The Difficult Doctrine of the Will of God

Some years ago, Don Carson wrote a short and important small book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. In that book he explains how what may appear to be the most straightforward of doctrines, that the God of the Bible is a God of love is, in fact, quite a difficult doctrine once we explore its various implications. 

If Dr Carson was so inclined, I'm sure he could write another book called The Difficult Doctrine of the Will of God.

God's will is an area of theology that might appear to be straightforward at first glance. Isn't the will of God simply what God wants? Well yes, but it is a lot more complicated than that. Whatever else it is, the doctrine concerning God's will is actually far from simple or straightforward once we begin to explore the subject in some depth. And even as simple a definition as 'what God wants' requires much exploration and careful balancing of various parts of the biblical evidence to create a rounded doctrine of the will of God.

The Will of God is One 

The first point that needs clarified is that God truly has but one will. God does not have two separate or conflicting wills. He is not divided in himself. Not only does this truth flow from the simplicity of God, but it also from the express truths of Scripture.

The Appearance of Two Wills in God

Although in himself God only has one will, yet in appearance to his us, his creatures, God's will is customarily discussed as having two senses.

The theologians discuss these two senses of God's will in a number of different ways, each of which is valid and useful. They all view the same distinction in the will of God in similar ways; yet, each has a distinct element also.

1. The Secret Will and the Revealed Will (Voluntas Arcana and Voluntas Revelata)

2. The Decretive Will (Will of Decree or The Sovereign Efficacious Will) and the Preceptive Will (Will of Precept or Command)

3. The Will of Good Will (Voluntas Beneplaciti) and the Will of Sign (Voluntas Signi)

4. The Will of God's Purpose and the Will of God's Delight (also called the Will of Good Pleasure (Eudokia) and the Will of Complacency (Euarestia).

There is a similarity between each of these types of distinction. They all involve the word "will" being used in different senses.

In some ways the secret/revealed will distinction is the least useful or accurate. The secret will is God's sovereign will which is always accomplished. The revealed will is what God wants us to do in order to please him. So, for example, God's revealed will is clear that he does not want us to murder; yet his secret will permits murders to happen every day. The main issue for me with this terminology is that God has revealed that he has a secret will (i.e. that he has a sovereign decree) and so although the details of it may be secret prior to events happening, the fact that he has such a will is no secret. 

For this reason, I prefer the distinction between a will of decree and a will of precept or command. This makes the same point as the secret/revealed will distinction, but in a clearer more accurate manner.

God's will in one sense is what his commands and prohibitions say. Do not steal is God's will. Preach the gospel to every creature is God's will—in the preceptive sense. But in the decretive sense, God's will is what ordains everything that comes to pass. Both types of will ultimately spring from the character and attributes of God, though the will of decree includes within it things that God chooses to permit that he does not approve of, for a greater purpose.

The distinction between the Voluntas Beneplaciti and the Voluntas Signi is very similar, with the former being the decree and the latter being the will of command.

Likewise, the will of God's purpose is the decree and the will of God's delight is his preceptive or revealed will.

All of these distinctions recognise that although God's will is one, there are two senses in which Scripture talks of the will of God. 

In all instances, in one sense, God's will is what he decrees to take place, what his purpose represents, and it is all encompassing, including things which God does not like or approve of. He permits sin to occur for his own purposes, including ultimately to manifest his own glory in the display of his justice and wrath. All things that happen are God's will in this sense. Yet we may not utilise the fact that something happened to conclude that it is God's will in the other sense of being something God approves of, delights in, or enjoys.

If we want to get an idea of what God likes, delights in, approves of, or wants us to do. If we would seek to please God by our actions, then we must look to the revealed will, the preceptive will, the will of the sign, the will of God's delight. We dare not try to extract this from analysing God's decree, since it includes both what God delights in, and what God detests. The revealed will of God is our guide for how God wants us to live.

