4. Of God’s Decrees in General
4. Of God’s Decrees in General
1. Where have we now arrived in our treatment?
To a consideration of the external (ad extra) works of God.
2. Into how many kinds can one divide these external works?
Into two kinds:
a) In the most general sense, an external work has reference to something that is not God, thus to a creature, although it is not therefore true that the external work devolves directly upon the creature. If we so understand an external work, we must reckon the decrees to the external works. They differ, however, from generation and spiration because they have reference to what is not God, to creatures.
b) In a narrower sense, an external work of God devolves directly upon something that is not God. So understood, the external works begin with the creation. But the decree does not therefore begin with the latter, for the decree and execution of the decree are to be sharply distinguished. One can certainly say of the decree that it revolves about created things, but not that it directly affects them.
3. What truths do we emphasize when we attribute decrees to God?
a) God’s sovereignty. Someone who makes a decree concerning a matter stands above that matter; it falls under his authority. He can do with it as he wills. Thus God stands sovereignly above all possible things. Whether they will receive existence or how they will exist depends entirely on His eternal purpose.
b) God’s freedom. When we decide on something, that includes that we make a free choice. While our freedom, however, is always relative and as creatures we are bound by many things, the freedom of God in His decree is utterly unlimited and stands under no other rule than that of His own glorious virtues that form His being itself. By this freedom the decree of God is distinguished from the internal [ad intra] works, the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit. It is not an act of free will of the Father that He generates the Son, nor an act of free will of the Father and the Son that they cause the Spirit to proceed from themselves and their being. With that said, however, in no sense do we maintain that these internal works are compelled or are against the will of the divine persons. All that is meant is that they do not depend on an act of free will. Expressed differently, the decree is completely tied to everything that pertains to created things. They could also not exist and God would still remain God, perfect and fully glorious in Himself. That may not be said of the internal works, for these belong to the necessary acts of God without which He would be the triune God.
c) God’s wisdom. A decree is always guided by motivations. A Pelagian freedom of the will, which would be without grounds, does not exist, not even for God. Moreover, such freedom would not connote a perfection, but an imperfection. Absolute arbitrariness is an imperfection. Thus, at the same time God’s decree is completely free and governed by wise motives. There are no grounds from outside Him that determine Him in making His decree but grounds derived from Himself, which therefore do not compel Him but give direction to His own perfect will. Both must be maintained by us, the freedom and the wisdom of God’s decree, especially the first against pantheism, which makes everything to be a necessary effluence of God’s nature. If God could not have omitted the decree or made it otherwise, the thought intrudes that the existence of the universe is necessary, given the existence of God. But that thought is impermissible. The transition between God’s eternal-necessary existence and the temporal existence of the created universe is a completely free transition. Conversely, we must also maintain that God has had wise and sufficient reasons for His decree. In by far the most cases we may not be able to specify them. All we affirm, and that based on Scripture, is that:
1. There are such reasons.
2. They all may be reduced to a final ground, namely the glorification of God Himself. But the different links by which they are tied to this final and highest goal can by no means always be specified by us.
From this knowledge that God’s decree is wise, it follows, in connection with the universality of God’s decree, that everything in the universe is governed by thought that has an ideal meaning. There is no blind, purposeless existence in which no thought would be present. A transparent plan of the entire world of real things is present in the counsel of God.
4. Which words in the original languages does Scripture use where it speaks of God’s decree?
a) In the Old Testament:
1. The word עֵצָה, “counsel” (Psa 33:11; Prov 19:21; Isa 28:29; 46:10–11). This word comes from the root יעץ, whose basic meaning in a material sense is “to penetrate into something”; “to press into something”; “to press one’s self for something.” It is used especially for giving counsel to others. The rational element of God’s decree thus comes to the fore here (2 Sam 16:20; Prov 27:9).
2. Further is the word סוֹד, “council,” from the root יָסַד in the hip’il, “to be crowded closely together for confidential deliberation” (Pss 2:2; 31:14). Of God’s decree, Jeremiah 23:18, 22. Thus here, too, the emphasis is on deliberation, resolution.
