Q. 1. “What is Gods
‘will’?”
The starting point for a
Reformed discussion on the will of God is the truth that God is one,44
absolutely sovereign, independent,45 and unchangeable God.46
God’s will is the infinitely wise, eternal, powerful, immutable and righteous
essence of God actively willing.47 This truth determines that the
will of God cannot be more than one, nor can it be in any way contradictory.
John Owen rightly says:
The essence of God, being a most absolute, pure, simple act or
substance, His will consequently can be but simply one: whereof we ought to
make neither division nor distinction.48
To divide God’s will is
to divide God’s being.49
God’s infinite will,
unlike ours, comprehends all things by a single and most comprehensive act.50
Francis Turretin is helpful here, when he points out that
Although the will of God is only one and most simple, by which He
comprehends all things by a single and most simple act so that He sees and
understands all things at one glance, yet because that one will is occupied
differently about various objects, it thus happens in our manner of conception,
it may be apprehended as manifold ...51
What may appear manifold
to our finite minds is in reality a perfect oneness, unity and simplicity of
will within the being of the infinite God. It is surely to be expected that we
finite creatures will not be able to wrap our puny minds around the wisdom and
will of the infinite God. But one thing we can and must wrap our minds around
is the fact that within the Being and will of God there can be no division, and therefore no hint of contradiction.
---------
NOTES:
46. Num. 23:19; I Sam. 15:29; Isa. 46:10; Mal. 3:6; James
1:17.
47.
A. A. Hodge, Outlines
of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers), p. 150.
48. John
Owen, The Works of John Owen (Banner
of Truth Trust, 1967), vol. X, p. 44.
49. H. C.
Hoeksema, whose arguments against William Heyns of the Christian Reformed
Church are yet to be adequately refuted, maintains that this is a recipe for
two Gods. This, he rightly argues, is because God’s will and His very being
cannot be separated. God’s will is the being of God willing. See the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, vol.
9, no. 2 (April 1976).
50 Deut. 6:4; Eph. 1:11.
51. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 1, p. 220.
(Christopher J. Connors, “The Biblical Offer of the Gospel”)
####################################
Q. 2. “What is God’s
‘decretive’ will (or ‘will of decree’)?”
God’s decretive will
is defined in the Westminster Shorter
Catechism as His “eternal purpose,
according to the counsel of His own will, whereby, for His own glory, He hath
foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.” (Shorter Catechism, 7). (Christopher
J. Connors, “The Biblical Offer of the Gospel”)
####################################
Q. 3. “What is God’s
‘preceptive’ will (or ‘will of command’)?”
The “preceptive will” … is that revealed will of God which is
set forth in Holy Scripture as the rule
God is pleased to make known for man’s duty. (Christopher J. Connors, “The
Biblical Offer of the Gospel”)
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Q. 4. “Is not God’s commands/precepts called His ‘will’?”
The first thing we need to establish is that the
preceptive will can be called God’s will only in a metaphorical sense. The preceptive will, is not God within Himself (ad
infra) “willing” as a rule for His own actions, but what God “wills” to
reveal outside Himself (ad extra) as the rule for the creature’s actions.
There is a clear difference between the two. The preceptive will terminates
outside God’s essence as that which He actively wills, or decrees, to require of man, while the decretive will
abides within Himself as His living will in regard to His own actions. The
preceptive will, therefore, falls as a proposition of God’s decretive will with
respect to what man is required to do.
In this way the preceptive will is rightly said to be an aspect of God’s all
wise providence in respect to man.
The Biblical relationship as set forward in the Westminster Confession could be
illustrated as follows:
God’s
Nature >>> God’s Decrees >>> Providence & Preceptive Will
God freely chooses to reveal the goodness of His being.
This revelation is not necessary but free, and it is always by means of, or, according to His
sovereign will. God’s sovereign will determines that the precept be revealed as
a chief means whereby God
accomplishes His eternal purposes among men.
(Christopher J. Connors, “The Biblical Offer of the
Gospel”)
####################################
Q. 5. “What is this idea floating
around today whereby God has ‘two wills’—a will to save the elect, but another
will (secret or hidden) to save the reprobate?”
[Some] teach that God
has two wills, the first of which is eternal, unchangeable, and sovereign
(irresistible); the second of which is changeable, resistible, and temporary,
contradicting the first will of God. They say that God does eternally choose some to salvation in Jesus Christ; that
is, he wills their salvation.
However, so it is said, God also wills the
salvation of all men, because he
expresses in the preaching of the gospel a desire (will) that all men be saved.
