“Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost…”

Acts 7:51

“…Lydia, a seller of purple…  which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.”

Acts 16:14

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Subsection

God’s Revealed Will has Purpose
Common Operations of the Spirit

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Order of Contents

Intro
History  2
Articles  4
Quotes  22+
God can Effect whatever a Creature can do  1
Thomism  1

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Intro

Herman Bavinck and William Cunningham, two respected reformed theologians, describe below how the historical origin and intention of the term (and concept) of ‘irresistible grace’ was not meant to deny resistible grace.  Shedd closely describes and synthesizes the Holy Spirit’s sincere, common strivings with those who resist them and finally perish under the gospel call, and His choice to put forth His irresistible power in overcoming the resistance of, and effectually drawing, some unto salvation.

For an introduction to this teaching of scripture, of the compatibility of resistible and irresistible grace, with many Bible verses and 60+ quotes demonstrating it from reformed history, see The Common Operations of the Spirit.

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On the History of this Teaching

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Herman Bavinck  1854-1921

Reformed Dogmatics  (1895-1899), 4:82-83

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William Cunningham  1805-1861

Historical Theology, vol. 2  (1862; Banner of Truth, 1994), ch. 25, ‘The Arminian Controversy’, Section 6, ‘Efficacious & Irresistible Grace’, pp. 408-9

“Calvinists, indeed, do not admit that it is an accurate mode of stating the question, to put it in this form,—whether or not the grace or gracious operation of the Spirit be irresistible?  for they do not dispute that, in some sense, men do resist the Spirit; and they admit that resistance to the Spirit may be predicated both of the elect and of the non-elect,—the non-elect having operations of the Spirit put forth upon them which they resist or throw off, and never yield to,—and the elect having generally resisted the operations of the Spirit for a time before they yielded to them. 

Accordingly, although the only thing in the Arminian declaration, as given in to the Synod of Dort [1618-9], which was regarded as containing a positive error in doctrine, was the assertion that, as to the mode of the Spirit’s operation in conversion, it was not irresistible, there is not, in the canons of the synod, any formal deliverance, in terminis [in such terms], upon this precise point, though all that the Arminians meant to assert, by denying the irresistibility of grace, is clearly and fully condemned.  This statement likewise holds true, in all its parts, of our own [Westminster] Confession of Faith.  It does not contain, in terminis [in such terms], an assertion of the irresistibility, or a denial of the resistibility, of the grace of God in conversion; but it contains a clear and full assertion of the whole truth which Arminians have generally intended to deny by asserting the resistibility of grace, and which Calvinists have intended to assert, when—accommodating themselves to the Arminian phraseology, but not admitting its accuracy—they have maintained that grace in conversion is irresistible.

They [Calvinists] object to the word irresistible, as applied to their doctrine, because of its ambiguity,—because, in one sense, they hold grace in conversion to be resistible, and in another, not.  It may be said to be resistible, and to be actually resisted, inasmuch as motions or operations of the Spirit upon men’s minds—which, in their general nature and bearing, may be said to tend towards the production of conversion—are resisted, or not yielded to, by the non-elect, and for a time even by the elect; while it may be said to be irresistible,—or, as Calvinists usually prefer calling it, insuperable, or infrustratable, or certainly efficacious,—inasmuch as, according to their doctrine, whenever the gracious divine power that is sufficient to produce conversion, and necessary to effect it, is put forth, it certainly overcomes all the resistance that men are able to make, and infallibly produces the result.”

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Articles

1600’s

Waser, Johann C. – Consideration of a Theological Question: Whether the grace of God is a Force, & Whether it is either Resistible or Irresistible  (fl. 1628-1667)  22 pp.  tr. AI by Confetti

Waser (fl. 1628-1667) was a reformed professor of logic, rhetoric and metaphysics at Zurich.

“12. Therefore that grace does not inflict force upon us, whether resistible or irresistible, neither resistibly nor irresistibly – whichever of these you might say, you could seem to be saying something harmful and hostile.  But that grace, according to the testimony of the same priest, brings us peace, salvation, and mercy.” – pp. 6-7

“53. For just as a physician who abolishes and removes disease and restores health; a master who abolishes and takes away servitude and grants freedom to a slave; a lord who breaks and destroys a prison and releases a captive and exalts him to the highest dignity – these are not said to use force upon the sick man, the slave, or the captive.  So neither does God use force upon one to whom He provides that renewing grace.  And just as it is foreign to debate
whether a sick man is restored to health irresistibly, a slave to liberty, a captive to dignity, so it is foreign to this matter to dispute whether God’s renewing grace operates irresistibly.” – pp. 21-22

Pareus, David – ‘Examination of Article 4’  in Epitome of Arminianism: or the Examination of The Five Articles of the Remonstrants in the Netherlands  in Zachary Ursinus, The Sum of Christian Religion...  (London: Young, 1645), pp. 832-37

Polhill, Edward – Quaere 3, ‘Whether the work of conversion be wrought in an irresistible way?’  in ch. 9, ‘Of the Work of Conversion’  in The Divine Will considered in its Eternal Decrees & Holy Execution of them  (London: Shelmerdine, 1695), pp. 486-537

Turretin, Francis – sections 3-7  of Question 6, ‘Whether efficacious grace operates only by a certain moral suasion which man is able either to receive or to reject.  Or whether it operates by an invincible and omnipotent suasion which the will of man cannot resist.  The former we deny; the latter we affirm against the Romanists and Arminians.’  in Institutes, vol. 2, 15th Topic, pp. 547-48

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Quotes

Order of

Bradford
Vermigli
Calvin & Zanchi
Arminius
Willet
Sibbes
Davenant
Bremen Delegation at Dort
Dort
Du Moulin
Synopsis
Prynne
Pemble
Collinges
Ross
Hall
Lawson
Ambrose
Dickson
Lightfoot
Polhill
Henry
Shedd
Berkhof

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John Bradford

The Writings of John Bradford…  Parker Society  (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1848-1853), “Election & Free-Will”, vol. 1, p. 217

“After this work, in respect of us and our sense, comes regeneration, which altogether is God’s work also: for, as to our first birth we bring nothing (bring, quoth I? yes, we bring to let [prevent] it many things, but to further it nothing at all)…”

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Peter Martyr Vermigli  d. 1562

Commentary on Judges, ch. 9, pp. 167-68

“Whether we can Resist the Grace of God, or No?

