Jacobus Arminius · 14 of 81

SIXTH PROPOSITION OF ARMINIUS · Part 4

They use the first distinction thus: "In sin there are two things, the act and its sinfulness." God, by his own ordination, is the author of the act, not of the sinfulness in the act. I will first consider the distinction, then the answer which they deduce from it. This distinction is very commonly made, and seems to have some truth, but to one examining, with diligence, its falsity, in most respects, will be apparent. For it is not, in general or universally, applicable to all sin. All sins, especially, which are committed against prohibitory laws, styled sins of commission, reject this distinction. For the acts themselves are forbidden by the law, and therefore, if perpetrated, they are sins. This is the formal relation of sin, that it is something done contrary to law. It is true that the act in that it is such, would not be sin, if the law had not been enacted, but then it is not an act, having evil or sinfulness. Let the law be absent, the act is naturally good: introduce the law, and the act itself is evil, as forbidden, not that there is any thing in the act which can be called unlawfulness or sin. I will make the matter clear by an example. The eating of the forbidden fruit, if it had been permitted to the human will as right, would, in no way, be sin, nor any part of sin, it would not contain any element of sin; but the same act, forbidden by law, could not be otherwise than sinful, if perpetrated; I refer to the act itself, and not to any thing in the act to which the term evil can be applied. For that act was simply made illicit by the enactment of the law. I shall have attained my object here in a single word, by simply asking that the sinfulness in that act may be shown separately from the act itself. That distinction, however, had a place in acts which are performed according to a perceptive law, but not according to a due mode, order, or motive. Thus he, who gives alms, that he may be praised does a good act badly, and there is, in that deed both the act and the evil of the act according to which it is called sin. But the sin which man perpetrated at the beginning, of the ordination of God, was a sin of commission; it therefore affords no place for that distinction. This fundamental principle having been established, the answer, deduced from that distinction, is at once refuted. Yet let us look at it. "God," they say, "is, by ordination, the author of the act, not of the evil in the act." I affirm, on the contrary, that God ordained that act, not as an act, but as it is an evil act. He ordained that the glory of His mercy and justice should be illustrated, of his pardoning mercy, and His punitive justice; but that glory is illustrated not by the act as such, but as it is sinful, and as an evil act. For the act needs remission, not as such, but as evil; it deserves punishment, not as such, but as evil. The declaration, then, of His glory by mercy and justice, is by the act as it is evil, not as it is an act; therefore that ordination which had its end, the illustration of that glory, was not of the act as such, but as evil, and of sin, as sin and transgression. That distinction, therefore, is useless in repelling the objection, which I have urged against that theory. I add, for the elucidation of the subject, that if God efficaciously determines the will to the material of sin, or to depraved objects, though it may be affirmed that He does not determine the will to an evil decision, in respect to the evil, He is still made the author of sin, since man himself does not will the evil in respect to the evil and the devil does not solicit to evil in respect to the evil, but in respect to that which is delectable, and yet he is said to induce persons to sin.

The second distinction is that of necessity and coaction. They use it in this way. If the decree of God, in which he ordained that man should fall, compelled him to sin, then would God, by that decree, become the author of sin, and man would be free from guilt: but that decree did not compel man. It only imposed a necessity upon him so that he could not but sin; which necessity does not take away his liberty. Therefore, man, since he sins freely, the decree being in force, is the cause of his own fall, and God is free from the responsibility. Let us now consider this distinction, and the use made of it.