According to this teaching, God wills (in the gospel) and doesn’t will (in
predestination) the salvation of some. And insofar as he does will the
salvation of all in the preaching, that will is never fulfilled, is only for
the here and now and not for eternity, and is incomplete and unfulfilled. (Ronald Hanko, “Doctrine According to
Godliness,” pp. 78-79)
Those who hold to a free offer and
still want to retain some semblance of being Calvinistic and Reformed make a
distinction … between the will of God’s decree and the will of His command; or,
as is sometimes said, between God’s decretive will and His preceptive will.
According to this strange notion, God’s decretive will purposes the salvation
only of the elect, while God’s preceptive will purposes the salvation of all
who hear the gospel. Thus God has two wills that are in direct conflict. (Herman C. Hanko “The History of the Free
Offer,” chapter 11)
There are contemporary
Calvinists who hold … that God has two contradictory wills or desires.
According to this theory, God in His decretive will desires the salvation of
only the elect, but in His preceptive will desires the salvation of all
sinners. (British Reformed Journal,
Issue 9 [January - March 1995], pp. 24-25)
####################################
Q. 6. “Doesn’t the contemporary
view of ‘two wills in God’ involve contradicton? (i.e. God both desiring and not desiring the same thing)? How do
advocates of this contemporary view get around this?”
The conflict is so obvious that even
the supporters of this view (and their number is legion) find it a bit
difficult to swallow. So in justification of this, they fall back on a sort of
last line of defense and plead “apparent contradiction.” They piously assure us
(and it sounds truly pious) that God’s ways are so much higher than our ways
that we cannot fathom them. What to us seems to be contradictory, to God is a
perfect harmony. All we can do is hold the two apparently contradictory
propositions in proper tension. (Herman
C. Hanko “The History of the Free Offer,” chapter 11)
####################################
Q. 7. “What is your objection
to this contemporary idea?”
We object to this teaching, because it
says that God’s will, and therefore God Himself, is incomplete, unfulfilled,
changeable, resistible (not sovereign), and temporary. It says that there is
contradiction (imperfection) in God. It even teaches that He is not one, but
two, since He is of two minds about things. All of this denies that God is
really God.
Scripture teaches that God has one
will and that He accomplishes everything He wills. Psalm 115:3 and Psalm 135:5–6 plainly teach this in the context of some powerful statements about
idolatry. To say that God does not do all His will—that His will can remain incomplete and unfulfilled—is to say
that He is not God and thus to commit the sin of idolatry. (Ronald Hanko, “Doctrine According
to Godliness,” p. 79)
The most obvious
fallacy involved with this is the violence it does to God’s character in saying
that He is subject to divine schizophrenia (New Latin, “split mind”), and to
the character of God’s special revelation in saying that it does not give an
adequate or even true picture of “the way things really are” as God decrees
them. Furthermore, the fact that God wills the salvation of only some is
revealed in His preceptive will (or else we would not know about it), and that
we have a special revelation or preceptive will at all is due to the fact that
it is contained in God’s decretive will. (British
Reformed Journal, Issue 9 [January - March 1995], pp. 24-25)
####################################
Q. 8. “Why cannot one hold and
believe two apparently contradictory propositions at the same time? (e.g. God
desires the salvation of all men, and God does not desire the salvation of all men)”
Consider the following as an
illustration of what people actually end up doing when presented with two
contradictory wills:
Let’s say you’re a child again, and
you want to go and play football in the park, and your mother says at one part
of the day, “I don’t allow you to play football in the park. You’re wearing your good jeans and you’ll
ruin them …” And then at another time of the day, your mother says “Yes you can
go and play in the park.” And then she sees you through the window out in the
park playing football, and she says “What on earth are you doing?!” And then
you say, “You said I could go and play in the park didn’t you? You gave me two
options: ‘Don’t go and play in the park’ and ‘Yes you can go and play in the
park.’ So I picked the one option that I liked best …”
What do people do when they are the
two wills of God? They pick the one that suits them! And, more often than not,
you end up in the Arminian view—for the Arminian view is always easier: easier
for fellowshipping with people, easier to preach because you’re not
contradicting the will of man; and the more you preach it, you end up with the
Reformed faith not fitting, and you end up with more and more Arminian ideas in
the congregation and Arminian people in the pew.
I know a little bit about the
congregations of some of the people who teach the “free offer” … They’re filled
with Arminians; and they are filled with people in the Sunday school who are
teaching the children of the church Arminianism. And if the minister had a
heart for the Reformed faith, why isn’t he going to admonish these people? But
what are they going to say? “You said I could go and play football … You gave
me two options, and I picked the one I like best.”
You can’t teach two things that don’t
make sense.
(Rev.