But now arises an other doubt as touching our nature as it is now fallen and corrupt, whether it can resist the grace of God and his Spirit being present, or no?

(There are sundry degrees of grace of God)

I think we must consider that there are, as it were, sundry degrees of the help or grace of God: for his might and abundance is sometimes so great that He wholly bows the will of man and does not only counsel, but also persuade.  And when it so comes to pass, we cannot depart from the right way, but we are of God’s side and obey his sentence.  Wherefore it was said unto Paul: “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

(There is no violence or coaction inferred to man’s will)

And yet must we not think that when it is so done [that] there is any violence or coaction brought unto the will of man: for it is by a pleasant moving and conversion altered, and that willing, but yet so willing that the will thereof comes of God: for it is it which wills, but God by a strong and most mighty persuasion makes it to will.

But sometimes that power of God and spirit is more remiss: which yet (if we will put thereunto our endeavor and apply our will) we should not resist: yea we should obey his admonishments and inspirations: and when that we do it not, we are therefore said to resist Him, and oftentimes fall.

And yet this is not to be understand as touching the first regeneration, but as concerning those which are regenerated, which are now endowed with grace and Spirit.  For the will of the ungodly is so corrupt and vitiate, that except it be renewed, it cannot give place unto the inspirations of God and admonishings of the Holy Ghost: and it in the first immutation of man’s conversion, it only suffers: and before the renewing, it continually (as much as in it is) resists the Spirit of God.  But the first parents, whilst they were perfect, if with the help of grace being somewhat remiss, they had adjoined their endeavor, they might have perfectly obeyed the commaundments of God.

But we, although we be renewed, saving grace is more remiss, remitting nothing of our endeavor, we shall not be able constantly and perfectly to obey the commandments of God, but yet we may be able to contain ourselves within the bounds or limits of an obedience begun: which thing because we do not, therefore oftentimes we sin, and grievously fall.

(Why the grace of god works not alike always in us)

But why God gives not his grace always to his elect after one sort and one increase, but sometimes He works in them more strongly and sometimes more remissedly, two reasons may be assigned:

First, lest we should think the grace of God to be natural strengths which remain always after one sort.  Wherefore God would most justly alter the degree and efficacy of his help: whereby we might understand that it is governed by his will and not as we lust. Moreover it oftentimes happens that our negligence and slothfulness deserves this variety.”

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On Jerome Zanchi & John Calvin

Edouard Bohl, “Separation of the Lutheran Church from the Reformed in the Sixteenth Century”  in Presbyterian & Reformed Review, vol. 5, no. 19  (July, 1894), pp. 419-22

“Zanchius, in fact, found then so much support in the council of the city [of Strassburg] that the printing of the book of [the Lutheran] Hesshusius [on the Lord’s Supper] was interdicted.  For this Marbach, who was superintendent in Strassburg, was determined in conjunction with Pappus, and other colleagues, to have revenge.  He accused Zanchius before the Scholararchs on account of certain theses which Zanchius uttered in his prelections [lectures]…  In the accusatory libel presented by Marbach to the rector of the university, the celebrated John Sturm, complaint was made chiefly that Zanchius denied the falling away of the elect…  There were still in the city many of Bucer’s friends, who saw no difference between Bucer’s views on the perseverance of the saints and the incriminated doctrine of Zanchius…

He [Zanchi] questioned in person the different faculties and expert authorities touching the orthodoxy of his theses.  Heidelberg, Marburg, Basel, Schaffhausen, Zurich declared in his favor…

On on epoint only did the scale incline decidedly to the side of the opponents of Zanchius [according to Bohl].  The amissibility [capable of being lost-ness] of grace was conceded, though only in a very cursory manner.  Zanchius durst hardly have signed this formula [respecting other doctrines also], rigorously understood.  He did so only for the sake of peace,a nd ont he repeated recommendation of Calvin, who gave his advice to Holbrac also in the same conciliatory spirit.  Zanchius, as also the French minister Holbrac, belonged up to this time [1563] to the company of Strassburg ministers.”

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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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Andrew Willet

A Six-fold Commentary upon Romans  (Cambridge: Legge, 1611), on Rom. 2, 3. Questions, Question 7, ‘Whether the leading of men to repentance by God’s long sufferance argues that they are not reprobate’, p. 104

“2…  But here we must distinguish between effectual calling, which always takes place and none can hinder it, and calling not effectual, yet sufficient if men did not put in a bar by their own hardness of heart: God’s absolute will then is not resisted when men come not to repentance: for his will is to leave such to themselves by his just judgment: and not to give them of his effectual grace.”

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Richard Sibbes

The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Grosart  (d. 1635; Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1862), vol. 5, “Salvation Applied,” pp. 388–90

“Those that the Father gives in election, Christ redeems, and by redemption saves; for redemption, in regard of efficacy, is no larger than God’s election.
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But to them that believe not, they have another use.  They have this benefit by Christ’s death, that there is mercy offered them, and some gifts of the Spirit.  God offers and stirs up good motions in them, but they rebel against them.

There be many degrees and means of faith. They use not all the means they ought, neither take all the degrees, therefore they are without all excuse, because He gives more grace, not only the means, but He is ready to give more grace than they are willing to entertain.  So it is their rebellion, which is the cause of their damnation.  They are said to resist the Holy Ghost, such reprobates in the church, to quench the Spirit (Acts 7:51), which implies the Holy Ghost is ready to work more in them than they are willing to entertain.

Is it not so by experience?  There is a company of profane persons, that, out of the abundance of their wicked hearts, and the poison of their breeding, will not vouchsafe to hear at all; others that do come, though for some bye and carnal ends.  Happily the Holy Ghost, in hearing, beats upon their consciences and awakes them.  But what say their rebellious hearts?  Shall I stoop to leave such and such courses that are pleasurable and gainful?  Hereupon they resist the work of the Holy Ghost in the ministry, when their hearts tell them there is a readiness in the Holy Ghost, and that He is sent from Christ and the Father to work more effectually in them than they are willing to be wrought upon, and therefore it is they are damned. Thy perdition is of thyself, O Israel! (Hos. 13:9).

