Chapter III: The Decrees Of God (2)

Joseph’s brethren were none the less wicked for the fact that God
meant their conduct to result in good (_Gen. 50:20_). Pope Leo X
and his indulgences brought on the Reformation, but he was none
the less guilty. Slaveholders would have been no more excusable,
even if they had been able to prove that the negro race was cursed
in the curse of Canaan (_Gen. 9:25—_“Cursed be Canaan; a servant
of servants shall he be unto his brethren”). Fitch, in Christian
Spectator, 3:601—“There can be and is a purpose of God which is
not an _efficient_ purpose. It embraces the voluntary acts of
moral beings, without creating those acts by divine efficiency.”
See Martineau, Study, 2:107, 136.

_Mat. 26:24—_“The Son of man goeth even as it is written of him:
but woe unto that man through whom the Son of man is betrayed!
good were it for that man if he had not been born.” It was
appointed that Christ should suffer, but that did not make men
less free agents, nor diminish the guilt of their treachery and
injustice. Robert G. Ingersoll asked: “Why did God create the
devil?” We reply that God did not create the devil,—it was the
devil who made the devil. God made a holy and free spirit who
abused his liberty, himself created sin, and so made himself a
devil.

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:299—“Evil has been referred to 1.
an extra-divine principle—to one or many evil spirits, or to fate,
or to matter—at all events to a principle limiting the divine
power; 2. a want or defect in the Deity himself, either his
imperfect wisdom or his imperfect goodness; 3. human culpability,
either a universal imperfection of human nature, or particular
transgressions of the first men.” The third of these explanations
is the true one: the first is irrational; the second is
blasphemous. Yet this second is the explanation of Omar Khayyám,
Rubáiyat, stanzas 80, 81—“Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with
gin Beset the road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with
predestined evil round Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin. Oh
Thou, who man of baser earth didst make, And ev’n with Paradise
devise the snake: For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is
blackened—man’s forgiveness give—and take!” And David Harum
similarly says: “If I’ve done anything to be sorry for, I’m
willing to be forgiven.”

(_b_) The decree to permit sin is therefore not an efficient but a permissive decree, or a decree to permit, in distinction from a decree to produce by his own efficiency. No difficulty attaches to such a decree to permit sin, which does not attach to the actual permission of it. But God does actually permit sin, and it must be right for him to permit it. It must therefore be right for him to decree to permit it. If God’s holiness and wisdom and power are not impugned by the actual existence of moral evil, they are not impugned by the original decree that it should exist.

Jonathan Edwards, Works, 2:100—“The sun is not the _cause_ of the
darkness that follows its setting, but only the _occasion_”;
254—“If by the author of sin be meant the sinner, the agent, or
the actor of sin, or the doer of a wicked thing—so it would be a
reproach and blasphemy to suppose God to be the author of sin....
But if by author of sin is meant the permitter or non-hinderer of
sin, and at the same time a disposer of the state of events in
such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and
purposes, _that sin_, if it be permitted and not hindered, _will
most certainly follow_, I do not deny that God is the author of
sin: it is no reproach to the Most High to be _thus_ the author of
sin.” On the objection that the doctrine of decrees imputes to God
two wills, and that he has foreordained what he has forbidden, see
Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 250-252—“A ruler may forbid
treason; but his command does not oblige him to do all in his
power to prevent disobedience to it. It may promote the good of
his kingdom to suffer the treason to be committed, and the traitor
to be punished according to law. That in view of this resulting
good he chooses not to prevent the treason, does not imply any
contradiction or opposition of will in the monarch.”

An ungodly editor excused his vicious journalism by saying that he
was not ashamed to describe anything which Providence had
permitted to happen. But “permitted” here had an implication of
causation. He laid the blame of the evil upon Providence. He was
ashamed to describe many things that were good and which God
actually caused, while he was not ashamed to describe the immoral
things which God did not cause, but only permitted men to cause.
In this sense we may assent to Jonathan Edwards’s words: “The
divine Being is not the author of sin, but only disposes things in
such a manner that sin will certainly ensue.” These words are
found in his treatise on Original Sin. In his Essay on Freedom of
the Will, he adds a doctrine of causation which we must repudiate:
“The essence of virtue and vice, as they exist in the disposition
of the heart, and are manifested in the acts of the will, lies not
in their _Cause_ but in their _Nature_.” We reply that sin could
not be condemnable in its nature, if God and not man were its
cause.