Angus Stewart—public lecture on “God’s Saving Will in the New Testament,”
Q&A Session)
[It] ought to be apparent to all that
this sort of argumentation ultimately leads to theological skepticism. If there
is contradiction possible at such a critical juncture of the truth, then there
is contradiction possible at any juncture of the truth. Then man can be both
totally depraved and relatively good. Then grace is both resistible and
irresistible. Then God is both triune and not triune. Then justification is
both by faith alone and also by faith and works. Then the atonement of Christ
is both efficacious and ineffectual. And so one can go on. But this makes any
knowledge of the truth impossible and mires one in the slime of subjectivism
and skepticism. (Herman C. Hanko “The
History of the Free Offer,” chapter 11)
####################################
Q. 9. “What is the judgment
upon this idea of two distinct but contradictory wills in God?”
[This] doctrine of two wills in God is
an invention. Any Reformer, including Calvin, who reprobated the idea in the
strongest possible terms, has never held it. It is sheer human invention that
masks an attempt to be both Arminian and Reformed at the same time. (Herman C. Hanko “The History of the Free
Offer,” chapter 11)
####################################
Q. 10. “How do we rectify this
problem? Is there any validity at all in making distinctions within the will of
God between His decrees and His precepts/commandments?”
The
[preceptive/decretive] distinction [in God’s will] is not between a desire to
save some (election) and a desire to save all (the well-meant offer). But, as
the wording of the distinction itself makes plain, the distinction is between a
desire, or intention, or purpose, to save only the elect (the will of decree)
and the command, or precept, to all who hear the gospel, that they repent and
believe (the will of precept). The preceptive will of God is His command, not
the expression of His purpose, or intention.
A precept is a command. It is not a wish. It is exactly the idea of the distinction
in Reformed theology that the Bible often teaches that God commands (preceptive
will) what He does not purpose according to His decree (will of decree).
Similarly, He forbids (precept) what He has decreed (decree).
Here
may be difficulty for the human comprehension. But there is no contradiction.
God forbade Adam to eat the fruit (precept), whereas He had decreed that Adam
would eat, in order that He might carry out His purpose of salvation in Jesus
Christ (decree). God forbade Joseph’s brothers to sell him into Egypt, whereas
He had decreed that they would sell him, so that Joseph might keep the family
of Jacob alive. God forbade all the agents of the wickedness of bringing Jesus
to the cross to perform their evil deeds, whereas He ordained that they would
perform them in order to accomplish the salvation of many by the redemption of the
cross. God commands all who hear the gospel to believe (precept), whereas by
the very preaching of the gospel He hardens the hearts of some that they not
believe, according to His decretal will of reprobation (decree). What God
commands is one thing (will of precept). What He decrees is another thing (will
of decree). Precept and decree involve no contradiction. (David J. Engelsma, PRTJ, vol.
53, no. 1 [Nov. 2019], p. 103)
God’s
will has historically and very helpfully been spoken of in chiefly two ways:
there is the “will of God’s decree”
(i.e. what God shall do—this refers
to His eternal counsel which determined absolutely everything that shall come
to pass) and there is the “will of God’s command”
(i.e. what He tells us we should do—this
refers to His moral, ethical requirements which are summed in the Ten Commandments).
(Rev. Angus Stewart—public lecture on
“God’s Saving Will in the New Testament”)
This does not mean that the
distinction itself is not valid. It is certainly true that Scripture indicates
to us that, within the one will of God, we may distinguish between God’s will
of decree and God’s will of precept. The danger of evil enters when we set
these two over against each other in such a way that these two not only
indicate two separate wills of God, but two wills which are in conflict with
each other. (Herman C. Hanko “The
History of the Free Offer,” chapter 11)
The proper distinction
is rather between God’s will of decree
(which deals with the indicative—what He will
do) and His will of command
(which deals with the imperative—what we ought
to do). The use of grammatical terms at this point is deliberate. Those who
hold to two different and differing wills and desires in God usually violate a
simple law of logic in their exegesis by making indicative inferences from
imperative sentences. (British Reformed Journal, Issue 9
[January - March 1995], pp. 24-25)
This distinction between a decretive and a revealed
(or preceptive) will of God is both sound and necessary, and one to which all
orthodox Calvinistic divines have had recourse. To quote Francis Turretin: “The
first and principal distinction is that of the decretive and preceptive will of
God ... The former relates to the futurition and the event of things and is the
rule of God’s external acts; the latter is concerned with precepts and promises
and is the rule of our action.” (Matthew
Winzer, “Murray on the Free Offer,” quoting Francis Turretin, Institutes of
Elenctic Theology Volume 1 [Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 1992],
p. 220. C.f. John Owen, Works Volume 10 [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust,
1987], p. 45, for a similar but fuller treatment of the distinction)
####################################
Q. 11. “So if
God has a ‘will of decree’ and a ‘will of command,’ how do we interpret this in
the light of the truth that God only has one
divine will?”
These “two wills” must
be seen as different aspects of the same simple will and desire of God, and
both are equally concerned with the conversion of the elect and the hardening
of the reprobate (as with Pharaoh). (British
Reformed Journal, Issue 9 [January - March 1995], pp. 24-25)
####################################
Q. 12. “Does not
even the proper distinction between Gods ‘will of decree’ and ‘will of command’ imply that God has two wills?”
Such a distinction must never be understood as
implying that God has two wills. For it is clear from the above definition that
the word will is being used in two different senses, i.e.,
equivocally, having two distinct points of reference. (Matthew Winzer, “Murray on the Free Offer: A Review”)
####################################
Q. 13. “You say that only the ‘will of decree’ is
the will of God in the proper sense of the term as an act of volition. Is there
historical support for that?”
Samuel Rutherford expresses this well in his own inimitable manner:
… that voluntas
signi, in which God reveals what is our duty, and what we ought to do, not
what is his decree, or what he either will, or ought to do, is not God’s will
properly, but by a figure only; for commands, and promises, and threatenings
revealed argue not the will and purpose, decree or intention of God, which are
properly his will. (Samuel Rutherford, Christ
Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself (Glasgow: Samuel and Archibald
Gardner, 1803), p. 480.)
The will of precept has no volitional content, for
it simply states what God has commanded ought to be done by
man. Whether man wills to do it is absolutely dependent upon whether God has
decreed that he shall do it. So it is quite inappropriate to say that God wills
something to be with reference to His will of command, for the
preceptive will never pertains to the futurition of actions,
only to the obligation of them.
(Matthew Winzer, “Murray on the Free Offer: A
Review”)
####################################
Q.
14. “But does not a ‘command’ of God entail a desire of God?”
When
we come to the will of God’s decree, that
definitely is what God desires, wishes and wants to happen—and therefore it
comes about. When we deal with the commands
of God, on the other hand, they don’t
tell us what God desires or wishes or wants to happen—they tell us what God is pleased with.
If
a command of God means that God wants
every individual person to do it, what does that do to God? Thomas Aquinas
[described] God as “the unmoved Mover,” [but the] view of a ‘command’ of God
requiring that God desires that it
take place makes God “the most frustrated
Desirer ever.” Think of it this way: The unbeliever, because of his total
depravity, cannot do any good (“There is none that doeth good”—Rom. 3:12). [If
we follow the idea that God’s commands tell us what God ‘desires,’ then you end
up with] the majority of people, all of their life, frustrating a desire of
God. Think of the [elect child of God]—some are regenerated as infants and
others are regenerated later: Let’s say there’s someone who’s effectually
called when he’s thirty years old, so that everything up to that thirty years
was only sinful and nothing righteous and pleasing to God in [anything] that
person did. Then, after that person
is converted, the good that he would, he does not, and the evil that he would
not, that he does (cf. Rom. 7:14-16)—i.e. even in the good that he does, there
is always sin; and, for use of a better phrase, even in the evil that we do,
there is always a little bit of good in it—for you always hate it as a believer. So if every command means that God desires it (e.g. the Ten Commandments:
“no other gods before Me; worship Me only in the way that I tell you; don’t
take the name of the Lord God in vain and remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy; honour all authority over you; no killing, adultery, stealing, lying or
coveting …”)—you end up with God’s desires with regard to the reprobate and all
their lives … thwarted; and then all the life of the elect before they’re saved
(more unfulfilled desires), and then with regard to the believer, as he never
seems to do anything perfect either … This view ends up with God just
incredibly frustrated, failed desires—all these things He wished and wanted to
happen never happen (the opposite happens), and that He decreed these things so
that they would never happen (He decreed the fall, He decreed reprobation, He
decreed that Christ wouldn’t die for the reprobate, He decreed that He wouldn’t
regenerate them or reveal Christ to them, or preserve them or keep them, or
glorify them, or raise them up at the resurrection …) What does that do to God?
[The] Bible talks about God’s will being sovereign, gracious, saving, etc.
A
command of God doesn’t show what God desires.
It shows what pleases God. So you can
say to an unbeliever “You should repent, because your life has been totally
displeasing to God and wicked. And this would be the first thing you do that
has ever pleased God.” And you can say to someone who’s a Christian, “You need
to change the way you are living in this area of your life because that’s
dishonouring to God. This pleases Him. This is the good, perfect, acceptable
and pleasing will of God (cf. Rom. 12:2, which is dealing with the will of command).”
(Rev.
Angus Stewart—public lecture on “God’s Saving Will in the New Testament,”
Q&A Session)
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