Their own consciences will tell them thus much.  So it is no matter what cavils they raise of Christ’s intention and God’s election.  Look thou, man, to thine own heart.  Doth not thy own heart tell thee thou art a rebel, and livest in profane wicked courses, in neglect of holy duties?  Thou carriest thine own sentence and cause of damnation in thy breast.

I appeal to the worst, who live in sins against conscience.  Here is the ground of thy damnation.  There be many ascents and degrees to saving faith.  Thou withstandest the beginnings and the motions of the Spirit.  If they come in and work upon thy heart any estrangement from sin, thy proud heart begins to rebel, and will not yield.  It is the only true obedience which lays itself at the foot of Christ, and is willing to be led and persuaded in anything so far as frailty will permit, and allows itself in no evil course.  This is that which brings sound comfort, which they not doing, therefore are without all excuse.
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Therefore men must look unto what God commands.  If their conscience tell them that they yield not that obedience which they ought and might, but rather resist the motions of God’s Spirit, hereupon comes their damnation to be just.  They are commanded to believe.”

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John Davenant

Animadversions upon a Treatise entitled, God’s Love to Mankind…  (Cambridge, 1641), ‘To his imaginary conference’, pp. 476-77

“Temptation: God has a double calling of men: an outward calling, by preaching the Word in men’s ears; an inward, by the irresistible work of the Spirit in their hearts.  The outward calling is a part of God’s outward will: the inward and effectual calling is a part of his secret will.  He calls me only with the outward call: and therefore I cannot be assured of God’s goodwill and meaning that I should believe, repent and be saved.

Minister: You misconceive Gods calling.  His outward calling by preaching the word in men’s ears is a means to convey the sense of the word preached inwardly to their understandings, and mediante intellectu [the intellect mediating], inwardly to stir up their wills to the doing of such things as they now see would make for their eternal good.

And I appeal unto your own knowledge and experience: Did the Word preached never pierce further than your ears?  Has it not enlightened your understanding with the wholesome doctrine of the gospel?  Has not God’s Spirit at some time or other by the Word inwardly moved you to break off your sinful and lustful courses and to lead a sober, just and religious life?  Why do you, contrary to your own conscience, falsely accuse God of affording you a bare outward calling, but no inward?  Why do you traduce Him as not willing that you should believe, repent and so be saved?

Take it for a certain rule: God always wills men should do those things which by his Word-written He enjoins them to do, and by his Spirit enlightening and inciting He so helps them to do that it is only the voluntary perverseness and stubbornness of their own wills resisting the Word and the Spirit which hinders them from doing those things which they should.

It is true that God can make any hard and resisting heart a soft and obedient heart; and He does it where He has an eternal purpose out of special mercy so to do: And it is as true that God may justly leave a stubborn heart to his own resistency and perverseness; and this He does where He has purposed in justice so to do.  Deus miseretur cujus vult, et quem vult indurat [God shows mercy to whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills, Rom. 9:18].

If you long to be assured of this secret meaning or purpose of God towards you in particular before you resolve upon your repentance, I can assure you that it is the Devil who has stirred up in you a longing after a thing impossible that so he may procure your destruction.  Strive therefore to bring this foolish and wicked fancy out of your mind and to judge of the meaning of God which belongs unto you according to his Word revealed unto you, leaving his secret and unsearchable will unto Himself.”

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Tract on the Gallican Controversy, pt. 1, pp. 564-65  appended to Davenant, An Exposition of Colossians, vol. 2  ed. Josiah Allport  (London, 1832)

“What is added in the last place, concerning the general intention of God, by which He wills that all men individually should be saved through the death of his Son, needs explanation.  It must be observed, therefore, that according to the custom of the Scriptures, the Divine will or intention sometimes denotes merely the appointment of means to an end, although there is no determinate will in God of producing that end by those means.

And the Schoolmen refer this intention or will of God to the common order of providence.  In this sense He willed and intended the obedience and salvation of the angels who apostatized, inasmuch as He furnished them with gifts, fit in themselves and suitable, to perform obedience and obtain salvation.  And in this sense God, with a general intention, wills life to all men, inasmuch as he willed the death of Christ to be the fountain and cause of life to all men individually, according to the tenor of the evangelical covenant.¹

¹ [Davenant calls the gospel offer, that whosoever believes in Christ will be saved (Jn. 3:16), established with all men as men, a “covenant,” and the “evangelical covenant”.  While this call and offer does not reach all persons, yet, according to some, it potentially could save all persons if it were not for the sin of persons after Adam and Eve not continuing in their responsibility and for persons not obeying the command to preach the gospel to every creature.  This potential power of providential means, designed unto the end of salvation, however varied or inaccessible through human history, yet reflects, for some theologians, God’s gracious will of providence in some way for the life and salvation of every human individual, especially in contrast to the demons which receive no such favors.]

But we must observe, that the Scriptures mention another will or intention of God, and that properly so called, which never fails in producing the good intended, and which the Schoolmen refer to the order of special predestination…

But if by this general intention they mean nothing more than a general aptitude and sufficiency in the death of Christ to effect the salvation of all men individually in the mode of an universal cause, or a general appointment of God concerning the salvation of all men individually, who, through the grace of God, duly apply to themselves this universal cause, then there is no need to reject this form of speaking.”

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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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Bremen [Germany] Delegation at Dort  1618

‘On Intellect & Will, i.e. Free Will’, pp. 33-34  in ‘On Predestination, Reprobation, Christ’s Death, Regeneration, Free Choice & Perseverance’  in The Acts of the Synod of Dort  (1618)

“V. What is the grace of conversion and regeneration, and is it resistible or irresistible?

Response: Grace is broadly defined. But in this context, we distinguish:

– The external preaching of the Gospel
– The internal illumination and conversion granted to the elect

True regeneration is understood to be singular, internal, and effective.

VI. External preaching is resisted when a person scorns or neglects the Word, or hears with carnal affection.

VII. Common grace is resisted.  When men resist the knowledge and assent to truth, this blocks conversion.

VIII. Special grace is never resisted by the elect.  Even though at times they resist, they are eventually overcome by divine power and drawn in.

IX. The reprobate resist even this divine illumination, especially those who commit the sin against the Holy Spirit.

X. There is, however, a singular grace by which the intellect is powerfully and effectually disposed, moved, and illuminated by God.  It is accompanied by promises in the Gospel.  The will is raised above its natural state and drawn to God, so that it now sees the good clearly, and is no longer able to persist in rejecting it.

XI. Furthermore, this grace is given only to the elect, though in individuals it is measured out and distinguished according to divine determination and various degrees. For God teaches and draws some more intensely by grace, others less so, and some He leaves in just condemnation for their unbelief or obstinate rejection. The flesh is more cunning and fierce in some, and more sluggish in others. The Spirit of God calls men under whose command and direction they are truly called. This grace regenerates, renews, and raises up the will; it conquers resistance and makes the unwilling willing.

XII. So we see that God does not act in the same way toward all men: some are able to resist grace, others are not able, even if they wished; some are able by nature, others are neither able nor willing.

XIII. This third mode destroys the will entirely rather than perfecting it, and utterly destroys and overturns its nature.”

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Canons of Dort

Note

The below does not say explicitly that God’s grace is resisted (probably out of an aim for consensus with those who may disagree), but the implication may be readily drawn from the face value language of Dort.

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Heads 3 & 4

Article 16

“…this grace of regeneration does not treat men as senseless stocks and blocks, nor takes away their will and its properties, neither does violence thereto; but spiritually quickens, heals, corrects, and at the same time sweetly and powerfully bends it; that where carnal rebellion and resistance formerly prevailed, a ready and sincere spiritual obedience begins to reign, in which the true and spiritual restoration and freedom of our will consist.”

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Peter Du Moulin  1619

The Anatomy of Arminianism…  (1619; London, 1635)

pp. 478-79

“III. But they [Arminians] do unwisely prove that which is not in controversy.  For we do not teach, we do not acknowledge that irresistibility which they attribute to us.  This conclusion therefore does not hurt us, who do willingly confess that the Holy Ghost does not always so work in men’s hearts that He takes away all resistance…

the question is, whether it may be that they may never be converted, and may finally resist the spirit of adoption.  To the proving of this, the places which speaks of reprobates, which we confess do finally resist God calling, and do want the spirit of adoption, are plainly besides the purpose.  Finally, these sectaries do not prove that in all these places [of Scripture] it is spoken of a final resistance, of which alone it is spoken here.”

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p. 492

“We have already advertised that this opinion is falsely laid upon us: That God does draw a man unresistibly [being unable to resist].  We only say that the elect, although they may resist a long time, yet at length they obey God calling, and their voluntary conversion is wrought certainly and infallibly, and that it cannot come to pass that they should never be converted, or being converted, that they should finally fall away and the grace of God should be at length extinguished, and be finally overcome by the resistance of the flesh.”

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See also pp. 8-9, 356-7, 396 & 399

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The Synopsis of Pure Theology  1625

Andreas Polyander, 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.
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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).
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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).
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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.
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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…
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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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On the Synopsis

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. 552-4.  It appears that the below distinctions came about in the Leiden context (at least with regard to disputations on the call to salvation) after the fuller explication of Arminianism and the Synod of Dort (1618-9).

“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].
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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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William Prynne

The Church of England’s Old Antithesis to New Arminianism…  (London: Matthewes, 1629), pp. 33-34

“These several passages quoted out of our [official] Homilies [of the Anglican Church] do abundanty testify:…  That God’s grace and Spirit do always work effectually in the hearts of his elect, in the act of their conversion, which they can never finally nor totally resist.  And that the elect and truly regenerate can neither fall finally nor totally from the state of grace, which is firm and stable.”

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William Pemble

Vindiciæ gratiæ. = A Plea for Grace, More especially the Grace of Faith…  (London: 1627), pp. 154-55

“Now to shut up all touching this point of man’s liberty in resisting the grace of God, the sum of all is this:  Before true conversion all unregenerate persons do resist the gracious means and preparations to their conversion, the reprobate finally, the elect for a time, till grace become victorious in their perfect sanctification.  In this their first conversion or regeneration the elect are no way active either to work it or to hinder it.

After their conversion in the doing of all good works, immanent or transient, they resist not so far as they are spiritual; they cannot but resist so far as they are carnal.  And though in time of temptation and spiritual desertion the flesh do not only resist but also prevail, to the hinderance of many particular gracious actions, yet for those main and principal acts of faith, repentance, love of God, hatred of evil, etc. the Spirit is infallibly victorious both to do them after the first conversion and also finally to persevere in doing of them.”

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John Collinges

The Spouse’s Hidden Glory & Faithful Leaning upon her Well-Beloved, wherein is laid down the soul’s glory in Christ and the way by which the soul comes to Christ, delivered in two lecture sermons…  (London: 1646), p. 26

“Nor do we say that any such previous action [to regeneration] can be performed by the creature ut de merito congrui teneatur Gratiam dare [so that it binds by congruent merit to give grace], that God is bound for the desert of any such previous action to give his inward and regenerating quickening grace:

But yet this we say, that in the church of God, where men are daily stirred up by the Word and Spirit to repent and believe savingly, God will give (though not for any of these previous or dispository actions, yet) freely, regenerating grace to all such as are capable of it, unless they have resisted the Spirit of God in the preceding operations and rejected his quickening grace; but yet we deny, that any man can perform these actions so but he will offend and resist the Spirit of God in them:

Now why when as all resist, God should reject some, as they have rejected Him, and leave them to the hardness of their own hearts, and work irresistibly on others who have resisted their God as much, and break open their hearts, though locked and barred against Him, and fill them with quickening grace, and pull a Lot out of Sodom by force, and draw a soul out of the wilderness by head and shoulders, I say, why He should do it, when two are grinding at the same mill, take one and leave the other…  I will conclude with Dr. Davenant, is Sacrum Misterium divinae voluntati reliquendum, ‘a sacred and secret mystery to be left to the divine pleasure,’ and the reason lies in the agent’s own breast; It is because He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and whom He wills He hardens; God is his own reason, and his free grace its own cause.”

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Alexander Ross

A Century of Divine Meditations upon Predestination & its Adjuncts...  (London: 1646), sect. 25, pp. 24-25

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Gisbert Voet

Select Theological Disputations (1655), vol. 2, Disputation 30, ‘On Regeneration’, pt. 2  (1639), p. 447 ff. tr. AI by Roman Prestarri  Latin at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“9. That it is infallible by reason of God’s intention and the event, and irresistible and invincible by reason of the mode and efficacy of operating. For although man according to his innate depravity can do nothing but resist in the divided sense, yet actually he does not resist nor can he resist in the composite sense, when the Holy Spirit regenerating removes resistibility by impressing a new principle of spiritual life.