Robert Browning, Mihrab Shah: “Wherefore should any evil hap to
man—From ache of flesh to agony of soul—Since God’s All-mercy
mates All-potency? Nay, why permits he evil to himself—man’s sin,
accounted such? Suppose a world purged of all pain, with fit
inhabitant—Man pure of evil in thought, word and deed—were it not
well? Then, wherefore otherwise?” Fairbairn answers the question,
as follows, in his Christ in Modern Theology, 456—“Evil once
intended may be vanquished by being allowed; but were it hindered
by an act of annihilation, then the victory would rest with the
evil which had compelled the Creator to retrace his steps. And, to
carry the prevention backward another stage, if the possibility of
evil had hindered the creative action of God, then he would have
been, as it were, overcome by its very shadow. But why did he
create a being capable of sinning? Only so could he create a being
capable of obeying. The ability to do good implies the capability
of doing evil. The engine can neither obey nor disobey, and the
creature who was without this double ability might be a machine,
but could be no child. Moral perfection can be attained, but
cannot be created; God can make a being capable of moral action,
but not a being with all the fruits of moral action garnered
within him.”

(_c_) The difficulty is therefore one which in substance clings to all theistic systems alike—the question why moral evil is permitted under the government of a God infinitely holy, wise, powerful, and good. This problem is, to our finite powers, incapable of full solution, and must remain to a great degree shrouded in mystery. With regard to it we can only say:

Negatively,—that God does not permit moral evil because he is not unalterably opposed to sin; nor because moral evil was unforeseen and independent of his will; nor because he could not have prevented it in a moral system. Both observation and experience, which testify to multiplied instances of deliverance from sin without violation of the laws of man’s being, forbid as to limit the power of God.

Positively,—we seem constrained to say that God permits moral evil because moral evil, though in itself abhorrent to his nature, is yet the incident of a system adapted to his purpose of self-revelation; and further, because it is his wise and sovereign will to institute and maintain this system of which moral evil is an incident, rather than to withhold his self-revelation or to reveal himself through another system in which moral evil should be continually prevented by the exercise of divine power.

There are four questions which neither Scripture nor reason
enables us completely to solve and to which we may safely say that
only the higher knowledge of the future state will furnish the
answers. These questions are, first, how can a holy God permit
moral evil? secondly, how could a being created pure ever fall?
thirdly, how can we be responsible for inborn depravity? fourthly,
how could Christ justly suffer? The first of these questions now
confronts us. A complete theodicy (Θεός, God, and δική, justice)
would be a vindication of the justice of God in permitting the
natural and moral evil that exists under his government. While a
complete theodicy is beyond our powers, we throw some light upon
God’s permission of moral evil by considering (1) that freedom of
will is necessary to virtue; (2) that God suffers from sin more
than does the sinner; (3) that, with the permission of sin, God
provided a redemption; and, (4) that God will eventually overrule
all evil for good.

It is possible that the elect angels belong to a moral system in
which sin is prevented by constraining motives. We cannot deny
that God could prevent sin in a moral system. But it is very
doubtful whether God could prevent sin in the _best_ moral system.
The most perfect freedom is indispensable to the attainment of the
highest virtue. Spurgeon: “There could have been no moral
government without permission to sin. God could have created
blameless puppets, but they could have had no virtue.” Behrends:
“If moral beings were incapable of perversion, man would have had
all the virtue of a planet,—that is, no virtue at all.” Sin was
permitted, then, only because it could be overruled for the
greatest good. This greatest good, we may add, is not simply the
highest nobility and virtue of the creature, but also the
revelation of the Creator. But for sin, God’s justice and God’s
mercy alike would have been unintelligible to the universe. E. G.
Robinson: “God could not have revealed his character so well
without moral evil as with moral evil.”

Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, tells us that it was God’s plan to
make man in his own image: “To create man, and then leave him
Able, his own word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him
too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all
unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made
perfect as a thing of course.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 268-270,
324, holds that sin and wickedness is an absolute evil, but an
evil permitted to exist because the effacement of it would mean
the effacement at the same time both for God and man, of the
possibility of reaching the highest spiritual good. See also
Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:108; Momerie, Origin of Evil; St.
Clair, Evil Physical and Moral; Voysey, Mystery of Pain, Death and
Sin.

C. G. Finney, Skeletons of a Course of Theological Studies, 26,
27—“Infinite goodness, knowledge and power imply only that, if a
universe were made, it would be the best that was naturally
possible.” To say that God could not be the author of a universe
in which there is so much of evil, he says, “assumes that a better
universe, upon the whole, was a natural possibility. It assumes
that a universe of moral beings could, under a moral government
administered in the wisest and best manner, be wholly restrained
from sin; but this needs proof, and never can be proved.... The
best possible universe may not be the best conceivable universe.
Apply the legal maxim, ‘The defendant is to have the benefit of
the doubt, and that in proportion to the established character of
his reputation.’ There is so much clearly indicating the
benevolence of God, that we may _believe_ in his benevolence,
where we cannot _see_ it.”

