Q. 1. “What is God’s ‘wrath’?”
“The wrath of God is His
hot displeasure against all unrighteousness, sin and rebellion, which is an
affront to His absolute holiness.” (Rev. Martyn McGeown)
“The reaction of His
holiness against the workers of iniquity” (Herman Hoeksema, “Reformed
Dogmatics,” vol. 1, p. 575)
###########################
Q. 2. “Can Christians experience God’s wrath?”
Christians can come under
God’s wrath. In the following texts, we see that the regenerate, while free
from God’s judicial hate, are subject
to God’s anger, wrath, and displeasure:
“O LORD, rebuke me not in
thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure” (Ps. 6:1).
“Sing unto the Lord, O ye
saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his
anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a
night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Ps. 30:4-5).
“O Lord, rebuke me not in
thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure” (Ps. 38:1).
“For we are consumed by
thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled” (Ps. 90:7).
Other passages include II
Chronicles 19:2, Psalm 38:1, 88:7, Habakkuk 3:2, Romans 13:5, I Corinthians
11:28-34, Hebrews 12:6-11, etc.
The Heidelberg Catechism also teaches this in Q&A 81/82 ...
Q. 81. “Are they also to be admitted to this supper, who, by confession
and life, declare themselves unbelieving and ungodly?”
A. 82. “No; for by this the covenant of God would be profaned, and His wrath
kindled against the whole congregation.”
We experience His wrath
as chastisement.
###########################
Q. 3. “What is God’s ‘hatred’?”
“His eternal
determination to destroy the wicked” (Rev.
Martyn McGeown)
“His hatred is His resolute determination to thrust
away from Himself and punish everlastingly.” (Rev. Angus Stewart, “The Psalms Versus Common Grace”—comm. on Psalm
11)
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Q. 4. “It is argued by anti-Common Grace people that God hates
the reprobate and therefore cannot love them. But surely it is in the
sense of detestation that God hates—not in the sense of desiring to
destroy or take revenge. God loathes the reprobate for their rebellion,
but at the same time loves and wishes for their repentance.”
[T]his
does not fit with the biblical presentation of God’s hatred: (1) God hated Esau
before he was born and before he had done anything good or evil (Rom. 9:11-13),
that is, unconditionally—for reprobation (like election) is unconditional; (2)
God’s hatred issues in the destruction of the reprobate—for in His
hatred for Edom, God “laid his mountains and his heritage waste” (Mal. 1:3),
even smashing Edom after she attempted to rebuild (v. 4) and declaring
indignation against her forever (v. 4). In His hatred for the wicked in Psalms
5 and 11, God, the righteous Lord, destroys and abhors them (5:5-6), and rains
upon them “snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest,” which shall be
“the portion of their cup” (11:6). Such hatred certainly includes a desire to
destroy, without, however, any hint of injustice, for God cannot be unjust
(Deut. 32:4; Rom. 9:14). God’s hatred of the reprobate issues in the lake of
fire—where, ironically, the [“common grace” advocate’s] “non-saving” love of
God also issues, for the reprobate perish—any “non-saving” love of God for them
notwithstanding. This creates insurmountable problems: How can the child of
God, who trusts in God’s love, derive any comfort from it, if, in fact, God
loves everybody? How can the Christian know that God loves him with more than
the “love” with which He supposedly loves the reprobate? (Rev. Martyn
McGeown, PRTJ, vol. 51, no. 2 [April 2018])
###########################
Q. 5. “Is wrath an attribute
of God? (like grace, mercy, love, holiness, etc.) Is His divine “hatred”
classified as an attribute? Or is it a different concept altogether? What are
the differences between wrath and hatred?”
“Is
wrath an attribute of God? No, because God is never wrathful in Himself. God’s
wrath is not His becoming angry in an emotional sense or losing His temper. It
is a settled disposition against evil.
God’s wrath is His attitude or response to unholiness. God has no pleasure in
wickedness (Psa. 5:4-5).” (Rev. Martyn
McGeown, “Essentials of Reformed Doctrine: Lesson Outlines”)
“Wrath
and hatred are aspects of the perfections of grace and love, rather than being
perfections by themselves alone. The beauty of God, especially as revealed in
His attitude of favor in Jesus Christ, takes the form of wrath against all that
is evil. So also with regard to hatred: aversion to all who are opposed to His
goodness in Jesus Christ.