3. Yet another term is זָמַם, “to begin,” alluding to the concentration of thoughts (Jer 4:28; 51:12; Prov 30:32).
4. Again, another word is חֵפֶץ, “inclination,” “liking,” “volition,” “good pleasure” (Isa 53:10). Here, in distinction from the words mentioned above, the emphasis falls more on the willing, the free element in God’s decrees.
5. A fifth term has a similar meaning, namely רָצוֹן, from רצה, “to hang on something,” “to cling to something,” then “sovereign will,” good pleasure,” sometimes even “arbitrariness” (e.g., Neh 9:24, 37; of God, Psa 51:18, 145:16; Isa 49:8).
b) In the New Testament:
1. Here εὐδοκία, “good pleasure” (Matt 11:26; Eph 1:5, 9), corresponds to the two last mentioned Hebrew words. Here the element of free good pleasure comes emphatically to the fore (Luke 2:14, 3:22).
2. Not much different is the adjective δεκτός, “accepted with pleasure”; Luke 4:19, “the acceptable year of the Lord”; 2 Corinthians 6:2, “at an acceptable time.”
3. Next are the words that mean “willing,” βούλεσθαι and βουλή, as well as θέλειν and θέλημα. The difference between these two sets of terms appears to come down to the following: βούλεσθαι looks at the will as consulting, deliberating, and thus has the emphasis fall on the rational element in God’s decree. Θέλειν, on the other hand, focuses more on the free inclination expressed in the decree and thus places the willing element in the foreground. But both words belong together and complement each other. Compare Matthew 1:19, where θέλειν is used (“Joseph had an aversion against putting her to shame”). In Romans 7:15 θέλειν is the opposite of μισσειν, “to hate.” With that agrees the fact that θέλειν is also used of the revealed counsel of God, in which He demands and commands, thus in which the tenor of His Holy nature is expressed, while βούλεσθαι is only used of God’s ordaining. In Ephesians 1:11 both terms occur together: “the counsel of His will” = “the plan that meets with His approval.” Compare further for βουλή Luke 7:30; Acts 2:23; 4:28; 13:36; Hebrews 6:17; for θέλημα Matthew 26:42; Luke 22:42; Acts 21:14; Matthew 18:14; 1 Peter 3:17; 4:19; Ephesians 1:5; of God’s revealed will, Romans 12:2.
4. Another New Testament word is πρόθεσις, “purpose,” literally “presentation,” “what someone proposes.” The prefix “pre-” (or “pro-”) is not meant in a temporal sense, but figuratively in a spatial sense. God places the decree, as it were, before Himself by His reason and then holds His will fixed on it (Rom 8:28; 9:11). Both elements of the decreeing of God are thus present here: wisdom and sovereignty, thinking and willing.
5. What is the relationship of God’s decree to His reason and His will?
a) In decreeing, an activity of reason and an activity of will accompany each other.
b) To be more specific, God’s necessary knowledge provides the material for His decree.
c) From this material thus given, God’s free will, led by sufficient reasons, chooses what will become real.
d) On this act of free will rests the free knowledge of God that proposes the objects of the decree not as purely possible but as they will become real in time.
6. What are the further properties of God’s decree?
a) It is eternal and is that in a specific sense, not simply as all God’s acts are eternal. Viewed from God’s side, every act of God is eternal simply because there is no passage of time in the being of God. But some of His acts terminate in time, such as creation, providence, the justification of sinners, etc. We do not call these latter acts eternal but temporal acts. With God’s decree it is otherwise. It has reference to matters outside of God but as an act nevertheless remains within God, and we therefore call it eternal in the strictest sense of the word. In this eternity there is no temporal sequence in the different parts or portions of the decree.
In the execution of the decree the fall follows creation without it being able to be said that [in the decree] the one precedes the other. And although there is certainly an order in the decree of God and its different parts are not in isolation alongside each other, this can never be a temporal order. Also, one may not so conceive of the situation as if God, in willing a certain end, is forced to will as well the means for attaining that end. In this sense as well the choosing of the one does not precede the necessity of the other. God causes the means completely freely, so that they can be means for attaining His purposes. What we call laws of nature are not absolute necessities for God. He could have made them otherwise. Only insofar as God’s attributes come into contact with things is one decree tied to another or involved in the other. For example, if God determines to permit sin, necessarily tied to that is that there shall be punishment for sin, for His righteousness demands that. So there is:
1. An order of free dependence, where means and end are freely conjoined.
2. An order of necessary connection, where the unchangeable attributes of God affect things decreed and cause new decrees, as it were, to originate.