Necessity and coaction differ as genus and species. For necessity comprehends coaction in itself. Necessity also is twofold, one from an internal, the other from an external cause; the one, natural, the other, violent. Necessity, from an external cause and violent, is also called coaction, whether it be used contrary to nature, or against the will, as when a stone is projected upwards, and a strong man makes use of the hand of a weaker person to strike a third person. The former has the name of the genus, necessity, but is referred to a specific idea, by a contraction of the mental conception. There is, then, between these two species, some agreement, as they belong to the same genus, and some discrepancy, since each has its own form. But it is now to be considered whether they so differ that coaction alone, and not that other species of necessity, is contrary to freedom; and whether he who compels to sin is the cause of sin, and not he who necessitates without compulsion. They indeed affirm this, who use this distinction. First, in reference to freedom; it is opposed directly to necessity, considered in general, whether natural or compulsive, for each of these species causes the inevitability of the act. For a cause acts freely when it has the power to suspend its action. Some say that freedom is fully consistent with natural necessity, and refer to the example of the Deity, who is, by nature and freely, good. But is God freely good? Such an affirmation is not very far from blasphemy. His own goodness exists in God, naturally and most intimately; it does not then exist in Him freely. I know that a kind of freedom of complacency is spoken of by the School-men, but contrary to the very nature and definition of freedom. We say, in reference to sin, that he is the cause of sin, who necessitates to the commission of sin, by any act whatever of necessitation, whether internal or external, whether by internal suasion, motion, or leading, which the will necessarily obeys, or by an application of external violence, which the will is not able, though it may desire, to resist; though, in that case, the act would not be voluntary. He, indeed sins more grievously, who uses the former act, than he, who uses the latter. For the former has this effect, that the will may consent to the sin, but the latter has no such effect, though that consent is not according to the mode of free-will, but according to that of nature, in which mode only, God can so move the will, that it may be moved necessarily, that is, that it cannot but be moved. And in this relation, the will, as it consents by nature to sin, is free from guilt; for sin, as such, is of free-will, and tend towards its object, according to the mode of its own freedom. The law is enacted not for nature but for the will, for the will as it acts not according to the mode of nature, but according to the mode of freedom. That distinction is, therefore, vain, and does not relieve the first theory from the objection made against it. If any one wishes, with greater pertinacity, still to defend the idea, that one and the same act can be performed freely and necessarily, in different respects, necessarily in respect to the first cause, which ordains it, but freely and contingently in respect to the second cause, let him consider that contingency and necessity differ not in certain respects, but in their entire essence, and that they divide the whole extent of being, and cannot, therefore, be coincident. That is necessary which cannot fail to be done; that is contingent which can fail to be done. These are contradictions which can in no way be attributed to the same act. The will tends freely to its own object, when it is not determined, to a single direction, by a superior power; but, when that determination is made by any decree of God, it can no longer be said to tend freely to its own object; for it is no longer a principle, having dominion and power over its own acts. Did it not pertain to the nature of the bones of Christ, (which they present as an example,) to be broken? Yet they could not be broken on account of the decree of God. I reply, that the divine determination being removed, they could be broken; but, that determination, being presented by the decree of God, they could not at all be broken, that is, it was necessary, not contingent, that they should remain unbroken. Did God, therefore, change the nature of the bones? That was not necessary. He only prevented the act of breaking the bones, which were liable by their nature to be broken, which act could have been performed, and would have been, if God had not anticipated it by His decree, and by an act according to that decree. For our Lord gave up the ghost when the soldiers were approaching the cross to break his bones, and were about to use the breaking of his legs to accelerate his death. That I may not be tedious, I will not refute all the objections; but I am persuaded, from what has been presented, that they are all susceptible of refutation. The third distinction is that of the decree and its execution. They use it thus; though God may have decreed from eternity to devote certain persons to death, and, that this may be possible, may have ordained that they should fall into sin, yet he does not execute that decree, by their actual condemnation, until after the persons themselves have become sinful by their own act, and, therefore, He is free from responsibility. I answer that the fact that the execution of the decree is subsequent to the act of sin, does not free from responsibility him, who, by his own decree, has ordained that sin should occur, that he might afterwards punish it; indeed he, who has ordained and decreed that sin should be committed, cannot justly punish sin after its commission; he cannot justly punish a deed, the doing of which he has ordained; he cannot be the ordainer of the punishment, who was the ordainer of the crime. Augustine rightly says, "God can ordain the punishment of crimes, not the crimes themselves," that is, He can ordain that they should take place. I have already demonstrated that man does not become depraved of his own fault, if God has ordained that he should fall and become depraved.

The fourth distinction is that of efficacious and permissive decree: which distinction, rightly explained, removes the whole difficulty, but it removes also the theory, by which God is affirmed to have ordained that sin should take place. The authors, however, of the first theory endeavour to sustain that theory by reference to permissive decree. They affirm that God does not effect, but decrees and ordains sin, and that this is done not by an efficacious, but by a permissive decree; and they so explain a permissive decree, that it coincides with one, which is efficacious. For they explain permission to be an act of the divine will, by which God does not bestow, on a rational creature, that grace, which is necessary for the avoidance of sin. This action, joined with the enactment of a law, embraces in itself the whole cause of sin. For he, who imposes a law which cannot be observed without grace, and denies grace to him, on whom the law is imposed, is the cause of sin by the removal of the necessary hindrance. But more on this point hereafter.

On the contrary, if permissive decree be rightly explained, it is certain that he, who has decreed to permit sin, is by no means the cause of sin; for the action of his will has reference to its own permission, not to sin. Nor are these two things, God, in the exercise of His will, permits sin, and, God wills sin, equivalent. For, the object of the will is, in the former case, permission, in the latter, sin. On the contrary rather, the conclusion, God permits, therefore, He does not will, a sinful act, is valid, for he who wills any thing does not permit the same thing. Permission is a sign of want of action in the will. That distinction, then, does not relieve the first theory. The fifth distinction is that of the divine decree and human nature, which they use thus: -- sin, if you consider the divine decree, is necessary; but if you have reference to human nature, which is equally free and flexible in every direction, it is freely and contingently committed; and, therefore, the whole responsibility is to be placed on human nature, as the proximate cause. We have discussed this, previously, in reference to the second distinction, and have sufficiently refuted it. They make another use of the same distinction, by a diverse respect of the ends, which God has proposed to Himself in His decree, and which are proposed to man in the commission of sin. "For," they say, "God intends, in His decree, to illustrate His own glory, but man intends to gratify his own desire; and though man does the very thing, which is divinely decreed, he does not do it because it is decreed, but because his will so inclines him. I reply, first; a good end does not approve, or make good, an action which is unlawful in itself; for "we are not to do evil that good may come;" but it is evil to ordain that sin shall be committed. Secondly, that man, to satisfy his own desire, should do that which God has forbidden, also results from the decree of God, and, therefore, man is relieved from responsibility. Thirdly, though the fulfillment of the divine decree is not the end which moves man to the commission of sin, yet that same thing is the cause which, by a gentle, silent, and imperceptible, yet efficacious, movement effects that man should sin, or, rather, commit that act which God had decreed should be committed, which, then, in respect to man, cannot be called sin. Finally, the last defense consists in a reference to the end, of which they make this use: "We are accustomed to state the decree of God, not in these terms, that ‘God has determined to adjudge some men to eternal death and condemnation,’ but we add, ‘ that His justice may be illustrated to the glory of his name.’"

I answer, that the addition does not deny the previous statement, (for this is confirmed by the rendering of the cause,) and the addition, even of the best end, does not justify an action which is not in itself formally good, as has before been stated. From these things, then, it is apparent, that these grounds of defense are insufficient, and avail nothing for the defense of that theory which states that God ordained that men should fall and become depraved, in order to open to Himself, in that manner, a way for the execution of the decree which He had, from eternity, determined and proposed to Himself, for the illustration of His own glory by mercy and justice. If any one may think that any other distinction or explanation can be presented, by which that theory may be defended and vindicated, I shall be, in the highest degree, pleased, if this is done. But let him be cautious not to change the theory or add to it any thing inconsistent with it. You mention, at the end of your sixth answer, an objection to your view; -- "Then the judgments of God depend on contingency, and are based on things contingent, if they have reference to man as a sinner, and to his sin." I must examine this with diligence, since it also lies against my view, in that I think that sin must be presupposed in the object of the divine decree. It is most manifest, from the Scriptures, that many of the judgments of God are based on sin, which, yet, cannot be said, to depend on sin. It is one thing to make sin the object and occasion of the divine judgments, and another to make it the cause of the same. The judgment, which God pronounces in reference to sin, He pronounces freely, nor does this depend on sin, for He can suspend it, or substitute another in its place; yet it is based on sin, because, apart from sin, He could not thus judge. But sin is contingent, or contingently committed.

Therefore, the judgments of God are based on things contingent. I deny the consequence. The judgments of God are based on sin, not as it is committed contingently, but as it is certainly and infallibly foreseen by God. Therefore, the sight of God intervenes between sin and judgment, and thus, judgment is based on the certain and infallible vision of God. Then that which exists, so far as it exists, is necessary. But the judgments of God are based on sin, already committed and in existence. In your answer, however, I could wish that it might be explained to me how those things, which are contingent, depend on the ordination of God, whether according to the source or the act, the word ordination having reference to a decree that certain things shall be done, not to the disposal of the order in which they shall be done, for so the word is to be understood in this place. For, though God has appointed the mode of contingency in nature, yet it does not follow from this that contingencies have their source in the ordination of God. For a cause, which is free and governs its own action, can suspend or carry forward a contingent act, according to its own will; so also in reference to the act. I do not, therefore, understand in what way contingencies, which are such in themselves, are not contingencies to God, from the fact that He has established the mode of contingency in nature. Sin is not, in any mode and in respect to anything, necessary. Therefore, sin is also contingent to God, that is, it is considered by God as done contingently, though in His certain and infallible sight, on account of the infinity of the divine knowledge. Nor is it the same idea, that a thing should be really contingent to the supreme cause, and that a thing, truly contingent in itself, should be considered as contingent by that supreme cause. For it is understood that nothing can be accidental or contingent to God, for He is immutable, He is entirely uncompounded, and, as Being and Essence, belongs to Himself alone. But the knowledge of God considers things as they are, though with vision far exceeding the nature of all things.