If God's word commands us, guides us, invites us or asks us, we can be sure that such an action as complies with God's word pleases him. Likewise, if God's word commands us not to, warns us, forbids us, then we can be sure than doing what God commands us not to do will displease God and refraining from any prohibition pleases him.  

The Simple and the Complex Sense

Another useful distinction made by theologians regarding God's will is known as the simple and complex (or compound) senses. The Reformed theologian, Francis Turretin, deals with this in his Institutes.

As I understand the concept, the simple sense involves looking at an event in isolation, as an event in itself. The complex or compound sense involves looking at the thing in relation to everything else.

The value of this insight is obvious when we look at some examples. Take for example the murder of a person. In the simple sense, God clearly condemns and opposes the unlawful taking of a human life. However, in the complex sense, God does permit murders to take place for his own ultimate purposes. Similarly, in the simple sense God wills that everyone who hears the gospel would respond in faith and find salvation in Christ. Yet in the compound sense, God wills only to save his chosen ones, the elect, and not to save everyone who hears the gospel. This is not mere double-talk. We must remember that the simple sense looks at each event as a thing in itself where the complex sense looks at the overall picture, including all things.

This approach is essentially that adapted by John Piper, who talks about looking at God's will in a narrow lens and a wide-angled lens. God can, in this way, be said to desire the salvation of all, viewed in the simple or narrow lens, but only to desire the salvation of the elect in the wide-angled sense, because although in a sense God desires to save all, his desire to glorify himself in the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate is his highest motivation.  

Delight, Desire and Wishes

A final distinction worth mentioning is another important one. The distinction is between God's constitutional attitudes and God's volitions. The former are part of God's nature but need not be part of God's actual will. The latter also stem from God's nature but are also part of God's volition, his will.

The distinction recognises that God may have delight in certain things, and desires or wishes for certain ends that stem only from his constitution or nature but are not part of his sovereign or decretive will, though such desires may find expression the revealed or preceptive will. 

Conclusions

It will be clear from these descriptions that there is a close relationship between what has alternatively been called God's constitutional attitudes in his nature, the simple sense and "revealed" or "preceptive" "will" of God. Likewise there is a correlation between God's volitional choices, the complex or compound sense, and God's sovereign will or the will of decree.

Bearing these distinctions in mind helps us safely and accurately chart a course through the Bible and all that the Scriptures teach concerning the will of God. When we forget these distinctions or blur them or flatten them out we will run into serious theological errors if not heresy. This is one of the false trails that all those who deny God's decree take. They oversimplify and fail to take into account all the Scriptures teach. 

Reformed theology, on the other hand, gives full scope to the entirety of Scripture regarding this difficult doctrine of the will of God. 

Supralapsarian Links

The following is a list of links to supralapsarian resources online. It should not be presumed that I agree either with the contents of these links, far less with other things these authors may have written, but I think they are useful in seeing what supralapsarians really believe. My own views are what I term a kind of "modified supralapsarianism" as outlined here which seeks to take into account some of the infralapsarian criticisms of standard supralapsarianism.

"Supralapsarianism" by Bernard Woudenberg: https://sb.rfpa.org/supralapsarianism/

"Suprlapsarianism is not a dirty word": https://www.apostolictheology.org/2013/01/supralapsarianism-its-not-dirty-word.html 

"Why Is Supralapsarianism The Correct View": https://www.baptists.net/history/2022/08/21-bible-doctrine-why-is-supralapsarianism-the-correct-view/ 

"Why Is Supralapsarianism An Important Issue?": https://www.baptists.net/history/2022/08/22-bible-doctrine-why-is-supralapsarianism-an-important-issue/

 "Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism" by Herman Bavinck: https://www.the-highway.com/Bavinck_predestination2.html. Note that Bavinck gives pros and cons for each view and ultimately rejects both attempts to put the decrees in any order as all are eternal.