For advocacy of the view that God cannot prevent evil in a moral
system, see Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 17; Young, The Mystery,
or Evil not from God; Bledsoe, Theodicy; N. W. Taylor, Moral
Government, 1:288-349; 2:327-356. According to Dr. Taylor’s view,
God has not a complete control over the moral universe; moral
agents can do wrong under every possible influence to prevent it;
God prefers, all things considered, that all his creatures should
be holy and happy, and does all in his power to make them so; the
existence of sin is not on the whole for the best; sin exists
because God cannot prevent it in a moral system; the blessedness
of God is actually impaired by the disobedience of his creatures.
For criticism of these views, see Tyler, Letters on the New Haven
Theology, 129, 219. Tyler argues that election and non-election
imply power in God to prevent sin; that _permitting_ is not mere
_submitting_ to something which he could not possibly prevent. We
would add that as a matter of fact God has preserved holy angels,
and that there are “just men” who have been “made perfect” (_Heb.
12:23_) without violating the laws of moral agency. We infer that
God could have so preserved Adam. The history of the church leads
us to believe that there is no sinner so stubborn that God cannot
renew his heart,—even a Saul can be turned into a Paul. We
hesitate therefore to ascribe limits to God’s power. While Dr.
Taylor held that God could not prevent sin in _a_ moral system,
that is, in _any_ moral system, Dr. Park is understood to hold the
greatly preferable view that God cannot prevent sin in the _best_
moral system. Flint, Christ’s Kingdom upon Earth, 59—“The
alternative is, not evil or no evil, but evil or the miraculous
prevention of evil.” See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:406-422.

But even granting that the present is the best moral system, and
that in such a system evil cannot be prevented consistently with
God’s wisdom and goodness, the question still remains how the
decree to initiate such a system can consist with God’s
fundamental attribute of holiness. Of this insoluble mystery we
must say as Dr. John Brown, in Spare Hours, 273, says of Arthur H.
Hallam’s Theodicæa Novissima: “As was to be expected, the
tremendous subject remains where he found it. His glowing love and
genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom, but it is as
brief as the lightning in the collied night—the jaws of darkness
do devour it up—this secret belongs to God. Across its deep and
dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, ‘all
dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,’ no steady ray has ever or will
ever come; over its face its own darkness must brood, till he to
whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the
night shineth as the day, says ‘Let there be light!’ ”

We must remember, however, that the decree of redemption is as old
as the decree of the apostasy. The provision of salvation in
Christ shows at how great a cost to God was permitted the fall of
the race in Adam. He who ordained sin ordained also an atonement
for sin and a way of escape from it. Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
1:388—“The permission of sin has cost God more than it has man. No
sacrifice and suffering on account of sin has been undergone by
any man, equal to that which has been endured by an incarnate God.
This shows that God is not acting selfishly in permitting it.” On
the permission of moral evil, see Butler, Analogy, Bohn’s ed.,
177, 232—“The Government of God, and Christianity, as Schemes
imperfectly Comprehended”; Hill, System of Divinity, 528-559;
Ulrici, art.: Theodicée, in Herzog’s Encyclopädie; Cunningham,
Historical Theology, 2:416-489; Patton, on Retribution and the
Divine Purpose, in Princeton Rev., 1878:16-23; Bib. Sac,
20:471-488; Wood, The Witness of Sin.

IV. Concluding Remarks.

1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.

(_a_) It inspires humility by its representation of God’s unsearchable counsels and absolute sovereignty. (_b_) It teaches confidence in him who has wisely ordered our birth, our death, and our surroundings, even to the minutest particulars, and has made all things work together for the triumph of his kingdom and the good of those who love him; (_c_) It shows the enemies of God that, as their sins have been foreseen and provided for in God’s plan, so they can never, while remaining in their sins, hope to escape their decreed and threatened penalty. (_d_) It urges the sinner to avail himself of the appointed means of grace, if he would be counted among the number of those for whom God has decreed salvation.

This doctrine is one of those advanced teachings of Scripture
which requires for its understanding a matured mind and a deep
experience. The beginner in the Christian life may not see its
value or even its truth, but with increasing years it will become
a staff to lean upon. In times of affliction, obloquy, and
persecution, the church has found in the decrees of God, and in
the prophecies in which these decrees are published, her strong
consolation. It is only upon the basis of the decrees that we can
believe that “all things work together for good”_ (Rom. 8:28)_ or
pray “Thy will be done”_ (Mat. 6:10)_.

