God’s Decree: Necessary & Contingent
3.1. God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
- God is completely free.
- Confession does not teach “determinism” » It teaches “compatibilism”
“God ordains the occurrence of all things but in such a way that human beings are responsible for their actions. With this qualification the divines affirm both necessity and contingency; whatever God ordains necessarily comes to pass, but it can and will come to pass contingently…[This] means that something could be otherwise…Once God decrees it, there is no longer contingency from the divine perspective…As it pertains to creatures, however, the divines state that the decree, far from taking away freedom and contingency, establishes it. Without God decreeing to create creatures that have the freedom to choose among various options, there would be no freedom whatsoever because free creatures would not exist.” – J.V. Fesko
- Affirmation: Multiple agents can act with differing motives and ends upon the same event (God’s actions and man’s actions present in single event).
- Post-Enlightenment thought rejects this (domino theory: therefore, only God “acts” in an event » determinism » human “action” is irrelevant to the event).
- “Necessity of the consequent” & “necessity of the consequence” (Richard Muller, DLGTT)
o Consequent: something that can’t be otherwise
§ Because you are sitting in the chair you are sitting in. By necessity of the consequent, it is impossible that you are sitting in any other chair.
o Consequence: something that could be otherwise
§ You are sitting in the chair you are in due to a certain set of circumstances (“hypothetical necessity” » coming into room, intention to sit, availability of seating, + other factors
- Reformed theologians affirm: (1) divine sovereignty & (2) human responsibility.
- Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, Chapter 6 “Divine Author and Human Hero in Dialogical Relationship”
o Dimensional analogy breaks down » Authorship upholds transcendence & immanence frameworks + sovereignty/freedom “problem”
5.2. Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly: yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.
Free Choice
9.1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil.
9.2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.
- In the garden Adam was free to sin or not to sin.
9.3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
- By sinning, Adam brought humanity in the “bondage” of sin.
- In the fallen condition, man is unable to do spiritual good.
- This does not mean that humans have lost freedom of choice.
o Human will bound to sin but choices are free and not forced upon us.
- God decrees “whatsoever comes to pass” and people freely make their own choices.
- God does not author sin and “offers no violence to the will of the creatures”—humans freely choose sin.
9.4. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by his grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly, nor only, will that which is good, but doth also will that which is evil.
- Only through grace of the gospel do people freely choose what is spiritually good.
- This does not mean that humans are free from the abiding presence of sin.
9.5. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone, in the state of glory only.
In conversion and ultimately glorification, sinners are completely freed from sin and immutably able to freely choose the good.
Share this post