Wrath
and hatred are similar. Hatred is the more basic characteristic or disposition.
It is the divine aversion to all that conflicts with and who oppose His
goodness, or holiness. Wrath is the expression of this aversion in a consuming
anger.” (Prof. David J. Engelsma,
09/04/2018)
“Strictly speaking, wrath is not an
attribute of God. For something to be an attribute
of God, it has to be something that God exercises before all worlds. It would
be more appropriate to say that the wrath of God is the manifestation of the
holiness of God in the context of the sinfulness of man. So, within the
Trinitarian relationship, that holiness is expressed among the members of the
Trinity, but not wrath.” (Sinclair
Ferguson, Ligonier Conference [Date unknown])
“According to Wolfhart Pannenberg, wrath
is not an attribute of God but ‘the annihilating outworking of his holiness
when it comes into contact with what is unclean.’ Paul Jewett’s position is
similar: ‘Wrath describes not God as he is in himself, but rather as he is
related to the sinner who spurns his love and dishonors his name.’ Holiness and
love are alone the true nature of God. Wrath is the reaction of God, the
necessary reaction of God’s holiness against sin” (Donald G. Bloesch, “God, the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness,
Love” [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006], p. 142)
“not that there is anger in God except
metaphorically” (Thomas Aquinas, Sup. Heb., C. 3, L. 2, 181.)
“In the first
place, we may state that God’s hatred as such is not, in the positive sense of
the term, one of His attributes, or virtues, as are, for example, God’s love,
God’s righteousness, God’s holiness. God is in Himself, apart from any relation
and attitude toward the creature, love. He IS righteousness. He IS holiness. But in this
sense we never read in Scripture that God IS hatred and this cannot properly be
posited of God, Within the divine Being and life as such there is no positive
attribute of hatred. Hatred is negative.
In the second
place, and in close connection with the preceding, we would maintain that God’s
hatred is implied in and is an aspect of His holy Self-love as that Self-love is revealed toward the
creature. It is the contrast, the counter-part,
the antithesis of love. In the revelation of His love of Himself
to the creature outside of Himself, God’s hatred is the ‘no’ of the ‘yes’ of
God’s love. From this already it would follow that the revelation of that
hatred stands essentially in the service of the revelation of His love.
Hence, in the
third place, God’s hatred must be defined and circumscribed in terms of His
love.” (Homer C. Hoeksema, PRTJ,
vol. 1, no. 1 [Apr 1967], pp. 23-24)
###########################
Q. 6. “According to Aristotle’s ‘10
Categories of Being,’ to argue that if God’s wrath and hatred are not
‘attributes’ of God in the full sense of the word (i.e. that if God is not
wrathful in Himself, regardless of anything outside of Himself), then we have
no other option than to say they are ‘accidents’—and consequently you end up
denying the doctrine of divine simplicity and classical theism.”
By “accidents,” Aristotle meant
characteristics that are not fundamental to one’s being (without them one is
essentially what he is, without loss or change in one’s being), but that one
takes on as it were incidentally on account of outside influences. A human
is ontologically a human without a large wart on his nose; the wart is an
accident.
I
decline to describe God in Aristotelian categories. Scripture reveals
God. God is love, according to the Bible. Love is an (ontological)
perfection of His being. Hatred is not a perfection of the divine
being. But the perfection of love expresses itself (eternally) as hatred
for anyone (e.g.) the devil and anything (sin) that opposes the divine
being. Hatred therefore is an implication of the perfection of love. Since
love is the being of God (God is His perfections), the divine being expresses
Himself as hatred towards all that opposes the goodness of God.
This does justice to the truth of simplicity,
without complicating the truth of God by philosophical categories. (Prof. David J. Engelsma, 13/04/2018)
###########################
Q. 7. “If wrath and hatred
are not ‘attributes’ of God, what category do you place them in relation to
God?”
“an
implication of the perfection of love. Since love is the being of God (God
is His perfections), the divine being expresses Himself as hatred towards all
that opposes the goodness of God.” (Prof.
David J. Engelsma, 13/04/2018)
###########################
Q. 8. “How do you define ‘inherent’?”
“inherent: ‘existing in something as a
permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute.’”
###########################
Q. 9. “Can you prove that
God’s attributes/virtues are first and foremost toward Himself?”