It is a striking evidence of the truth of the doctrine that even
Arminians pray and sing like Calvinists. Charles Wesley, the
Arminian, can write: “He wills that I should holy be—What can
withstand his will? The counsel of his grace in me He surely will
fulfill.” On the Arminian theory, prayer that God will soften hard
hearts is out of place,—the prayer should be offered to the
sinner; for it is his will, not God’s, that is in the way of his
salvation. And yet this doctrine of Decrees, which at first sight
might seem to discourage effort, is the greatest, in fact is the
only effectual, incentive to effort. For this reason Calvinists
have been the most strenuous advocates of civil liberty. Those who
submit themselves most unreservedly to the sovereignty of God are
most delivered from the fear of man. Whitefield the Calvinist, and
not Wesley the Arminian, originated the great religious movement
in which the Methodist church was born (see McFetridge, Calvinism
in History, 153), and Spurgeon’s ministry has been as fruitful in
conversions as Finney’s. See Froude, Essay on Calvinism; Andrew
Fuller, Calvinism and Socinianism compared in their Practical
Effects; Atwater, Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton
Review, 1876:73; J. A. Smith, Historical Lectures.

Calvinism logically requires the separation of Church and State:
though Calvin did not see this, the Calvinist Roger Williams did.
Calvinism logically requires a republican form of government:
Calvin introduced laymen into the government of the church, and
the same principle requires civil liberty as its correlate.
Calvinism holds to individualism and the direct responsibility of
the individual to God. In the Netherlands, in Scotland, in
England, in America, Calvinism has powerfully influenced the
development of civil liberty. Ranke: “John Calvin was virtually
the founder of America.” Motley: “To the Calvinists more than to
any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland,
England and America are due.” John Fiske, The Beginnings of New
England: “Perhaps not one of the mediæval popes was more despotic
than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the promulgation of
his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind have taken
towards personal freedom.... It was a religion fit to inspire men
who were to be called to fight for freedom, whether in the marshes
of the Netherlands or on the moors of Scotland.”

Æsop, when asked what was the occupation of Zeus, replied: “To
humble the exalted and to exalt the humble.” “I accept the
universe,” said Margaret Fuller. Some one reported this remark to
Thomas Carlyle. “Gad! she’d better!” he replied. Dr. John Watson
(Ian McLaren): “The greatest reinforcement religion could have in
our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the
sovereignty of God.” Whittier: “All is of God that is and is to
be, And God is good. Let this suffice us still Resting in
childlike trust upon his will Who moves to his great ends
unthwarted by the ill.” Every true minister preaches Arminianism
and prays Calvinism. This means simply that there is more, in
God’s love and in God’s purposes, than man can state or
comprehend. Beecher called Spurgeon a camel with one
hump—Calvinism. Spurgeon called Beecher a camel without any hump:
“He does not know what he believes, and you never know where to
find him.”

Arminians sing: “Other refuge have I none; Hangs my helpless soul
on thee”; yet John Wesley wrote to the Calvinist Toplady, the
author of the hymn: “Your God is my devil.” Calvinists replied
that it was better to have the throne of the universe vacant than
to have it filled by such a pitiful nonentity as the Arminians
worshiped. It was said of Lord Byron that all his life he believed
in Calvinism, and hated it. Oliver Wendell Holmes similarly, in
all his novels except Elsie Venner, makes the orthodox thinblooded
and weakkneed, while his heretics are all strong in body. Dale,
Ephesians, 52—“Of the two extremes, the suppression of man which
was the offense of Calvinism, and the suppression of God which was
the offense against which Calvinism so fiercely protested, the
fault and error of Calvinism was the nobler and grander.... The
most heroic forms of human courage, strength and righteousness
have been found in men who in their theology seemed to deny the
possibility of human virtue and made the will of God the only real
force in the universe.”

2. True method of preaching the doctrine.

(_a_) We should most carefully avoid exaggeration or unnecessarily obnoxious statement. (_b_) We should emphasize the fact that the decrees are not grounded in arbitrary will, but in infinite wisdom. (_c_) We should make it plain that whatever God does or will do, he must from eternity have purposed to do. (_d_) We should illustrate the doctrine so far as possible by instances of completeness and far-sightedness in human plans of great enterprises. (_e_) We may then make extended application of the truth to the encouragement of the Christian and the admonition of the unbeliever.

For illustrations of foresight, instance Louis Napoleon’s planning
the Suez Canal, and declaring his policy as Emperor, long before
he ascended the throne of France. For instances of practical
treatment of the theme in preaching, see Bushnell, Sermon on Every
Man’s Life a Plan of God, in Sermons for the New Life; Nehemiah
Adams, Evenings with the Doctrines, 243; Spurgeon’s Sermon on _Ps.
44:3—_“Because thou hadst a favor unto them.” Robert Browning,
Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in
his hand Who saith ‘A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust
God: See all nor be afraid!’ ”

Shakespeare, King Lear, 1:2—“This is the excellent foppery of the
world that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our
own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon
and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by
heavenly compulsion, and all that we are evil in by a divine
thrusting on; an admirable evasion of man to lay his disposition
to the charge of a star!” All’s Well: “Our remedies oft in
ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives
us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we
ourselves are dull.” Julius Cæsar, 1:2—“Men at some time are
masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our
stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”