"Did God Foreordain Evil and Evil Doers?" by Al Baker: https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2010/did-god-foreordain-evil-and-evil-doers/

"Super Supralapsarianism" by Al Baker: https://banneroftruth.org/uk/resources/articles/2010/super-supralapsarianism/

"Supralapsarianism Preferable" by Herman Hoeksema: https://cprc.co.uk/articles/supralapsarianism/ 

"Supralapsarianism and Its Practical Implications" by Ward Fenley: https://www.pristinegrace.org/article.php?id=768 

"Supralapsarianism" by Vincent Cheung: https://www.vincentcheung.com/2010/05/11/supralapsarianism/ 

"The Counsel of God (11): Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism" by Herman Veldman: https://sb.rfpa.org/the-counsel-of-god-11-supralapsarianism-and-infralapsarianism/

A List of Supralapsarians: https://www.semperreformanda.com/theology/eschatology/list-of-supralapsarians-by-supralapsarian/

These links were working at the time this post was published. 

Modified Supralapsarianism

I have recently been thinking about the order of God's decrees and after much thought, I have decided that the correct view is probably what I would term a modified form of supralapsarianism. Though infralapsarianism is certainly the view taught in the Reformed confessions, such as the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Confession, it is also true that these confessions, particularly the Westminster Confession, certainly leave room for supralapsarianism as well, particularly as I will outline it in this post.  

As we will consider, there are significant problems with aspects of both the standard infralapsarian presentation and the standard supralapsarian view. As a result, I propose a modified view, which we will now discuss as a modified form of supralapsarianism which builds on the best points of both infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism.

It was only after forming this view independently that I came to understand that something very like the view presented here was held historically by some who identify as supralapsarians such as the Dutch theologian, Peter van Mastricht (as explained here by Geerhardus Vos).

The differences between the two views should not be overemphasised anyway. Both infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism agree that the creation, fall, election and reprobation are all included within God's all-encompassing decree. The only differences concern the logical order of the elements within the eternal decree, not a chronology as such. In both views, all the parts of the decree—creation, fall, election and reprobation—are eternal.

The view advocated here suggests a pre- or supralapsarian aspect to God's decree, a discrimination in the mind of God, so to speak, between one group who would ultimately be saved and another who would ultimately be lost, prior to the logical decision to create or permit the fall, but this is combined with a post- or infralapsarian view of the election of individuals into the two groups, the elect for salvation in Christ and the preterition or rejection of individuals and the decision to punish them for their sins.

The standard infralapsarian order of the decrees (or of the logical moments with a all-encompassing decree) is as follows:

• Decree to create humanity 
• Decree to permit the fall 
• Decree to elect some of the fallen mass of humanity to salvation and decree to reprobate the remainder of humanity to condemnation 
• Decree to provide and accomplish salvation for the elect in Christ.
  

This order tracks the same order as the events play out in time and history beginning with creation then fall then election then salvation.

Though this is by far the most common presentation among Calvinists, it has significant problems, which we can list as follows:

1. The planning of God appears to follow exactly the same as the historical order plays out in time, but in planning a final goal the end point is decided first and then the steps to reach the end goal. A analogy would be a baker. He first decides to bake a cake and then assembles the ingredients, weighs them out, mixes them before putting the mixture in the oven to achieve the final aim. He does not take out ingredients and begin to mix them up and then finally decide to bake a cake!
   
2. What is the purpose of God in creation and permitting the fall if the decree of salvation only comes in after these two decisions have already been made? The normal infralapsarian order does not account for why God permitted the Fall to take place.
   
3. This order of decrees does not include the overarching purpose of all things being for the glory of the triune God in the display of his attributes of justice and grace.

The most common supralapsarian order of the decrees is as follows, and though this helps answer these questions, it is not without issues of its own difficulties: 

• Decree to provide and accomplish salvation for the elect in Christ.
• Decree to elect some for salvation and reprobate others to condemnation
• Decree to create the elect and the reprobate
• Decree to permit the fall

This answers the problems of infralapsarian. Here creation and fall serve a prior and higher purpose to have elect to save and reprobate to condemn which will bring God glory. Here the order is the reverse of the historical playing out of the decrees. This order ties in better with God’s primary concern to display his own glory and the final state of the elect and the non-elect is foremost in God’s mind. However, the traditional supralapsarian scheme also has its own significant problems.