The eternity of God’s decree is expressed in Ephesians 3:11, “the eternal purpose that He has accomplished”; Acts 15:18, “to God all His works are known from eternity”; 2 Timothy 1:9, “before times eternal”; 1 Corinthians 2:7, “before the world was” (Eph 1:4; 2 Thess 2:13; 1 Pet 1:20).
b) God’s decree is one and is oriented to one highest goal: the glorification of His name, of Himself. Especially for His creatures, angels and men, this is the goal to which God’s decree is directed. The proof for this lies in the simplicity and self-existence of God.
c) God’s decree is universal; it encompasses all things. What concerns the decree itself (not what concerns its execution) there is no distinction in the firmness with which things are determined, between the physical and the moral, the good and the evil. All are equally established by God with equally essential certainty. Because in the universe everything is related, the firmness of the decree in its entirety would also vanish with the universality of God’s decree. For that to which the decree does not extend remains uncertain and would intrude in an unsettling fashion into what is certainly determined. On this all-encompassing character of God’s decree and the certainty attendant on it rests the possibility of all knowledge, for without reality as certain, knowledge is not possible.
This universality of God’s decree is the foundation for His free knowledge, as previously noted. This knowledge cannot have another foundation. In order to be the object of knowledge something must be certain. In order to be the object of eternal knowledge it must be eternally certain. But to posit that something would be eternally certain outside of God’s decree would of course come down to positing a second deity beside Him. But what is an independent eternal certainty other than God? Foreknowledge must therefore rest on the decree.
Socinians deny that God’s foreknowledge pertains to future free acts. Arminians help themselves with the defense that future free acts are always already present for God by virtue of His eternity, humanly speaking even before they happen. He knows them accordingly, without having made a decree about them. That view has been refuted earlier, in considering the doctrine of God’s attributes. Here the Socinian is more consistent.
1. The all-encompassing character of God’s decree is taught us by Holy Scripture in so many words. He works all things to the counsel of His will (Eph 1:10–11); all His works are known to Him from eternity (see Prov 16:33; Dan 4:34–35; Matt 10:29–30; Acts 17:26; Job 14:3; Isa 46:10).
2. The good acts of men are included. Believers are created for good works, which God ordained beforehand for them to walk in them (Eph 2:10).
3. The evil acts of men are also included. Acts 2:23, “this man then being delivered up according to the definite counsel and foreknowledge of God”; Acts 4:28, “to do whatever Your hand and Your counsel had predestined to take place”; Psalm 76:10, “The wrath of man shall praise you”; Proverbs 16:4, “The LORD has wrought everything for the sake of His own will, even the ungodly for the day of evil.” Of course, this does not mean that there is no distinction between God’s decree concerning moral evil and His decree concerning other things. We will come back to this matter later. But here it must be noted that the difference cannot be as if evil were decreed by God with less firmness. Everything is equally firm. Something is decreed or is not decreed, and a third supposedly lying in between may not be entertained.
4. God’s decree also includes so-called chance; Proverbs 16:33, “The lot is cast into the lap …” (Gen 45:8; 50:20; John 19:36; Psa 34:20; Exod 12:46; Num 9:12). This really needs no demonstration because chance is not a scientific but purely a popular concept. Only that is called chance for which we do not know how to indicate the cause or causes. In each particular case, however, there are certainly causes. Where the lot is cast into the lap, there the way it falls and the result are just as determined and certain as where we decide something by premeditation. A die has no free will in a Pelagian sense so that it can fall on whatever side it chooses. But even apart from this natural determination there is in all natural things, there is still a direct determination of God from which they cannot escape.
