“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will”   — Ephesians 1:11

Two main Greek words are used to speak of God’s will, that is boule and thelema. And these speak of two different bases for desire: boule having more to do with “rational and conscious desire,” and thelema with “an impulsive or unconscious desire.” And so naturally when the New Testament authors used these two words, predominantly the word boule was attached to concepts such as the “counsel of God,” such as in Acts 2:23, where “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan [boule] and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Here the emphasis is that the events of the crucifixion were settled from eternity out of God’s mind. It is similarly used in Acts 4:28, about all of the conspirators against Christ, “to do whatever your hand and your plan [boule] had predestined to take place.” Note that the ESV opts for the word “plan” in each case. Now thelema is a more diverse word because it can speak to both the emotional state that prefers, or the preference itself, or simply consent, though the thing may be less agreeable than another thing, still it is relatively agreeable. It is the heart’s “snapshot of the good” and not the whole picture.

Our opening verse, Ephesians 1:11, used both of these words, so that Paul is saying that God’s action of predestination is according to both the divine counsel (βουλὴν) and his good preference or pleasure (θελήματος).

It is in our section on Scripture that a more general distinction must be made, but one that is simpler than some of the others we will delve into. When it comes to how we know the will of God, we must distinguish between God’s revealed and hidden wills. Augustine used the language of the former: God’s good pleasure, secret, decretive; and of the latter: expressed, signified, revealed, perceptive. Other labels for these, while potentially synonymous and fitting, are subject to abuse: “antecedent and consequent,” “absolute and conditioned,” “efficacious and inefficacious.” These are important, but are not quite the same as revealed and hidden. Deuteronomy 29:29 is a verse we examined with respect to God’s incomprehensibility. It factors in here as well. There we read that,

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

We should remember this when coming to that will of God that regards his moral precepts. Special revelation is for attending to what God wants of us. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 3 asks, “What do the Scriptures principally teach?” Answer: “The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.” The practical application is already coming to the surface in this doctrine. 

God’s will is both a broader concept and a more narrow concept than his sovereignty or omnipotence, in that we are speaking of what God can do of his nature, rather than what he can do of his right and power. We will come to the questions of what all does God ordain and whether anything can thwart his will (under his sovereignty and omnipotence). For now, we are only getting a sense of what it means for God, such as we have seen him to be, to will at all. 

The Decretive, Prescriptive, and Permissive Senses

First, we must make a distinction between the 1. decretive will, 2. prescriptive will, and 3. permissive will of God. In the essence of God the decree is one, eternal, and immutable. All that God decrees will come to pass (Psa. 33:11, 115:3, Dan. 4:35, Eph. 1:11, Rom. 11:36). So God’s decretive will is that will in God himself. Now the prescriptive (or perceptive) will of God is what we see in his commands (or precepts), or what he “prescribes” of human behavior. We call this his “will” because it is what he demands of us, and so in that sense it is what he desires of moral creatures. Finally there is God’s permissive will, so named because it encompasses all those things that violate God’s prescriptive will and yet he “permits” to go on, at least for a time. This too belongs to God’s causation. After all, who would deny that God could stop any amount of evil that he wanted to?

These distinctions help us when difficult questions emerge about predestination and reprobation, or about the indicatives versus the imperatives: in other words, what shall be what you ought to do.

For example, the election of those to eternal life belongs to his decretive will. All statements about his will for the good of man, including their salvation, are general with respect to his prescriptive will. Relating God’s “foreknowledge” to God’s “foreordination,” does God know according to what he wills, or will according to what he knows? This is partly a false dilemma, but partly also a matter of a logical distinction of hierarchy. God’s knowledge and will are one essence, and so, considered in himself, he both knows according to will and wills according to what he knows. But the latter never means a knowledge dependent on that which is an effect. Peter Lombard asked the question, whether these created things are in God’s essence or through God’s essence. The answer is the latter. The same is true of evil things. God knows evil things through knowledge, but good things through knowledge and approbation and good pleasure [1].

We can say more about the decree itself (the decretive will). To decree means to command. In the case of God, whatever he speaks into existence will come to pass. God decrees every single thing that ever comes to pass (Psa. 33:11, 115:3, Dan. 4:35, Eph. 1:11, Rom. 11:36), from the greatest to the least thing (Prov. 16:33), from tragedy (Amos 3:6) to our greatest good (Rom. 8:28). Of this, Bavinck says that the will of God is “eternal, immutable, independent, and efficacious”; and “The actual will in God is the will of his good pleasure, identical with his being, and efficacious” [2]. In all classical theology there is an order spoken of with respect to the decree. The Socinians divided the decrees between those made before time and the majority made after the creation began.

But the reasons for holding to all the decrees as eternal are: (1) Scripture expressly ascribes eternity to them (Mat. 25:34, Eph. 1:4, 2 Tim. 1:9, 1 Pet. 1:20); (2) Scripture implies it from foreknowledge (Acts 15:18), since if the decrees are foreknown, and foreknowledge is eternal, then so are the decrees; and (3) temporal decisions imply deliberation.

Now deliberation implies ignorance and succession; but ignorance is opposed to omniscience, and succession is opposed to immutability and eternality. That there is an order to the decrees does not mean that some are eternal and others not. The order is logical and not chronological.

We must understand the permissive will as a function of the decretive will, a “circle” within the larger circle. In order to grasp this, we must understand this in terms of two ways by which God causes all that he causes: (1) efficiently, that is, by creating that which is not yet; and (2) permissively, that is, by withdrawing some operative grace from that which is, yet nonetheless upholding that being in existence to some lesser degree or altered state. 

One Will—Necessary and Free

The will of God is one: that is, simple. It is not one thing for God to will and another thing for God to be. The two are properly said to be a logical distinction and not a real distinction—that is, a distinction between two extra-mental and ontologically separable entities. This raises questions both about God’s freedom and about God’s triunity. As to whether God wills all that he does of necessity, Thomas answers that “There are two ways in which a thing is said to be necessary, namely, absolutely, and by supposition” [3]. So, for instance, it is necessary that God orders all things according to His goodness, yet it is not necessary that God creates a man; yet supposing he creates a man, he will order all things (whether in original creation, redemption, or restoration) in such a way as conforms to His goodness. Both are necessary, but the former has an absolute necessity and the latter a consequent necessity (or what Aquinas called a necessity “by supposition”). We will come back to this concept. 

Does God have libertarian free will? Some will say yes, understanding that to mean "uncaused by anything other than himself." However LFW means something a bit more specific than that. It means "the ability to do or do otherwise," specifically without any necessity of nature causing each choice. There is a way to reason this out in terms of classical theology. But the terms have too much baggage. The older Reformed thinkers (Turretin for example) would speak of the "liberty of indifference” by which God can do or do otherwise, but since God is eternal, immutable, simple, and so forth, this is never a freedom pit against the necessity of his whole essence.

If we go back to Thomas’ distinction between the absolutely necessary and the consequently necessary, what we find is that even of those things that did not have to be (God being under no necessity, but freely willing) that which is willed is only willed according to all that God is, so that God is both free to do this or to do that, but never “free” to do contrary to all that is in God, as such would not be a freedom but a contradiction. 

We must also add a word about the debate between realism and voluntarism. While realism and nominalism differed as to the ontological status of universals, voluntarism is the doctrine insisting that all created effects are what they are not according to nature but according to divine will. The realist will naturally detect a false dilemma. When God wills freely, he still makes a thing according to nature—that is, his own nature (Ps. 19:1-4; Rom. 1:20), the ectypes that form the objects of natural law patterned after the archetypes of divine ideas and divine attributes. Voluntarism is the product of a concern to protect God’s freedom to make any A over any ~A. Fair enough. But if indeed ~A was chosen instead, we can be sure that ~A would have had to be according to God’s nature every bit as much as A. In short, the voluntarist misses the point because he is a poor philosopher. And poor philosophers make poor theologians.

Bavinck speaks of the free and necessary will of God. “God’s will in relation to himself is his ‘propensity toward himself as a goal’; his will with respect to his creatures is his ‘propensity toward his creatures as means’” [4]. There is a link, Bavinck argues, between the voluntarism of Duns Scotus’ statement about the will willing and the kind of world God can will.

In a voluntarist conception of the will, no other reason or cause prior to the will. Another way to summarize their reasoning is in this way: If all created things are contingent, then the cause of God’s will must be accidental and not essential to him.

“The will, accordingly, is the cause of all reality” [5]. But, Bavinck says, Scotus did not go as far as Muslim apologists who held that Allah continues to create all thing, in such a way that no subsequent choice need have any connection to what came prior. Thus will would be all, and nature would be nil. Bavinck’s summary of Occam, along the same lines (assuming it to be accurate), would annihilate any objective “fittingness” between any two theological truths and undercuts any consequent necessity to the Incarnation, Atonement, or anything else. Each thing that comes to be would be wholly arbitrary. 

Objections to the Classical Doctrine of the Divine Will

We begin with two objections met by Aquinas, both of which may look simple enough at first, but which open up discussions on the concepts of pure act, as well as the possible ends for God’s decree. 

Objection 1. “It seems that God does not will things apart from Himself. For the divine will is the divine existence. But God is not other than Himself. Therefore He does not will things other than Himself.”

