John Owen · 21 of 73

Chapter III. The immutability of the purposes of God. · Part 1

Having cleared the truth in hand, from the immutability of the nature of God, which himself holds out as engaged for us to rest upon, as to the unchangeable continuance of his love unto us, proceed we now to consider the steadfastness and immutability of his purposes, which he frequently asserts as another ground of assurance to the saints of his safeguarding their glory of free acceptation to the end.

I shall not enter upon the consideration of the nature and absoluteness of the purposes of God as to an express handling of them, but only a little unfold that property and concernment of them whereon the strength of the inference we aim at doth in the same measure depend. Many needless and curious questions have been, by the serpentine wits of men, moved and agitated concerning them; wherein, perhaps, our author hath not been outgone by many; as will be judged by those who have weighed his discourses concerning them, with his distinctions of “desires, intentions, purposes, and decrees,” in God. But this is not the business we have in hand; for what concerneth that, that which ensueth may suffice. God himself being an infinite pure act, those acts of his will and wisdom which are eternal and immanent are not distinguished from his nature and being but only in respect of the reference and habitude which they bear unto some things to be produced outwardly from him. The objects of them all are such things as might not be. God’s purposes are not concerning any thing that is in itself absolutely necessary. He doth not purpose that he will be wise, holy, infinitely good, just: all these things, that are of absolute necessity, come not within the compass of his purposes. Of things that might not be are his decrees and intentions; they are of all the products of his power, — all that outwardly he hath done, doth, or will do, to eternity. All these things, to the falling of a hair or the withering of a [blade of] grass, hath he determined from of old. Now, this divine fore-appointment of all things the Scripture assigns sometimes to the knowledge and understanding, sometimes to the will of God: “Known unto him are all his works from the beginning of the world,” Acts xv. 18. It is that knowledge which hath an influence into that most infinitely wise disposal of them which is there intimated. And the determination of things to be done is referred to the “counsel” of God Acts. iv. 28; which denotes an act of his wisdom and understanding, and yet withal it is the “counsel of his own will,” Eph. i. 11.

I know that all things originally owe their futurition to a free act of the will of God; he doth whatever he will and pleaseth. Their relation thereunto translates them out of that state of possibility, and [from] being objects of God’s absolute omnipotency and infinite simple intelligence or understanding, whereby he intuitively beholdeth all things that might be produced by the exerting of his infinite almighty power, into a state of futurition, making them objects of God’s foreknowledge, or science of vision, as it is called. But yet the Scripture expresseth (as before) that act of God whereby he determines the beings, issues, and orders of things, [so as] to manifest the concurrence of his infinite wisdom and understanding in all his purposes. Farther; as to the way of expressing these things to our manner of apprehension, there are held out intentions and purposes of God distinctly suited to all beings, operations, and events; yet in God himself they are not multiplied. As all things are present to him in one most simple and single act of his understanding, so with one individual act of his will he determines concerning all. But yet, in reference to the things that are disposed of, we may call them the purposes of God. And these are the eternal springs of God’s actual providence; which being (“ratio ordinis ad finem”) the disposing of all things to their ends in an appointed manner and order, in exact correspondence unto them, these purposes themselves must be the infinitely wise, eternal, immanent acts of his will, appointing and determining all things, beings, and operations, kinds of beings, manners of operation, free, necessary, contingent, as to their existence and event, into an immediate tendency unto the exaltation of his glow; or, as the apostle calls them, the “counsel of his own will,” according whereunto he effectually worketh all things, Eph. i. 11.

Our consideration of these purposes of God being only in reference to the business which we have in hand, I shall do these two things:— First, Manifest that they are all of them absolute and immutable; wherein I shall be brief, not going out to the compass of the controversy thereabout, as I intimated before; my intendment lies another way. Secondly, Show that God hath purposed the continuance of his love to his saints, to bring them infallibly to himself, and that this purpose of God, in particular, is unchangeable; which is the second part of the foundation of our abiding with God in the grace of acceptation.

