This is the second post of a series on the Observations of the Divine Attributes of God by Jerome Zanchius (1516-1590). They are a great help for better understanding the gloriously comforting doctrine of predestination. The first post by Zanchius can be found here, entitled “The Divine Wisdom & Foreknowledge of God”. I highly encourage you to take the time to study carefully these observations. They are a blessing and, after all, we want you to think while you’re here. – JT

Jerome Zanchius 

We pass on,

II.-To consider THE WILL OF GOD, with regard to which we assert as follows :-

POSITION 1. -The Deity is possessed not only of infinite knowledge, but likewise of absolute liberty of will, so that whatever He does, or permits to be done, He does and permits freely and of His own good pleasure.

Consequently, it is His free pleasure to permit sin, since, without His permission, neither men nor devils can do anything. Now, to permit is, at least, the same as not to hinder, though it be in our power to hinder if we please, and this permission, or non-hinderance, is certainly an act of the Divine will. Hence Augustine* says, "Those things which, seemingly, thwart the Divine will are, nevertheless, agreeable to it, for, if God did not permit them, they could not be done, and whatever God permits, He permits freely and willingly. He does nothing, neither suffers anything to be done, against His own will." And Luther+ observes that "God permitted Adam to fall into sin because He willed that he should so fall."
* Enchir. cap. 100. + De Serv. Arb. c. 153.

POSITION 2. -Although the Will of God, considered in itself, is simply one and the same, yet, in condescension to the present capacities of man, the Divine will is very properly distinguished into secret and revealed. Thus it was His revealed will that Pharaoh should let the Israelites go, that Abraham should sacrifice his son, and that Peter should not deny Christ; but, as was proved by the event, it was His secret will that Pharaoh should not let Israel go (Exod. iv. 21), that Abraham should not sacrifice Isaac (Gen. xxii. 12), and that Peter should deny his Lord (Matt. xxvi. 34).

POSITION 3. -The will of God, respecting the salvation and condemnation of men, is never contrary to itself; He immutably wills the salvation of the elect and vice versa; nor can He ever vary or deviate from His own will in any instance whatever, so as that that should be done, which He willeth not, or that not he brought to pass, Which He willeth. "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure" (Isa. xlvi. 10). "The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, and the thoughts of His heart to all generations" (Psalm xxxiii. 11). "He is in one mind, and who can turn Him? and what His soul desireth, even that He doeth. For He performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with Him" (Job xxiii. 13, 14). " Being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will " (Eph. i. 11).

Thus, for instance, Hophni and Phineas hearkened not to the voice of their father, who reproved them for their wickedness, because the Lord would slay them (1 Sam. ii. 25), and Sihon, king of Heshbon, would not receive the peaceable message sent him by Moses because the Lord God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate, that He might deliver him into the hand of Israel (Deut. ii. 26, 30). Thus also, to add no more, we find that there have been, and ever will be, some whose eyes God blindeth, and whose hearts He hardeneth, i.e., whom God permits to continue blind and hardened on purpose to prevent their seeing with their eyes and understanding with their hearts, and to hinder their conversion to God and spiritual healing by Him (Isa. vi. 9; John xii. 39, 40).

POSITION 4. -Because God’s will of precept may, in some instances, appear to thwart His will of determination, it does not follow either (1) that He mocks His creatures, or (2) that they are excusable for neglecting to observe His will of command.

(1) He does not hereby mock His creatures, for if men do not believe His word nor observe His precepts, the fault is not in Him, but in themselves; their unbelief and disobedience are not owing to any ill infused into them by God, but to the vitiosity of their depraved nature and the perverseness of their own wills. Now, if God invited all men to come to Him, and then shut the door of mercy against any who were desirous of entering, His invitation would be a mockery and unworthy of Himself; but we insist on it, that He does not invite all men to come to Him in a saving way, and that every individual person who is, through His gracious influence on his heart, made willing to come to Him, shall sooner or later be surely saved by Him, and that with an everlasting salvation.

(2) Man is not excusable for neglecting God’s will of command. Pharaoh was faulty, and therefore justly punishable, for not obeying God’s revealed will, though God’s secret will rendered that obedience impossible. Abraham would have committed sin had he refused to sacrifice Isaac, and in looking to God’s secret will would have acted counter to His revealed One. So Herod, Pontius Pilate, and the reprobate Jews were justly condemned for putting Christ to death, inasmuch as it was a most notorious breach of God’s revealed will. "Thou shalt do no murder," yet, in slaying the Messiah, they did no more than God’s hand and His counsel-i.e., His secret, ordaining will-determined before should be done (Acts iv. 27, 28); and Judas is justly punished for perfidiously and wickedly betraying Christ, though his perfidy and wickedness were (but not with his design) subservient to the accomplishment of the decree and word of God.