5. God’s decree concerns the means as well as the end that is to be reached. It is therefore foolish to exclude the means, with the thought that God’s counsel will still be realized.
The latter is certainly true, but man deceives himself if he thinks his aversion and his unwillingness to use means is unconnected with the outcome. In many instances that aversion and unwillingness are precisely the means that God uses to prevent one or another outcome.
Under this rubric belongs as well the question whether God has decreed a fixed lifetime and specific time of death for every man. The Remonstrants and Socinians answer this question negatively; the Reformed, naturally, affirmatively. Voetius has devoted an extensive writing to this question. He laid emphasis on this point, especially to guard against the popular misconception that if someone’s death were a miraculous occurrence that would suddenly interrupt the chain of natural causes and effects. Here, too, causes and effects go together, and if medications do not prevent death, that can be due to the nature of the disease and one must not immediately think of a miracle that prevented their working. But naturally that disease in its nature and the power of the medicine are together included in God’s eternal decree (Job 14:5; Psa 39:5; John 7:30).
One says, however, that fifteen years were added to Hezekiah’s life after it was first announced to him that he would die. But this announcement of the prophet was not a revelation of a divine decree that would later be changed but only a declaration of the deadly nature of the disease that would certainly have brought an end to Hezekiah’s life, had God not miraculously intervened.
6. The decree of God also embraces the free acts of man. This is by far the most difficult point of all. On the one hand, it is completely absurd and impossible that what is most important in what takes place in world history would be beyond the control of God’s decree. If arbitrariness rules in this area, then the entire course of the world is abandoned to what is arbitrary, and God would have to wait for what the final outcome will be. On the other hand, one wishes to hold that just here an exception must be made, since our consciousness of rationality appears to demand some kind of chance factor in our acts of will. Man says involuntarily, “If I will be responsible for my deeds, then I must have also been able to do otherwise. And if God’s eternal decree has already determined my doing, then I could not do otherwise.” In other words, eternal certainty and moral freedom exclude each other; they are incompatible concepts.
One must keep a sharp eye open for this objection. It is not that the execution of God’s decree and my rational freedom conflict with each other. Freedom is uncertainty, so one thinks. In that is its essence, and certainty and uncertainty naturally cannot go together. Now in any case this much is clear, that the certainty of God’s decree may not be changed. If these two are incompatible and one of these must give way, then it is settled in advance that the second will have to give way. In other words, we will have to change our concept of freedom; we will have to form a conception of human freedom such that it no longer finds its essence in uncertainty and absolute chance. The great question appears here then: What is moral freedom? That is, what is that freedom in which everyone’s moral consciousness tells him that it is inseparable from responsibility? To shift the question to the execution of God’s decree makes no sense, for, as we said, the objection lies in the certainty of the decree of God and decidedly not in its execution. The execution, for example, is different for good or evil acts of free will, and yet for both the objection that appears here is in principle the same.
7. How many concepts of freedom are there?
a) The Pelagian concept of free will that amounts to uncaused self-determination. If a man is to be free in this sense, there must be no grounds on which he acts that determine his actions. He must determine his actions at every point. At every point in his willing he must be able to do precisely the opposite, and if this cannot be said, he is not free. The character of man therefore does not determine his will, but will stands above character and forms character. Man, as he comes from God’s hand, is neutral, neither good nor evil. His nature is a rational scale in a state of equilibrium, and only if the scale tilts to the right or to the left does man become good or evil, holy or unholy. As it happened with Adam, so it still happens in principle with every man, only the circumstances for Adam were more favorable than for us.
b) The concept of freedom that we must attribute to Adam must also freely grant that in the state of rectitude the outlook for Adam had two sides. He could fall or remain standing, he was not forced to sin, he did not possess a principle that must lead to sin, and yet the possibility that he sinned existed, as the outcome shows. Now it is of the highest importance to distinguish this concept of freedom from the Pelagian concept. The difference lies in the fact that we do not think of Adam’s nature like a scale in equilibrium. Adam was completely holy and good. The scale was thus tilted to the good side from the beginning. According to Pelagians, a morally neutral Adam can become, as he chooses, either good or evil. According to us, a good Adam can become evil. From that flows another distinction to which equally close attention must be given. The Pelagian concept extends to include both sides. It applies to the transition both from evil to good and from good to evil. The concept we apply to Adam holds only for his position before the fall; later it never and nowhere occurs again. Adam could produce evil from good, but no one after the fall, including Adam, can produce good from evil. Further, those regenerated are unable again to produce evil from good. Even the perfected saints in heaven are unable to do that.
