Complex Motives in God

Below is a footnote that I added to my article on the "sincere offer" of the gospel when I revised and published it in the book, The Author of Sin. I am posting it here because many of you have already read the article as it originally appeared on this blog, and might not read it again in the book.

Scripture teaches that God decrees what he desires – that is, his "good pleasure" – and what he desires, he decrees and makes certain. Dabney tries to preserve the "sincere offer" by asserting that there are complex motives in God, so that although God might genuinely desire the salvation of the non-elect from one perspective, another stronger motive or reason in him overrides such a desire, and this is why he has not chosen to save the non-elect. It seems to Dabney that this explanation preserves both his belief in divine election of only some for salvation, and God's genuine desire to save everyone in one sense. However, even if we accept what Dabney says about complex motives in God, at the point of the divine decree of only some for salvation and then at the point of the preaching of the gospel, the stronger motive to select only some for salvation has already overridden the genuine desire to save all (that is, assuming that this desire exists at all), so that neither the divine decree nor the preaching of the gospel any longer expresses or allows for any desire in God to save all. In other words, even if God's motives are complex, the decree and the preaching are not complex, but the decree and the preaching are precisely what we are talking about. Therefore, even if Dabney is right about complex motives in God, it is irrelevant to our discussion.