The proof that His all
His eternal attributes/virtues are toward Himself first and foremost is His self-sufficiency—He does not need the
creature to be His attributes. (Rev.
Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 10. “Did not God hate Esau before he hath done any evil?
If yes, then why cannot it be said that God’s hatred is not ‘attribute’?”
God indeed hated Esau before he had done any
evil? (Rom. 9:13). But Gods hatred is not ‘attribute’ because God’s attributes
all have Himself as their object (as
least first of all and principally) and God does not hate Himself. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 11. “If wrath and hatred are
not attributes or virtues of God, what is being applied in the lake of fire? An
abundance of love or application of justice in response to His righteousness?”
We are denying that wrath and hatred are
attributes of God—not that God is
angry/wrathful with the reprobate and punishes them in Hell for ever, etc. God
is love, for He loves Himself. An attribute of God is self-sufficient. God does
not hate or show wrath to Himself. (Rev.
Angus Stewart)
God eternally hates the reprobate in the way of
their sins (Rom. 9:13), but wrath and hatred are not attributes of God. The simplicity of God means that He IS His
attributes. God IS His infinity, His love, His justice, His power, His
wisdom, His unchangeableness, His mercy, His omnipresence, His truth, etc. But
God IS NOT His hatred or His wrath. We fully hold the truth of eternal
punishment, God’s hatred and hardening of the reprobate, that Christ bore the
wrath of God due to the elect, etc., but this does not mean that God IS His hatred
or wrath or that these things are divine attributes. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 12. “If ‘God eternally hates
the reprobate in the way of their sins (Romans 9:13),’ how is this hatred not
an essential attribute of God?”
Divine simplicity means that God IS his
attributes. IS God wrath? IS God hatred (as well as love)? (Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 13. “Before the original sin
or Fall, God did decree election and reprobation, irrespective of any good
works or sins of men. The ultimate reason for this does not lie outside of God
while God being the supreme, ultimate and imperial cause of election and
reprobation. So even before the Fall, or
before they have done any good or evil, God made a decree to love Jacob and
hate Esau. How then, in this case at least, wrath and hatred will not qualify
for divine attributes?”
God eternally hated the reprobate (in the way
of their sin). I do not see any substantive
difference in our positions. It is a matter of definition of a divine “attribute.”
(Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 14. “How about Psalms
95:11?—‘Unto whom I sware in my wrath
that they should not enter into my rest.’ Is this not an eternal decree? Does
this not go in parallel with Psalm 89:35—‘Once have I sworn by my holiness’? Just as holiness is His attribute, is not
wrath of God also an attribute?”
Yes. But this does not prove that wrath is a
divine attribute.
###########################
Q. 15. “Since sin is outside of
God, you are bound to conclude that wrath also is outside of His essential
being, and therefore wrath began when sin began and it logically follows that
wrath could not be an attribute because it had a beginning, if I understood your position correctly?
This is not my argument.
###########################
Q. 16. “The decree of
reprobation is irrespective of sin is it not? (Rom 9:13—BEFORE doing any evil)
But you say, ‘in the way of sin.’ Bible says that God does have the right to
create a vessel of wrath FITTED UNTO (NOT FOR) DESTRUCTION IRRESPECTIVE OF sin
in the object He hath made. That is the right of the Potter in His essential
being.”
The decree of reprobation is prior to sin and
not conditioned on sin (unconditional) but not irrespective of sin. God unconditionally reprobates (sovereign) in the way of sin (justice). God could
not reprobate someone (which includes His hating, hardening and punishing them
everlastingly) who never sinned. The Reformed position is that God
unconditionally reprobates (sovereign) in the way of sin (justice). (Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 17. “To say ‘God
unconditionally reprobates in the way of sin’ … is this not judicial (conditional) reprobation and
therefore not sovereign reprobation?”
This is simply the Reformed formulation of
reprobation, which preserves both the absolute sovereignty of God and His
holiness.
Here is a sermon on reprobation: http://www.cprc.co.uk/romans9f.mp3 (Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 18. “What is meant by ‘God could not reprobate someone (which
includes His hating ...) who never
sinned’?”
God is holy. Because of His own holiness, He
cannot hate or condemn or eternally reprobate to hell those who are righteous. The judicial ground of the
condemnation of those sovereignly reprobated is their sin. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 19. “Doesn't God hate
reprobates prior to sin under the supralapsarian view? But when it comes to
punishment God is just because he waits until after they have sinned.”