Our result, then, is that this freedom for Adam is something entirely unique. It is related to the covenant of works, and instead of being excluded by Adam’s holiness is properly connected with it insofar as this holiness was a mutable and not an immutable holiness.
c) The third concept of freedom is inseparable from the concept of man or the concept of a “rational being,” so that besides man it applies to pure spirits and, in the most perfect sense, to God.
It all comes down to the fact that man does what he does from an inner impulse because there is something in his very being that impels him to his actions. Thus he is not moved from the outside, like a machine, but from the inside out, like a living organism. One can often hear the defense that man in a state of sin no longer possesses free will. That is true if one understands freedom in the sense described under b) above. He can do nothing else but sin. But it is untrue if one thereby thinks that man sins against his own inclinations. He sins just because his sinful soul, his sinful character, impels him to sin. This is again true if one juxtaposes conscience and character in man. His conscience tells him that he must do what is good, his sinful habits impel him to do what is evil. One may therefore certainly say he is driven to do what is evil against his own conscience, but not against his own will, his own character. Conscience and character, with its will, are not the same. There is something in sinful man that is not compatible with sin, that protests against sin. But that is not something good in him. It is the voice of God in him who bears witness to what is right. Still, it preserves a good sense if one says: Man in his fallen state does not have free will because he must do what is evil against his better knowledge and the testimony of his conscience. He is a slave of sin and his conscience tells him that it is sin.
8. What then is the status of the connection between God’s decree and these three kinds of freedom?
a) It immediately catches the eye that the first, the so-called Pelagian freedom of the will, is incompatible with God’s decree. In essence it is uncertainty and therefore incompatible with any sort of certainty, therefore also incompatible with the certainty of God’s decree. Thus, indifferent to whether we are dealing with Adam or with fallen man, if he has a free will as the Pelagian teaches, then he stands outside God’s decree. It is important, therefore, to hold for Adam, too, that he was not free in a Pelagian sense.
b) It is somewhat different for the second freedom as, based on Scripture, we attribute to Adam before the fall the possibility to turn from good to evil.
1. First of all, we must note that here there is no causeless freedom. Adam’s initially holy nature turns to sin—not, his neutral nature decides for evil.
2. Next, we are unable to explain how a cause can exist in the holy nature of Adam that turned him to sin. We must pronounce the origin of the first sin in Adam an unsolvable problem.
3. Thirdly, we must say that the relationship of God’s decree to this first free sin is also inexplicable. One thing is certain: Sin, as far as its reality is concerned, did not come from God, although it receives its certainty from God’s decree. The cause of sin lies in man, but sin, too, has not obtained its determination and certainty apart from the permissive decree of God.
c) The third kind of freedom does not conflict with God’s decree. God can so act on man that he still acts freely of himself. If by grace God makes someone holy so that his unconscious life as a whole is holy, then also of himself his thoughts, words and deeds will be holy, necessarily holy. But thereby they will be no less free. Here freedom and certainty are fully compatible. To understand this well one must be clear about what belongs to this freedom and what is incompatible with it.
Freedom in the third sense we define in general as: motion of character, in accord with itself, in a rational being.
This includes:
1. That all expressions in the conscious life are revelations of the character that lies beneath and in back of them. Man’s individual acts and expressions of the will are not free and detached from his character but are determined by it. Their freedom consists just in the fact that their acts flow from inner character and are in accord with it. If that were not the case, man would not be responsible. Only an act that is exponential of character is covered by the moral law. Acts that are not occur among those who are insane but whom one then rightly views as not responsible. Instead of nullifying freedom, this causality is the only true foundation of freedom.