The brief of the matter is this : secret things belong to God, and those that are revealed belong to us; therefore, when we meet with a plain precept, we should simply endeavour to obey it, without tarrying to inquire into God’s hidden purpose. Venerable Bucer, after taking notice how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and making some observations on the apostle’s simile of a potter and his clay, adds* that "Though God has at least the same right over His creatures, and is at liberty to make them what He will and direct them to the end that pleaseth Himself, according to His sovereign and secret determination, yet it by no means follows that they do not act freely and spontaneously, or that the evil they commit is to be charged on God."

* Bucer ad Rom. ix.

POSITION 5. -God’s hidden will is peremptory and absolute, and therefore cannot be hindered from taking effect. God’s will is nothing else than God Himself willing, consequently it is omnipotent and unfrustrable. Hence we find it termed by Augustine and the schoolmen, voluntus omnipotentissima, because whatever God wills cannot fail of being effected. This made Augustine say, +"Evil men do many things contrary to God’s revealed will, but so great is His wisdom, and so inviolable His truth, that He directs all things into those channels which He foreknew." And again , ++"No free will of the creature can resist the will of God, for man cannot so will or nill as to obstruct the Divine determination or overcome the Divine power." Once more, ~"It cannot be questioned but God does all things, and ever did, according to His own purpose: the human will cannot resist Him so as to make Him do more or less than it is His pleasure to do; quandoquidem etiam de ipsis hominum voluntatibus quod vult facit, since He does what He pleases even with the wills of men."
+ De Civ. Dei. 1. 22, c. 1, Vol.2, p. 474, T.T. Clark’s Edition
++ De Corr. and Grat. c. 14
~ De Corr. and Grat. 14

POSITION 6. -Whatever comes to pass, comes to pass by virtue of this absolute omnipotent will of God, which is the primary and supreme cause of all things. "Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created " (Rev. iv. 11). "Our God is in the heavens; He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased" (Psa. cxv. 3). "He doeth according to His will, in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?" (Dan. iv. 35). "Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places" (Psa. cxxxv. 6). "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father" (Matt. x. 29). To all which Augustine subscribes when he says, " No thing is done but what the Almighty wills should be done, either efficiently or permissively." As does Luther, whose words are these, +" This therefore must stand; to wit, the unsearchable will of God, without which nothing exists or acts." And again (c. 160), "God would not be such if He was not almighty, and if anything could be done without Him." And elsewhere (c. 158) he quotes these words of Erasmus "Supposing there was an earthly prince, who could do whatever he would and none were able to resist him, we might safely say of such an one that he would certainly fulfil his own desire; in like manner the will of God, which is the first cause of all things, should seem to lay a kind of necessity upon our wills." This Luther approves of, and subjoins, Thanks be to God for this orthodox passage in Erasmus’s discourse! But if this be true, what becomes of his doctrine of free-will, which he, at other times, so strenuously contends for?
* Tom. 3 in Enchir.
+ De Serv. Arb. c.143.

POSITION 7. -The will of God is so the cause of all things, as to be itself without cause, for nothing can be the cause of that which is the cause of everything. So that the Divine will is the ne plus ultra of all our inquiries; when we ascend to that, we can go no farther. Hence we find every matter resolved ultimately into the mere sovereign pleasure of God, as the spring and occasion of whatsoever is done in heaven and earth. "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight" (Matt. xi. 25). "It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke xii. 32). "I will, be thou clean" (Matt. viii. 3). "He went up into a mountain, and called unto Him whom He would" (Mark iii. 13). "Of His own will begat He us, with the word of truth " (James i. 18). "Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 13). "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. Therefore, He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth " (Rom. ix. 15, 18). And no wonder that the will of God should be the main spring that sets all inferior wheels in motion, and should likewise be the rule by which He goes in all His dealings with His creatures, since nothing out of God(i.e., exterior to Himself) can possibly induce Him to will or nill one thing rather than another. Deny this, and you, at one stroke, destroy His immutability and independency, since He can never be independent, who acts pro re nata,as emergency requires, and whose will is suspended on that of others; nor unchangeable whose purposes vary, and take all shapes, according as the persons or things vary, who are the objects of those purposes. The only reason, then, that can be assigned why the Deity does this or omits that is because it is His own free pleasure. Luther,* in answer to that question, "Whence it was that Adam was permitted to fall and corrupt his whole posterity, when God could have prevented his falling," etc., says : "God is a Being, whose will acknowledges no cause, neither is it for us to prescribe rules to His sovereign pleasure, or call Him to account for what He does. He has neither superior nor equal, and His will is the rule of all things. He did not therefore will such and such things because they were in themselves right, and He was bound to will them; but they are therefore equitable and right because He wills them. The will of man, indeed, may be influenced and moved, but God’s will never can. To assert the contrary is to undeify Him." Bucer+ likewise observes: "God has no other motive for what He does than ipsa voluntas, His own mere will, which will is so far from being unrighteous that it is justice itself."

(to be continued)

Related Post:

The Divine Wisdom & Foreknowledge of God