I. By the purposes of God I mean, as I said before, the eternal acts of his will concerning all things that outwardly are of him; which are the rules, if I may so speak, of all his following operations, — all external, temporary products of his power universally answering those internal acts of his will. The judgment of those who make these decrees or purposes of God (for I shall constantly use these words promiscuously, as being purely of the same import, as relating unto God) to be in themselves essential to him and his very nature, or understanding and will, may be safely closed withal. They are in God, as was said, but one; there is not a real multiplication of any thing but subsistence in the Deity. To us these lie under a double consideration:— First, Simply as they are in God; and so it is impossible they should be differenced from his infinite wisdom and will, whereby he determineth of any thing. Secondly, In respect of the habitude and relation which they bear to the things determined, which the wisdom and will of God might not have had. In the first sense, as was said, they can be nothing but the very nature of God, the τὸ velle of God, his internal willing of any thing that is either created or uncreated; for these terms distribute the whole nature of being. Created they are not, for they are eternal (that no new immanent act can possibly be ascribed to God hath full well of late been demonstrated). Farther; if they are created, then God willed that they should be created, for he created only what he willed. If so, was he willing they should be created, or no? If he were, then a progress will be given infinitely, for the question will arise up to eternity. If uncreated, then doubtless they are God himself, for he only is so; it is impossible that a creature should be uncreated. Again; God’s very willing of things is the cause of all things, and therefore must needs be omnipotent and God himself. That “voluntas Dei” is “causa rerum” is taken for granted, and may be proved from Ps. cxv. 3, which the apostle ascribes omnipotency unto, Rom. ix. 19, “Who hath resisted his will?” Doubtless it is the property of God alone to be the cause of all things, and to be almighty in his so being. But hereof at present no more. On this supposal, the immutability of the decrees of God would plainly be coincident with the immutability of his nature, before handled.

It is, then, of the decrees and purposes of God, with respect to the matters about which they are, whereof I speak: in which regard, also, they are absolute and immutable; — not that they work any essential change in the things themselves concerning which they are, making that to be immutable from thence which in its own nature is mutable; but only that themselves, as acts of the infinite wisdom and will of God, are not liable to nor suspended on any condition whatever foreign to themselves, nor subject to change or alteration (whence floweth an infallible certainty of actual accomplishment in reference to the things decreed or purposed, be their own nature what it will, or their next causes in themselves never so undetermined to their production), whereof I treat. That the determining purposes or decrees of God’s will concerning any thing or things by him to be done or effected do not depend, as to their accomplishment, on any conditions that may be supposed in or about the things themselves whereof they are, and therefore are unchangeable, and shall certainly be brought forth unto the appointed issue, is that which we are to prove Knowing for whose sakes and for what end this labour was undertaken, I shall choose to lay the whole proof of this assertion upon plain texts of Scripture, rather than mix my discourse with any such philosophical reasonings as are of little use to the most of them whose benefit is hereby intended.

Isa. xlvi. 9–11, The Holy Ghost speaks expressly to our purpose: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.” Verse 9, the Lord asserts his own deity and eternal being, in opposition to all false gods and idols, whom he threatens to destroy, verse 1. Of this he gives them a threefold demonstration:—

First, From his prescience or foreknowledge: “There is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done;” — “In this am I infinitely discriminated from all the pretended deities of the nations. All things from the beginning to the end are naked before me, and I have declared them by my prophets, even things that are future and contingent in themselves. So are the things that I now speak of. The destruction of Babylon by the Medes and Persians is a thing to be carried on through innumerable contingencies; and yet as I have seen it so have I told it, and my counsel concerning it shall certainly be executed.”

Secondly, By his power, in using what instruments he pleaseth for the executing of his purposes and bringing about his own designs: “Calling a ravenous bird from the east;” — one that at first, when he went against Babylon, thought of nothing less than executing the counsel of God, but was wholly bent upon satisfying his own rapine and ambition, not knowing then in the least by whom he was anointed and sanctified for the accomplishment of his will. All the thoughts of his heart, all his consultations and actions, all his progresses and diversions, his success in his great and dreadful undertaking, to break in pieces that “hammer of the whole earth,” with all the free deliberations and contingencies wherewith his long war was attended, which were as many, strong, and various, as the nature of things is capable to receive, were not only in every individual act, with its minutest circumstances, by him foreseen, and much also foretold, but also managed in the hand of his power in a regular subservience to that call which he so gave that “ravenous bird” for the accomplishment of his purpose and pleasure.