10. Therefore no voluntary or involuntary of man has place in this first moment, because no human action intervenes, but it is the action of God alone. So that the will conducts itself neutrally and purely passively with respect to the new principle, here willing or not willing nothing. Yet regeneration could be called voluntary as to man by extrinsic denomination from the consequent effect, or by a certain extrinsic respect, on account of the subsequent (not indeed antecedent or simultaneous) consent of the will, or new and regenerate volition, by which, excited by second grace in the second moment, man himself begins to will the spiritual goods offered through calling according to the new will divinely impressed, and according as the Holy Spirit made him willing from unwilling, and works in him τὸ θέλειν [to thelein, the willing] and to accomplish.

11. Finally, that it is difficult if you look to nature and flesh, yet easy if you look to τὸ κράτος τῆς ἰσχύος [to kratos tēs ischuos, the might of the power] divine, Mt. 19:23–26, compared with Eph. 1:19; Prov. 21:1; Rom. 11:23.

Hence omnipotent facility and easy omnipotence are attributed to God regenerating.”

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Joseph Hall

The Shaking of the Olive Tree, the Remaining Works of that incomparable prelate Joseph Hall…  (d. 1656; London: Cadwel, 1660), 5th Article, ‘Of Perseverance’

p. 382

“For the part that most constantly teaches the forceableness of conversion, holds such a kind of actuating the will as does no whit hurt or infringe the liberty thereof; yea rather, which profits it; and while they speak of an irresistible act in turning us, they mean not such an act as cannot be at all resisted, if we would, but such a one as the will, through God’s gracious inclination, would not wish to resist, for that their will to resist is so overcome by the sweet motions of God’s Spirit, that now yieldance is made powerfully voluntary;”

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pp. 383-84

“True, God makes us willing of unwilling, and so we resist not.  But how does He make us willing?  Whether by an irresistible manner of working in us, or not, this, say the opponents, is the main question.  Surely so, as that, to use Aquinas his word, the will is impelled, though not compelled; so as that, though there is in the nature of the will a freedom and capacity of agreeing or dissenting, in respect of itself, yet as it is for the present moved and actuated by the effectual inclination of the Almighty, now it so sways one way as if it had for the time put off the power of refusing.

What need we then trouble ourselves with these upstart terms of ‘resistible’ and ‘irresistible’?  Let it content us that the gracious in-operation of God effectually draws the heart of man to will, to receive, to entertain the happy motions of his good Spirit to our renovation.  If we yield not this to God, we yield nothing; and if we give Him this, He will not quarrel us for more.

But what place soever these differences have found in foreign schools and pulpits, ours have reason to be free, if we shall listen to that wise and moderate voice of our [Anglican] Church, which our forecited reverend author [Bishop Overall] commends unto us, who, after the relation of the two extreme opinions, rests in this, medio tutissimus: that men are so stirred and moved by grace that they may, if they attend thereunto, obey the grace which calls and moves them; and that they may, by their free will, also resist it.  But withal, that God, when He will, and to whom He will, gives such an abundant, such powerful, such congruous, otherwise effectual grace, that although the will may, in respect of the liberty thereof, resist, yet it resists not, but does certainly and infallibly obey; and that thus God deals with those whom He has chosen in Christ so far as shall be necessary to their salvation.  Who so cannot sit down quietly in this decision, methinks, should be no friend to peace.”

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George Lawson

Theo-Politica, or a Body of Divinity…  (London: Streater, 1659), pt. 2, ch. 4, pp. 113-14

“The manner of conversion is to us unsearchable, both because we are ignorant of the nature of the immortal soul, and because much more are we ignorant of the manner of God’s working upon that immortal spirit.  As for the resistibility or irresistibility of grace, we know that the power of God is almighty, and cannot be resisted by any created strength, if He please to exercise it to the full, or in some high measure:

But if God give power to the creature, or work by that created power given, it may be resisted by a contrary created power: And so grace or the power of conversion, as a created thing in man, may be so given as to be resisted by the will of man.  And both the understanding of man, will and does, either deny or doubt of divine truths represented to the soul; and the will will wrangle, oppose and reject or not sincerely affect and submit unto the divine commands, and promises.  And hence, the many conflicts not only in conversion, but after we are converted.

As for necessitation of the will in this work of divine calling, it’s certain and granted of all that the illumination of the understanding may be necessary so far as the soul in respect of the same is only passive, though in the apprehension and judgement concerning the truths represented by the Word it be active.  Besides, God may give an active power to the will, and it may be passive in receiving of it, and also necessitated to an act of complacency in general, so that it necessarily may approve by a general approbation of the justice and equity of the command, and the excellency of the good promised…

Yet notwithstanding this necessary and natural act of complacency, that act of the will, which Buridan calls acceptatio ad prosecutionem may be, and is free.  I pass by the philosophical speculations concerning the nature of the will, which few know, concerning the natural and necessary acts thereof, and also concerning those that are free; and what the natural liberty of the will is, and in what acts, and in respect of what acts, it is free.  Concerning the positive acts velle and nolle, and the negative, non velle, non nolle, and concerning the liberty of contradiction and specification;

It’s far more profitable for all such as are so blessed as to live in the Church and enjoy the means of conversion diligently to use the means and exercise that power which God has given them, and also earnestly and constantly pray for the regenerating Spirit, which God has promised to them that seek Him in an orderly way.  For upon this done, regeneration will follow; and by the divine and spiritual power given them, together with God’s special assistance, and concurrence, after all necessary preparations, they shall freely determine and the will shall wholly and most willingly submit to God-Redeemer, which is the ultimate product of divine vocation, the parts whereof are the outward Word, and the inward power of the Spirit which go together, according to the promise of the Gospel, and make up the essence of it…

And we cannot find in Scripture that God denies his Spirit to such as hear his Word till they give God cause either by their neglect or perversness, or apostasy from that degree of grace they have received to withdraw the same.  By all this we understand that Christ finds his subjects, to whom God has given Him a right, to be enemies, and He enlarges as He begins his Kingdom by a kind of spiritual conquest, dashing in pieces all such as will not submit, and are bound to submit, with his iron rod and irresistible strength, reducing the rest unto subjection, after some time of standing out…

And this publication of his laws is accompanied with a wonderful power of his Spirit whereby together with the Word of the Kingdom, He pierces the minds of men and breaks their stony hearts in sunder, as an hammer does a rock: In this respect the Lord says, ‘Is not my Word like as a fire, and like an hammer that breaks the rock asunder, Jer. 23:29.”