1. If the decree to create comes after the decree of predestination of individuals, how can there be individuals to elect or reprobate if their creation has not even been contemplated. This would seem to be a significant problem. Yet if the separation of elect and non-elect only happens after contemplation of their creation, then their creation must have been contemplated with another purpose in mind which seems contrary to the spirit of supralapsarianism.
   
2. The supralapsarian view has more difficulty avoiding charges of God creating people and then predestining them to damnation without first regarding them as sinful, indeed without any reference to sin, potentially making the purpose of God unjust, which cannot be.
3. The supralapsarian view tends to see creation merely as a means to an end, rather than having any independent divine purpose for the display of the divine glory in its own right.
   
4. The supralapsarian view posits a divide between elect and reprobate individuals that precedes and overrides any other consideration. This can make it difficult for supralapsarians to account for biblical passages that speak of God's love and goodness for all shown in common grace and mercy.
5. The supralapsarian view can sometimes be presented in a way that lacks nuance in presenting the elect as the recipients only of grace and the reprobate the recipients only of wrath and justice, when the reality of the divine decree is that the elect were children of wrath as much as the non-elect prior to their conversion and the non-elect remain recipients of divine benevolence and goodness despite their rejection for salvation.
   

A modfied supralapsarian position, which seeks to take the best of both traditional positions, could be set forth as follows: 

• Decree to glorify the triune God himself in the display of all his attributes and in the works of all persons of the Trinity in creaton, providence, the fall, salvation and condemnation.
• Decree to have two groups of people, one in covenant with him through Christ and the Holy Spirit and receiving salvation and the other outside of covenant with him and receiving condemnation and punishment (but without any individuals in either group). 
• Decree to create the world and humanity in God’s image – displaying God’s greatness, wisdom, glory, imagination, creativity, etc.
• Decree to permit the fall. 
• Decree to elect some individuals of the fallen mass of humanity to salvation and decree to reprobate the remainder of the individuals of humanity to condemnation (this part of the decree does concern individuals viewed as sinners)
• Decree to provide and accomplish salvation for the elect in Christ.

It will be noted that the additional two points helps explain the purpose of the creation and the permission of the fall, while the remaining points follow the traditional infralapsarian order, all to God's primary purpose of glorifying himself and sharing the life of the Godhead with his image bearers in covenant with himself in supralapsarian manner. 

  

The key distinction in this scheme lies between God decreeing to have a saved covenant people and a non-saved group outside the covenant and this distinction and part of the decree is made prior to contemplating the fall and God determining which individuals will be elected for salvation, leaving others to be reprobated and condemned (which occurs only after the individuals are considered as fallen and sinful individuals). We could call this scheme a kind of hybrid with a kind of supralapsarian corporate election and reprobation, but a logically subsequent infralapsarian individual election of individuals and the reprobation only of sinful individuals. For this reason, I believe this remains a modified form on supralapsarianism, though it could equally be viewed as a modified form of infralapsarianism. It is distinct from either traditional presentation of the two views after all.

The fundamental objections to infralapsarianism are answered in this scheme without falling into the harshness of the traditional supralapsarian scheme because at the point individuals are elected or reprobated they are viewed in the divine mind as sinners, undeserving of salvation and deserving damnation:

1. That creation and the fall do serve a prior purpose of God in glorifying himself, displaying certain of his attributes and bringing about individuals to be elected and reprobated.
   