Thirdly, By the immutability of his purposes, which can never be frustrated nor altered: “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure; — I have purposed it, and I will also do it.” The standing, or fixedness and unchangeableness, of his counsel, he manifests by the accomplishment of the things which therein he had determined; neither is there any salve for his immutability in his counsel, should it otherwise fall out. And if we may take his own testimony of himself, what he purposeth, that he doth; and in the actual fulfilling and the bringing about of things themselves purposed, and as purposed, without any possibility of diversion from the real end intended, is their stability and unchangeableness in them manifested. An imaginary immutability in God’s purposes, which may consist and be preserved under their utter frustration as to the fulfilling of the things themselves under which they are, the Scripture knows not, neither can reason conceive. Now, this unchangeableness of his purposes the Lord brings as one demonstration of his deity; and those who make them liable to alteration, upon any account or supposition whatsoever, do depress him, what in them lies, into the number of such dung-hill gods as he threatens to famish and destroy.

Ps. xxxiii. 9–11, “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” The production and establishment of all things in that order wherein they are, are by the psalmist ascribed to the will and power of God. By his word and command they not only are, but stand fast; being fixed in that order by him appointed. Both the making, fixing, and sustaining of all things, is by “the word of his power.” As the first relates to their being, which they have from creation, so the other to the order in subsistence and operation, which relates to his actual providence. Herein they stand fast. Themselves, with their several and respective relations, dependencies, influences, circumstances, suited to that nature and being which was bestowed on them by his word in their creation, are settled in an exact correspondency to his purposes (of which afterward), not to be shaken or removed. Heb. i. 3; Rev. iv. 11; Acts xvii. 28, ii. 23, iv. 28; Gen. l. 20; Eccles. iii. 11. Men have their devices and counsels also, they are free agents, and work by counsel and advice; and therefore God hath not set all things so fast as to overturn and overbear them in their imaginations and undertakings. Saith the psalmist, “They imagine and devise indeed, but their counsel is of nought, and their devices are of none effect; but the counsel of the Lord,” etc. The counsel and purposes of the Lord are set in opposition to the counsel and purposes of men, as to alteration, change, and frustration, in respect of the actual accomplishment of the things about which they are. “Their counsels are so and so; but the counsel of the Lord shall stand.” He that shall cast verse 11 into verse 10, and say, “The counsel of the Lord, that comes to nought, and the thoughts of his heart are of none effect,” let him make what pretences he will or flourishes that he can, or display what supposals and conditions he pleaseth, he will scarcely be able to keep the field against him who will contend with him about His prerogative and glory. And this antithesis between the counsels of men and the purposes of God upon the account of unchangeableness is again confirmed, Prov. xix. 21, “There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” Herein is the difference between the devices of men and the counsel of God: Men have many devices to try what they can do. If one way take not, they will attempt another (“hac non successit, alia aggrediemur via”), and are always disappointed, but only in that wherein they fall in with the will of God. The shallowness of their understanding, the shortness of their foresight, the weakness of their power, the changeableness of their minds, the uncertainty of all the means they use, puts them upon many devices, and often to no purpose. But for Him who is infinite in wisdom and power, to whom all things are present, and to whom nothing can fall out unexpected, yea, what he hath not himself determined, unto whom all emergencies are but the issue of his own good pleasure, who proportions out what efficacy he pleaseth unto the means he useth, — his counsels, his purposes, his decrees shall stand, being, as Job tells us, “as mountains of brass.” By this he differenceth himself from all others, idols and men; as also by his certain foreknowledge of what shall come to pass and be accomplished upon those purposes of his. Hence the apostle, Heb. vi. 17, 18, acquaints us that his promise and his oath, those “two immutable things,” do but declare ἀμετάθετον τῆς βουλῆς, “the unchangeableness of his counsel;” which God is abundantly willing to manifest, though men are abundantly unwilling to receive it. Job determines this business in Job xxiii. 13, 14, “He is of one mind, and who can turn him? what his soul desireth, even that he doeth. For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me.” Desires are the least and faintest kind of purposes, in Mr Goodwin’s distinctions; yet the certain accomplishment of them, as they are ascribed unto God, is here asserted by the Holy Ghost.

