Jacobus Arminius · 75 of 81

DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT OF PERMISSION · Part 2

Sin is distributed, in respect to its causes, into sin of ignorance, of infirmity, and of malice; and by some, an additional distinction is made, namely, sin of negligence or thoughtlessness, as different and separate from the former, while others think that this is embraced in the three species previously mentioned.

The divine permission is also adjusted to these differences. It would be an endless work to present all the divisions and differences of sin, and to show how the divine permission is related to each class. But we must not omit that, in sin, not it alone but the act also, blended with it, is to be considered, as in sin there is the transgression of the law, and the act, that is the act, simply as such, and the act, as forbidden or prescribed, the omission of which prescript is sin. But permission can be considered, either in respect to the act, or to the transgression, for sin is prevented in the prevention of the act, without which sin can not be committed. Again, the act is prevented in the prevention of the sin, which necessarily inheres and adheres to the act, so that the act itself can not be performed without sin. For one may abstain from an act, towards which he is borne by his inclination, because it can not be performed without sin; another, on the contrary, abstains from sin because he is not inclined to the act itself. When he abstains from the act because it is sin, he abstains from sin per se, from the act incidentally: but when he abstains because the act is not pleasant to him, he abstains from the act per se, from sin incidentally. When also an act, is permitted as an act, it is permitted per se, sin is permitted incidentally. When sin is permitted as sin, it is permitted per se, the act is permitted incidentally. All of which things are to be diligently considered in reference to the subject of permission, that it may be understood what efficiency God suspends in that permission, and what efficiency He uses to no purpose—to no purpose in relation to the event, in that sin is not omitted, not to no purpose in relation to the objects which God has proposed to Himself, the best and the most wisely intended, and most powerfully obtained. But though we have already discussed the permission of acts in general, it will not be superfluous to treat here of the same, so far as those acts are blended with sin, and sin with them; though, in the mean time, the principal reference in this discussion, must be to the permission of sin, as such. For, as these two are so connected, that they can not be separated in an individual subject, the very necessity of their coherence seems to demand that we should speak of the permission of both in connection, though of the permission of sin per se, and of the act incidentally. But since the relation of sin appears, most plainly, in an act committed against a prohibitive law, as omission of good may be often comprehended under it by synecdoche, as in the definitions of sin, -- "it is that which is done contrary to the law,"—also, "a desire, word, or deed against the law,"—it will not be irrelevant to show, in the first place, how God permits that sin, whether as it is a sin, or as it is an act, which He permits, or in both relations.

We will present the modes of permission corresponding to the contrary modes of prevention, as before. The murder which Ahab and Ahaziah intended to perpetrate on the prophet Elijah, was an act, which, being performed would have taken away the life of Elijah, and it was a sin against the sixth commandment of God. God prevented that murder, not as a sin, but as an act. This is apparent from the mode of prevention, for in one instance, he took Elijah out of the hands of Ahab, and in another He consumed, with fire sent down from heaven, those who had been sent to take the prophet (2 Kings 1). The former case was according to the fourth mode, heretofore mentioned; the latter was, according to the first mode, in opposition to the power of Ahaziah and in this case prevented the effect. David, being instigated by his followers to slay Saul, his persecutor and enemy, refused, being restrained from that act, not as an act, but as a sin, for he said "The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord" (1 Sam. xxiv. 6).

The mode of prevention was by a revelation of the divine will, and by a persuasion to obedience, and was suitable to the prevention of sin as such. The defilement of Sarah, the wife of Abraham when she was brought to Abimelech, would have been an act, by which, as the violation of Sarah’s chastity, would have caused great grief to Abraham, and would have been a sin against the seventh precept of the Decalogue. It was divinely prevented, if you consider the mode of prevention, as far as it was sin. For God, in a dream, revealed to him that she was "a man’s wife" (Gen. xx. 3), and he could not, without sin, have carried out his design. If you examine the design and reason of the prevention, it was both in respect to the act and to the sin; as an act, because it would have caused indelible grief to Abraham, and from this God wished to spare his servant; as sin, because God knew that Abimelech would have done this "in the integrity of his heart" (6th v.) and He, therefore, withheld him from sin, in adultery with the wife of his friend.

Let us look at the opposite modes of permission in examples, also selected from the Scriptures. The sale of Joseph, made by his brethren, (Gen. 37), was an act and a sin; also, the affliction by which Satan tried Job, the man of God (Job. 1 & 2). Both were permitted by God. Was this in respect to the act or to its sin? This can not be gathered from the mode of the permission, for God abstains from all modes of restraint when He permits any thing, and if He did not so abstain, He would prevent, and then would, consequently, be neither the act nor sin. But, from the end and the mode of effecting the permitted act and sin, a judgment may be formed of the respect according to which God has permitted the act of sin. From the sale of Joseph resulted his removal to Egypt, his elevation to the highest dignity, in that land from which, food, necessary for his father’s family, could be procured, in a time of most direful famine. God declares that He sent him into Egypt for this purpose. All this resulted from the sale, not as it was a sin, but as an act. In the affliction of Job, God desired that the patience and constancy of His servant should be tried, and it was tried by the affliction not as a sin but as an act. On the other hand, God permitted David to number the people (2 Sam. 24), and Ahab to slay Naboth (1 Kings 21), in which cases the numbering of the people, and the murder were acts, but were permitted as sin. For God purposed to punish Israel, and that Ahab should fill up the measure of his crimes. It is, indeed, true that God also wished to take pious Naboth from this vale of sorrows to the heavenly land; this was effected by the murder, not as it was a sin, but as an act. Yet the proper, immediate, and adequate reason that God permitted Ahab to perpetrate that murder, is that of which I have spoken—the measure of his crimes was to be filled. For God could, in some other way, without human sin, have called Naboth to Himself. Again, God permitted Absalom to pollute, by incest, the wives or concubines of his father, and this was done in respect to both. For it was permitted both as an act, and as sin. As an act, it served for the chastisement of David who had adulterously polluted the wife of Uriah; as a sin, it was permitted, because God wished that Absalom, by his crime, should cut off all hope of reconciliation with his offended father, and, in this way, hasten his own destruction, the just punishment of rebellion against his father. In both respects, also, God permitted Ahab to go up to Ramoth-Gilead contrary to the word of the Lord; as a sin, because God wished to punish him; as an act because God wished that he should be slain in that place, to which he came by the act of going up. From these examples a judgment may be formed of similar cases. Thus far in reference to permission of sin, which consists in the perpetration of an act, prohibited by law.

Let us now consider sin, as it is committed when an act, forbidden by law, is not performed, but omitted not from a due reason and purpose. Here the act is prevented, but sin is not prevented. There is, then, in this case, the permission of sin only, as such, and the mode of permission is a suspension of the revelation of the divine will, or at least of suasion and motion to obedience to the known will of God. For the creature omits the act, not because God has forbidden it, but for some other reason. Thus the brothers of Joseph omitted to slay him, as they had determined to do, not because they began to think that this crime would displease God, but because, from the words of Judah, they thought it useless, and that it would be better to sell him into bondage (Gen. 37). Absalom, after thousands of followers had been collected, omitted to pursue his fleeing father as Ahithophel counseled him, not because he considered it wrong to pursue his father, for he was wholly hostile to him, but he followed the counsel of Hushai, because he considered that the curse, advised by Ahithophel, would be dangerous for himself and the people. In this and similar examples, we see that God restrained an act, which had been forbidden and therefore was sin, and yet did not prevent sin, which was committed by those, who omitted that forbidden act; but he permitted them to sin in the mode of omitting the forbidden act. The reason is manifest, as by the act, a person, whom God purposes to spare, would be injured, but no one but the sinner himself is injured by sin committed in an undue omission of an act, as is just. Indeed by the prevention of an act, there is prepared for the persons, who have omitted an act, the punishment due to them both on account of this sin of undue omission, and for other reasons, as happened to Absalom.

We now proceed to the permission of sin, which is committed in the mere omission of an act, which has been commanded. This is permitted by God, as it is an omission of an act, and as it is sin. God, I assert, permits that act, which the law commands to be omitted, either as it is an act, or as it is sin. God permitted the sons of Eli to disobey the admonitions of their father, (1 Sam. ii. 25); Saul, to spare the king of the Amalekites, (1 Sam. xv. 8); the Israelites, when the statement of the spies had been made, to refuse to go up into the promised land, (Num. xiv. 4), the citizens of Succoth and Penuel, to deny bread to the army of Gideon, (Judges viii. 6 & 8); Ahab, to send away Benhadad alive, a man devoted to death by the Lord, (1 Kings xx, xxxiv, ); Festus, before whom Paul was accused, not to pronounce sentence against him, and in favour of the Jews, (Acts xxv. 12); &c. He permitted all these things partly as they were omissions of acts, partly as they were sins, that is, omissions contrary to a preceptive law, which imposed commands, partly in both respects. In reference to the sons of Eli, the Scripture says—"they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them." The permitted omission of obedience thus far was sin. The omission by Saul of the slaughter of those, whom God willed and commanded to be slain, was permitted as it was a sin, not as it was the omission of an act, by the performance of which they would have been deprived of life. For God had determined to take away the kingdom of Saul from him, and had already denounced this against him, by the mouth of Samuel, because he had sacrificed, not waiting for Samuel, (1 Sam. xiii. 9-14). Agag, also, was afterwards hewed in pieces before the Lord by the prophet Samuel. The fact that the Israelites omitted to go up into the promised land, as they had been commanded by the Lord, occurred because God purposed that their bodies should fall in the wilderness, as they had so often tempted God, and murmured against Him. Then that omission was permitted as a sin. God permitted the citizens of Succoth and Penuel to withhold bread from the army of Gideon, partly that He might test the constancy of those, who were "pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna," partly that He might prepare punishment for the citizens of Succoth and Penuel. In this case then, the omission of the act was permitted as it was such, and as it was sin. For as, being provided with food, they would have been strengthened, who were pursuing the Midianites, so the omission of the act, as such, on their part, was grievous and to be worthy of punishment. The sending away of Benhadad, or his release from death was permitted by God, as a sin—a sin, committed against an express command—for God purposed that Ahab should heap up wrath against the day of wrath, on account of his heinous sins; and also as an act, as He purposed that Benhadad, in the prolongation of his life, by the omission of an act commanded by God, might fight afterwards with Ahab, and, after his death, with the Israelites, and besiege Samaria to the great injury of its inhabitants. Festus was permitted by God, to refrain from acquitting Paul—according to law and right as he could be convicted of no crime—in respect to the act as such, and not as sin. For, from that omission resulted a necessity for the appeal of Paul to Caesar, which was the occasion of his departure to Rome, where God willed that he should bear testimony concerning His Son.

In respect to sin, when a prescribed act is performed unduly as to manner and design, it is certain that it is permitted as such, for in it nothing is permitted except the omission of a due mode and purpose, which omission is purely sinful. This is evident from the mode of permission, which, in this case, is certain; namely, the suspension of efficiency by which sin, as sin, is permitted. Joab performed many distinguished deeds and those prescribed by God, in fighting bravely, against the enemies of the people of God, in behalf of Israel, that it might be well for the people of God; but God did not incline his mind to do this from a right motive. It is apparent that he sought his own glory, in those deeds, from the fact that he, by wicked treachery, destroyed men, equal to himself in bravery and generalship, that he might be alone in honour. For the man who defends any cause, only that it may be defended, and for the glory of God, will not be vexed that as many as possible, endued with skill and bravery, should be united in its defense; indeed, he would most deeply rejoice and be glad on this account.

As to the differences of sin in view of its causes—ignorance, infirmity, malice, negligence—there is in respect to these a clear distinction in their permission. For the permission of a sin of ignorance arises from the suspension of the revelation of the divine will; of malice, from the suspension of the act by which the perversity of the heart is corrected and changed; of infirmity, from the withholding of strength to resist temptation, of negligence, from the suspension of the act by which a serious and holy care and anxiety is produced in us to watch our faculties, and to walk in the law of the Lord. For God knows, when it seems good to him to perform a work, by the acts of rational creatures, which can not be committed by them without sin, how to suspend His own efficiency, so as to permit His creatures to perform their own acts. He willed that His church should be proved and purged by persecutions, and indeed by the act of Saul, a man zealous for the law, who, from inconsiderate and preposterous love towards his own religion, wished that the sect of the Nazarenes, so called should be extirpated. That this might be effected through him, He suffered him to be some time in ignorance, without which, as he was then constituted, he would not have persecuted the church. For he says that he "did it ignorantly" (1 Tim. i. 13). In the case of Julian the apostate, a most foul persecutor of the church, God did not correct his willful and obstinate hatred of Christ and his church. For when he was convinced of the truth of the Christian doctrine, he could have persecuted it only through willful malice. God’s procedure, in not correcting that hatred, was deserved by him, who, willingly and of his own fault, had apostatized from Christ. God purposed that Peter, presuming too much on himself, should come to a knowledge of himself, and He suffered him to deny his Master, from fear of death, not affording him such support of His Spirit, as to move him to dare to profess Christ openly, despising the fear of death. David, being freed from his enemies, and having conquered many neighbouring kings and nations, began to guard his steps with too little care, and heedlessly gave himself up to negligence, especially because he had Joab, a distinguished general and skilled in military duties, in whom, on account of consanguinity, he could trust; from this it happened that he fell into that shameful adultery with the wife of Uriah. But God permitted him to fall into that negligence, and on that occasion to commit sin, that he might be more diligently watchful over himself, mourn on account of his own sin for an example to others, afford a distinguished specimen and example of humility and repentance, and rise more gloriously from his sin. It would be tedious to remark the same thing in each kind of sin; but let these suffice, as exhibiting the means and mode of forming a correct judgment in reference to permission. But though the whole complex matter, which is made up of act and transgression, may be permitted by God, through a suspension of all divine acts, by the use of which, on the part of God, the act, either as an act or as sin, would have been prevented, yet it is useful to consider, distinctly, in what respect that permission may be given by God, and what efficiencies, and of what kind, He suspends, that He may not hinder the commission or omission of an act prescribed or forbidden. For in this the divine goodness, wisdom and power, and even justice is seen as distinctly as possible, and it is most clearly proved how God, in all his own action, restraint and permission, is free from blame, and without sin, and by no means to be considered the author of sin. In showing which, it is so much the more evident how easily they may fall into absurdity and blasphemy, who refer, indeed, to a providence, acting, restraining, permitting, but not with sufficient distinctness, accuracy, and diligence, bringing together and comparing them, and distinguishing each from the others.

The individual causes of permission, in its variety and in that of the permitted acts, and of sins, are, at the same time, various and manifold, and not generally explicable, which can, perhaps, in some way, be demonstrated by those, who have their senses exercised in divine things, and are accustomed to consider them with earnest study. Two general or universal reasons can be presented for the fact that God permits events in general, and why He permits any particular event. One is the freedom of the will, which God bestowed on rational creatures, and which He designed as the mistress and the free source of their actions. The other is the declaration of the divine glory, which is of such a character as not only to effect and prevent that which can be effected and prevented, for his own glory, but also so to reduce to order the acts of rational creatures which are permitted, and which frequently deviate from the order, prescribed to them, that from it the praise of the divine goodness, mercy, patience, wisdom, justice and power may shine forth and be revealed. To which pertains that, which is beautifully said by Augustine, "God has judged that it belongs to His own omnipotent goodness to bring good out of evil rather than not to permit evil to exist."

The creature is likewise to be considered, to whom is granted the permission of an act of commission or of omission, which can not, without sin, be committed or omitted; namely, as to his character at the time when that act is permitted to him, whether, as only created, and remaining in his primeval integrity, or as fallen from that state; again, whether made a partaker of grace, or invited to a participation of grace; whether brought to that state, or resisting grace, or not sufficiently solicitous to receive it, and to continue in it, and the like. For God can deny to any creature, considered as such, action, motion, efficiency, concurrence, either general or special, of nature or of grace, of providence or predestination—though I do not dare to make a confident assertion in reference to the act of Predestination—which act and concurrence, which motion and efficiency He could not, without injustice, deny to the same creature considered in a different relation. But a permission of sin depends, as we have before seen, on a suspension of the divine act, motion, efficiency, &c.