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Thomas Hooker

The Application of Redemption by the Effectual Work of the Word & Spirit of Christ for the bringing home of lost sinners to God  (d. 1647; London: Cole, 1656), bk. 10, pp. 358-86

“1. There is no power in man to remove that resistance that is in his heart against God and the work of his grace; that which out of its own corrupt principles does wholly resist, and cannot but resist, the operation and dispensation of all spiritual means that would prevail with it for good, that cannot take away the resistance; for resistance cannot take away resistance; it implies a palpable contradiction, as that which is professedly cross to common sense.

But the corrupt heart of a natural man, while he is in the state of nature and corruption, does and cannot but wholly resist the work of God’s Spirit and grace, and all the saving operations of all the means thereof.  The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary, Gal. 5:17.  And what is born of the flesh is flesh, Jn. 3:7; that is the temper and inward constitution of a soul in its natural condition; it is wholly born of the flesh, and therefore nothing but flesh, and therefore can do nothing but resist the Spirit; yea, it cannot but oppose whatever would take that resistance away; for it is a received rule of reason, and confessed of all hands, everything desires the preservation of itself and its being; otherwise the being and the causes that made up the being should be cross to the thing, if it should endeavor its own destruction; nay, a thing should be opposite to itself.

Hence it is that the corruption of the heart will put forth all the skill and strength it hath, or by the contrivements of carnal reason can compass, to fortify and preserve itself against the spiritual and saving dispensation of the work of God’s Spirit in his own ordinances; because wicked men look at the power thereof as that which works the ruin of their lusts; therefore they labor to avoid the light if they can; if not that, to oppose it, and overbear it by their delusions; if not that, to destroy it…

2. Before the soul can act against the evil of sin, or for the removal of this resistance wherein the destroying venom of sin lies, and that which stops the passage of the power of the ordinance and the work of grace, it is necessary that the Lord should not only concur with the act of the will of a sinner, to lead or draw forth the act thereof which He has ability to express, but He must let in an influence of the same power and virtue into the faculty of the will, whereby it may be enabled to put forth an act unto which it formerly had no power of itself…

3. The influence of this spiritual power whereby the Lord takes away this sinful resistance, is not by any gracious habit of sanctification, but by an irresistable motion of the work of his Spirit upon the soul…”

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Christopher Love

Treatise of Effectual Calling & Election...  (London: Rothwell, 1653), Sermon 5, on 2 Pet. 1:10, pp. 64-65

“First, whether may a wicked man, a man as yet not called, be able to resist and keep off his own call?

And that you may understand the answer hereto, I must lay down this distinction: that there is a twofold calling of Christ: a significative calling, and an operative calling.

First, a significative calling, which is such a calling whereby Christ, in the ministry of the Word, signifies and declares what He would have men to do.  Now this kind of call wicked men may resist; this call, I say, and this revealed will of God, in declaring what graces he would have men act, and what sins he would have men forbear.  Therefore we read, Acts 7:51, “You stiff-necked people, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you have always resisted the Holy Ghost”; meaning the preaching of the Word by the ministry of his apostles.  So Prov. 1:24, ‘I have called, and ye have refused,’ etc.

But then secondly, there is an operative calling, and that is such a call whereby God does not only signify to a man what he must do, but with the signification of his will gives a man a power to do what He calls him to do, accompanying the Word with his Spirit, making the heart stoop and yield to Jesus Christ.

Now this call no man can resist; grace is irresistible; and this effectual calling, by the operation of the Spirit, a man cannot resist.  All the gainsayings of the heart, and all the stoutness of the will, it must stoop and must be brought under subjection to Jesus Christ. Jn. 6:37, ‘All that the Father hath given Me,’ says Christ, ‘shall come unto Me.’  They shall not be able to withstand Jesus Christ, but they shall come in unto Him.  So Isa. 55:10–11:

‘As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and returns not thither again, but waters the earth, to make it bring forth… so shall my word be that goes out of my mouth; it shall not return in vain, but shall accomplish that which I intended, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.’

As all the world cannot hinder the rain from coming down on the earth, no more can any man in the world, if God has an intent to convert and call him, hinder the benefit of the Word from redounding upon his soul.”

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John Brinsley

Aqua cœlestis, or a Sovereign Cordial extracted from the Sufficiency of Divine Grace & Strength made Perfect in Weakness…  (London: Sawbridge, 1663), pp. 54-56

“They do not receive this grace as they ought to do.  They let it into the ear, giving it the hearing, but not into the heart, embracing of it.  They shut the door of their souls against it.  Now upon this condition it is that Christ promises to communicate Himself and his grace to those to whom He comes, viz. if they shall open the door to Him, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and sup with him, and he with Me.’ (Rev. 3.20).

It is not the bare hearing of the voice of Christ speaking in his word, but the opening of the door, the letting of Him into the soul, receiving and entertaining Him by faith and love that will bring men to have communion with Him to be made partakers of his grace and Spirit.

Now this many will not do; they shut the door of their souls against Jesus Christ, not letting in the motions of his Spirit into their hearts, but opposing, resisting it.  This is that which Stephen charges upon the Jews, Acts 7:51, ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, and ears, ye do always resist the holy Ghost; as your fathers did so do you.’  And so is it with many, they hear the Word, but they do not let in the monitions of it, nor the motions of the Spirit into their hearts.

Question: Why, but is not the grace of God irresistible?

A. This is made a matter of controversy, eagerly debated betwixt Arminians and Orthodox divines; I shall not now wade into it.  In a word take this resolution: The Spirit of grace in itself is irresistible (I mean so irresistible, as that though it may be opposed, yet it cannot be conquered) but it does not always work in an irresistable way and manner.  In itself (I say) it is irresistible, so as if it will put forth its strength, it is able to make way for the motions of it; able to open the door of the soul, though never so closed shut against it, so as not only to illuminate the mind, but also to change the will; not by forcing and constraining it (which being contrary to the nature of the will, is inconsistent with it; should the will be forced, it should cease to be a will, the property whereof is to act freely), but by sweetly inclining it, of unwilling, making it willing to comply and yield to such terms as are tendered to it; by which means the grace of God becomes effectual in it.  But this I shall not enlarge upon, resting contented with this, that the grace of God is sufficient for all that shall receive it: sufficient for their conversion.”

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Isaac Ambrose

Looking unto Jesus…  (d. 1664; London: Chiswel, 1680), bk. 8, Ascension, ch. 1, sect. 9, ‘Manner how the Holy Ghost was sent’, p. 488

“3…  But more especially the Holy Ghost is compared to a wind in respect of its irresistable workings; as nothing can resist the wind, it goes and blows which way soever it will; so nothing can resist the Spirit of God, wheresoever it has a purpose to work efficaciously; I will not say, but the heart of a man may resist and reject the work of the Spirit in some measure, and in some degrees; Stephen told the Jews, they had always resisted the Holy Ghost (Act. 7:51); and the apostle tells of strong holds, and of every high thing that exalts itself against God (2 Cor. 10:5);

so there is a natural contrariety, a constant enmity and active resisting of God’s Spirit by our spirits; we must therefore distinguish between a prevalent and a gradual resisting; the Spirit in conversion so works that He takes away the prevalent, but not the gradual resisting; A man before he be converted is froward, and full of cavils and prejudices; he is unwilling to be saved; he cannot abide the truth; he does what he can to stifle all good motions: yet if he belong to the election of grace, God will at last over-master his heart and make him of unwilling, willing; He will omnipotently bow and change the will and work on his soul by his mighty power efficaciously, insuperably and irresistably.”

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David Dickson

Therapeutica Sacra  (1664), bk. 1, ch. 3

“Wherefore, whosoever in the preaching of the Gospel, are charged and commanded to repent, to believe in Christ, or turn unto God, they are commanded also to use all these external means [“hear a Sermon preached, to read the Scripture, to be informed by Catechizing, and conference of Religion…”] whereby they may be informed of the duty required, and of the means leading thereunto; in the exercise of which external means, they may meet with sundry common operations and effects of God’s Spirit, before they be regenerate or converted, whereof the use may be sound not only in, but also after, conversion; And if any man shall refuse, slight or neglect to follow these preparatory exercises, which may prepare him for conversion, he is inexcusable before God and man, and guilty of rejecting of the offer of reconciliation, yea guilty of resisting of the Holy Ghost, of which sin and guiltiness the holy martyr Stephen charges the misbelieving Jews, Acts 7:51.

8. As for the regenerate man, he it is who in the acknowledgement of his sinfulness and deserved misery, and of his utter inability to help himself, does cast away all confidence in his own parts, and possible righteousness of his own works, and flees to Christ offered in the Gospel…”

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John Lightfoot

The Works of the Reverend & Learned John Lightfoot…  (London: Scot, 1684), ‘A Sermon preached at Hertford Assize, March 17, 1664’, on Jn. 8:9, pp. 1083-84

“II. Secondly, there is a conviction of conscience that brings with it some overpowering, some more, some less, some for one end, some for another.  I say, some overpowering.  In that dispute about the resistibility or irresistibility of grace, as far as I can see into the dispute, this distinction might be useful and advantageous toward the determining of it, viz. to consider what the Spirit of God does to the heart by way of trying it, and what it does with intent and resolution to overpower it.

The former part of the distinction you have in Ex. 20:20, ‘Fear not, for the Lord is come to prove,’ or try, ‘you.’  The latter in Isa. 26:11, ‘They will not see, but they shall see and be ashamed.’  The former in Rev. 3:17, Christ stands at the door and knocks, to try whether He shall be entertained.  The latter in Eze. 22:14, ‘How can thy heart endure and thy hands be strong in the day that I shall deal with thee, when I break in resolved to overpower thee?’  As in that blasted conviction I spake of before, there was a trying but no overpowering, so there is some overpowering conviction also, that is but for trial….

So that was a very overpowering conviction upon the conscience of Herod, that made him reverence John Baptist, and to hear him gladly and to do many things according to his doctrine; but it was far from attaining the utmost end of conviction: it was only by way of trial, whether he would come up to the utmost end or no.  This conviction neither they in the text, nor Herod could resist, for conviction brake in, whether they would or no; but the ultimate operation of conviction they resisted; because in this conviction the Spirit of God did only try them, not resolved to overpower them to the utmost fruit and effect of conviction…

For the first, it is well known how God tried the hearts and consciences of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, by Moses’ words and miracles, and how again and again He in some degree did overpower them; but still they resisted and came not up to the proper and ultimate effect of conviction, to own and to do their duty.”

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Edward Polhill

‘Edward Polhill (1622-1694) on Matthew 23:37’  in “The Divine Will Considered in its Eternal Decrees”  in The Works of Edward Polhill (Morgan, PA.: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1998), pp. 208-10

“Mt. 23:37, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  Thou that kills the prophets and stones them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.”  Here, say they [Remonstrants], is resistible grace.  Very well; but what grace does the text speak of?  It speaks only of the grace afforded to those Jews which were never gathered or converted thereby, but not a title of the grace afforded to those Jews which were thereby actually gathered or converted; and how then can it prove that this latter grace (of which it speaks not at all) was resistible?

If it prove this grace resistible, it can be upon no other ground but this only, that the grace afforded to the Jews which were not gathered, and the grace afforded to the Jews which were gathered, was one and the same; but how can that be made good?  Can that text assert an equality of grace to both sorts of Jews, which speaks only of grace afforded to one of them, vis., to the ungathered ones?  It is impossible.