The Canons
of Dordt condemn as “detestable” the idea that God reprobated (hated) men
without any regard to their sins.
###########################
Q. 20. “Wasn’t the Canons of Dordt written from an infralapsarian perspective though.”
That’s irrelevant.
###########################
Q. 21. “Why can’t God hate whom
He so wills without relation to sin?”
Because He is holy and righteous.
###########################
Q. 22. “How do you mean by saying God reprobated men ‘in the
way of sin’?”
It
simply means that that God not only decreed the end, but also the means to that
end.
###########################
Q. 23.
“Are ‘wrath’ and ‘hatred’ the same or are they different?”
Wrath is not the same as
hatred. As intense anger, wrath is commensurate with love in the case of
God’s elect people. His anger falls upon His children walking in sin not
repented of. Anger expresses itself in chastisements, as in the case of
David living in adultery and murder. The Psalms often cry out over the
experience of God’s anger by Israel or by one of the saints. Similar is
the intense anger, or wrath, that a covenant parent shows to a disobedient
covenant child. (Prof. David J.
Engelsma, 14/04/2018)
###########################
Q. 24. “Did God ‘hate’ Christ
on the cross? If not, how is it that Christ ‘bore the wrath of God for the sins
of His people’?”
God never hated His Christ. God
never loved Christ more than when He was pouring out His punitive wrath upon
Him on the cross and when the Christ was obediently submitting to this
wrath. By the way, the difference between God’s wrath upon Christ and His
wrath upon us is that His wrath upon Christ was punitive whereas His wrath upon
us is never punitive but always chastising. (Prof.
David J. Engelsma, 14/04/2018)
###########################
Q. 25. “God decreed from eternity to hate Christ for a time, and
to no longer hate Him after that ... And because He sovereignly decreed these
changing attitudes or dispositions, He not only remains eternally unchangeable,
but is freely available to manifest His hatred in any way He wants.”
God
decrees 'things' outside Himself, NOT His own attributes. God decrees sin and
God 'automatically' yet freely hates the sin. He does not decree His own wrath!
(Rev. Angus Stewart)
###########################
Q. 26.
“If we are going to deny wrath to be an essential attribute or virtue of His
being, are we not left with saying there must’ve been a ‘change’ in God?—God
not bearing wrath in eternity past, but suddenly bearing wrath ‘in time’? Does
this not create a ‘change’ in God? (Once He was wrathful, and the next minute
He wasn’t wrathful). Doesn’t the doctrine of immutability (or unchangeableness)
necessitate that wrath must be constantly ‘eternal’ and therefore an attribute
of God in itself (God’s attributes all being eternal)?”
Wrath is not an (essential) attribute of God as is
love. Wrath is the manifestation of His love for Himself towards sinful
creatures—chastising in the case of the elect and punitive in the case of the
reprobate ungodly, as in its own way in the case of Christ substituting for His
guilty church. As for the ‘eternality’ of wrath, this is realized in the
eternal decree to pour out His wrath on the Christ. The problem you raise
is basically the same as that concerning creation. God created in time,
not in eternity. This implies no change in God. For He decreed
eternally to create (in time). (Prof.
David J. Engelsma, 14/04/2018)
###########################
Q. 27. “I’ve been in correspondence with some individuals who
are into Aristotle and Philosophy, and who take his ‘Categories of Being,’
so-called, to argue that if God’s wrath and hatred are not ‘attributes’ of God
in the full sense of the word (that is, if God is not wrathful in Himself
regardless of anything outside of Himself) then wrath and hatred must be
classed as so-called ‘accidents.’ Basically we are presented with an
‘either/or’ situation: ‘Either wrath/hatred are what God is, ontologically (wrath and hatred are who HE IS—His being,
essence or substance) or we end up denying divine simplicity and classical
theism and ending up with no other option than wrath being catagorized as an
‘accident’ ... How would you define what in philosophical terminology are
called ‘accidents’? If wrath is not His ‘substance’ is it therefore His ‘accident’?”
Concerning
this matter of Plato and Aristotle: they were Greek philosophers who were pagan
in their teachings. That is, they could not and never did write anything that
was the truth. In the early history of the church, there were learned men,
educated in pagan schools, who thought Greek philosophy compatible with the
Christian faith. Justin Martyr is a case in point.