He, however, who wishes to discuss fully and thoroughly the subject of permission must, of necessity, treat of the general providence of God, and of that special providence, which preserves, governs, rules, effects, prevents and permits. For, as permission is opposed to prevention, by the mode either of privation or of contradiction, so it is opposed to efficiency by negation; and it is the nature of permission to have, antecedent to itself, various acts of God concerning the same creature, to which permission is granted, and concerning that act which is permitted. If these acts of God are not accurately explained, it can not be understood what that efficiency is, in the suspension of which, permission properly and immediately consists. This, also, is the reason that many, when they hear any thing concerning permission, immediately, in their own minds, conceive of inactive quiet, and abstinence from all effort on the part of providence; others, considering the power and efficacy of that providence, which is present in and presides over all things and acts, either reject the idea of permission, or acknowledge it only in word, in the mean time, so explaining it as to resolve it into a certain act of God, and into the efficiency of providence. But these errors are both to be avoided, lest we should take away, from the divine providence, acts which belong to it, or should attribute to it things foreign to it, and unworthy of His justice. In reference to the remarks, already made, some one will object that I attribute to permission not only the illegality and the irregularity of the act, but also the act itself; and thus remove from the operation of the divine will and efficiency, not only the illegality of the act, but the act itself. He will say that, in this, he perceives a double error; first, because I attribute sin, simply and taken in any respect, to permission, and remove it from the divine efficiency and will; when it ought, in a certain respect, to be attributed to the divine efficiency and will; secondly, because I take away, from the efficiency and the will of God, the act which is the first and supreme cause of all being. Let us examine a little more closely both objections. We explain the former by the sentiments of the objector himself. In sin there are three respects; for there is, first, guilt; second, punishment; third, the cause of other sins. Indeed God is not, they say, the cause of sin in respect to its guilt, but to its punishment, and to its being the cause of other sins. They affirm that God is, without controversy, the cause of punishment, because that is an act of justice, by which sin, deviating from the law of the prescriptive justice of God, is brought under the rule of divine punitive justice. That sin is of God, as it is the cause of other sins, they, also, prove from the acts of blinding, hardening, giving over to a reprobate mind, which are acts of God and are causes of sins. I answer; -- to the first, that the objection is not valid against all sins. For the first sin, committed by a creature, can not be the punishment of another sin. There are also many sins which are not, in fact, the causes of other sins; for God may so administer and dispense the fall and the sins of His creatures, as that they may result in good, that is a greater odium against sin, and a more diligent solicitude and anxiety to guard their own steps. Therefore many sins, contrary to this objection, come to partake of an opposite character, by the permission of God, and in no respect by His efficiency. It will be said, in reply, that there are, nevertheless, many sins which must be considered in those three respects: of these at least, it may be proper to say, that in the last two respects they have God, as their cause and author. I answer secondly, that there is no act or sin, which has, at the same time, the relation of guilt, of punishment, and of the cause of another sin, if these things may be correctly and strictly considered. I confess that this is usually said, and is common with many who treat of this subject.