Were the confirmation of the matter of our present discourse my only design in hand, I could farther confirm it by enlarging these ensuing reasons:—

First, From the immutability of God, the least questioning whereof falls foul on all the perfections of the divine nature, which require a correspondent affection of all the internal and eternal acts of his mind and will.

Secondly, From his sovereignty, in making and executing all his purposes, which will not admit of any such mixture of consults or co-operations of others as should render his thoughts liable to alteration, Rom. xi. 33–36. The Lord in his purposes is considered as the great former of all things, who, having his clay in the hand of his almighty power, ordains every parcel to what kind of vessel and to what use he pleaseth. Hence the apostle concludes the consideration of them, and the distinguishing grace flowing from them, with that admiration, Ὦ Βάθος! — “O the depth!” etc.

Thirdly, From their eternity, which exempts them from all shadow of change, and lifts them up above all those spheres that either from within and in their own nature, or from without by the impression of others, are exposed to turning. That which is eternal is also immutable, Acts xv. 18; 1 Cor. ii. 7–11.

Fourthly, From the absoluteness and independency of his will, whereof they are the acts and emanations, Rom. ix. 15–21. Whatever hath any influence upon that, so as to move it, cause it, change it, must be before it, above it, better than it, as every cause is than its effect as such. This will of his, as was said, is the fountain of all being; to which free and independent act all creatures owe their being and subsistence, their operations and manner thereof, their whole difference from those worlds of beings which his power can produce, but which yet shall lie bound up to eternity in their nothingness and possibility, upon the account of his good pleasure. Into this doth our Saviour resolve the disposal of himself, Matt. xxvi. 42, and of all others, chap. xi. 25, 26. Certainly men in their wrangling disputes and contests about it have scarce seriously considered with whom they have to do. “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?’

Fifthly, From the engagement of his omnipotency for the accomplishment of all his purposes and designs, as is emphatically expressed, Isa. xiv. 24–27, “The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand: that I will break the Assyrian in my land. This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations. For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?” The Lord doth not only assert the certain accomplishment of all his purposes, but also, to prevent and obviate the unbelief of them who were concerned in their fulfilling, he manifests upon what account it is that they shall certainly be brought to pass; and that is, by the stretching out of his hand, or exalting of his mighty power, for the doing of it; so that if there be a failing therein, it must be through the shortness of that hand of his so stretched out, in that it could not reach the end aimed at. A worm will put forth its strength for the fulfilling of that whereunto it is inclined; and the sons of men will draw out all their power for the compassing of their designs. If there be wisdom in the laying of them, and foresight of emergencies, they alter not, nor turn aside to the right hand or to the left, in the pursuit of them. And shall the infinitely wise, holy, and righteous thoughts and designs of God not have his power engaged for their accomplishment His infinite wisdom and understanding are at the foundation of them; they are the counsels of his will: Rom. xi. 34, “Who hath known his mind” in them? saith the apostle, “or who hath been his counsellor?” Though no creature can see the paths wherein he walks, nor apprehend the reason of the ways he is delighted in, yet this he lets us know, for the satisfying of our hearts and teaching of our inquiries, that his own infinite wisdom is in them all. I cannot but fear that sometimes men have” darkened counsel by words without knowledge,” in curious contests about the decrees and purposes of God, as though they were to be measured by our rule and line, and as though “by searching we could find out the Almighty unto perfection.” But he is wise in heart; he that contendeth with him, let him instruct him. Add, that this wisdom in his counsel is attended with infallible prescience of all that will fall in by the way, or in the course of the accomplishment of his purposes, and you will quickly see that there can be no possible intervenience, upon the account whereof the Lord should not engage his almighty power for their accomplishment. “He is of one mind, and who can turn him? He will work, and who shall let it?”

Sixthly, By demonstrating the unreasonableness, folly, and impossibility, of suspending the acts and purposes of the will of God upon any actings of the creatures soever; seeing it cannot be done without subjecting eternity to time, the First Cause to the second, the Creator to the creature, the Lord to the servant, disturbing the whole order of beings and operations in the world.

Seventhly, By the removal of all possible or imaginary causes of alteration and change, which will all be resolved into impotency in one kind or other; every alteration being confessedly an imperfection, it cannot follow but from want and weakness. Upon the issue of which discourse, if it might be pursued, these corollaries would ensue:—

First, Conditional promises and threatenings are not declarative of God’s purposes concerning persons, but of his moral approbation or rejection of things.