Reply Obj. 1. “The divine will is God’s own existence essentially, yet they differ in aspect, according to the different ways of understanding them and expressing them … For when we say that God exists, no relation to any other object is implied, as we do imply when we say that God wills. Therefore, although He is not anything apart from Himself, yet He does will things apart from Himself” [6].

Objection 2. Further, the willed moved the willer, as the appetible the appetite, as stated in De anima iii. 54. If, therefore, God wills anything apart from Himself, His will must be moved by another; which is impossible.”

Reply Obj. 2. “In things willed for the sake of the end, the whole reason for our being moved is the end, and this it is that moves the will, as most clearly appears in things willed only for the sake of the end. He who wills to take a bitter draught, in doing so wills nothing else than health; and this alone moves his will. It is different with one who takes a draught that is pleasant, which anyone may will to do, not only for the sake of health, but also for its own sake. Hence, although God wills things apart from Himself only for the sake of the end, which is His own goodness, it does not follow that anything else moves His will, except His goodness. So, as He understands things apart from Himself by understanding His own essence, so He wills things apart from Himself by willing His own goodness” [7].

Objection 3. “If all that comes to pass is by invincible decree, then God willed evil as well as the good. Therefore, God is the author of evil.” 

Reply Obj. 3. We will construct a full answer to this by combining this session on will, and the next few on God’s power and sovereignty. For now, let’s add a building block concerning divine will per se. Bavinck says this: “But though he wills all creatures as means and for his own sake, he wills some more than others to the degree they are more direct and suitable means for his glorification” [8]. He offers a useful analogy about a father wielding a knife and yet forbidding it to his son, explaining how God can will sin differently than he abhors and forbids it [9]. Finally, on this point, God’s revealed will and secret will are not opposed, as if the latter hates sin and the former approves. In fact the revealed realizes the hidden, and brings it to fruition.

Objection 4. “The will of God cannot be immutable, nor founded upon any knowledge other than foreknowledge of what humans would do; since the Scriptures give numerous examples of a promise or threat of God that, followed by different human response, were followed still by an altered divine response.” 

Reply Obj. 4. As Turretin said, “Unfulfilled promises and threatenings do not argue a change of will because they were conditional, not absolute” [10]. When man disobeys a condition set forth by God, what would natural follow the condition goes undone, but the decree is not overthrown. Of things that require a condition, and yet will not be fulfilled: “since God (who has all things in his own power) knows that such a condition will never take place (since he himself has not decreed it), he cannot be said to have decreed anything under that condition” [11].

Objection 5. “If the will of God is timeless and immutable, then this will is impersonal, since purpose is required for personal will. But purpose presupposes sequence and deliberation.”

 Reply Obj. 5. The objection is question-begging. Paul Helm pushes back against those who suppose that will and purpose imply an act that initiates within conscious sequence: “It does not follow from the claim that an eternal being does not purposefully initiate actions that such a being does not have purposes. He may have timeless purposes, purposes which are brought about in time, that is, in the temporal order of his creation” [12].

Practical Use of the Doctrine

We will consider two practical uses of this doctrine: (1) to know that every personal detail of life is intended by God; (2) to know that the gospel will of God is simple and immutable;

Use. 1. This doctrine is given to know that every personal detail of life is intended by God. For instance in Psalm 139: " Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether ... For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb ...  in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (v. 4, 13, 16)

Use. 2. This doctrine is given to know that the gospel will of God is simple and immutable. Reformed theologians speak of the covenant of redemption, that eternal pact made especially between the Father and the Son, which is seen to be the foundation for the whole covenant of grace in history. And while there is much mysterious, that we have left untouched, concerning the will of God as to its one essence, while granting three Persons, we can at least speak of the oneness of the plan as a certain foundation for every part of the gospel. If we come full circle to Ephesians 1, we see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the economy of redemption: each has a particular part of salvation that is proper to the Person. But what tells us that the Son will pick up where the Father left off? Or how do we know that the Spirit will apply what the Son accomplished?

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day (Jn. 6:38-40).

The whole of the salvation of the elect is not on a whim, but an all-controlling will. When we are done playing games with finite “free wills” and ready to deal with the weight of eternity, nothing but worship and thanksgiving for this truth will do.

______________________

1. Lombard, Sentences, Bk. I, d. 36

2. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:243, 244

3. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt.I. Q.19, Art.3

4. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:233

5. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:235

6. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt.I. Q.19, Art.2

7. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt.I. Q.19, Art.2

8. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:241

9. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:244

10. Turretin, Institutes, I.3.11.12

11. Turretin, Institutes, I.4.3.14

12. Helm, Eternal God, 62.