I will prove my assertion, first by argument, then by presenting examples of blinding and hardening. That no act at the same time, sin and punishment, is certain, since sin is voluntary, punishment is involuntary; sin is action, punishment is passion; by punishment sin is brought into subjection, but sin is not brought into subjection by sin; but by punishment, I say, differing from sin or guilt, not in relation only, but in the thing and subject which is the act. When this is said by learned men, a reason ought to be assigned for this opinion. I acknowledge it; but let us consider the sense in which this is said and understood by them. They say that sin is the punishment of sin, because, on account of previous sin, God permits the sinner to commit another sin, and, indeed, suspends some of His own acts, and performs others, in which case the creature will sin of his own wickedness, and will commit other sins, on account of which he deserves greater punishment and condemnation, and thus, as sin deserves greater punishment, it is said to be the punishment of sin by a metonymy of cause and effect. In this sense they understand their own declaration, or it can not be sustained. But that no sin is, at the same time, guilt and the cause of another sin, is also true, if it may be rightly understood; that is, a proximate and immediate cause. It is, indeed, the meritorious cause of another sin, that is, it deserves that God should afterwards suspend some act, and perform other acts, which being performed, he will, of his own wickedness, as said before, commit some sin; it is also the preparatory cause of the perpetration of other sins: for by sin the conscience is wounded, desire for prayer, and confidence in it are destroyed, a habit of sinning is prepared, a power over the sinner is granted to Satan, from which an easy lapse into other sins readily follows; yet it is not the proximate and immediate cause of another sin. "It is nevertheless a cause," some may say, "though remote and meritorious." What then? By this very distinction the whole force of the objection is destroyed. By it, God is made the cause of some acts, the creature will, of His own wickedness, deservedly add another sin to the former, and God is absolved from the charge of being the cause of sin, which deserved that He should perform those acts of sin, as it is the cause of another sin. For the action of the Deity intervenes between the sin, which is the cause of another sin, and that consequent sin. In that objection, however, it was inferred that God is the cause of sin, in that He is the occasion of the second sin. That error arises from the confusion and the inaccurate consideration of those acts. Sin, in the relation of guilt, is first in order, then follows demerit or conviction to punishment, from the justice of God; which is the act of God, who punishes that sin by merited desertion, and blindness. But "blindness," you say, "is sin or guilt, and the punishment of previous sin, and the cause of subsequent sin, and God is the cause of blindness." The truth of what has been previously said may be demonstrated in this example. That blindness, judicially produced by God, is correctly said to be the punishment of previous sin, and can, if rightly understood, be said to be the cause of consequent sins, that is, by a removal of restraining grace, and by the performance of some acts, from which it will follow that the creature, thus blinded and left, will, of his own wickedness, commit sin. But that blindness is not sin or guilt. A distinction is to be made between the blindness as the act of God to which man is judicially subjected, and the blindness of man himself by which he renders his own mind hard and obstinate against God, which is the act of man, produced by wickedness and obstinate pertinacity. These acts indeed concur, but do not coincide, nor are they one single action, made up of the efficiency of those concurrent actions, which together make up one total cause of that act, which is called blindness. Learned men often speak in such a manner, I grant, but not with sufficient distinctness; and perhaps in a sense which agrees with my explanation, and is not contrary to it. For they use the term blindness, in a complex and indistinct manner, for the act and its result, or the work and its effect, which is, thereby, produced in the person made blind, which may be called passive blindness, produced by that active blindness. Of blindness, thus confusedly and indistinctly considered, it may be said that it is sin, the punishment of sin, and the cause of sin, but this is not at variance with my opinion, for I deny that God is the cause of that blindness, so far as it is sin and guilt. Active blindness—as we now term it, by way of distinction—which is produced by a man, making himself blind, is sin, for it is a great crime to harden one’s own mind against God. Active blindness, which proceeds from God, is the punishment of previous sin, by which the sinner has merited to himself desertion, and privation of grace. The active blindness, which is from man, and that, which is from God, concur to the same effect, which is passive blindness, which is, properly, punishment. Finally, the active blindness of man, blinding himself, and that of God, blinding man, is the cause of the accumulation of other sins with those previously committed, by the blinded sinner, but in the mode of which I have spoken. I answer, that if it is true that one and the same act is sin or guilt, the punishment of sin, and the cause of subsequent sin, then it can not be true that God is its cause, according to the last two relations, and not according to the first, for a twofold reason. First, this distinction of relation can not effect that God should be the cause of one thing, and not of another, in fact, joined to it, unless in that mode, which will be hereafter explained, which they exclude from this subject, who say that blindness, produced by God, is sin, and the cause of sin. These respects are useful to a mind, intelligent and able to discriminate between things most intimately connected, which constitutes actually and numerically, one thing, but considered in different relations, they can not have place in actual efficiency, the limit of which is real existence. God inflicts punishment on a person who is a sinner, and His creature; the act of infliction does not distinguish the creature from the sinner, but the mind of Him, who punishes, makes the distinction, for it knows how to punish the creature, not as such, but as sinful. This error is frequently committed, that relations are carried further than their nature may permit. Secondly, because of those three relations, order, nature, and causality, the former is that in which sin is considered as guilt, the latter two are those in which it is considered as punishment, and the cause of consequent sin. God is the first cause of all effects, which He produces with or by His creatures; but, in this case, He will be a subsequent cause, for He will produce, in the relation of subsequent respects, an act, which the creature produces in the relation of prior respect, which is absurd, and inverts the order of causality and efficiency, which exists between first and second causes. There may, indeed, be supposed to exist a concurrence, which we shall hereafter explain; but they, who say that the blindness, inflicted by the Deity, is the cause of consequent sins, and at the same time a sin, deny that this concurrence has any place here. These things, indeed, I have thought, ought to be explained, somewhat fully, on account of the difficulty of the subject itself, and of preconceived opinions.