2. That all such expressions are accompanied by thinking; they must be rational acts. Motions that we make mechanically and without rational awareness, although they flow from an inward disposition, we do not call free. Someone who acts freely and wills freely accompanies his acting and willing by conceptualizing them. He is aware that therein his being is expressed, that it is he himself who acts and acts in such a way, since his character brings it about.
3. Man’s character, however, must also have a certain freedom. As the will is certainly determined from the inside out by character but nonetheless is freely and rationally determined, so must character be naturally free and rational. Thus one can certainly affect the character of a person without the loss of freedom. But it is not an indifferent matter how one affects the character of a person. There are influences conceivable that could eliminate freedom of character. And similarly character may be determined and stable, but with a rational stability that is governed and controlled by a rational tendency in a deeper sense.
4. From what has just been said it follows that character may not be controlled by blind material forces. Whoever makes the human spirit and thus the human will a product of matter, that is, the materialist, abolishes the freedom of character. One calls this materialistic determinism. Determinism is incompatible with the freedom that a rational being must possess in order to be responsible.
5. There is, however, another determinism that we will call pantheistic. This teaches that the being of man, his character, is only a phenomenon, a random, passing phenomenon issuing with necessity from the activity of All-Being that is not conscious of itself and causes all things in a blind fashion. This, too, cannot exist along with freedom, because here not only is an external influence exercised on character but it also loses its independence. It no longer exists in itself; it has become a manifestation of something else. It no longer acts of itself; something else acts on and through it. Pantheism is thus incompatible with the freedom of rational beings.
6. Finally, there is still a third form of determinism that one could call rationalistic. It comes down to this, that our thoughts, the verdict of our reason, control the will with necessity. Thinking, then, dictates the law for willing, and nothing else is left for the will than to follow the verdict of reason. One easily perceives that such a rationalistic conception abolishes freedom. Now it is certainly true that the verdict of our reason will influence the decision of our will. But in that decision reason has only a serving task, insofar as it teaches me, namely, what in the various possibilities that present themselves most agrees with my disposition, with my will. The verdicts of reason are thus subservient to the will and not independent of the will. One can act on someone’s will by motives of reason only if one has a point of contact in that person’s will to which one can appeal. By presenting someone with the shamefulness of an act, one will perhaps be able to prevent the act, provided that the person possesses feelings of shame.
7. It should now be clear that God can realize His decrees with reference to His creatures without needing to limit their freedom in a deterministic manner. Their free acts are not uncertain and the certainty to which these acts are connected is not brought about by God in a materialistic, pantheistic, or rationalistic manner. As the omnipresent and omnipotent One, the personal One, He can so govern man that man can do nothing without His will and permission and still do everything of himself in full freedom. When God sanctifies someone, He is at work in the depths of his being where the issues of life are, and then the sanctified will acts of itself and unconstrained outwardly no less freely than if it never had been under the working of God. The work of God does not destroy the freedom of the creature but is precisely its foundation.
9. Is God’s decree also efficacious?
Yes, in this sense, that it reaches fulfillment with certainty. Nothing ever happens with greater certainty than what God has decreed. However, one must not so conceive of this as if the decree is the cause of the reality of all things. The decree is the ground of the certainty of all things. To decree something is not yet to carry out or to do something. Everything is equally subject to God’s decree. In the execution of God’s decree there is a great difference between the particular parts. So, by the efficacy of God’s decree, we only mean that an unbreakable connection exists between the certain determination of the decree in God and its execution in time. In God’s decree there is an efficacious will to realize it. The decree is not present in God as a mere idea but is an abiding thought or will. There is a unity between having decreed, being decreed, and efficacious willing what is decreed (βούλεσθαι and βεβουλῆσθαι, not βουληθῆναι alone.)
10. Is God’s decree also immutable?
Yes, this is already included in the preceding attribute. It is also involved in His eternity, in which there is no thought of change. It arises further from God’s independence and wisdom. For the last-mentioned attributes one may compare Isaiah 46:10; Job 23:13; Psalm 33:12 and Hebrews 6:17.
11. How then do you define God’s decree?
As “the free determination of His rational will concerning everything outside Him that will be and how it will function.”
