Q8. How doth God execute his decrees?

A. God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

We will recall that one way of dividing divine causality is between efficient and permissive cause. This was brought up in the context of the problem of evil, but of course it is only one implication of the more general distinction between primary and secondary cause. By God causing “efficiently” we mean that God directly creates that which is not, whereas by him causing “permissively” we mean that God withdraws some operation of that creating or sustaining grace. We used the example of a light switch and the difference between its two “commands,” being “on” and “off.” Both are properly caused by the same switch, and yet the manner of their execution is the difference between (a) efficient arrangement of natures and (b) the diffusion of such an arrangement and so a returning toward non-being. 

What Question 8 does is to take up the same issue of God’s decrees and divide them on the larger “story-board” of nature and history. The most simple way to come to this understanding—though too simple to withstand further scrutiny—is to see CREATION as page one, scene one: “Let there be …” (Gen. 1:3); and then every other line and every other page is PROVIDENCE. So that God makes it all at first, and then sustains it all thereafter. Of course there is an important truth in that. 

The Decree of Creation

We have to speak about the mode of creation. The classical Christian tradition has affirmed that God created “ex nihilo.” This Latin phrase, ex nihilo, means “from” or “out of nothing.” So creation ex nihilodraws attention again to the aseity of God in his act of creation. He did not need anything to borrow from. He simply spoke all things into existence, by his word (Ps. 33:6) and by his will (Rev. 4:11). 

Obj.1. Wasn’t this doctrine stated later, in the early church fathers?

Less than orthodox scholars may tend to speak of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo as an alien, metaphysical intrusion into the faith. However, we must understand that even where theologians explicitly articulate a doctrine in order to avoid this or that error, this is not the invention of an idea but rather clarification in the face of some ambiguity or all-out assault against the truth as it is. Two other key verses show how this is a thoroughly biblical idea:

“By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb. 11:3).

In Romans 4:17, Paul roots God's creative activity over Abraham's lifeless body back in the original act. He speaks of God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

Obj.2. Creation ex nihilo is illogical, as it violates the ex nihilo, nihil fit principle.

It is quite true that nothing can come from nothing. The words of the formula are more suggestive than the concept that has been associated with it. To say that God “created out of nothing” has always emphasized that God borrowed from nothing. He needed nothing to bring about his power to create. John Gerstner himself maintains the absurdity of “even God” bringing something out of non-being. This seems to be an equivocation and raises the question of how many theologians in “the majority” really have meant that the “nothing” is that out of which the being came. But to be concise, if we take the formula to mean the traditional concept, then no contradiction results.

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo drew a sharp contrast between the biblical view and 1. Greek materialism where the cosmos was eternal and 2. Neoplatonic emanationism.

Not only was the universe not always there, but its cause is the Infinite-Personal God who is utterly distinct from it. Now in speaking of these as significant errors, one might ask: Is ex nihilo creation an essential doctrine? While one does not have to understand this to have faith, nonetheless, when talking about the consistency of the system of Christian truth—yes, it is essential. Here is why that is. To posit the pre-existence of matter, that is for God to have resorted to a material cause that existed in its own right, would be to assume or infer divine attributes concerning that matter: its eternality and infinity. Not to mention God would be dependent upon it.

Our doctrine of creation must be comprehensive with respect to space: 

“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing” (Is 40:26).

And our doctrine of creation must be comprehensive with respect to time. Note the ongoing and present dimension of God’s decree causing things like the weather: “fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word!” (Ps. 148:8) 

The idea of creation, consistently held, produces increasing trust in God’s power and the capacity to be unmoved by the rising up of rebel creatures. For example, the Westminster divines cite Acts 4:24-28. Now we examined verses 27 and 28 to show how primary and secondary cause relate to each other, especially in an event where the human actors were doing the most evil thing. The setting of Acts 4 is the release of Peter and John after their bold stand before the chief priest and elders of the city. If we move up to verse 24, what is the confession of the saints’ prayer? “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them …” and then follows the statement about God ordaining all of the events of the suffering of Christ. Creation begets confidence. 

The Decree of Providence

Providence is about God causing all things to come to pass, his governing of all events, his care for his creatures, and especially for his own people. Genesis 50:20 and Romans 8:28 are two famous texts that are examples of providence. We will wait till Question 11 to get to the “works of providence” in particular. Here we are only examining it as a function of the divine decree. And we could get at the question like this: If God completed the creation (Gen. 2:1), and yet other passages speak of all people and things created by God, do we explain this by God‘s providence and concurrence?

Or, on the flip side: Is providence really just continual creation? Here is where our distinctions between primary and secondary cause, and between efficient and permissive cause, have to come into play. While the decree is always the primary cause, relative to all that comes about; the act of creation is efficient causality, and the continual existence of those things is upheld by that same divine word. The Confession addresses this mode,

“yet by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently” (V.2).

Note that taking creation and providence together means rejecting another grave error. We spoke of how the Christian doctrine of creation was a rejection of a few early errors: Greek materialism and Neoplatonic emanation. Extending that same truth to providence means rejecting the modern heresy of Deism. A deist is someone who believes that God made the world but then stepped away from the picture to let it run by its own inherent laws. So they wouldn’t believe in supernaturally revealed religion, miracles, the incarnation of Christ, or really any salvation or personal relationship with God at all.

No heavenly or historical act or event is safe from God writing it into his story: “he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth” (Dan. 4:35). Providence issues forth from the decree as surely as creation does, so that the analogy to an Author of a drama is useful. However, it has its limitations. A finite author has to “use his imagination” in the same way that a finite reasoner has to make observations and draw inferences. It is not only the story that exists in a sequence, but so does the mind that gives it birth. Hence the author reacts in a sense to the drama. A finite story-teller is, to some degree, bound to his story.

This is the sort of thing that modern religion has in common with that early modern heresy of Socinianism. If they view providence as an outworking of God’s decree at all, they would divide that decree between designs that God set in motion “from the beginning” and those that are “factored in,” given the movements of the actors in the drama. So the anointing of Christ as King is no mere response to Adam’s failure or Israel’s failure, but he says, “I will tell of the decree” (Ps. 2:7); and “the Son of Man goes as it has been determined” (Lk 22:22).

Creation and providence are causes for worship. 

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Rev. 4:11)

If creation and providence do not make us worship God, then to some extent we have not seen creation and providence as God’s total and perfect execution of his decree. We are often unaware of the amount or kinds of worship we render to the creation (cf. Rom. 1:21-23); but the doctrines of creation and providence as God’s perfect decrees—effortless, omnipotent, invincible, free and immutable decrees—ought to immediately vaporize the slightest temptation to place our fears or our hopes in the creature.