Review Article: “The Two Wills of God: Does God Really Have Two Wills?” by C. Matthew McMahon

 

The Two Wills of God:  Does God Really Have Two Wills? by C. Matthew McMahon.  Coconut Creek, Florida:  Puritan Publications, 2005.  Pp. 543.  $39.99 soft.  Reviewed by David J. Engelsma

This poorly written and carelessly edited volume (on pages 241-243 alone are at least nine errors of grammar and spelling) nevertheless has its virtues.  It is a worthy theological study:

Does God will, in any way, goodness, blessing or love to the reprobate (the seed of the serpent), with the desire of making those who receive his blessings, loving-kindness, or goodness, happy as a result?  Does God intend their salvation when the free-offer of the Gospel is given to them and falls upon their ears?  Is there such a thing as a free “offer” (offer as in the strict sense) of the Gospel if God wills all things, even the election and reprobation of men? (p. 19). 

The book vigorously denies that God has both a will for the salvation of some only—the elect—and a contradictory will for the salvation of all humans without exception, expressed in a gracious desire in the preaching of the gospel.  In this connection, the book boldly flies in the face of the nearly unanimous, contrary verdict among reputedly Calvinistic churches and theologians today by asserting that God is, and must be, “logical.” (Can one conceive a more ridiculous, objectionable deity in the 21^st century than one who is “logical,” that is, one who can be known, one who is, according to John 1, the Logos?)  The consensus today is that God is illogical in decreeing the salvation of some only while desiring the salvation of all in the “well-meant offer” of Christ in the gospel. 

The author proves his denial of two, contradictory wills in God from Scripture, from the Reformed and Presbyterian creeds, indeed, from the early Christian creeds, and from various outstanding theologians in all ages of the Christian church. 

Another, related virtue is the rejection of a “common grace” of God.  By “common grace,” McMahon refers to both a saving grace of God for all humans and to a non-saving grace in the good things of earthly life—rain, sunshine, health, wealth, and the like.  According to McMahon, God is gracious in any respect whatever only to the elect in Jesus Christ.  Both the gospel and rain and sunshine are curse to the reprobate wicked, hardening them and storing up wrath in the day of judgment. 

For this doctrine, too, the author offers abundant biblical proof, with extended exegesis of the passages commonly appealed to by the defenders of a common grace of God.

In light of this theology, it comes as a surprise that McMahon dismisses the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) as hyper-Calvinists.  In part, his charge is due to his misunderstanding of hyper-Calvinism.  In McMahon’s thinking, hyper-Calvinism is “emphasizing the hatred of God for the wicked without acknowledging His divided sense desire for their salvation, or indiscriminate providence for their bodily sustenance” (p. 158).  Apart from the fact that the PRC do not so emphasize the hatred of God as to fail to acknowledge God’s indiscriminate providence for the bodily sustenance of the reprobate ungodly, McMahon sucks his description of hyper-Calvinism out of his thumb.  Hyper-Calvinism is not whatever it suits the latest writer on the subject to make of it.  Hyper-Calvinism has a certain, definite, specific meaning.  It is the theological error that denies that God calls, or summons, all who hear the gospel to repent of their sins and to believe in Jesus Christ, regardless of whether he is elect or reprobate.  According to hyper-Calvinism, the gospel is to be preached only to the elect (as though this were even possible).  The PRC are not guilty of this error.  No one has ever made this charge stick.  No one can. 

In part also, the charge against the PRC is due to McMahon’s inconsistency in his denial of a will of God for the salvation of the reprobate.  As his description of hyper-Calvinism implies, McMahon contends that there is, after all, a certain “desire” of God for the salvation of all wicked persons, reprobate as well as elect.  This “desire” is what McMahon calls God’s “divided sense desire for their salvation.”  The PRC do indeed deny that there is any divine “desire” for the salvation of the reprobate whatever.  But this does not make them hyper-Calvinists.  On the contrary, it establishes them as genuine Calvinists. 

In addition to the sloppy writing and editing, the book suffers from a serious weakness.  Basic to the author’s argument concerning the will, or wills, of God, indeed, the burden of the book, is a strange, obscure distinction between a “compound” sense of the will of God for the salvation of sinners and a “divided” sense.  At his clearest, McMahon identifies his distinction as virtually that of the traditional distinction between God’s “decretal” will and His “preceptive” will: “God has a will of decree and a will of precept, a compound and divided sense” (p. 315).  In this case, McMahon’s “compound” will of God is His decree of predestination, whereas his “divided” will is God’s command to all who hear the gospel that they repent and believe.  If this is the meaning of McMahon’s unfamiliar distinction, he ought to have worked with the traditional distinction of “decretal/preceptive,” and to have left his peculiar, obscure, confusing distinction of “compound/divided” in his pen.      

But there is evidence that McMahon intends more with his “divided” sense of the will of God than the Reformed tradition means by God’s “preceptive” will.  He definitely makes his “divided” sense include the anthropomorphisms of Scripture.  Fatally compromising the main theme of his book, and contrary to what he states elsewhere, McMahon makes the “divided” sense of the will of God consist of a gracious “desire” of God in the preaching of the gospel for the salvation of all. 

In reality, God has no more a will, or desire, for the salvation of the reprobate in the (passionate) preaching of the gospel than He has in the eternal decree.  Nor does the “preceptive” will of God teach this.  The preaching of the gospel expresses God’s “precept”: the summons to repent and believe.  A precept is a command, not a desire compromising the divine decree, as God’s command to Pharaoh to let the people go was His precept, hardening the monarch’s heart, in harmony with the decree that the king of Egypt perish by disobeying the precept (cf. Romans 9). 

McMahon’s quite illogical conception of the “divided” will of God explains his condemnation of the PRC as hyper-Calvinists.  In the (logical) harmony of the “preceptive” will of God with the “decretal” will of God (that McMahon rightly demands, but himself violates), the PRC deny that the “preceptive” will of God in the preaching of the gospel—“Repent! Believe!—is a well-meant, gracious offer to the reprobate.

God does not have two wills.