12. What is the relationship of God’s decree to His providence?
Creation aside, decree and providence are identical in scope and coincide completely. Providence is the execution of the decree. Their content is the same. Nothing with which God’s providence is concerned may be excluded from the decree, and just as something becomes reality under God’s providential governance, it is comprehended in God’s decree. A comparison with the doctrine of providence is therefore the best means to cure a wrong view of God’s decreeing. The decree is providence in outline, but then it is an approved outline that bears in itself the seal that it is to be realized. The one who thinks that God has decreed certain things, apart from the means, need only be pointed to providence, which shows us means and ends in their permanent connection.
13. What do the more or less Pelagian-minded introduce against God’s decrees?
They continually speak of conditional decrees (decretum conditionatum). Like the Pelagians are the Remonstrants and Socinians. First, one says, there comes to pass in God the establishing of the general rule that faith will result in eternal life, and lack of faith in perdition. For Socinians God’s decree must determine this provisionally and can only proceed further if man has decided the question, still open to that point, whether or not he will believe. When man has decided, then the second part of the decree follows that applies the general rule in specific instances. For Socinians this takes place in time, since they deny eternal foreknowledge of free acts; for the others it takes place already in eternity, since they do attribute such foreknowledge to God. But it comes down ultimately to the same thing, namely that God in His decree not only determines the creature but is also determined by the creature.
14. What objection do you have to such a conditional decree?
The subsequent decree is no longer a decree in the strict sense of the word. It is only a taking note of what man has decided before God. After the general rule has first been established and the creature has applied this rule to himself, nothing more remains for God to determine. A new element of certainty no longer enters.
15. What is the relationship between God’s decrees and the being of God?
The Socinians say, in order to maintain the contingent character and the variability of the decrees, that they are essentially (realiter) separate from God. That is why the relationship between God’s being and His decree was a much-discussed question in the old dogmatics. Some set the question aside as useless (so, e.g., Cocceius). One usually answered by making distinctions in this vein:
a) God’s thinking and willing, as they are the active causes in His decreeing, are naturally not divorced from His being. If therefore decree means decreeing itself as a certain act or movement of God’s mind and will, then decree is the same as God’s being. God’s decree is to such an extent God Himself, the decreeing God.
b) The direction and relation of this decreeing act outward, the inclining of the will toward the objects of the decree. This is entirely free, since God could have just as well not decreed or could have decreed differently. One must therefore say that taken in this sense, the decree is distinct from God’s being and separable from it.
c) The thing decreed itself, that is, not yet so much the real thing outside God after the execution of the decree, but the idea of it as decreed in God’s mind. This, too, does not coincide with God’s being and can therefore be removed from it.
Although these matters are very abstract, it is good to emphasize them here. Complete identification of God’s being and decree in every respect exposes to the danger of pantheism and leaves the impression that the universe must necessarily emanate from God’s being.
16. How does one designate God’s decree as it functions with respect to sin?
A permissive decree (decretum permissivum). This term has become accepted in Reformed dogmatics and is even found in most confessions. Our own [Belgic] Confession, on the doctrine of providence (Article 13), says, “[A]ll our enemies cannot harm us without His permission and will.”
Here and there objection is made to this distinction. Beza states it is not difficult to show that it is completely misunderstood by some, in a way that removes the devils and evil men from God’s control except that He keeps their actions and the consequences of their actions within certain limits. Nevertheless, Beza also wishes to see the terms decernius and permissivum (decreeing and permitting will) maintained, provided that they are explained correctly.
Danaeus speaks more dismissively: “From this it follows that that sophistical distinction that one is accustomed to make between God’s permission and His decree ought to be abandoned, because what happens by God’s permission happens with His will and consequently by virtue of His decree.”
a) First, it should be observed that by permissive decree the Lutherans understand something entirely negative. By it they mean that God does not decree to prevent or hinder sin by a positive act. Thus, sin itself is fully present in God’s decree as sure and certain. Concerning it God has nothing more to decide. His permissive decreeing, taken strictly, means to say that He does not decree rather than that He certainly decrees not, namely, to counter sin. This, of course, is a wrong and inadequate view. It teaches that sin has its reality and certainty from man. The former is true, as we have seen; the latter cannot be conceded. For, as for all things, so also for sin, certainty must lie in the decree of God. A permissive decree cannot be a bare budding in our spirit.
b) Others understand the permissive character of God’s decree concerning sin more in another sense, namely as follows:
God decrees in a positive manner that certain things will happen. However, sin as an unavoidable consequence adheres to these things that God decrees. Thus, if He wills these things, He must also permit sin. So, it comes down to this: God has permitted sin not for itself but because of its necessary connection with other things that He willed.