Secondly, There is a wide difference between the change of what is conditionally pronounced as to the things themselves and the change of what is determinately willed, the certainty of whose event is proportioned to the immutable acts of the will of God itself.

Thirdly, That no purpose of God is conditional, though the things themselves, concerning which his purposes are, are oftentimes conditionals one of another.

Fourthly, That conditional purposes concerning perseverance are either impossible, implying contradictions, or ludicrous, even to an unfitness for a stage. But of these and such like, as they occasionally fall in, in the ensuing discourse.

II. This foundation being laid, I come to what was secondly proposed, — namely, to manifest, by an induction of particular instances, the engagement of these absolute and immutable purposes of God as to the preservation of the saints in his favour to the end; and whatsoever is by Mr Goodwin excepted as to the former doctrine of the decrees and purposes of God, in that part of his treatise which falls under our consideration, shall, in the vindication of the respective places of Scripture to be insisted on, be discussed.

The first particular instance that I shall propose is that eminent place of the apostle, Rom. viii. 28, where you have the truth in hand meted out unto us, full measure, shaken together, and running over. It doth not hang by the side of his discourse, nor is left to be gathered and concluded from other principles and assertions couched therein, but is the main of the apostolical drift and design, it being proposed by him to make good, upon unquestionable grounds, the assurance he gives believers that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose;” the reason whereof he farther adds in the following words: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” What the good aimed at is, for which all things shall work together, and wherein it doth consist, he manifests in the conclusion of the argument produced to prove his first assertion: Verses 35–39, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation,” etc. The good of believers:, of them that love God, consists in the enjoyment of Christ and his love. Saith, then, the apostle, “God will so certainly order all things that they shall be preserved in that enjoyment of it whereunto in this life they are already admitted, and borne out through all oppositions to that perfect fruition thereof which they aim at; and this is so unquestionable, that the very things which seem to lie in the way of such an attainment and event shall work together, through the wisdom and love of God, to that end.” To make good this consolation, the apostle lays down two grounds or principles from whence the truth of it doth undeniably follow, the one taken from the description of the persons concerning whom he makes it, and the other from the acts of God’s grace, and their respective concatenation in reference to those persons.

The persons, he tells you, are those who are “called according to God’s purpose.” That their calling here mentioned is the effectual call of God, which is answered by faith and obedience, because it consists in the bestowing of them on the persons so called, taking away the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh, is not only manifest from that place which afterward [it] receives in the golden chain of divine graces, between predestination and justification, whereby the one hath infallible influences into the other, but also from that previous description which is given of the same persons, namely, that they love God, which certainly is an issue and fruit of effectual calling, as shall afterward be farther argued; for to that issue are things driven in this controversy, that proofs thereof are become needful.

The “purpose” according to which these persons are called is none other than that which the apostle, chap. ix. 11, terms the “purpose of God according to election;” the “election of grace,” chap. xi. 5; as also the knowledge and “foundation of God,” 2 Tim. ii. 19; as will in the progress of our discourse be made farther appear, although I know not that this is as yet questioned. The immutability of this purpose of God, chap. ix. 11, 12, the apostle demonstrates from its independency on any thing in them or in respect of them concerning whom it is, it being eternal, and expressly safeguarded against apprehensions that might arise of any causal or occasional influence from any thing in them given thereunto, they lying under this condition alone unto God, as persons that had done neither good nor evil. And this, also, the apostle farther pursues from the sovereignty, absoluteness, and unchangeableness of the will of God. But these things are of another consideration.

Now, this unchangeable purpose and election being the fountain from whence the effectual calling of believers doth flow, the preservation of them to the end designed, the glory whereunto they are chosen, by those acts of grace and love whereby they are prepared thereunto, hath coincidence of infallibility as to the end aimed at with the purpose itself, nor is it liable to the least exception but what may be raised from the mutability and changeableness of God in his purposes and decrees. Hence, in the following verse, upon the account of the stability and immutability of this purpose of God, the utmost and most remote end in reference to the good thereby designed unto believers, though having its present subsistence only in that purpose of God and infallible concatenation of means thereunto conducing, is mentioned as a thing actually accomplished, Rom. viii. 30.