God Passive Only Relative to Himself
Posted by Vincent Cheung on September 25, 2006The following is an edited email correspondence.
I read your article on free will offerings, and once again I thank the Lord for using you to refute the false doctrine of human freedom relative to God. As one who is in total agreement with your teachings on this subject (having already studied many of your works), I thought that perhaps when time permits you could address Acts 14:16 where Paul, speaking of God, says, "In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways" (NASB). This is the verse I have been confronted with the most by free will advocates.
Although I have not yet written anything that directly addresses Acts 14:16, I have written an extensive exposition on Acts 17, which contains a similar statement. I suggest that you look this up from my Presuppositional Confrontations.
Then, in my Commentary on Ephesians, I mention the correct interpretation for verses that seem to speak of God's actions in a passive way ("hand them over," "pass them by," etc.). I show that they are passive only relative to something that God has already actively established. That is, God is never passive relative to men — his decrees are never fulfilled by bare permission, nor does he "pass them by" for anything, as if men could even decide or perform evil by their own power. Rather, whenever Scripture speaks of God's action as passive, it invariably refers to something that God has already actively established, only that he is allowing to stand what he himself has done.
In other words, whenever Scripture says that God "allows" Y (or any equivalent expression), invariably we find that Y is the necessary consequence of X, and that other passages would say that it is God who directly causes X. And like everything else in creation, even the relationship between X and Y is something directly established and sustained by God. Therefore, it is really God who actively and directly causes both X and Y.
Again, this means that, metaphysically speaking, we must not distance God from evil (and thus assign to some other power a degree of control over creation on the metaphysical level), since this necessarily results in dualism, which is pagan rather than biblical. I regret that this pagan tendency is strong even in Reformed theology and popular Calvinism. In connection to this, the unbiblical and incoherent doctrines of compatibilism, passive reprobation, conditional reprobation, and so on, must also be rejected.
It must be remembered that, when I refer of God's direct control over all things evil, I am speaking of metaphysics, not ethical approval. While metaphysics has to do with power, ethics has to do with precept. When these two are confused, then one would think that what God forbids to man by precept, he himself cannot then cause by divine power. But these two things are in different categories altogether.
– Recommended –
From vincentcheung.com:
"Forced to Believe" (1) , (2) , (3) , (4)
The "Sincere Offer" of the Gospel, (1) , (2)
More than a Potter (1) , (2) , (3) , (4)
Freewill Offerings and Human Freedom
Creatures Cannot Initiate Motion
From rmiweb.org: