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Subsections

Revealed Will has Purpose
Ineffectual Call
Compatibility of Irresistible & Resistible Grace
God can Effect whatever a Creature can do
Common Operations of the Spirit
Antecedent / Consequent Will
Conditional Will

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Order of

Inefficacy  1
Against  5+
For  27+
Ineffectual Grace  8
Ineffectual Sacraments  1
Christ  5

Lombard
Thomism
Scotism

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On Inefficacy Generally

Quote

1200’s

Thomas Aquinas

Summa, pt. 1, quest. 25, art. 2, reply to obj. 2

“…a thing is ineffectual which is ordained towards an end to which it does not attain.”

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Against an Ineffectual Will of God

Note: Numerous of the writers below qualify what they say and speak with regard to a certain sense, especially of a “proper” sense or of an ineffectual will being “in” God.

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Order of

Articles  2
Quotes  3+
Latin  2

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Articles

1600’s

Turretin, Francis – 16. ‘May the will be properly distinguished into antecedent and consequent, efficacious and inefficacious, conditional and absolute?  We deny.’  in Institutes of Elenctic Theology  tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr.  (Geneva, 1679-1686; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, Topic 3, pp. 226-31

Rijssen, Leonard – A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary  trans. J. Wesley White  MTh thesis  (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), ch. 3, God

Controversy 2 – ‘Are there capricious desires or inefficacious desires (optationes) in God, which are called wishes (velleitates)?  We deny against the same.’  40-41

Controversy 3 – ‘Is God’s will always absolute, firm, and efficacious and never conditioned, weak, or inefficacious?  We affirm against the same.’  41

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Quote

Order of

Baynes
Greenhill
Pitcarne
Menzies

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1600’s

Paul Baynes

A Commentary upon the First Chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul, written to the Ephesians…  some Principal Controversies about Predestination are handled, and diverse arguments of Arminius are examined  (London, 1618), on Eph. 1:11, pp. 254-55  Note Baynes’s context against Arminius.

“Doctrine 3.  ‘Counsel of his will’.  That is which his will propounded to it, [it] did freely accept.  Observe hence that what God wills once, that He effectually works, see Ps. 115, ‘Our God is in heaven and does whatsoever He wills: Who has refused his will?’ so Isa. 46:10.  We see in beasts that they have an appetite to that [which] they move after; in men that which they will, that they put out their power to effect; so it is in God: if He will anything, He does work it effectually.

That is a frivolous distinction of an effectual and an ineffectual will in God, which stands neither with truth of Scripture, as in this place, nor with the blessedness of God, nor with the nature of things: all that showed Him, which his will accepts, He does effectually work it.  [It is] Against [the] blessedness of God: for might God will a thing and not have it, He were not fully blessed, when to have every good will is more blessed than to want [lack] it.  Against [the] nature of things, for everything which will and ability works, if God almighty have will to anything, the thing must needs follow.  Where there is full power to work anything, applied to the working of it, the thing wrought must needs follow.

Here some distinguish and say that in things which God will do, his power does work them effectually, but the things which God would have on condition from us, those his power does not work: an old Pelagian conceit.  Would not God have us walk in his commandments, and has He not said that He will put his Spirit in us and make us walk in them?  St. Augustine learned that God did promise to work mightily those things He requires from us.

If to have the conditional will be more happy than to want it, then God who has power to work the condition in us will not want it: Not to say that this conditional will is absurdly imagined in God: He must will the having a thing on condition which He will not work, and then it is impossible, unless the creature can do something good which He will not do in him; or on condition which He will work, and then He works all He wills; or on such a condition which He sees the creature cannot perform, nor Himself will not make Him perform; and this were idle and frivolous.”

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William Greenhill

An Exposition continued upon the 20th-29th chapters of the prophet Ezekiel...  (London: Chapman, 1658), on ch. 20, v. 8, p. 43

“Question: Seeing God purposed to destroy them, and did it not, is not his will alterable and inefficacious?

Answer: The counsels, purposes, decrees of God are unalterable and do take place, Ps. 33:11; Isa. 14:27; 43:13; 46:10; Mal. 3:6; Heb. 6:17.  For that said and done here, it’s more humano [by a human custom]: God saw cause-sufficient to move Him to their destruction, but seeing what evil was like to come about, He would not destroy them; had the Lord decreed it before the world, it must have taken place, no change or alteration could have been.”

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Alexander Pitcarne

The Spiritual Sacrifice, or a Treatise wherein several Weighty Questions and Cases concerning the saints’ communion with God in prayer are propounded and practically improved  (Edinburgh: Brown, 1664), pt. 1, pp. 146-47  Pitcarne (1622?–1695) was a partially conforming Scottish minister and academic.

“Thus then the morality of our actions must not be measured by any decree concerning the futurition of events, but by some other rule, in which must concur God’s will and appointment, setting bounds unto us and designing our duty, and discovering what is well-pleasing and acceptable to God, honest and laudable in itself, and profitable and comfortable to us in the issue; and thus we have the Word of God for our direction and have his laws and testimonies to be our rule: Dt. 29:29; Isa. 8:20; Dt. 30:10-12; Dt. 5:29; Ps. 147:19; Rom, 12:2; 1 Thess. 4:2; 1 Pet. 4:2, etc. and we may take notice of these three things as necessarily requisite and concurring in that which is a warrant unto and rule of our actions and petitions:

1. The good-pleasure and decree of God, not concerning what shall come to pass, but concerning the quality and moral goodness of human actions, and which does limit and set bounds to reasonable creatures and prescribes unto them their duty; and this is the fountain and first spring (yea and by many judicious and sober divines is judged to be the supreme adequate and first rule) of moral rectitude.  Hence we may conceive that God’s laws in Scripture are called ‘decrees,’ ‘statutes’ and ‘ordinances’.

2. From this decree and appointment, does (to our apprehension) flow divine approbation, complacency and delight in what is thus appointed to be our work and duty: hence that appointment is called the good, acceptable and perfect will of God, Rom. 12:2, and our actions when conform[ed] to that rule, are said to be well-pleasing in his sight, Heb. 13:2; yea the Lord does not only declare his love of his complacency, and delight in these when they are performed, but also He is said to will and desire (though not according to the Jesuitical and Arminian gloss)¹ those works while He is speaking to the rebellious and disobedient who have slighted his laws and casten all his statutes behind their backs: Eze. 18:23, 32; 33:11; Hos. 6:6; 1 Sam. 15:22; Isa. 61:8; Mt. 9:13; 2 Pet. 3:9, etc.

¹ Arminians, Socinians and Jesuits from thence would collect a frustratable and inefficacious will and desire in God, but this phrase does only import God’s serious approbation of the works of righteousness and detestation of the contrary.

3. There must be an intimation and promulgation of this decree and appointment, and a declaration of those things that would be well pleasing, and acceptable to God.”

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John Menzies

The Church of England Vindicated against her Chief Adversaries of the Church of Rome...  (London: Wilkinson, 1680), ch. 4, p. 190  Menzies (1624–1684) was a Scottish presbyterian minister, Protester, a partial-conformist after the Restoration and a theological professor during that time.

“Do they [Jesuits] not overthrow the omnipotency of God by attributing to Him inefficacious wills?  How is it that all are not saved, if He willed all to be saved?  Does He not in heaven and earth whatever pleases Him, Ps. 135:3.”

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Latin

1600’s

Maccovius, Johannes – in A Theological Collection of all that which is Extant, including Theological Theses through Common Places in the Academy of Franeker  (Franeker, 1641), First Part:  a Collection, 1. Of Predestination

8. No Ineffectual Will of God  22-24

Maccovius (1588-1644)

Spanheim, Frederic – 1. ‘The assertors of a particular and efficacious grace more greatly commend the goodness of God than those of a universal and inefficacious grace’  in Exercitations on Universal Grace  (Leiden, 1646), vol. 2, Additions & Vindications of Them, pp. 1501-9

Spanheim (1600-1649)

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For Ineffectual Divine Willings in Some Regard

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Order of

Quotes  22+
Historical  4
Latin  1

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Quotes

Order of

Rollock
Salkeld
Gryffith
Synopsis
Polyander
Byfield
Davenant & Aquinas
Rutherford
Love
Roberts
Shepard
Baxter
Poole
Fairclough
P. Henry
Mastricht
Howe
M. Henry
Heppe
Shedd
Murray
Berkhof
Finlayson

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1600’s

James Arminius

The Works of James Arminius, tr. James Nichols (Auburn: Derby, Miller, Orton, 1853), vol. 1, Public Disputations, Disputation 4, ‘On the Nature of God’, pp. 453-54  Arminius was a theological professor at Leiden.  He tended not to go into controversial things in his Public Disputations.

“LVIII. 3. The will of God is also distinguished into that by which He wills to do or to prevent something, and which is called “the will of his good pleasure,” or rather “of his pleasure” (Ps. 115:3), and into that by which He wills something to be done, or to be omitted, by creatures endued with understanding, and which is called “the will [signi] which is signified.” The latter is revealed; the former is partly revealed, and partly hidden. (Mk. 3:35; 1 Thess. 4:3; Dt. 29:29; 1 Cor. 2:11-12)

The former is efficacious, for it uses power, either [tanta] so much as cannot be resisted, or [tali] such a kind as He certainly knows nothing will withstand: (Ps. 33:9; Rom. 9::19) The latter is called “inefficacious,” and resistance is frequently made to it; yet so that, when the creature [excedit ordinem] transgresses the order of this revealed Will, the creature by it may be reduced to order, and that the Will of God may be done [de] on those by whom his Will has not been performed. (2 Sam. 17:14; Isa. 5:4-5; Mt. 21:39-41; Acts 5:4; 1 Cor. 7:28) To this twofold Will is opposed the remission of the Will, which is called “Permission,” and which is also two-fold. The one, which permits something to the power of a rational creature, by not circumscribing its act with a law; and this is opposed to “the revealed Will.” The other is that by which God permits something [potentiae] to the capability and will of the creature, by not interposing an efficacious hindrance; and this is opposed to “the Will of God’s pleasure” that is efficacious. (Acts 14:16; Ps. 81:13)”

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John Salkeld

A Treatise of Paradise…  (London: Griffin, 1617), ch. 64, pp. 319-21  Salkeld (1576–1660) was born in England, studied with Jesuits in the university of Coimbra and in Portugal, but had become a protestant again living in England by the time of this work.

“But God (says Simon Magus) would not that Adam should have eaten of the forbidden fruit, who nevertheless did eat of that fruit; it follows therefore that he remained not as his Creator would have had him to have remained; how then can God be omnipotent, or his will always fulfilled?

It were necessary, if we should fully satisfy this argument, to entreat more largely of the will of God than were convenient for this place: wherefore, that we may briefly answer this objection, we must presuppose with the school-divines a threefold distinction of the will of God, according to the diversity of their proper objects:¹ the first they call his efficient, effectual, or working will, by which God does so effectually intend anything that He performs it actually by some external operation and work, either actually produced or to be produced.

¹ Aquinas, [Summa] pt. 1, quest. 19; the same: Molina, Vasquez, Suarez, Sumel, Bannez and many others.

The other kind of will which the divines distinguish in God, in regard of some objects which He does not really produce, is called inefficax voluntas, a kind of propension or inclination of his divine will to the effectuating of any good effect, which might redound to the felicity of man: yet for the attaining of the end, which out of his unsearchable wisdom He has prefixed, He oftentimes permits the contrary to this his divine inclination and will; the which therefore is called God’s permissive will.

As for example, God would that all men should be saved, according to that of the apostle [1 Tim. 2:4], Deus vult omnes homines saluos fieri; to wit, in his universal grace, calling and inspirations and other general means, offered to all, so that out of his infinite goodness He wishes and wills in this sort all to be saved; and that He might the more manifest his infinite mercy by the efficacy of his working will, He actually saves some; even so, to manifest his justice by his other permissive decree, He permits others to work their own ruin and eternal damnation.”

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William Gryffith

The Delights of the Saints…  (London: Butter, 1622), pt. 1, pp. 11-13  Gryffith (c.1589–1672) was an Anglican bishop, opposed to the puritans.

“But against this it may be objected what St. Peter [and Timothy] says: that He would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of his will. (2 Pet. 3 [v. 9]; 1 Tim. 2:4)  And therefore either there are diverse and contrary wills in God, or it is his will that all should be saved, but yet are not, because they will not believe.

I answer: That the will of God is diversely distinguished by the doctors, as [John] Damascene (The will of God is not diverse, Damascene, bk. 2, ch. 46), into an:

1. Antecedent will
2. Consequent will

Lombard and the Schoolmen (bk. 1, ch. 45) into his:

1. Signified will
2. Well-pleasing will

Tertullian (Lib. Exhort. ad castitatem.), into his:

1. Efficient will
2. Permissive will

Whereof he calls the first voluntas pura and the other voluntas indulgentiae.

St. Augustine (Enchiridion, ch. 102 & 103), into his:

1. Effectual working and omnipotent will
2. Not working, or not efficient will

Others into his:

Absolute will
Conditional will

Others into his

Secret will
Revealed will

All which, and all such like distinctions of God’s will, if they be diligently observed and well understood, do fall into the same end and do no ways prove either diverse wills to be in God or any contradiction to be in the will of God.

For it is most certain that as the essence of God is most simple, without composition or division, so the will of God, which is nothing else but his eternal decree concerning all things, is one and the selfsame immutable and unresistible: in so much that the wicked, who as much as in them lies, do resist the will of God revealed and commanded unto us in his Word, yet notwithstanding, will they, nill they, they fulfill the will of God decreed in Himself from all eternity; as you may see most plainly in the example of Pilate, Herod and the wicked Jews, who in crucifying Christ, rebelled and resisted the will of God revealed in his word, yet herein they did perform the secret will of God, which before all worlds He had determined should be done, as St. Peter shows (Acts 2:23; Augustine in Enchiridion, ch. 98), Et sic in hoc ipso quod contra voluntatem Dei fecerunt, de ipsis facta est voluntas eius: And so in this very thing wherein they did against God’s will, God effected his own will. (Idem, de cor. et gratia)  Et de his qui faciunt quod non vult, facit ipse, quae vult: And touching these men which do against his will, He does whatsoever He will.”

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On The Synopsis of Pure Theology (1625)

Van den Belt, ‘The Vocatio in the Leiden Disputations (1597—1631): The Influence of the Arminian Controversy on the Concept of the Divine Call to Salvation’  in Church History and Religious Culture, Vol. 92, No. 4 (2012), p. 552-54

“To explain the efficacious call, Polyander (1622) refers to the parable of the seed.  The inefficacious concurrence of the internal and external modes of the call has three distinct forms.  Some are illumined by the light of the gospel, but not affected to embrace it.  Others permit the light of the truth conceived in the soul to be suffocated by the cares of this world, and to others the Holy Spirit gives some taste of his grace by which their heart is affected with a sense of joy for a moment.  These three forms correspond with the seed that falls along the path, among thorns, and on rocky places…

Polyander does not equate the internal call with the efficacious call for two reasons: 1) Because the universal call through nature also has an internal side, and 2) because the external and the internal call can concur in the hypocrit [Heb. 6:4-6].
…

When the call is divided into internal and external…  with respect to the reprobate however, they can be distinguished as species.  Following Polyander (1622) and Polyander (1627), Walaeus (1631) also distinguishes certain grades of the internal operation of the Spirit in the reprobate…  In short, all the disputations held on the vocatio after the synod [of Dort] differentiate the internal work of the Spirit.”

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Andreas Polyander

Synopsis of Pure Theology (Brill), Disputation 30, ‘On the Calling of People to Salvation’  in Synopsis of a Purer Theology, vol. 2 (Brill, 2016), pp. 222-27

“32. The way of calling, when we examine it from opposing perspectives, is divided into external and internal.  The former is achieved outwardly through the administration of Word and sacraments, the latter inwardly through the working of the Holy Spirit.
…

34, Nor does God always link the two ways of calling equally or in the same way, but the concurrence of both of them is effective in some people and ineffective in others.†

† [Editor: …’concurrence’ refers to the external and the internal callings that mostly, but not necessarily, concur. Even if they do concur that is not always efficacious.  According to Arminius the concurrence of the outward and inward call was efficacious, be it that the effect ultimately depended on the consent of the believer.  After the Synod of Dort, Reformed theologians felt a need to specify when and how the internal call had effect and did no longer teach that the concurrence of the outward and inward calls was always salvific.  Cf. Van den Belt, ‘Vocatio in the Leiden Disputations,’ 552.]

35. The ineffective concurrence of the two ways is observed in three kinds of people.  For some people are not moved to embrace it, even though the light of the evangelical truth has shone fully upon them.  These are the people who receive the seed of the Gospel that is sown along the trodden path (Mt. 13:19).
…

37. To other people the Holy Spirit offers a little taste of his grace so that their hearts are touched by a momentary feeling of happiness.  These receive the Gospel like seed sown among thorns (Mt. 13:22).
…

40. Although some gifts flow forth from the concurrence of the two callings and are shared by hypocrites along with the elect (i.e., the gift of knowing and tasting God’s good Word, and the virtues of the coming age [Heb. 6:4-6]), they are not sufficient for the salvation of the hypocrites.  But in the elect they prepare the way for their salvation and–by God’s good pleasure towards them–these gifts do lead the way to more abundant grace, of which others are rightly, deservedly deprived because they do not employ those first gifts in the right way.
…

45. The form of the effective calling by which it is distinguished from the ineffective one, consists in the saving application of this benefit which takes some sinners from their natural communion to that particular grace…
…

46. The highest goal of both callings (shared by both the ineffective and the effective one) is the manifestation of God’s mercy towards those whom He calls.  The subordinate goal of the effective calling, and [the goal] proper to it, is the saving imparting of God’s grace; but the accidental goal of the ineffective calling is the conviction of stubborn disobedience and complete inexcusableness in the hearts of those who impudently withstand and interrupt the Holy Spirit as He speaks through the mouths of the preachers.†

† [Editor: …The finis accidens is not essential to the goal but as it were a side effect of it.]”

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Nicholas Byfield

A Commentary upon the Three First Chapters of the First Epistle General of St. Peter…  (London: Miles, 1637), on 1 Pet. 1:12, p. 86

“Again, revelation is either uncreated or created.

There is an uncreated revelation which is infinite, and such is that which the Father reveals to the Son from all eternity.

The created revelation hath three degrees, 1. Imperfect, 2. Perfect, 3. And most perfect.  The most perfect revelation is in Christ-man, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  The perfect revelation is in angels and blessed souls in heaven: the imperfect is in men on earth.

The revelation vouchsafed to men on earth is either ineffectual or effectual.

The ineffectual is a revelation not available to salvation, such is that revelation which may befall wicked men.  For they may prophesy, as is granted, Mt. 7.  But I call this revelation ineffectual because they may be castaways for all this.

But properly, revelation is the heritage of the saints.  For in them only it is effectual, and thus the Lord does grant revelation in two degrees:

1. Sometimes it is such an illumination as works a full assurance: sometimes it is an illumination that works only a persuasion.  In weak Christians the work of the Spirit of revelation is persuasion, but in strong Christians it is full assurance.”

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John Davenant

Animadversions upon a Treatise entitled, God’s Love to Mankind…  (Cambridge, 1641), ‘Answer: Whether absolute reprobation oppugne the truth and sincerity of God’, pp. 357-58

“It is the height and riches of God’s mercy which from everlasting has prepared for the elect only, and in time bestows upon them only that special and effectual grace which infallibly brings them unto glory.  It is a lower degree of mercy (and yet true mercy too) which is showed to the non-elect or reprobate, in preparing for them and bestowing upon them such means of grace as by their own default are made ineffectual.”

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On John Davenant & Aquinas

Michael Lynch, John Davenant’s Hypothetical Universalism: a Defense of Catholic & Reformed Orthodoxy  (Oxford Univ. Press, 2021)

p. 138

“Davenant recognized that if God wills the means of salvation to be procured for the reprobate, then God’s intention to save appears thwarted.  Does this not imply that God’s will is ineffectual because of God’s universal desire to save all?

Davenant responds to God’s apparent impotence by noting that God oftentimes obtains (and sometimes actually grants) the means to an end wherein the end is never attained.  Davenant appeals to the scholastic distinction between providence and predestination employed by Aquinas. (Davenant, De Morte Christi, in DD, 23 (370); Davenant, Sententia de Gallicana controversia, in DD, fol. Ii4v. Cf. Aquinas, [Disputed Questions,] De Veritate, in CT, q. 6 [on Predestination] a. 2 co. [actually art. 3, body])  Providence is a general appointment of a thing toward an end (universaliter ordinationem in finem), whereas predestination represents the outcome or result of an ordering (exitum vel eventum ordinis).  Predestination differs from providence in that “not everything that is ordained to an end [as in providence] reaches that end.” (Aquinas, De Veritate, in CT, q. 6 a. 2 co. [actually art. 3, body])

Like providence, then, the evangelical covenant is grounded upon an ordination to an end that does not infallibly obtain.  God has ordained that Christ make a universal satisfaction on condition of belief, which condition being not always fulfilled, necessitates that not all are forgiven.  This evangelical covenant, which displays the “freedom, mercy, and justice of God,” is made, consonant with God’s general love for mankind, between humanity and God promising the saving benefits of Christ to those who repent and believe.”

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pp. 151-52

“Davenant also often distinguishes between conditional and absolute decrees with respect to the voluntas simplicis complacentiae.  Absolute decrees properly fall under God’s voluntas beneplaciti, whereas God’s voluntas simplicis complacentiae is often expressed conditionally in Scripture.  Thus, when Scripture says God wills the salvation of all, it is on the condition of believing in Christ— an act “so agreeable unto Gods will that wheresoever it is found it shall be rewarded.”  Consider, for example, God’s voluntas simplicis complacentiae by which God is said to desire or will the salvation of all.  This will can be understood as an effectual will (virtually, in itself) with a condition.  That is, it is a mixed conditional, as opposed to a mere conditional.  As the sixteenth-century Jesuit Gabriel Vásquez explains,

“God, by way of an agreement [pacto], willed our salvation by a simple love [affectu] and that salvation is pleasing to him, so that unless sins hinder it, he effectually wills it…  therefore because of this mixed [implicitae] will under a condition, we say that God has a conditional will, or as they say, willingness [velleitatem].”

So God may be said to approbatively love the salvation of all, insofar as the objects of faith and repentance are well-pleasing to him, while also permitting the failing of the event, viz., the salvation of any particular person, on account of their failure to perform the condition.

Because of God’s foreknowledge of all future actions of all human beings, as well as his absolute power to cause them to do any good which would lead to blessedness or leave them in their sin leading to destruction, all of God’s decrees are either absolute or mixed conditionals.  Moreover, all decrees are either revealed or hidden.  The decree regarding a person’s election is hidden; on the other hand, the decree that God will save any person that believes is revealed.  Decrees that come in the form of a condition— such as “If Esau believes, he will be saved”— are not pure conditionals, as noted above, but are said to be mixed because they are grounded upon God’s absolute, effectual, and revealed will that he has bound himself to, namely, that he will save any who repent and believe.  According to an eternal and inviolable divine ordination, there is an indissoluble connection between faith and salvation.  Davenant explains:

“It is an absolute decree of the Divine will published in the Gospel, That whosoever repenteth, believeth, persevereth, shall be saved: From hence is derived that mixt conditionall decree, If Cain, if Judas, if any other repent and believe, they shall be saved.”

In short, when Davenant speaks of a conditional decree, he understands such decrees as founded upon God’s absolute will by which he has decreed that the apodosis follow (infallibly) from the fulfillment of the protasis.”

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pp. 152-53

“In accordance with God’s love of simple complacency and his signified will is the divine will toward the good whereby God has given to his creatures fitting means for the obtaining of such good.  Hence Davenant writes,

“God is said to will, desire, aim-at that good for the obteining whereof he affordeth fitting means, though withall he willeth that it shall be within the liberty of the creature to hinder & frustrate those means, & though he have absolutely decreed to permit the creature to abuse them unto his own destruction.”

Davenant notes that theologians often call this sort of divine willing “voluntas antecedens, voluntas conditionata, voluntas simplicis complacentiae.”

This granting of various gifts and graces to creatures is understood by Davenant with Aquinas’s doctrine of God’s providence in view.  Davenant illustrates this order of providence by observing from the natural world that God has provided for us many bodily remedies that are applicable to heal us, though not infallibly ordained to heal us. In the realm of theology, Davenant explains God’s providential will in furnishing the angels, both elect and nonelect, with many gifts ordained by God to the end of the angels’ felicity, even though not every angel obtained such felicity.  According to this will, God may be said to have

“willed and intended the obedience and salvation of the angels who apostatised, inasmuch as he furnished them with gifts, fit in themselves and suitable, to perform obedience and obtain salvation.”

According to Davenant, these gifts can be either external or internal, with respect to human beings.  One such external gift of God’s providence is the death of Christ, which has been ordained as a universal remedy for the sins of all human beings.  Moreover, Davenant argues that within the scope of the church community, God has provided many graces (including the preaching of the word, and even internal graces such as knowledge of one’s own sin and the fear of punishment); these graces, although they all are generally ordered to the salvation of those to whom such graces come, do not infallibly obtain that end.  In order to avoid confusion, Davenant emphasizes that when one speaks of “the end of such an action of God or of such a gift of God,” we are not to understand such an end as that which causes the divine volition but rather that God gave to such actions and gifts a “fitness or aptnesse to produce such an end.”  All such gifts reveal to us, according to Davenant, an antecedent and conditional will or decree in God for the good of all human beings:

“We cannot but acknowledge in [“the blessings and means which God has afforded to the angels, to Adam, and which he continually affordeth unto wicked men”] an antecedent and gracious will [in God] to do them good.””

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Samuel Rutherford

Christ Dying & Drawing Sinners to Himself…  (London: 1647), pp. 272-318

“A second question is, How far the Law can draw a sinner to Christ?  Antinomians tell us of a legal drawing and conversion, and of an evangelic drawing; the legal drawing they say is ours [that of the reformed]; the latter theirs.

Assertion 1.  The difference between the letter of the Law and the Gospel is not in the manner of working, for the letter of either Law or Gospel is alike ineffectual and fruitless to draw any to Christ.  Christ preached the Gospel to hard-hearted Pharisees; it moved them not.  Moses preached the Law and the curses thereof to the stiffnecked Jews and they were as little humbled.  Sounds and syllables of ten hells, of twenty heavens and Gospels, without the Spirit’s working, are alike fruitless.  And we grant the Law is a sleepy keeper of a captive sinner; he may either steal away from his keeper or if he be awed with his keeper, he is not kept from any spiritual, internal breach of the Law, nor moved thereby to sincere and spiritual walking.

But the difference between Law and Gospel is not in the internal manner of working, but in two other things:

1. In the matter contained in Law and Gospel: because nature is refractory to violence and the Law can do nothing but curse sinners; therefore it can draw no man to Christ.  The Gospel again contains sweet and glorious promises of giving a new heart to the elect, of admitting to the Prince of peace laden and broken-hearted mourners in Zion and in conferring on them a free imputed righteousness; and this is in itself a taking-way, but without the Gospel-spirit [it is] utterly ineffectual.

2. To the Gospel there is a Spirit added, which works as God does with an omnipotent pull; and this Spirit does also use the Law to prepare and humble; though this be by a higher power than goes along with the Law as the Law.”

.

Christopher Love

The Mortified Christian…  (London: Eglesfield, 1654),
‘A Sermon preached by Mr. Christopher Love at Anne Aldersgate, being by way of preparation for the morning exercise…’, p. 99

“(3) You must take heed how you hear, because if you do not, the Word will not only be ineffectual to you, but do you a great deal of hurt.”

.

Francis Roberts

Mysterium & Medulla Bibliorum: the Mystery & Marrow of the Bible, viz. God’s Covenant with Man…  (London: R.W., 1657)

bk. 3, ch. 4, p. 865

“(2) In this Sinai-Covenant Jesus Christ is frequently tendered unto Israel, and that in variety of notions and considerations as has been abundantly manifested: The Tabernacle, the veil, the ark, the mercy-seat over the ark, the high priest with his consecration, garments, office, etc. the sacrifices of all sorts, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt-offering, etc.  they all typed out and tendered Christ to Israel.  Consequently true faith in Christ must herein be necessarily implied and required of Israel for discerning Christ in these mysteries, for apprehending and applying Him unto themselves for righteousness and salvation accordingly.  For without such faith to apprehend and apply Christ, all these manifestations of Christ to Israel had been vain, useless and ineffectual.”

.

bk. 4, p. 1341

“1…  This First Covenant becoming so weak, unprofitable and ineffectual to them, Heb. 7:18-19.

2. Gods just displeasure and judgement upon them for this Breach of Covenant: ‘And I regarded them not, saith the Lord.'”

.

Thomas Shepard

Subjection to Christ in all his Ordinances & Appointments the best means to preserve our Liberty: together with a Treatise of Ineffectual Hearing the Word...  (d. 1649; London: S.G., 1657), ‘Of Ineffectual Hearing’, pp. 89-90

“There is a twofold Word, or rather a double declaration of the same Word: 1. There is God’s external or outward Word, containing letters and syllables, and this is his external voice.  2. There is God’s internal Word and voice, which secretly speaks to the heart, even by the external Word, when that only speaks to the ear.

The first the Jews did hear at Christs Baptism, in Christs ministry, and in reading the Scriptures, and when they did hear it, it was God’s Word they heard, full of glory, and so they heard the Word spoken, but only man speaking it: the other comes to few, who hear not only the Word spoken, but God speaking the Word, Rom. 10:18-19.  Israel did hear, but Israel did not know. Christ speaks in parables; Hence in seeing they did not see, Lk. 8:10.  And this is one way, how ’tis true that Christ says, They never heard his voice.  As ’tis with a painted sun on the wall, you see the sun and stars, but there is a difference between seeing this and the sun and stars themselves, wherein is an admirable glory: go to a painted sun, it gives you no heat, nor cherishes you not; so it is here, etc.

2. This inward Word is double: 1. ineffectual (though inward); 2. effectual.

1. Ineffectual, is that which has some inward operation upon the heart, but it attains not God’s end to bring a man into a state of life; and thus, Heb. 6:2, 5.  Many tasted of the good Word of God, yet fell away.  And such a heart is compared to a field which a man plows and sows, and rain falls on it, and yet the end is not attained: it brings forth thistles; and this many Jews did hear, and hence had some kind of faith in Christ.

2. Effectual, is that which has such an inward efficacy upon men’s hearts, as that God attains his end thereby, Isa. 55:11, and brings men to a state of life, of which Christ speaks, Jn. 6:45, and this voice none but the elect hear; and of this Christ speaks here, as appears, v. 38, ‘Him whom He sent, ye believe not.’  Hence it is you have heard God at no time.  Hence He speaks of such a hearing and knowing, such a hearing outwardly as is accompanied with such a hearing inwardly, Jn. 14:17, so that many men may hear the word spoken outwardly, but never inwardly: they may hear it inwardly, but never effectually, translating them from state to state, from death to life, from life to life and glory.  No sense of the majesty of God speaking, nor effectual hearing of the Word spoken.  When the sun is down the moon may arise, but yet a man is cold and dark; but when the sun arises, oh it warms, nourishes and cherishes, etc. nothing is hid from it; so it is here, when the Lord speaks inwardly and effectually to the heart.”

.

George Swinnock

The Christian Man’s Calling…  (London: T.P., 1662), ch. 15, ‘How a Christian may exercise himself to godliness in hearing and reading the Word, and of preparation for hearing’, pp. 216-17

“Thirdly, if thou wouldst prepare thyself for the Word, entreat God to bless it to thee: The operations of the Spirit must accompany the administration of the Word, or it will be ineffectual: It is the Spirit that quickeneth, Jn. 6.63.  The fire burns naturally, and the water cools naturally; but if the fire of the Word ever burn up thy corruptions, or the water of the Word refresh thee with real consolations, it must not be by its own nature, but by a divine power.”

.

Richard Baxter

Richard Baxter’s Catholic Theology...  (London: White, 1675), pt. 1, sect. 14, Of Several Distinctions of God’s Will, p. 56

“359. XI. The next distinction of God’s will is into effectual and uneffectual.  And here he that would see a great deal said on the question, Whether God have any uneffectual will, and whether man’s will can frustrate it, may see too much in a multitude of Schoolmen on [Lombard] Sentences, dist. 1, quest. 45 & 46.¹

¹ Aquinas, art. 1; Scotus, quest. unica; Durandus, quest. 1; Bonaventura, art. 1; Gregory Ariminiensis, quest. unica, art. 3; Pennot. bk. 4, ch. 22; Alvarez, De Auxiliis, disp. 32; Ruiz, De Voluntate, disp. 18; Granada, Of the Will of God, tract. 4, disp. 3; Suarez, bk. 4, Of Predestination, ch. 8; Gregory Valencia, disp. 1, quest. 19, p. 6; Cajetan; Nazar. Ban. Zum. Navar. Gonzal. Molina; Vasquez, etc. in [Aquinas, Summa] pt. 1, quest. 19, art. 6; Ripa. Arrub. Fasol. ibid.; Nic. D’Orbel., pt. 1, dist. 46 and many other Scotists, etc.

Some answer (as D’Orbellis, etc.) that the voluntas beneplaciti [will of good-pleasure] is ever effectual, but not the voluntas signi; which yet seeing he well explains to be only the making of duty, he might well have said is still effectual to its proper primary effect.  Gregory Ariminiensis (and many others) distinguish of the will of complacency and displicency, and that prosecutionis et fugae; and say the latter is effectual and not the former: which others say of the absolute will as distinct from the conditional.

The plain truth I have oft opened before: God’s will is the first efficient, the chief dirigent and the final cause (in which the three principles, power, wisdom and goodness are eminent).

1. His efficient will is ever effectual and never frustrated.  ‘Whatsoever pleased the Lord (to do) that He did in heaven and in earth, in the sea and in the depths.’ Ps. 135:6.  ‘And who has resisted (this) his will?’ Rom. 9:19.

2. His directing will is ever effectual as to the making of the Law or rule, and of due or right thereby: For so far it is efficient of that effect: But it is too oft violated by our sin.

3. His final will or complacency, is God’s being pleased with the being, or action, or relation of the creature, and supposing it, [it] is not efficient [because it is an end, final goal], and therefore [it is] not effectual.

And I know no need of more upon this question.”

.

Matthew Poole

Annotations upon the Holy Bible…  (London: Parkhurst, 1685), on Acts 26, verse 30, margin note

“…although they [King Agrippa, etc.] had heard this excellent discourse from the most learned apostle [Paul], like the blackmore or leopard they cannot change their spots, Jer. 13:23, or skin, having sinned against former manifestations of God’s will; this, for ought we read, became ineffectual unto them.”

.

Richard Fairclough

Puritan Sermons, vol. 6, ‘The Papal Doctrine In Denying The Possibility Of Assurance Is False, And Has A Dangerous Tendency To Destroy The True Place And Comfort Of Souls In The Certain Hopes Of Everlasting Happiness. – 2 Peter 1:10’, p. 377-78

“God’s call sometimes is ineffectual, and sometimes effectual.  So the same apostle plainly declares in 1 Thess. 2:13: “For this cause also thank we God, which effectually works also in you that believe.”  Observe that it is the work of God’s Spirit in the heart, superadded to the Word of the Gospel, as spoken by men, that makes any call effectual.  Without this inward work, God may call, and the soul will never answer…

It is this effectual work of God’s Spirit, in regenerating the soul by infusing of habits of grace, which distinguishes an internal effectual call of God form a mere external and ineffectual one… The text makes sure that it might be known whether or not God has so called you by His Word, as that also He has worked in you by His Spirit; whether God has illuminated your understanding, and inclined your will, so that you have complied with God’s will, and have answered His call.  Whether, when God drew you, you ran after Him (Cant. 1:4); whether, when God entreated and persuaded you to be reconciled to Him you consented (2 Cor. 5:20); whether, when He wooed you, He also won you; whether, when He invited you to the wedding supper of His Son, you made no excuse or delay, but accepted, and welcomed the offer of the Gospel with faith and love (Luke 14:18).  All which if you did do, it arose from the power of an inward call, being superadded to the outward call of the Word…”

.

Philip Henry

An Exposition upon the First 11 Chapters of Genesis  (d. 1696; London: Nisbet & Co., 1839), pp. 166-67  on Gen. 6:3, “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh.”

“Three things are to be observed in this speech:

1. God’s resolution not always to strive with man by his Spirit. My Spirit has striven a great while; it shall strive yet a little longer; but it shall not strive always.  The Holy Spirit is a striving Spirit with the children of men; striving them away from sin, and to bring them to God; striving by the checks of their own consciences, but the ministry of the Word, by the rebukes of Providence; striving by one fair warning after another to reclaim the sinner.  Have not we ourselves experienced these strivings?—something within us that has whispered in an hour of temptation, “Do not this abominable thing which the Lord hates?”  ‘Twill be our wisdom to hearken to such whispers, and to close with them, striving against sin.  Heb 12:4.  If the Spirit of God be resisted in its strivings, and quenched in its motions, though it may strive long, yet it will not strive always.  ‘Tis a principle with men not to be always persuading those with whom they cannot prevail; neither will the blessed Spirit do so.  If Ephraim be joined to idols, is it not a righteous thing with God to say, Strive no more with him, let him alone?  Hosea 4:17.  What guest will stay long there where he is not welcome?  Is it not wisdom then to improve these strivings while we have them?

 2. The reason of that resolution: For that he also is flesh; carnal, earthly, sensual, corrupted, depraved, defiled; and therefore ‘tis to no purpose to strive with him; ‘tis but labor lost. It is as good to go about to change the Ethiopian’s skin or the leopard’s spots, as to reclaim and reform these impenitent sinners.  Flesh, in scripture, is frequently opposed to spirit.  It is the corrupt nature that renders the strivings of the blessed Spirit ineffectual.  ‘Tis the law in the members that wars against the law of the mind.  Rom. 7:23.  The flesh and the spirit are sworn enemies one to another, and between them there is a constant conflict.  Gal. 5:17.  Now where the flesh, the carnal part, is so far suffered to prevail, as that the man may be denominated flesh, there the Spirit will not always, will not long strive.  Those therefore that would enjoy the Spirit’s strivings, must curb and restrain, and not gratify and encourage, the corrupt motions and carnal desires of the flesh and of the mind.  Eph. 2:3.”

.

Peter van Mastricht

Theoretical Practical Theology (RHB), vol. 3, bk. 3, ch. 11, sect. 13

“3. In the moral providence of God, is there a place for an ineffective wish?

XIII. It is asked, third, whether in the moral providence of God, there is a place for some ineffective wish or desire of God. The Pelagians and Pelagianizers—Socinians, Jesuits, Arminians, and others—because they argue for a self-determined free choice that God cannot determine, and because likewise they argue for a conditioned antecedent will in God, by which God wills if a person wills, and likewise by which he wills that each and every person be saved, if only they will it, say that there is in God a wish properly so-called, by which God desires that this or that duty be done by man, but he desires it in vain.

The Reformed acknowledge no sort of wish and desire in God, except that which coincides with his commandment, different from it in this alone, that whereas a commandment urges a duty only by the authority of the lawgiver, a wish urges it by a motive drawn from a certain eminent advantage which is certainly set to fall from that duty upon him who obeys.  We examined the reasons on both sides in book 2, chapter 15, §XXXII.”

.

1700’s

John Howe

See Howe’s remarks on common grace. Oracles, II. ii.

.

Matthew Henry

Commentary on the Bible, on Gen. 6:3

“This comes in here as a token of God’s displeasure at those who married strange wives; He threatens to withdraw from them his Spirit, whom they had grieved by such marriages, contrary to their convictions: fleshly lusts are often punished with spiritual judgments, the sorest of all judgments.  Or as another occasion of the great wickedness of the old world; the Spirit of the Lord, being provoked by their resistance of his motions, ceased to strive with them, and then all religion was soon lost among them.  This He warns them of before, that they might not further vex his Holy Spirit, but by their prayers might stay Him with them. Observe in this verse,

I. God’s resolution not always to strive with man by his Spirit.  The Spirit then strove by Noah’s preaching (1 Pt. 3:19–20) and by inward checks, but it was in vain with the most of men; therefore, says God, He shall not always strive.

Note, 1. The blessed Spirit strives with sinners, by the convictions and admonitions of conscience, to turn them from sin to God.  If the Spirit be resisted, quenched, and striven against, though He strive long, he will not strive always, Hos. 4:17.  Those are ripening apace for ruin whom the Spirit of grace has left off striving with.

II. The reason of this resolution: For that he also is flesh, that is, incurably corrupt, and carnal, and sensual, so that it is labor lost to strive with him. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? He also, that is, All, one as well as another, they have all sunk into the mire of flesh.

Note, 1. It is the corrupt nature, and the inclination of the soul towards the flesh, that oppose the Spirit’s strivings and render them ineffectual.  When a sinner has long adhered to that interest, and sided with the flesh against the Spirit, the Spirit justly withdraws his agency, and strives no more.  None lose the Spirit’s strivings but those that have first forfeited them.”

.

1800’s

Heinrich Heppe

Reformed Dogmatics  rev. Ernst Bizer, tr. G.T. Thompson  (1861; 1950; Wipf & Stock, 2007), p. 517

“13. In the same way too it cannot be concluded that because the outward calling of the rejected is ineffectual it is therefore not seriously meant by God. Outward calling is always per se [of itself, in principle] a real calling to salvation, since everyone who follows it up thereby gains righteousness in Christ and eternal life: only, in the case of the godless, it is ineffectual because of their hardness of heart.  Similarly, the calling from God’s side is always seriously intended, since God promises grace even to the rejected upon condition of faith, and makes faith for them a duty.  But of course God omits to give faith to the rejected, because He is not bound to do so in the case of any man… From this it follows that even the calling of the godless is on God’s side ‘sincere and serious’.”

.

William G.T. Shedd

Calvinism: Pure & Mixed  (NY: 1893)

ch. 3, pp. 19-20

“When God ‘foreordains’ a sinner ‘to everlasting death,’ He decides to leave him in the sin which deserves everlasting death and results in it.  The non-elect sinner has experienced the operation of common grace.  It is an error to say that God shows no kind or degree of mercy to the non-elect.  But he has resisted and defeated it.  God decides to proceed no further with him by the bestowment of that special grace which regenerates, and ‘makes willing in the day of God’s power.’

The elect sinner has also experienced, resisted, and defeated common grace.  God decides to proceed further with him, by effectual calling and regeneration.”

.

ch. 5, pp. 48-51

“Common grace is great and undeserved mercy to a sinner, and would save him if he did not resist and frustrate it.  In and by it, ‘God commandeth all men everywhere to repent,’ and whoever repents will find mercy…

Scripture denies that God is under obligation to follow up his defeated common grace with his irresistible special grace.  It asserts his just liberty to do as He pleases in regard to imparting that measure of grace which produces the new birth, and makes the sinner ‘willing in the day of God’s power.’…

God sincerely desires that the sinner would hear his outward call, and that his common grace might succeed with him.”

.

Dogmatic Theology  (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888), vol. 2, pp. 482–89

.

1900’s

John Murray

‘Report of the Committee on the Free Offer of the Gospel, Presented to the Fifteenth (1948) General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, ‘The Report’, Conclusions 2-3

“(2) We have found that God Himself expresses an ardent desire for the fulfilment of certain things which He has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass.  This means that there is a will to the realization of what He has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards that which He has not been pleased to decree.  This is indeed mysterious, and why He has not brought to pass, in the exercise of his omnipotent power and grace, what is his ardent pleasure lies hid in the sovereign counsel of his will.  We should not entertain, however, any prejudice against the notion that God desires or has pleasure in the accomplishment of what he does not decretively will.

(3) Our Lord Himself in the exercise of his messianic prerogative provides us with an example of the foregoing as it applies to the matter of salvation.  He says expressly [in Mt. 23:37] that He willed the bestowal of his saving and protecting grace upon those whom neither the Father nor he decreed thus to save and protect.”

.

Louis Berkhof

Systematic Theology  (1951), III. Common Grace, B. Name & Concept of Common Grace

“c. Special grace is irresistible.  This does not mean that it is a deterministic force which compels man to believe against his will, but that by changing the heart it makes man perfectly willing to accept Jesus Christ unto salvation and to yield obedience to the will of God.  Common grace is resistible, and as a matter of fact is always more or less resisted.  Paul shows in Rom. 1 and 2 that neither the Gentiles nor the Jews were living up to the light which they had.  Says [W.G.T.] Shedd: “In common grace the call to believe and repent is invariably ineffectual, because man is averse to faith and repentance and in bondage to sin.” [Calvinism Pure & Mixed, p. 99.]  It is ineffectual unto salvation because it leaves the heart unchanged.

d. Special grace works in a spiritual and re-creative way, renewing the whole nature of man, and thus making man able and willing to accept the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, and to produce spiritual fruits.  Common grace, to the contrary, operates only in a rational and moral way by making man in a general way receptive for the truth, by presenting motives to the will, and by appealing to the natural desires of man.  This is equivalent to saying that special (saving) grace is immediate and supernatural, since it is wrought directly in the soul by the immediate energy of the Holy Spirit, while common grace is mediate, since it is the product of the mediate operation of the Holy Spirit through the truth of general or special revelation and by moral persuasion.”

.

R.A. Finlayson

Reformed Theological Writings of R.A. Finlayson  (Christian Focus Publications, 1996), ch. 5, “The Benefits of the Covenant – Efficacious Grace in the Westminster Confession of Faith”, p. 253  Finlayson was a professor in the Free Church of Scotland.

“1. What is meant by Efficacious Grace?

The [Westminster] Confession makes a distinction between ‘common grace’ and ‘efficacious grace’.  We are not justified, however, in making this a distinction in kind as if common grace was different in quality from saving grace.  Both are the free unmerited favor of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Any distinction that we know of is the result of its operations.  The ministry of the Spirit of God in common grace is often ineffective and fruitless insofar as actual salvation is concerned, whereas effectual grace is an operation of the Spirit which invariably without fail results in salvation.”

.

.

Historical

On the Post-Reformation

Muller, Richard

Dictionary, ed. 1

“permissio efficax

Effective permission or willing permission; especially, the providential concursus (q.v.) underlying evil acts of human beings; a concept typical of Reformed theology, which will not allow a bare or ineffectual permission on the part of God and which will acknowledge no realm of activity outside of the will of God.  God therefore is viewed as positively willing to permit the free agency of human beings and as supporting their acts with his providential concursus even when those acts go against his revealed will.”

.

“vocatio, ‘calling’

specifically, the call of God to be his children, which occurs by the grace of the Holy Spirit…
…
Against the Reformed distinction between an effective (efficax) and ineffective (inefficax) vocatio [calling], the Lutherans hold the sufficiency of Scripture and the efficacious character of God’s call in all cases.  Failure to heed the call indicates no fault in the Word but rather in the hearer.  The Reformed, by contrast, distinguish vocatio specialis [an individual or particular calling] in vocatio externa [the external call], which is the universal call of the gospel to all men without distinction, and vocatio interna, which is the inward calling of the Spirit that creates the communion between man and God necessary for the vocatio externa [external calling] also to be vocatio efficax [an effectual calling].  Only the elect are therefore effectively called.”

.

“voluntas Dei, ‘the will of God’

…
The Reformed further argue the distinction of the voluntas decreti vel beneplaciti [will of decree or good-pleasure] or voluntas decernens [decreeing will] into the categories of voluntas efficiens, effecting will, and voluntas permittens, permitting will.  Under the former category, God is viewed as directly or indirectly through instrumental causes effecting his positive will, whereas under the latter category God is understood as permitting both contingent events and acts of free will even when such events and acts go against his revealed will.”

.

PRRD, vol. 3, p. 470

“3.  Voluntas efficax and voluntas inefficax….  But what of the possibility that God’s will can be distinguished into voluntas efficax [an effective will] and voluntas inefficax [an ineffective will]?  This latter distinction is ill chosen, but will stand if it refers to the effectual will of God to the decree and the ineffectual will to the divine precepts, the former being incapable of resistance and the latter resisted successfully by all evildoers.  If a distinction between effective and ineffective will is sought in the voluntas decreti [will of decree] itself, this is repugnant and deeply in error…”

.

.

.

Latin

1700’s

Holtzfus, Barthold – Thesis 12  on Effectual & Ineffectual  in ch. 8, ‘Of the Will of God & of the Distinctions of the Divine Will’  in A Theological Tract on God, Attributes and the Divine Decrees, Three Academic Dissertations  (1707), pp. 109-122

Holtzfus (1659-1717) was a professor of philosophy and theology in the reformed tradition at Frankfurt.

.

.

On Ineffectual Grace

Quotes

Order of

Davenant
Jenkyn
Younge
Sherlock
Ball
Robinson
Lobb
Bates

.

1600’s

John Davenant

Animadversions upon a Treatise entitled, God’s Love to Mankind…  (Cambridge, 1641), ‘Whether absolute reprobation oppugn the truth and sincerity of God’, pp. 357-58

“As for the divine commiseration of sinners, it shows that their death and damnation are not things primarily well-pleasing unto God: but it shows not that God must become an hypocrite and a dissembler if He have eternally decreed to permit them to incur death and damnation by their own default.  For God’s mercy being actio sublevantis [an act of taking away] and not passio condolentis [a passion of suffering with], it ties Him not to do all He can for redeeming any man out of his misery; but his action is ordered and limited by his own free-will.

It is the height and riches of God’s mercy which from everlasting has prepared for the elect only, and in time bestows upon them only that special and effectual grace which infallibly brings them unto glory.  It is a lower degree of mercy (and yet true mercy too) which is showed to the non-elect or reprobate, in preparing for them and bestowing upon them such means of grace as by their own default are made ineffectual.”

.

William Jenkyn

An Exposition of the Epistle of Jude…  (London: Maxey, 1652), on v. 4, pp. 333-34

“4. This turning the grace of God into lasciviousness argues the grossest folly; it is a forsaking of our own mercy, a receiving the grace of God in vain.  What is, if this be not to neglect great salvation; to be prodigal of blessedness; to ravel out and to wanton away the offers of Christ Himself?  Who would not heartily chide himself that by toying, trifling, or unnecessary lingering in the way to the exchange, misses of a bargain by which he might have gained a thousand pounds?…

4. Grace turned into lasciviousness is the top of all ingratitude.  What greater unkindness than to be evil because God is good?…  To be lascivious because God is gracious is to fight against God with his own weapons, to wound God with that arm which He has cured (Hos. 7:15), to kill and crucify Him who has freed us from death: In a word, to make that a pillow for presumption which God appointed for an antidote against despair.”

.

An Exposition of the Epistle of Jude…  (London: Maxey, 1654), on vv. 17-19, pp. 569-70

“These sensual atheists, then turning the grace of God into wantoness and giving over themselves to the following of their lusts, securely derided and scoffed at any directions of holiness or denunciations of judgments which opposed them in their ungodly courses as vain and contemptible fables:

…
4. It makes all the means of grace ineffectual; scorners will not be bettered:  ‘Rebuke a scorner, and he will hate thee;’ the strength of this sin makes all the helps of holiness to be but weak; they all slide off, as water from an oiled post.  A scorner, is (as it were) a brazen wall, which beats back all the arrows of reprehension.  Mocking argues obduratenesse in sin; It extinguishes light natural and opposes light spiritual.”

.

Richard Younge

The Whole Duty of a Christian...  (London: Leybourn, 1653), ch. 29, p. 57  Younge (fl. 1640–1670) was a puritan tract writer.

“…but this is the misery and a just plague upon our so much formality and profaneness under our so much means of grace, there be very few men that make not the whole Bible and all the sermons they hear, yea the checks of their own consciences and the motions of God’s Spirit utterly ineffectual for want of wit and grace to apply the same to themselves…”

.

Richard Sherlock

The Quakers’ Wild Questions Objected against the Ministers of the Gospel…  with Brief Answers Thereunto...  (London: Cotes, 1654)  Sherlock (1612–1689) was an Anglican clergyman.

pp. 152-53

“§ 53. But how comes it to pass then, that these blessed means of grace, these conveyances of the Spirit are so often ineffectual?  Many men do daily pray, often hear and read the Word of God, have been engraffed into the body of Christ by baptism, and many times receive the blessed eucharist, and yet little or no news do they hear of the Spirit, very little stirrings of the heart, few good motions do they feel within, they are never the better, nor a whit the more enriched, either with spiritual gifts or graces for the use of these means: The cause whereof is the hardness of man’s heart, which receives not the impressions of the Spirit; the corruption of man’s nature, which quenches the sacred fires of piety and charity, before they be well enkindled in the soul; the exorbitant and unruly lusts of the flesh, and of the world, which resist the good motions, lustings, and strivings of the Spirit of God.  Intus existens prohibet alienum; when the fruits of the flesh have overgrown the soul, there’s no room for the fruits of the Spirit to take rooting there: These two kinds of fruits cannot grow both in one heart, but the one will choak, overgrow, and destroy the other.

To this outward means of grace then, and of the Spirit, the inward qualifications, the infitting of the soul to receive the impressions of the Spirit must be added…”

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p. 155

“In vain [it is] to participate of those mysteries of our salvation, the body and blood of our Lord, till first by self-examination we have cast out the venom of our sinful doings by repentance and steadfast purposes of amendment.  In a word, it is our sins unrepented that make void and ineffectual all the blessed means of grace and of the Spirit; by those it is we quench the Spirit, we grieve the Spirit, we resist the Spirit, we provoke the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19; Eph. 4:30), and poison the blessed nature of life; so that all the conveyances of the Spirit are barren and unfruitful whilst they reflect upon hardened and impenitent hearts.”

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An Answer to a Late Scandalous Pamphlet entiuled “A Friendly debate between Satan & Sherlock”…  (London: A.C., 1677), p. 17

“…which is a very powerful argument against the delays of our repentance, and should make us very cautious of contracting such habits of vice as may make the grace of God ineffectual to us.”

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John Ball

The Power of Godliness both Doctrinally & Practically handled…  (London: Miller, 1657), ch. 3, p. 299

“Q. What difference is there betwixt the combat which is to be found in the temporary [believer], and that which is proper to the regenerate?

A. Besides the remainders of God’s image, the temporary believer is endued with the common graces of the Spirit, for substance not counterfeit, though ineffectual to sanctification.  He is illightened with the knowledge of divine mysteries grounded upon the Scripture, which is not altogether idle and ineffectual: He is drawn to believe in some sort and with confidence to receive the Word of the Kingdom both as true and good.  He may reform himself in such sort, that it may be said Satan is cast out of him: and all this not in hypocrisy or for fear of punishment, but freely and according to the Word of grace, whereby he is moved to affect things that are above.

From whence follows a combat in him far greater and of another nature than that betwixt reason and appetite, conscience and affection, or the relics of God’s image with the power of sin; even of the common graces of the Spirit with the power of corruption repressed, not mortified or killed.  But the graces of the Spirit are not soundly planted, the Word of the Kingdom is not kindly received into the heart so as to rule with universal sovereignty, and to season throughout the powers of the soul.

Temporary Christians make some account of God’s favor and the joys of heaven in an inferior place: but their desire of happiness is subordinate to the things of this world; in particular estimation, which is joined with choice of heart, they prefer their special delights before Christ, and will rather leave Him than leave the world, if the one of necessity must be parted with.  Wherefore the will of the best unregenerate man, is still in captivity under the dominion of sin, and his heart of an earthly temper, though it be somewhat changed by the superficial receipt of the Word of Life, which it tastes, but digests not.

In which respect the motions of the unregenerate in the ways of godliness may be said to be dead and accidental; because the soul is not enlivened by the Spirit of grace: but the motion of the regenerate is lively and natural, proceeding from the Spirit of grace that dwells in them, whereby they are quickened in the inner man.”

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Ralph Robinson

Christ the Perfect Pattern of a Christian’s Practice…  (London: J.S., 1658), ‘Mary Wolnoth, April the 29th 1649’ on Mk. 3:5, pp. 186-87

“1st Use. This shows the reason why the preaching of the Word and all the dispensations of grace are so ineffectual and do so little good upon the hearts of most men: why there are so few converted and brought home to God: the heart is hard, hard by nature, hardened more by custom in sinning…

2nd Use. The ministers of God should from hence learn to use all their might and skill in dispensing the Word of God’s grace to the sons of men.”

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Stephen Lobb

The Glory of Free Grace Displayed...  (London, 1680), ch. 7, p. 72

“‘You will not come unto Me that ye may have life,’ you will have none of my counsel, you will not return, you are a stiff-necked people, obstinate and rebellious, whence the common assistances of Gods Spirit proves ineffectual and if God did not glorify free-grace any further, none, not the elect would return unto God, for although common grace given unto all is sufficient to leave all men without excuse, their non-improvement being their sin, yet none are thereby effectually engaged to turn unto God in faith, no not the elect, who, while unregenerate, are as sinfully obstinate as any;”

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William Bates

The Danger of Prosperity Discovered in Several Sermons upon Prov. 1:27  (London: Aylmer, 1685)

p. 57

“4. The prosperity of sinners usually renders the means of grace ineffectual, that should reclaim and reform them, and consequently their destruction is remediless.  The means of grace are internal or external: Internal, the motions of the Holy Spirit and the convictions and excitations of conscience: External, the ministry of the Word and the counsels of faithful friends; all which are usually made frustrated and inefficacious by the vices and lusts of the prosperous.”

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p. 67

“2. The convictions and excitations of conscience are prevented, or made ineffectual by the prosperity of sinners.”

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p. 88

“2. Infidelity, that is occasioned and confirmed by prosperity in sin renders the gospel ineffectual to the salvation of men.  The Word preached did not profit the Jews, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. (Heb. 4:2)”

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On Sacraments being Ineffectual

Quote

1600’s

Richard Baxter

Certain Disputations of Right to Sacraments...  (London: Simmons, 1658), 2nd Disputation, pp. 200-201

“4. The Fathers erred not so much as many suppose in their ascribing [salvific effects] to baptism.  For:

1. Sometime by baptism they mean not only the external ordinance, but the whole work therein to be done; viz. the accepting Christ solemnly in Covenant, and giving up ourselves as a sanctified people to Him, renouncing the flesh, the world and the Devil, and so becoming fully Christians.  This is baptism with them, and not the outward sign alone.  And what says Peter less, when he says, ‘Baptism saves us,’ and thus expounds himself when he has done?  And what say the Fathers more?

2. When they speak of these effects of baptism, they suppose a due recipient or subject, that is, a true believer, or the seed of such: and therefore they oft speak of the inefficacy of the outward baptism to hypocrites.

3. When they speak of the outward ordinance only, the collation which they ascribe to it and all the great effects, are to be understood but by way of obsignation and solemnization, and not solely excluding the internal faith and the Covenant: as actual solemnized marriage gives a woman right to her husband and all that he has, when yet she had a right by secret covenant and contract before.

Now common reason and the nature of the thing and many of the contexts showing that the Fathers and Councils must be thus expounded according to these rules, I would fain know how they deserve that heavy accusation that we commonly lay upon them for their judgement in this, or what ground the Papists have to plead them generally for their efficacy ex opere operato?  And yet I will not excuse each particular person of them thus.”

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On Ineffectual Willings of Christ’s Human Will

Note that, per Scripture, the 6th Ecumenical Council of the Early Church and Reformed Orthodoxy, Christ has two wills, one human, one divine, with his finite human will subordinated to his divine will.  See ‘Christ has Two Harmonious Wills, Divine & Human’.

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Order of

Articles  3
Quotes  2

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Articles

1600’s

Jeanes, Henry – pp. 251-62  in A Vindication of Dr. Twisse from the Exceptions of Mr. John Goodwin in his Redemption Redeemed  (Oxford: Robinson, 1653)  appended to William Twisse, The Riches of God’s Love…  (Oxford: L.L., 1653)

Jeanes (1611–1662) was a reformed, English clergyman and puritan controversialist who had a knack for scholastic theology.

Part of this section is quoted below in the quotes.

Creed, William – paragraphs 61-73, pp. 236-43   in sect. 13  in The Refuter Refuted, or Dr. [Henry] Hammond’s Ektenesteron Defended, against the impertinent cavils of Mr. Henry Jeanes...  (London: Royston, 1660)

Creed (1614?-1663) was an English, Arminian clergyman, academic and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1660.

Jeanes’s pertinent section is the article above.  Creed’s treatment is detailed, learned and scholastic; he quotes Suarez numerous times.

“It cannot be denied but that there were in Christ during the state of his humiliation, those acts of the will that the Schools call efficaces and inefficaces; such acts of holy love that were complete and perfect in themselves and in the issue and accomplishment, and such other acts of holy love that were imperfect in themselves and also ineffectual in the event.” – p. 236

“From these [Mt. 23:27; Lk. 13:34; Mk. 7:24; 14:35-36; Mt. 26:39] and other like passages, the Fathers in the Sixth General Council concluded against the heresy of the Monothelites [that Christ has only one will], and established the true doctrine of a twofold will in Christ, not contrary to themselves, but still subordinate the one unto the other, at least in the final issue.” – p. 237

“I shall not now enquire whether these acts of Christ’s will and holy love did issue and proceed from Him per modum naturae [through the mode of nature, as Rutherford held; see below], or per modum rationis [through the mode of reason], as they speak in the Schools, or both; that is, whether they were only the natural weights and inclinations, and desires of the will and habit of charity to his own self-preservation, without any deliberation, such as is to be found in children before the use of reason; or whether they proceeded from Him out of a deliberate consideration and pondering, not so much of the now-impending evils and the fury of his Father’s wrath, as the love He bore to his own people the Jews, whose destruction and casting off He foresaw would be the consequents of his death: though Suarez seems to me to have proved the latter as well as the former.” – pp. 237-38

Pitcarne, Alexander – pp. 69-76  in pt. 1  in The Spiritual Sacrifice, or a Treatise wherein several Weighty Questions and Cases concerning the saints’ communion with God in prayer are propounded and practically improved  (Edinburgh: Brown, 1664)

Pitcarne (1622?–1695) was a partially conforming Scottish minister and academic.

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Quotes

Order of

Rutherford
Jeanes

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1600’s

Samuel Rutherford

Christ Dying & Drawing Sinners to Himself  (London: 1647), pp. 138-41

“‘But for this cause came I to this hour.’

Here is the fifth article in this prayer: a sort of correction, in which Christ does resign his will, as man, to the will of God; as Mt. 26:39; Lk. 22:42.  ‘Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.’

In this there is offered to us a question, Whether or no there be in this prayer any repugnancy in the human will of Christ to the will of God?  For:

1. A correction of the human will seems to import a jarring and a discord;
2. Christ desired that, the contrary whereof He knew was from eternity decreed of God.
3. The Law of God is so spiritual, straight and holy that it requires not only a conformity to it, and our will, actions, words and purposes, but also in all our affections, desires, first-motions and inclinations of our heart, that no unperfect and half-formed lustings arise in us even before the complete consent of the will that may thwart or cross the known Law and command of God; and by this, ‘Thou shalt not lust,’ Rom. 7, and the duty of the highest love we owe to God, to love him with all the heart, soul, mind, and whole strength, Mt. 22:37; Mk. 12:33; Lk. 10:27.

Some Arians and Arminians, John Geysteranus at the Synod of Dort, have said blasphemously that there was concupiscence and a will repugnant to God’s will in the second Adam, as in the first.  But this they spoke against the consubstantiality and deity of the Son of God.  To which we say:

Assertion 1.  Jesus Christ that holy thing, Lk. 1:35, was a fit high priest, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, Heb. 7:26.  Which of you (says Christ to the Jews) convinces me of sin, Jn. 8:46.  There could not be a spot in this Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world, no prick in this Rose, no cloud in this fair Sun, no blemish in this beautiful Well-beloved.

Assertion 2.  An absolute, resolved will or desire of heart to lust after that which God forbids in his Law must be a sinful jarring between the creature’s and the Creator’s will.  Now, Christ‘s will was conditional and clearly submissive; it lay ever level with his Father’s holy will.

Assertion 3.  I shall not with some affirm that which in the general is true, a will contrary to God’s revealed command and will, called voluntas signi, which is our moral rule to oblige us, is a sin [see Assertion 4 below]; but a will contrary to God’s decree, called voluntas beneplaciti, which is not our rule obliging, except the Lord be pleased to impose it on us as a moral Law, is not a sin.

Peter and the apostles, after they heard that prophecy of their denying of Christ and their being sinfully scandalized, and their forsaking of Christ when the Shepherd was smitten, were obliged to have a will contrary to that decree and to pray that they might not be led into temptation, but might have grace to confess their Savior before men and not flee, nor be scattered: Here is a resolute will of men lawfully contrary to the revealed decree of God, yet not sinful.  But the Lord’s will that Christ should die for man, as it was a decree of the wise and most gracious Lord pitying lost man, so was it also a revealed commandment to Christ, that He should be willing to die and be obedient to the death, even the death of the cross, Phil. 2:8; yea, a rule of such humble obedience as we are obliged to follow, as is said, verse 5, ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ etc.  If the Lord’s will that Christ should die be nothing but his mere decree, it could not oblige us in the like case to be willing, as John says to lay down our life for the brethren.  Yea, Jn. 10:18, Christ has a commandment of God and the revealed will of God to die for us:

‘No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down; I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of my Father.’

Here is an express commandment given to Christ to die for sinners; and the Father loves Christ for obedience to this commandment.

Assertion 4.  A conditional and a submissive desire, though not agreeable to a positive law and commandment of God, is no sin, nor does the Law require a conformity in all our inclinations and the first motions of our desires to every command of God, though most contrary to nature and our natural and sinless inclinations.

1. If God command Abraham to kill his only begotten son and offer him in a sacrifice to God, which was a mere positive commandment, for it’s not a command of the law of nature (nor any other than positive) for the father to kill the son, if yet Abraham retain a natural inclination and love commanded also in the law of nature to save his son’s life and to desire that he may live, this desire and inclination, though contradictory to a positive command of God, is no sin; because the Fifth Command, grounded on the law of nature, does command it.  Nor did God’s precept (‘Abraham, kill now thy son, even Isaac thine only begotten son’) ever include this, ‘Abraham, root out of thine heart all desire and inclination natural in a father to preserve the life of the child.’  So the positive command of the Father that the Son of God should lay down his life for his sheep, did never root out of the sinless nature of the man-Christ a natural desire to preserve his own being and life, especially He desiring it with special reservation of the will of God commanding that He should die.

2. A martyr dying for the truth of Christ may have a natural and conditional desire and inclination to live, though his living be contrary to the Lord’s revealed will commanding him to seal the Gospel with his blood and to confess Christ before men.

3. If the brother, son, daughter, wife or friend that is as a man’s own soul, Dt. 13:6, blaspheme God, yea if father or mother do it, Dt. 33:8-9, yet is a father obliged to stone the son or daughter, the son being a magistrate or a Levite and priest, to judge according to law (the priests’ lips should preserve knowledge, Mal. 2:8) that his father or mother ought to be stoned to death; yet ought not father or son to lay aside that natural desire of being and life to son, father, brother which the law of nature in the Fifth Command does require, especially the desire being conditional, with submission to God’s will, as the desire of Christ is here; and the command to stone the blasphemer, that the father stone the son, the son the father, being positive, and though founded on the law of nature, that a man prefer his Lord Creator and God before son or father and mother, yet are they not precepts of the law of nature such as is the precept of nature that a man desire his own life and being, the father the life and being of the son.

Assertion 5.  The apparent opposition (for it is not real) is rather between Christ‘s sensitive and his sinless mere natural desire and affection, and his reasonable will, than his [human] will and the will of God:¹ Nor can any say there is a fight or jarring between the conditional desire of Christ subjected in the same act of praying, to the Lord’s decree and the resolute and immutable will of God.  The Law of God, because holy and spiritual, does require a conformity between all the inclinations and motions of our soul and the law of nature; but an absolute conformity between all our inclinations and every positive command of God, such as was the Lord’s command that Christ should die for sinners, is not required in the Law of God.  If Adam submit his natural hunger or desire to eat of the forbidden tree, to God’s Law, and eat not, there is no sinful jarring between his will and God’s positive Law, ‘Thou shalt not eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil.’”

¹ [Rutherford here solves the issue contrary to Suarez, per Creed’s article above.]

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Henry Jeanes

A Vindication of Dr. Twisse from the Exceptions of Mr. John Goodwin in his Redemption Redeemed  (Oxford: Robinson, 1653), pp. 254-55  appended to William Twisse, The Riches of God’s Love…  (Oxford: L.L., 1653)

“First, you cannot deny but that in these words of Christ, ‘Father if it be possible, or if it be thy will, let this cup pass from Me,’ Christ prayed not as a Mediator for his elect, for so He was engaged to drink of this cup, but as a man naturally declining and abhorring death and the ignominy of the cross as they are in themselves evil: and yet all your arguments, mutatis mutandis, ‘with due change’ may be applied unto this interpretation, as well as unto Dr. Twisse’s notion (as you call it) upon Lk. 23:34.

Secondly, in answer unto your objections, we may make use of a distinction of prayer brought by Suarez in the 3rd Part, Summa, Aquinas, quest. 21, art. 4, ‘Prayer is nothing else but an unfolding of the will unto God.’  Now in Christ’s manhood there was a twofold will, one absolute and effectual, another conditional and uneffectual, which may otherwise be termed a velleity, a will of simple complacency, a will of a thing only secundum quid, in some particular respect, ‘according to some particular consideration’.  Of such a will of his we read, Mk. 7:24, ‘He entered into an house, and would have no man know it, but He could not be hid.’

Answerable unto these two acts of the will in Christ, there may be attributed unto Christ two sorts or kinds of prayer: one proceeding from an absolute and effectual will, and this was always heard: the other from a conditional and uneffectual will, and this was not always heard; such was his prayer in his agony, ‘Let this cup pass from Me’; and of this sort or kind of prayer is that passage, Ps. 22:2, in reference unto Christ, understood, ‘O my God, I cry in the day time, but Thou hearest not, and in the night season and am not silent.’

Now to apply this distinction: Christ could not pray as a private man for those of his persecutors for whom He did not pray as a Mediator, if we speak of that kind of prayer, which comes from an absolute and effectual will, which is styled by Gregory de Valentia, Voluntas rationis undequaque deliberatae [the will of the rule which has deliberated in every respect], because it proceeds upon regard had to all circumstances.  And the reason is, because with this kind of prayer, He never prayed for any thing, but what He knew would be granted; for He never absolutely and effectually willed any thing, but what was agreeable unto God’s absolute will, the will of his decree or good pleasure; and this is all that your [John Goodwin’s] arguments can prove.

But yet notwithstanding this, He might pray (taking prayer for a representation of a conditional or uneffectual will) for the pardon of even those of his persecutors, who He knew should be condemned and for whom therefore He prayed not as Mediator: or more plainly, He might express a velleity, a gracious, merciful, and charitable desire, to have all his crucifiers pardoned, so as it were not contrary unto God’s decree, unto which He did submit, and in which He did acquiesce, as He did in his prayer for the removal of his passion, ‘not my will but thy will be done.’

An answer very like unto, if not coincident with this, may be easily gathered out of Dr. Twisse; and it is that Christ, as a private man, prayed for the pardon of all his persecutors, taking prayer for an expression of Christ’s antecedent will, not as prayer is a representation of his consequent will.

An antecedent will, as Alvarez explains it, is the willing of a thing considered absolutely, as it is in itself, abstracting from all other considerations of it.  A consequent will is the willing of a thing considered with all circumstances wherewith it is clothed.

Thus a merchant wills the preservation of his wares with an antecedent will, as the preservation of his wares is considered in itself; but he does not will it with a consequent will as it is considered with this circumstance, as ’tis accompanied with hazard and danger of his life.  Thus also a judge with an antecedent will, wills the life of a prisoner, because his life is in itself a thing good and desireable: but he does not will it with a consequent will, as he is guilty of murder, incest or any the like capital crime.

Now Dr. Twisse, though he reject the application of this distinction to God, with whose simplicity and infinite knowledge several successive considerations of one and the same thing are utterly incompatible, yet he denies not but it may have place in the manhood of Christ:

Ratione diversarum considerationum non nego (says he) distinctionem istam competere posse in hominem; quippe cui variae considerationes occurrere possunt invicem succedentes: sic Christus naturali sui conservandi desiderio ferebatur, cum a patre peteret, ut calix transiret; at considerata voluntate et decreto patris de calice isto ad bibendum ipsi propinato, eidem se submittere consultum duxit.

[With respect to different considerations, I do not deny that this distinction can apply to man; for various considerations may occur to him, succeeding one another.  Thus Christ was moved by His natural desire for self-preservation when He asked the Father that the cup might pass from Him; but, having considered the Father’s will and decree concerning that cup which had been appointed for Him to drink, He judged it expedient to submit Himself to the same.]

This distinction in regard of diverse considerations of one and the same thing, may be ascribed unto man, in whom are found several considerations of the same thing succeeding one another: So Christ as man, out of a natural desire of self-preservation, prayed that the cup of his passion might pass from Him; but the will or decree, the command of his Father, his own office, and man’s salvation being considered, He submitted himself to the drinking up of this cup, even to the very dregs; nevertheless not my will but thy will be done. Lk. 22:42. If this cup may not passe away from me except I drinke it, thy will be done. Mt. 26:42. He did not will his passion with an antecedent will, but he willed it (you see) with a consequent will. Jn. 4:34. And so he prayed against it, as a prayer is a proposal of an antecedent, not consequent will.

Now that Dr. Twisse resembles this prayer of Christ, for the forgiveness of all his crucifiers, unto Christ’s deprecation of his death and passion, and makes it to be as that, an expression only of an antecedent will, a desire of their pardon, considered absolutely in itself, abstracting from God’s decree unto the contrary, I shall evidence by giving you Dr. Twisse’s own words. Vindication of the Grace, Power & Providence of God, bk. 1, pt. 2, page 188:

Non dicit Molinaeus istam voluntatem Christi hominis, secundum quam oravit pro crucifigentibus ipsum, contrariam fuisse voluntati divinae; potuit enim fieri cum submissione voluntati Dei tacite facta, licet non expressa, ad formulam precationis illius: pater transeat a me calix iste; Sed non mea voluntas fiat, sedtua.

[“Molina does not say that this will of Christ as man, according to which He prayed for those who crucified Him, was contrary to the divine will; for it could have been made with a tacit submission to the will of God, although not expressly stated, in accordance with the form of that prayer: ‘Father, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.’]

And again afterwards in the same page:

Annon homini sanctissimo convenit, privatam offensam remittere, et palam protestari, se (nisi Deus aliter statuisset) percupere ut ipsis ignosceret; de quibus tamen Deus aliter forsitan constituerit, quod et ipsi forsitan innotescit?  Annon petiit salvator, et ardenter obsecravit, ut si possibile esset, calix transiret, cum tamen Deum aliter constituisse, ne scilicet eum transiret calix, ipsi satis constaret? etc.

Denique, Christum illis bene voluisse, ut homo erat, quos antecedaneo decreto ab omnis boni spe ac possessione absolute exclusit Deus; hoc enim addendum fuit (licet illud fraudulenter nimiùm dissimulet Corvinus) etiam haec sententia quid horrendi, quaeso te inculcat?  Praesertim cum non sic voluisse dicamus, considerata ista, de eorum a salute exclusione, voluntate divina; sed duntaxat, si per volunta∣tem Dei aliter constitutum non fuisset, et si penes ipsum esset, ut eligeret, utrum in persecutores ipsius vindictam exerceret, aut suspenderet; pro ea quam ut homo in omnes (etiam in injuriis remittendis) charitatem exercere debuit, vindictam suspensam mallet quam exercitam.

[Does it not befit a most holy man to forgive a private offense, and openly to profess that he would greatly desire to forgive them (unless God had otherwise determined); concerning whom, nevertheless, God perhaps had otherwise ordained, a fact which perhaps was also known to Him?  Did not the Savior ask, and earnestly beseech, that, if it were possible, the cup might pass from Him, although it was sufficiently clear to Him that God had otherwise determined—that is, that the cup should not pass from Him? etc.

Finally, that Christ, insofar as He was man, wished well to those whom God, by a prior decree, had absolutely excluded from all hope and possession of good: for this too had to be added (although Corvinus most deceitfully conceals it)—what, I ask you, of anything horrible does this doctrine inculcate?  Especially since we do not say that He willed thus when that divine will concerning their exclusion from salvation is taken into consideration; but only that, if God’s will had not otherwise determined the matter, and if it had been within His power to choose whether to exercise vengeance upon His persecutors or to suspend it, then, in accordance with that charity which, as man, He ought to exercise toward all (even in the forgiving of injuries), He would have preferred that vengeance be suspended rather than exercised.]”

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Lombard, Medievals & Commentators on Lombard

Articles

1100’s

Lombard, Peter – The Sentences, book 1, The Mystery of the Trinity  tr. Giulio Silano  (d. 1160; Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2007), pp. 243-62

45. God’s Will

…
5. In what manners is (the term) God’s “will” accepted
6. That God’s preception, prohibition, permission, counsel, and operation are sometimes understood by the name of “will”
7. Whether God wills from all persons that to be done those things which He commands, and/or not to be done those things which He prohibits

46. Evil & the Efficacy of the Divine Will

1. That God’s will, which He Himself is, can be cancelled in nothing
2. In what manner is this to be understood: “I willed to gather thy children together, and thou wouldst not”, and this: “He who wills all men to come to be saved”
3. Whether evils come to be done by God willing and/or nilling
4. In what manner is this saying of St. Augustine to be understood: “It is good that evils come to be”
5. On the multiple acceptation of the term “good”
6. That evils have value for the university of things
7. That the cause that man is worse, is not in God

47. Efficacy of the Divine Will

1. That the will of God regarding a man is fulfilled whithersoever he turns himself
2. In what sense certain things are said to be done “against” God’s will
3. For what reason did God command to all to do good and avoid evil, but does not will that this be fulfilled by all

48. Conformity of our Will to the Divine Will

1. That man sometimes with goodwill wills something other than God wills, and with bad-will sometimes wills the same which God wills
2. That God’s will is fulfilled through the evil wills of men
3. Whether it pleased holy men that Christ would suffer and die
4. Whether we ought to will the sufferings of the saints

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1200’s

Alexander of Hales – bk. 1, pt. 1, inquiry 1, tract 6, questions 3-4  in Sum of Universal Theology  tr. AI by Stiven Peter  (Paris, 1230-1245; Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1924-1948), pp. 491-546

Alexander (c. 1185–1245) was a Franciscan friar, theologian and philosopher.  This is the first comprehensive Franciscan systematic theology, compiled under Alexander’s direction with William of Melitona, John of la Rochelle and the Halensis collaborators.

Albert the Great – bk. 1, dist. 45, art. 9 to dist. 48  in Commentaries on the Four Books of Sentences  tr. AI by Stiven Peter  (Paris: Vives & Bornet, 1894), 1,026-83

Albert (c. 1200 –1280) was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop and was known as Doctor Universalis.  He was a teacher of Aquinas.

Aquinas, Thomas – Commentary on the Sentences  (d. 1274), bk. 1, dist. 47, Certain things that seem to show the inefficacy of the divine will

art. 1, ‘Whether God wills that all men be saved? [No, with a distinction]’

art. 4, ‘Whether God wills that evils occur? [No]’

Bonaventure – bk. 1, dist. 45-48  in Commentary on the Four Books of Sentences  in Complete Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. 16, Philosophy of God  Buy  (Franciscan Institute Publications)

Bonaventure (1221–1274) was an Italian Franciscan bishop, cardinal, scholastic theologian and philosopher.

Dist. 45, On God’s will, according to its quiddity

…
Article 3, On the divine will, as much as regards its reckoning of being signified

Quest. 1, Whether the divine will is fittingly divided into the will of a sign and the will of good pleasure?

Quest. 2, On the number and sufficiency of the signs of the divine will

Doubts on the text of Master Peter’s 45th distinction

Dist. 46, On the fulfilling of the divine will

Article sole: On the will of God in respect of the salvation of all, and in respect of evil

Quest. 1, Whether God wills that all men come to be saved by the will of his good pleasure?
Quest. 2, Whether God wills evils to come to be?
Quest. 3, Whether it is good that evils come to be?
Quest. 4, Whether it is true that evils come to be?
Quest. 5, Whether evil is ordainable by the will of God?
Quest. 6, Whether evil concerns the complement of the universe?

Doubts on the text of Master Peter’s 46th Distinction

Dist. 47, On the divine will in regard to its efficacy

Article sole: On the efficacy of the divine will

Quest. 1: Whether the will of God’s good pleasure can be impeded?
Quest. 2: Whether anyone can work against the will of a sign?
Quest. 3: Whether God ought to permit evils?
Quest. 4: Whether God can precept evils?

Doubts on the text of Master Peter’s 47th distinction

Dist. 48, On the conformity of our will to the divine will

Article 1, On the conformity of our will in regard to its quiddity

Quest. 1, Whether it is possible, that our will be conformed to the divine will?

Quest. 2, Whether the conformity of our will to the divine will makes it just?

Article 2, On the conformity of our will as much as regards obligation

Quest. 1, Whether we are bound to conform our will to the divine will in the reason for willing?

Quest. 2, Whether we are bound to conform our will to the divine will in the (thing) willed?

