil. By such thoughts nothing more is gained than that we hurl ourselves headlong into destruction because they set up an object which defies investigation, namely, the unrevealed God.”2 We employ the following argument: the only principle3 of theology is God’s Word; therefore what has not been revealed in God’s Word is not theological.
The will of God is unchangeable.
§ 4. Next, whatever God does in time He has determined [decrevit] to do from eternity because His will is unchangeable. Consequently, we deduce this rule, which is especially noteworthy: “A decree of God and the execution of that decree agree most perfectly. There is nothing in God’s work that was not in His decree, and there has been nothing in His decree that does not follow in His work.” You see, when we say that God does something, we do not understand that there is any impulse to act in Him. Rather, we are indicating a new effect of His eternal will; that is, we are saying that something exists anew because of His eternal will.
The two principal works of God.
§ 5. Scripture bears witness that in time God performed two especially great works (to which all the rest can be related in a certain order and manner), namely, the creation of the entire universe and the restoration of the human race. From this we conclude that God made a decree about both from eternity. The nature of this decree is shown by its execution.
Creation.
§ 6. Here it is our intent to discuss creation, which is the first work in which God revealed Himself externally as He came forth from His hidden throne. “So that God, who by nature is invisible, could be known by visible beings, He did a work that by its visibility revealed Himself as the Workman,” writes Ambrose (on Romans 1, p. 4). Consequently, Basil also says (Hexaem., homily 11): “This entire world, like a written book, implies the glory of God.”
1 An incidental property of a thing. That which affects something and is outside its essence. For example, “whiteness” can be an accident of a wall but is not of its substance.
2 Lectures on Genesis (1535–45/1544–54), AE 5:44 (cf. WA 43:458–59).
3 A source or origin from which something proceeds or emanates. Gerhard explains that divine revelation, which today exists only as Holy Scripture, is the only principle of knowing in theology, while God Himself is the only principle of being: On the Nature of Theology (1625 Exegesis, Preface), § 19. See also Johann Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, 2nd ed. (Stetini: Mamphrasius, 1661), col. 1128; Johann Adam Scherzer, “Definitiones Philosophicae,” in Vade mecum sive Manuale philosophicum (Leipzig: Christian Kirchner, 1675; r epr., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1996), 162; Nuntio Signoriello, Lexicon peripateticum philosophico-theologicum, in quo scholasticorum distinctiones et effata praecipua explicantur, editio novissima (Naples: Apud officinam Bibliothecae Catholicae Scriptorum, 1893), 269.