The
result was that Gnosticism arose and almost destroyed the church. Gnosticism
was a fusing of pagan, Jewish, eastern mysticism and Christianity into one
religion. It finally failed, primarily because of the work of Iraenaus, who
insisted Christianity was unique in that in all respects, it was rooted in
divine revelation.
In
the Middle Ages, when Greek and Roman writings were made available to the
European church. The church was Roman Catholic and the MSS and artifacts from
the East sparked the Renaissance. The popes fought against this new learning,
but could not stop it, and so decided to make peace with it. The results were
various successful attempts to merge Christian thought with pagan philosophers’
writings. This was particularly true of Aristotle’s writings, although there
were also those who preferred Plato’s idealism. The outstanding figure was
Thomas Aquinas. That in turn produced Scholasticism and also made the church a
patron of the Renaissance.
In
more recent times the same thing has taken place under the erroneous doctrine
of common grace. When I was attending Calvin College, the generally held view
was that common grace enabled Greek philosophers to discover and teach
important truths. In fact, one professor bemoaned the fact that Plato climbed
the ladder toward heaven and almost made it, but failed to climb the last rung.
This made him very sad. In other words, the ancient Greek writers (and
sculptors and artists) possessed grace. Such a view has also led to vast
departures from the truth.
Accidents
in philosophy are to be distinguished from the essence of a creature. Your
essence is “humanness” and your accident are your height, the color of your
hair and eyes, and the size of your nose. The essence is the general class to
which you belong; your accidents are your own characteristics. You are like me
in essence, but quite different from me in accidents.
Holiness
is an essential attribute of God as are all His attributes (“God is love” not
“God loves”, or better, God loves because He is love). Anger and wrath are
emotional responses to man’s violation of God’s holiness. God possesses
emotion; emotions belong to the will; God wills to punish the wicked who tarnish
and attempt to destroy His holiness. Nothing about God can be described in
terms of human characteristics. He is the “Wholly Other One.” His response to
sin must be wrath: anything else would deny His holiness. (Prof. Herman C. Hanko, 19/04/2018)
QUESTIONS/STATEMENTS FOR FURTHER STUDY:
Q. “Is Romans 9 suggesting that God’s hatred
had nothing to do with Esau’s sin? (‘though they were not yet born and had done
nothing either good or bad, in order that God’s purpose of election might
continue, not because of works but because of him who calls’—v. 9).”
Q. “If God cannot have ‘hate’ as an attribute, then
how can God have ‘love’ as an attribute?”
Q. “To say that hate is an out-working of love
is to confuse the manifestation of the attribute with the attribute
itself ...” (???)
Q. “Is God outworking His attributes? If yes,
then did the attributes come into being only at moment God began outworking
them? If yes, how does this not deny God’s unchangeability? If not, He decrees
according to His attributes, and hatred is an attribute of God ...” (???)
Q. “To posit wrath as an accident of God is to deny His simplicity. It is either of His
essence/substance or it is not. If not, then an accident, not substance.”
Q. “Since we believe that wrath is only against
sin, does that mean that wrath only came into existence at the Fall, and not
before?”
Q. “If wrath occurred only after the Fall, doesn’t
this imply that God was ‘surprised’ by Adam's sin?”
Q. “If Gods hatred is never apart from sin,
then surely His hatred is judicial and not ‘sovereign’ (aka, uncaused).”
Q. “Isn’t ‘unconditional reprobation’ inconsistent
with ‘damnation in the way of sins’?” The very fact that we use the term
‘unconditional’ is because it indicates that reprobation, as a decree, is not
based on the sin of man, while we all agree condemnation is a judicial hatred
in time.” (???)
Q. “God loved Jacob for no reason. God hated
Esau for no reason. Period. And He need not give an account of ‘Esau was
reprobated/hated in the way of his sins’ as you often quote.”
Q. “If to love the elect was an eternal decree,
then to not love the non-elect is also an eternal decree ...
Thus if God is love, God is non-love
too ... In other words, God’s one perfection is manifested in various ways ...
As love for the elect ... As hate for the reprobate ... So if love is an
attribute of God, then so also is hate.” (????)
Q. “Doesn’t God hate sin and sinner? Doesn’t
that mean that to some extent Christ was ‘hated’ in so far as He bore our sin
and was legally guilty?”
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