Doubts on the text of Master Peter’s 48th distinction

.

Duns Scotus, John – bk. 1, dist. 46-48  in Ordinatio, bk. 1, dist. 26-48  tr. Peter L.P. Simpson (2013 / 2023)

46th Distinction

Whether God’s will of being well-pleased is always fulfilled  196

47th Distinction

Whether divine permission is some act of the divine will  198

48th Distinction

Whether a created will is morally good whenever it conforms to the uncreated will  199-200

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1300’s

Durandus of St. Pourcain – bk. 1, dist. 45, quest. 3 to dist. 48  in Commentary on the Sentences  tr. AI  (d. 1334; Lugduni, 1587), pp. 606-31

Durandus (c. 1275 – 1332 / 1334) was a French Dominican, philosopher, theologian, and bishop.

Rimini, Gregory of – Dist. 46-47, ‘Whether the will of God is always fulfilled? [Distinguished]’  in On the Sentences, bk. 1  tr. AI  Buy  (d. 1358), pp. 1155-66

Gregory (c. 1300–1358) was one of the great scholastic philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages.  He was the first scholastic writer to unite the Oxonian and Parisian traditions in 14th-century philosophy, and his work had a lasting influence in the Late Middle Ages and Reformation.  His scholastic nicknames were Doctor acutus and Doctor authenticus.  His views strongly influenced some of the Protestant Reformers.

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1600’s

Estius, Willem H. – dist. 45, sect. 7 to dist. 48  in Commentary on the Sentences, bk 1  tr. AI  (d. 1613; Paris, 1680 / 1696), pp. 487-523

Estius (1542–1613) was a Dutch, Romanist commentator on the Pauline epistles.

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Latin

1500’s

Luther, Martin – Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard  in D. Martin Luthers Werke  (1510-1511; Weimar: Hermann Bohlau, 1893), vol. 9

Luther (1483-1546), a German, composed this commentary in becoming a doctor, as was the standard requirement at the time.

Bk. 1

dist. 45.  60
dist. 46.  60
dist. 47.  61
dist. 48.  61

Daneau, Lambert – A Threefold Commentary on the First Book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which is on the True God…  (Geneva: Eustathius Vignon, 1580)

Daneau (c. 1530 – c. 1590) was a French jurist and reformed theologian, who taught for a time in Leiden and other places.

Bk. 1

dist. 45. God’s Will

Lombard  702
4.  709
5.  711
6. 713
7.  714
Censure  715

dist. 46. Evil & the Efficacy of the Divine Will

Lombard  720
2.  731
3.  732
5.  733
6.  733
7.  735
9.  736
10.  737
12.  737
14.  738
Censure  738

dist. 47. Efficacy of the Divine Will

Lombard  741
1.  745
2.  746
Censure  747

dist. 48. Conformity of our Will to the Divine Will

Lombard  748
2.  753
3.  754
5.  754
Censure  755-57

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Thomism

Articles

1200’s

Aquinas, Thomas

Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 1, dist. 47, Certain things that seem to show the inefficacy of the divine will

art. 1, ‘Whether God wills that all men be saved? [No, with a distinction]’

art. 4, ‘Whether God wills that evils occur? [No]’

art. 6, ‘Whether the will of God is always fulfilled? [Yes, with a distinction]’  in Summa, pt. 1, quest. 19

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1500’s

Vasquez, Gabriel – Commentaries & Disputations on the First Part of St. Thomas, vol. 1  tr. AI by Stiven Peter  (Gratianus, 1598)

question 19

art. 6, ‘Whether the will of God is always fulfilled?’  1,034

disputation 83, ‘Whether there is in God some will of good-pleasure which is not always fulfilled?’  1,036-50
…

art. 11, ‘Whether in God the will of sign ought to be distinguished?’  1,060
art. 12, ‘Whether the five signs are fittingly posited concerning the divine will?’  1,061-63

Vasquez (1549 or 1551 – 1604) was a Spanish, Jesuit theologian.  His foremost academic rival was his fellow Jesuit Francisco Suárez, whose philosophical views he often and openly criticized (such as in this work).

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1600’s

Suarez, Francis – ch. 8, ‘On the will of sign and good-pleasure, antecedent and consequent’  in On Thomas, pt. 1, On the Divine Substance & its Attributes, bk. 3, pp. 514-21  tr. AI  in All the Works (d. 1617; Paris: Vives, 1855), vol. 1  Latin

Gonet, Jean Baptiste – Thomistic Manual of Theology: a Brief Course of the Whole of Thomistic Theology, vol. 1  tr. AI by Osvaldo R.  (d. 1681; Antwerp: Associates, 1726)

ch. 3, On God’s antecedent will for the salvation of all  167

ch. 4, On the efficacy of the divine will  181-240

Gonet (c. 1616 – 1681) was a French Dominican theologian.

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1700’s

Billuart, Charles-René – The Summa of Thomas accommodated to the modern norms of Academies, or a Course of Theology according to the mind…  of the Divine Thomas in his Summa, with digressions in Ecclesiastical History inserted for necessary things, for the use of Thomistic Scholars  (1747), pt. 1, quest. 19-23, quest. 19

art. 5, ‘Whether God’s will is always fulfilled? Where concerning the divisions of divine will’  21

art. 6, ‘Concerning the will of God regarding the salvation of all’  28

art. 7, ‘Whether Christ died for all men without exception’  42-67

Billuart (1685-1757) was a Dominican preacher, controversialist and theologian born in Belgium.

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1900’s

Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald – ch. 19, ‘The Will of God’, article 6, ‘Whether the will of God is always fulfilled’  in The One God: a Commentary on the First Part of St. Thomas’ Theological Summa  (B. Herder Book Co., 1943), pp. 526-57

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Quotes

1900’s

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Reality: a Synthesis of Thomistic Thought  (Herder Book Co., 1950)

ch. 10, God’s Will & God’s Love, pp. 104-5

“Now we understand that God’s efficacious will is always infallibly fulfilled…

In what sense, then, do we speak of God’s inefficacious will?  This will, says Thomas (Ia, q. 19, a. 6 [Whether the Will of God is always fulfilled?], ad 1), is a conditioned will, an antecedent will, which wills all that is good in itself, independently of circumstances.  Now this conditional, antecedent will remain[s] inefficacious because, in view of a higher good of which He alone is judge, God permits that this or that good thing does not come to pass.  Thus, in view of that higher good , God permits to illustrate, that harvests do not reach maturity, that the gazelle becomes the prey of the lion, that the just suffer persecution, that this or that sinner dies in final impenitence.  Sometimes we see the higher good in question, sometimes we cannot.  In permitting final impenitence, for example, God may be manifesting infinite justice against obstinacy in evil.

Such is the Thomistic distinction of antecedent (inefficacious) will from consequent (efficacious) will…

To illustrate.  God willed, by consequent will, the conversion of St. Paul.  This conversion comes to be, infallibly but freely, because God’s will, strong and sweet, causes Paul’s will to consent freely, spontaneously, without violence, to his own conversion.  God did not on the other hand will, efficaciously, the conversion of Judas, though He, conditionally, inefficaciously, antecedently, certainly willed it, and He permitted Judas to remain, freely, in final impenitence.  What higher good had God in mind?  This, at least: the manifestation of infinite justice. (For more extended exposition, see our work, De Deo uno, 1938, pp. 410-34; also Rev. thom., May, 1937, “Le fondement supreme de la distinction des deux graces, suffisante et efficace.”)

We must add this remark: Resisting sufficient grace is an evil which comes solely from ourselves.  But non-resistance is a good, which, in last analysis, comes from God, source of all good.”

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pt. 5, Redemptive Incarnation, ch. 32, “Introduction”, pp. 204-5

“Divine decrees are of two kinds: one efficacious and absolute, the other inefficacious and conditional.  The latter is concerned with the thing to be realized taken in itself, abstracting from all actual circumstance.  Thus, for example, God wills the salvation of all men.  But, in fact, God permits final impenitence in a sinner (e.g. Judas) as manifestation of infinite justice.

Efficacious decrees on the contrary are concerned with the thing to be realized taken with all its concrete circumstances of place and time.  Hence these decrees are immutable and infallible. (Ia, q. 19, a. 6 [Whether the Will of God is always fulfilled?], ad 1)”

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pt. 8, Developments & Confirmations, ch. 59, Efficacious Grace, pp. 400-402

“The Divine Will, Antecedent and Consequent

‘The will.’ says St. Thomas (Ia, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1), ‘is related to things as they are in themselves, with all their particular circumstances.  Hence we will a thing simply (simpliciter) when we will it with all its concrete circumstances.  This will we call the consequent will…  Thus it is clear that everything which God wills simpliciter comes to pass.

If, on the contrary, we will a thing in itself good, but independently of its circumstances, this will is called the antecedent will, or conditional will, since the good in question is not realized here and now.  That man should live, says St. Thomas (Ibid.), is good.  But if the man is a murderer, it is good that he be executed.  Antecedently, God wills that harvests come to maturity, but He allows for some higher good, that not all harvests do in fact mature.  Similarly, He wills antecedently the salvation of all men, tough for some higher good, of which He alone is judge, He permits some to sin and perish…

It is thus that St. Thomas harmonizes God’s antecedent will, of which St. John Damascene speaks, with God’s omnipotence.

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The Supreme Principles

Nothing comes to pass, either in heaven or on earth, unless God either brings it to pass in mercy, or then in justice permits it.  This principle, taught in the universal Church, shows that there is in God a conditional and antecedent will, relative to a good which does not come to pass, the privation of which He permits in view of some higher good.
…

All that God wills, He does.  This principle has no exception.  All that God wills (purely, simply, unconditionally) comes to pass without our freedom being thereby in any way forced, because God moves that freedom sweetly and strongly, actualizing it, not destroying.  He wills efficaciously that we freely consent and we do free consent. The supreme efficacy of divine causality, says St. Thomas (Ia, q. 19, a. 6), extends to the free mode of our acts…

Hence we find that in the ninth century, to terminate the long controversy with Gottschalk, the Council of Thuzey (860), at the instance of the Augustinian bishops, harmonized God’s will of universal salvation with the sinner’s responsibility.  That Council’s synodal letter (OL, CXXVI, 123; Denz., 17th ed., p. 145, no. 320, note 2.) contains this sentence: Whatever He has willed in heaven or on earth, God has done.  For nothing comes to pass in heaven or on earth that He does not in mercy bring to pass or permits to come to pass in justice.

Since God’s love is the cause of created goodness, says St. Thomas (Ia, q. 20, a. 3), no created thing would be better than another, if God did not give one a great[er] good than He gives to another.  This is equivalent to St. Paul’s word: What has thou that thou hast not received? (1 Cor. 4:7)”

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Scotism

Articles

1200’s

Duns Scotus, John – bk. 1, dist. 46-48  in Ordinatio, bk. 1, dist. 26-48  tr. Peter L.P. Simpson (2013 / 2023)

46th Distinction

Whether God’s will of being well-pleased is always fulfilled  196

47th Distinction

Whether divine permission is some act of the divine will  198

48th Distinction

Whether a created will is morally good whenever it conforms to the uncreated will  199-200

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1600’s

Macedo, Francisco – 2. ‘General will of God concerning the salvation of all men, 1 Tim. 2:4’  in Collations of the Teachings of St. Thomas & Scotus, with the Differences between the Two…  vol. 1  tr. AI by Vertias  (Padua: Frambotti, 1671), bk. 1, Collation 12, pp. 841-73  A more detailed ToC is given at the beginning of the volume.

Macedo (1596-1681), known as S. Augustino, was a Portuguese Franciscan theologian.  While exercising independent judgment, he tends to lean original-Scotus.  He had a very good knowledge of Aquinas’s works (and of Thomists and their works) through his life (vol. 2, p. 424).

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