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It is unthinkable
that a God of infinite wisdom and power would create a world without a
definite plan for that world. And because God is thus infinite His plan
must extend to every detail of the world’s existence. If we could see the
world in all its relations, past, present, and future, we would see that it
is following a predetermined course with exact precision. Among created
things we may search where we will, as far as the microscope and the
telescope will enable the eye to see, we find organization everywhere.
Large forms resolve themselves into parts, and these parts in their turn are
but organized of other parts down as far as we can see into infinity.
Even man, who is but the creature of
a day and subject to all kinds of errors, develops a plan before he acts;
and a man who acts without design or purpose is accounted foolish. Before
we make a trip or undertake a piece of work all of us set our goal and then
work to attain that goal in so far as we are able. Regardless of how some
people may oppose Predestination in theory, all of us in our everyday lives
are practical predestinarians. As E. W. Smith says, a wise man “first
determines upon the end he desires to attain, and then upon the best means
of attaining it. Before the architect begins his edifice, he makes his
drawings and forms his plans, even to the minutest details of construction.
In the architect’s brain the building stands complete in all its parts
before a stone is laid. So with the merchant, the lawyer, the farmer, and
all rational and intelligent men: Their activity is along the line of
previously formed purposes, the fulfillment, so far as their finite
capacities will allow, of preconceived plans.
The larger our enterprise is, the
more important it is that we shall have a plan; otherwise all our work ends
in failure. One would be considered mentally deranged who undertook to
build a ship, or a railroad, or to govern a nation without a plan. We are
told that before Napoleon began the invasion of Russia he had a plan work
out in detail, showing what line of march each division of his army was to
follow, where it was to be at a certain time, what equipment and provisions
it was to have, etc. Whatever was wanting in that plan was due to the
limitations of human power and wisdom. Had Napoleon’s foresight been
perfect and his control of events absolute, his plan – or we may say, his
foreordination – would have extended to every act of every soldier who made
that march.
And if this is true of man, how
much more is it true of God! “A universe without decrees,” says A. J.
Gordon, “would be as irrational and appalling as would be an express-train
driving on in the darkness without headlight or engineer, and with no
certainty that the next moment it might not plunge into the abyss.” We
cannot conceive of God bringing into existence a universe without a plan
which would extend to all that would be done in that universe. As the
scriptures teach at God’s providential control extends to all events, even
the most minute, they thereby teach that His plan is equally comprehensive.
It is one of His perfections that He has the best possible plan and that He
conducts the course of history to its appointed end. And to admit that He
has a plan, which He carries out, is to admit Predestination. “God’s plan
is shown in its effectuation to be one,” says Dabney, “Cause is linked with
effect, and what was effect becomes cause; the influences of events on
events interlace with each other, and descend in widening streams to
subsequent events; so that the whole complex result is interlaced through
every part. As astronomers suppose that the removal of one planet from our
system would modify more or less the balance and orbits of all the rest, so
the failure of one event in this plan would derange the whole, directly or
indirectly.”
If God had not foreordained the
course of events but waited until some undetermined condition was or was not
fulfilled, His decrees could be neither eternal nor immutable. We know,
however, that He is incapable of mistake and that He cannot be surprised by
any unforeseen inconveniences. His kingdom is in the heavens and He rules
over all. His plan must, therefore, include every event in the entire sweep
of history.
That even the small events have
their place in this plan, and that they must be as they are, is easily
seen. All of us know of certain “chance happenings” which have actually
changed the course of our lives. The effects of these extend throughout all
succeeding history in ever-widening influences, causing other “chance
happenings.” It is said that the quacking of some geese once saved Rome.
Whether historically true or not it will serve as a good illustration. Had
not the geese awakened the guards who gave the alarm and aroused the
defending army, Rome would have fallen and course of history from that time
on would have radically different. Had those geese remained silent who can
imagine what empires might have been in existence today, or where the
centers of culture might have been? During a battle a bullet missed the
general by only an inch. His life is spared, he goes on commanding his
troops, wins a decisive victory, and is made the chief ruler is his country
for many years, - as was the case with George Washington. Yet what a
different course history would have taken has the soldier on the other side
aimed the slightest trifle higher or lower! The great Chicago fire of 1871,
which destroyed more than half of the city, was started, we are told, when a
cow kicked over a lantern. How different would have been the history of
Chicago if that one motion had been slightly different! “The control of the
greatest must include the control of the less, for not only are great things
made up of little things, but history shows how the various trifles are
continually proving the pivots on which momentous events revolve. The
persistence of a spider nerved a despairing man to fresh exertions which
shaped a nation’s future. The God who predestinated the course of Scotch
history must have planned and presided over the movements of that tiny
insect that saved Robert Bruce from despair.” Examples of this kind could
be multiplied indefinitely.
The Pelagian denies that God has
a plan; the Arminian says that God has a general but not a specific plan,
but the Calvinist says that God has a specific plan which embraces all
events in all ages. In recognizing that the eternal God has an eternal
plan in which is predetermined every event that comes to pass, the Calvinist
simply recognizes that God is God, and frees Him from all human
limitations. The Scriptures represent God as a person, like other persons
in that His acts are purposeful, but unlike other persons in that He is
all-wise in His planning and all-powerful in His performing. They see the
universe as the product of His creative power, and as the theater in which
are displayed His glorious perfections, and which must in all its form and
all its history, down to the least detail, correspond with His purpose in
making it.