2. The order of events in time occur to bring about prior determined aspects of the decree (to have a covenant people in Christ and a non-covenant remainder of humanity to God's own glory)
3. This view is clear that any individual is only elected to salvation or passed by and condemned when viewed as a sinner, not merely a creature.
4. This view makes it clear that although there is double predestination, there is no equal ultimacy between the choosing of the elect and the reprobation of the non-elect. Election is a positive act; reprobation is a passive passing by and only an active judicial condemnation for sin.
5. Although this view sees a distinction between two groups from the first, there is not reason to reject a universal love and common grace to all humanity under this scheme, nor does it affect the free offer of the gospel being made to all.
   

This view recognises that what the ultimate goal is first in logical order and then the steps to reach the goal follow in the plan in historical order. It recognises that in the planning, the planner must also consider what the correct historical order of events needs to be to reach the goal.

It will be interesting to see what other Reformed theologians have made of this issue where they are infralapsarian but seek to address some of the objections to this view. I know that the great Dutch Reformed theologian, Herman Bavinck, rejected both supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, believing that God's decree is one organic whole. I would agree with this to a point, except that it seems necessary to account within the single decree for the logical decisions God must have made. As with the previous cake analogy, it is difficult to see how God would not first choose the ends he wants and then the means to achieve those ends (this is the essence of the supralapsarian view of course), yet the cake recipe also requires the steps to be ordered in the correct way that leads from assembling and weighting ingredients to the final cake. Most importantly, this view is clear that God elects and rejects actual fallen individual human beings, not just created human beings. 

Therefore, though sovereign, God cannot be regarded as unjust or arbitrary. His grace and mercy to the elect is truly grace and mercy shown to undeserving sinners and His justice and wrath to the reprobabte is truly justice and holy wrath shown to hell-deserving sinners. Thus the harsher aspects of supralapsarianism are avoided, but also the weakness of the traditional infralapsarian view which struggles to explain God's purpose in the creation and the permission of the fall.

The Creator of Evil or the Author of Sin?

Scripture contains many apparent contradictions. And let's be frank, it is these apparent contradictions that give rise to many of the theological differences and disputes among evangelical Christians.

To give just two examples. Firstly, there is an apparent contradiction between John 3:16 where God is said to "love the world" and Psalm 5:5 where God is said to "hate all who do wrong". Secondly, there is an apparent contradiction between Daniel 4:35 which indicates God is absolutely sovereign over all things: "He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: 'What have you done?'" and verses like Luke 7:30 where "The Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves" or Matthew 23:37 where Christ says over the city of Jerusalem: "How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing." Whatever way you look at it, these are at least apparent contradictions.

Now, for liberal scholarship, apparent contradictions do not represent much of a problem. The answer of liberal scholarship is that the contradictions are real since the Bible is more-or-less deemed to be the product of merely human writers each with their own ideas and views of God, humanity and the world. Liberal scholarship has no problem with the fact that Isaiah's and Ezekiel's or Paul's and Peter's theology contradict each other. It's no less surprising for liberal theology that two biblical authors should disagree than it is for Calvin and Arminius or Wright and Piper to disagree. However, for evangelical scholarship, apparent contradictions represent a real problem whenever we seek to interpret Scripture. Because we believe that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) and therefore behind the different human authors is the voice of the one divine author, we evangelicals have to accept that any contradictions in Scripture are only apparent not real. 

In this post we are going to look at one such example and see how we might go about resolving the apparent difficulties.

Isaiah 45:7 reads in the NIV (with God speaking): "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster;  I, the Lord, do all these things." The word translated "prosperity" is the rich Hebrew word shalom, often translated as "peace" though it can also mean wholeness, well-being, health. More significantly for our discussion, the word translated as "disaster" is the Hebrew word ra which is often translated as "evil" or "wickedness". In the King James Version, the verse reads: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

A number of translations have perhaps sought to soften Isaiah's words by indicating that the "evil" concerned is what might be called "natural evil" and so the NIV has "disaster". Other translations have "woe" or "calamity" here, suggesting that the evil is not moral evil or wickedness. I am not arguing against this view. The context might well point in that direction. 