Usually this is worked out further as follows: At issue above everything was the freedom of the human will, that man, therefore, should choose for himself what he wanted, good or evil. Thus, involved as well in this freedom, in this possibility of going in either direction, was the permitting of evil, of sin.
This view is entirely unacceptable. It still makes only the possibility of sin an object of God’s decree, but not the certainty of sin. We must not only maintain that God tolerated that possibility but also that its certainty is the result of His permissive decree. It may not be thought as though God decreed to create man and then to wait on how the choice of man would turn out. That would be the Pelagian conditional decree applied to the situation of man before the fall. This view, then, is also completely at home within the orbit of Pelagian ideas.
c) There are different conceptions of God’s permissive decree that do not really pertain to the decreeing act but more to its execution and so need not be discussed here—for example, the difference between the formal and the material in sin. This is a point that has its place in the doctrine of providence and not here. Although one would see this distinction as a solution, it is of no help here, for God’s decree concerns both the formal and the material.
d) It is not possible to explain fully in a corroborating way how we are to think about God’s permissive decree. We wish, in general, to maintain the following:
1. The permissive decree is no less a certain decree than any other. Any thought as though we can speak of hesitation or uncertainty in God must be excluded by far. God is certain in everything He decrees, and for all things their certainty is secure solely in the decree of God. Also sin, in order to be certain, must be through God’s decree. The one who denies this deviates from Reformed doctrine. Just on this point lies the one great error of the church father Augustine, who wanted to make sin only an object of God’s foreknowledge but not of God’s decree. Calvin says as decisively as possible, “Man falls because God’s providence has so ordained it, but he falls by his own fault” (Institutes, 1.18.4); “I acknowledge that it is a horrible decree. Still, no one can deny that God certainly has known how it would turn out with man and that therefore He has known because he has so foreordained it in His decree.” “For the first man has fallen because the Lord judged that it ought to be so. Why He judged that remains hidden to us” (3.23.7, 8). But Calvin also lets the reverse come out, as we immediately hope to see.
2. As its object the permissive decree had sin in view as something contrary to God’s holy nature and on which His displeasure must rest. To permit something always means that it arouses my disapproval. Therefore, because on the one hand sin is against God’s holy nature, on the other hand there must have been considerations in God that nonetheless caused Him to decree to permit it. It is not granted to man to know these considerations in detail. It must be enough for us to know that through sin God knew to glorify Himself by His righteousness and His redeeming love.
3. By permitting sin in His decree God remains completely free of any wrong. Calvin: “The destruction of the godless depends on God’s decree such that the cause and nature of that destruction is to be sought in man himself.” “Through his own malevolence, man has corrupted the nature that he had received from his God.” “God could not have judged other than that man ought to fall, because He saw that thereby the honor of His name would properly come to light. And where one speaks of God’s honor, there His justice must immediately be in view, for what deserves praise, must be just.” Thus, according to Calvin, it is a just decree, both in its origin as in its content (cf. Institutes, 2.4.3–5, where Calvin goes much further than we would presume to and where in principle he rejects the permissive decree).
In the execution of this decree, too, there is nothing that can make God a cause of sin. On this point Scripture speaks as emphatically as possible. God tempts no one to evil (Jas 1:13). God is light and in Him there is no darkness (1 John 1:5). God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes (Eccl 7:29). The Spirit of God teaches His children to praise all that is good as the work of God but also to ascribe blame for all that is evil only to themselves. This testimony of the Spirit in the believer, founded on God’s word, teaches us how this matter appears in God’s light, and we must believe it though that same light does not illumine our understanding.