In a very illuminating article on
“Predestination,” Dr. Benjamin B Warfield, who in the opinion of the present
writer has emerged as the outstanding theologian since John Calvin, tells us
that the writers of Scripture saw the divine plan as “broad enough to
embrace the whole universe of things, and minute enough to concern itself
with the smallest details, and actualizing itself with inevitable certainty
in every event that comes to pass.” “In the infinite wisdom of the Lord of
all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place
in this unfolding of His eternal plan; nothing, however small, however
strange, occurs without His ordering , or without its peculiar fitness for
its place in the working out of His purposes; and the end of all shall be
the manifestation of His glory, and accumulation of His praise. This the
Old Testament (as well as the New Testament) philosophy of the universe – a
world-view which attains concrete unity in an absolute decree, or purpose,
or plan of which all that comes to pass is the development in time.”
The very essence of consistent
theism is that God would have an exact plan for the world, would foreknow
the actions of all the creatures He proposed to create, and through His
all-inclusive providence would control the whole system. If He
foreordained only certain isolated events, confusion both in the natural
world and in human affairs would be introduced into the system and He would
need to be constantly developing new plans to accomplish what he desired.
His government of the world then would be a capricious patchwork of new
expedients; He would at best govern only in a general way, and would be
ignorant of much of the future. But no one with proper ideas of God
believes that He has to change His mind every few days to make room for
unexpected happenings which were not included in His original plan. If the
perfection of the divine plan be denied, no consistent stopping place will
be found short of atheism.
In the first place there was no
necessity that God should create at all. He acted with perfect freedom,
when He brought this world into existence. When He did choose to create
there was before Him an infinite number of possible plans. But as a matter
of fact we find that He chose this particular one in which we now are. And
since He know perfectly every event of every kind which would be involved in
this particular world-order, He very obviously predetermined every event
which would happen when He chose this plan. His choice of the plan, or His
making certain that the creation should be on this order, we call His
foreordination or His predestination.
Even the sinful acts of men are
included in this plan. They are foreseen, permitted and have their
exact place. They are controlled and overruled for the divine glory. The
crucifixion of Christ, which is admittedly the worst crime in all human
history, has, we are expressly told, its exact and necessary place in the
plan (Acts 2:23; 4:28). This particular manner of redemption is not an
expedient to which God was driven after begin defeated and disappointed by
the fall of man. Rather it is “according to the eternal purpose which He
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Eph.3:11. Peter tells us that Christ as
a sacrifice for sin was “foreknown indeed before the foundation of the
world, “ I Peter 1:20. Believers were “chosen in Him before the foundation
of the world” (or from eternity), Eph. 1:4. We are saved not by our own
temporary works, “but according to His purpose and grace, which was given us
in Christ Jesus before times eternal,” II Tim.1:9. And if the crucifixion
of Christ, or His offering up Himself as a sacrifice for sin, was in the
eternal plan, then plainly the fall of Adam and all other sins which made
that sacrifice necessary were in the plan, no matter how undesirable a part
of that plan they may have been.
History in all its details, even
the most minute, is but the unfolding of the eternal purposes of God.
His decrees are not successively formed as the emergency arises, but are all
parts of one all-comprehending plan, and we should never think of Him
suddenly evolving a plan or doing something which He had not thought of
before.
The fact that the Scriptures often
speak of one purpose of God as dependent on the outcome of another or on the
actions of men, is no objection against this doctrine. The scriptures are
written in the everyday language of men, and they often describe an act or a
thing as it appears to be, rather than as it really is. The Bible speaks of
the “the four corners of the earth,” Is. 11:12, and of the “foundations of
the earth,” Ps. 104:5; yet no one understands this to mean that the earth is
square, or that is actually rests upon a foundation. We speak of the sun
rising and setting; yet we know that it is not the motion of the sun but
that of the earth as it turns over on its axis which causes this
phenomenon. Likewise, when the Scriptures speak of God repenting, for
instance, no one with proper ideas of God understands it to mean that He
sees He has pursued a wrong course and changes His mind. It simply means
that His action as seen from the human viewpoint appears to be like that of
a man who repents. In other places, the Scriptures speak of the hands, or
arms, or eyes of God. These are what are known as “anthropomorphisms,”
instances in which God is referred to as if He were a man. When the word
“repent,” for instance, is used in its strict sense God is said never to
repent: ”God is not a man, that He should lie, Neither the son of man, that
He should repent,” Nu. 23:19; and again, “The Strength of Israel will not
lie nor repent; for He is not a man, that He should repent.” I Sam. 15: 29
The contemplation of this great plan
must redound to the praise of the unsearchable wisdom and illimitable power
of Him who devised and executes it. And what can give the Christian more
satisfaction and joy than to know that the whole course of the world is
ordered with reference to the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven and the
manifestation of the Divine glory; and that he is one of the objects upon
which infinite love and mercy is to be lavished?
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