However, many Calvinists believe Isaiah 45:7 is a proof text that God is in total, meticulous and sovereign control of everything that happens whether it be good or evil in all senses of the words. I was quite surprised to find Bruce Ware doing this in his book God's Greater Glory. Ware argues quite strongly that to deny God's providential hand in all things including evil (and not just in the sense of allowing evil or merely permitting it) is to deny the plain meaning of a text like Isaiah 45:7. He even points out how the same word for "create" (bara) that is used solely for God's activity in creation (e.g. Genesis 1:1) is used here of evil. For Ware the "evil" of Isaiah 45:7 is definitely something God creates.

Okay, so on that basis, if God creates evil - and it is not just hurricanes and floods we are talking about here - then we have a real problem, don't we? We have a glaring apparent contradiction with other verses in Scripture.

If God in a sense creates evil how does this square with a cardinal point of Reformed (and indeed all reputable evangelical theologies) that God is in no way the author of sin? The Westminster Confession of Faith is typical of Reformed creeds in stating: "God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is, nor can be, the author or approver of sin." (WCF 5.4)

That God cannot be the author of sin is abundantly clear in Scripture, not only in all the verses that speak of his all-good, all-loving and all-holy character, but many times quite explicitly as well.

1 John 1:5 reads: "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." 

Habakkuk 1:13 speaks to God thus: "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing." 

The Psalmist notes in Psalm 5:4 (NKJV): "For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,
Nor shall evil dwell with You."

And James 1:13 is very clear: "God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone."

Finally 1 John 2:16 states: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."

So then how do we resolve the problem of Isaiah saying that God creates moral evil and these other verses showing that God cannot tolerate sin, far less be the author of sin, which is of course moral evil?

The most common way is to adopt the view we've looked at already that the evil spoken of in Isaiah 45:7 is not moral evil or sin but natural "evil" in the sense of natural disasters, fatal diseases, etc. This would seem to me to be a reasonable approach and it taken by many Calvinists, such as John MacArthur. But for other Calvinists, like Bruce Ware and Gordon Clark, such an approach is unacceptable because they hold the view that everything that occurs is God's will (is part of God's purpose or plan). The idea that moral evil is totally outside the scope of what God creates, or is outside the scope of God's plans or purposes in any sense (even by only allowing it), is a non-starter for Christian theology.

But let us assume Ware is correct that Isaiah 45:7 is talking about all kinds of evil, moral as well as natural. Personally I actually think he is correct in this and the King James Version translates it accurately. I think Isaiah's high doctrine of divine sovereignty displayed throughout chapters 40-48 would indicate he meant that God is sovereign over all kinds of evil. If this is so, then how can we harmonise this verse's teaching that God somehow "creates" evil though Scripture is clear that he is in no sense the author of sin?

The only alternative I can see is to recognise the biblical concept that God, as Creator and Ruler of the universe, is regarded as taking a sovereign's responsibility for events that happen in his domain (in God's case, the universe), including evil events, even though he is not directly responsible for any evil. In the ancient world the concept was well-recognised that a king or potentate, as leader of a nation, bore some kind of official responsibility for the actions of those under his rule.

In this sense God is the "creator of evil" because he is the Creator of the universe including beings to whom he gave the ability to choose good or evil (and who consistently choose evil since the Fall). And even when he permits evil to occur, in his wisdom he can make use of evil to bring about good.

So here are two viable models for how to reconcile how God can create "evil" yet not be the "author of sin." First, it is possible that the "evil" referred to in Isaiah 45:7 concerns natural disasters and calamities rather than sin or wickedness. Second, even if the "evil" of Isaiah 45:7 does include sin and wickedness, God would only be the "creator" of such in the indirect sense in which he is creator of creatures he permits to commit sins, who are then solely morally responsible for those sins and wickedness. As ruler of the domain where those creatures carry out their actions "under his watch" so to speak and for his providential purposes, which are always and only good.