But if it be not the truth of the text, is there yet any truth in the thing?  Had all the Jews equal grace with the Jews given to Christ, with the Jews drawn by the Father, with the Jews chosen out of the world?  It is incredible…  It cannot be.  Wherefore, this text speaking only of the grace given to the ungathered Jews, proves not the grace given to the other Jews to be resistible, but it genuinely proves a will in God to gather them all under his wings of grace;

I say, a will in God, for it cannot be interpreted of Christ’s human will; for the gathering willed was not only a gathering by Christ’s ministry, but by the mission of prophets before his incarnation, to which Christ’s human will could not extend, because not then in being: wherefore, this will is God’s ordinative will, imported in the ministry of Christ and the prophets, the proper end and tendency whereof was to gather them into the bosom of his grace…

“God’s stretching out his hands” is all one with his call, (Prov. 1:24); but all men are not called after the same rate as the called according to purpose: wherefore, this place proves not, that the workings of grace as to the elect are resistible; but that the offers of grace as to the non-elect are serious, God in the means really spreading out his arms of grace unto them.  Again: they [the Remonstrants] urge that of our Savior, “These things I say, that you might be saved,” (John 5:34); which words were spoken to them, which “would not come to Christ,” (ver. 40); but that the Holy Spirit spoke as inwardly and powerfully to them, as to the elect who” hear and learn of the Father;” what chemistry can extract it out of this text? or from what other scripture can it be demonstrated? God” commands the light to shine out of darkness in some hearts,” (2 Cor. 4:6); but does He so in all?

Whence then are those blinded ones? (ver. 4). If there be any such, where is the Remonstrants’ equality of grace? Where, when they say, that illumination is wrought irresistibly?  These things cannot consist together.  Wherefore our Savior’s words show not forth the weakness or separableness of grace as to the elect, but the true end and scope of Christ’s preaching as to the non-elect; what he spoke to them was in order to their salvation…

wherefore this place proves not I that the working of grace in the elect is resistible, but it signally shows forth the nature, of divine ordinances. Every ordinance is an ordinance from the will of God; it is an appointment dropped down from heaven; it is divinely destinated eis oikodomen, for edification and not for destruction…

John’s baptism was not a mere external sign or shadow, but imported God’s ordinative counsel to bring men to repentance; it was eis matanoian, to repentance, as its proper end, (Mt. 3:11).  Gospel-preaching is not a mere sound or voice of words, but it imports God’s ordinative counsel to turn men unto himself. Hence every true minister is said to stand. in God’s counsel, and for this very end, to turn them from the evil of their doings, (Jer. 22:22).  Every ordinance speaks an ordinative counsel for some spiritual end, a serious ordination for the good of souls.”

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Matthew Henry

Commentary on Acts, on 7:51, “…ye do always resist the Holy Ghost…”

“2. They resisted the Holy Ghost striving with them by their own consciences, and would not comply with the convictions and dictates of them. God’s Spirit strove with them as with the old world, but in vain; they resisted Him, took part with their corruptions against their convictions, and rebelled against the light.  There is that in our sinful hearts that always resists the Holy Ghost, a flesh that lusts against the Spirit, and wars against his motions;

but in the hearts of God’s elect, when the fullness of time comes, this resistance is overcome and overpowered, and after a struggle the throne of Christ is set up in the soul, and every thought that had exalted itself against it is brought into captivity to it, 2 Co. 10:4, 2 Co. 10:5.  That grace therefore which effects this change might more fitly be called victorious grace than irresistible.”

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A.A. Hodge

Outlines of Theology  new ed. enlarged  (London: Nelson, 1879), ch. 28, ‘The Application of Redemption…’, pp. 451-52

“20. In what sense is grace irresistible?

It must be remembered that the true Christian is the subject at the same time of those moral and mediate influences of grace upon the will, common to him and to the unconverted, and also of those special influences of grace within the will, which are certainly efficacious.

The first class of influences Christians may, and constantly do resist, through the law of sin remaining in their members.

The second class of influences are certainly efficacious, but are neither resistible nor irresistible, because they act from within and carry the will spontaneously with them.

It is to be lamented that the term irresistible grace has ever been used, since it suggests the idea of a mechanical and coercive influence upon an unwilling subject, while, in truth, it is the transcendent act of the infinite Creator, making the creature spontaneously willing.”

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William G.T. Shedd  1893

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.”

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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…

Whoever is in any degree convinced of sin, and is in any degree urged by his conscience to confess and forsake it, is a subject of common grace.  And whoever stifles conviction, refuses confession, and ‘holds down the truth in unrighteousness,’ [Rom. 1] resists common grace.  St. Paul charges this sin upon both the heathen and the evangelized.  Common grace, we repeat, is great and undeserved mercy to a sinner, and by it God evinces his pity for his soul, and his desire for its salvation.  But man universally, unevangelized and evangelized, nullifies this form and degree of the Divine mercy, by his opposition.

The opponent of preterition comes in here at this point, and contends that God is bound to go yet further than common grace with sinful man, and subdue his enmity by creating him anew in the spirit of his mind; and that if He ‘passes him by,’ and leaves him where he is, and as he is, He has no love for his soul.  The sovereignty of God in this matter of bestowing regenerating grace is denied.  To bestow it upon Jacob but not upon Esau, upon some but not upon all, is said to be injustice and partiality.

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.’  The passages have already been cited.  And reason teaches the same truth.  Mercy from its very nature is free and optional in its exercise.  God may manifest great and unmerited compassion to all men in common grace and the outward call, and limit his compassion if He please to some men in special grace and the effectual call.
…

God sincerely desires that the sinner would hear his outward call, and that his common grace might succeed with him.  He sincerely desires that everyone who hears the message: ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; yea, come buy wine and milk without money,’ would come just as he is, and of his own free will, ‘for all things are ready.’  The fact that God does not go further than this with all men and conquer their aversion, is consistent with this desire. No one contends that God is not universally benevolent because he bestows more health, wealth, and intellect upon some than upon others…

The omnipotence of God is able to save the whole world of mankind, and to our narrow vision it seems singular that He does not; but be this as it may, it is false to say that if He does not exert the whole of his power, He is an unmerciful being towards those who abuse his common grace.  That degree of forbearance and long-suffering which God shows towards those who resist it, and that measure of effort which He puts forth to convert them, is real mercy towards their souls.  It is the sinner who has thwarted this benevolent approach of God to his sinful heart.  Millions of men in all ages are continually beating back God’s mercy in the outward call and nullifying it.

A man who has had common grace, has been the subject of the Divine compassion to this degree.  If he resists it, he cannot charge God with unmercifulness, because He does not bestow upon him still greater mercy in the form of regenerating grace.  A beggar who contemptuously rejects the five dollars offered by a benevolent man, cannot charge stinginess upon him because after this rejection of the five dollars he does not give him ten…

God’s desire that a sinner should ‘turn and live’ under common grace, is not incompatible with his purpose to leave him to ‘eat of the fruit of his own ways, and be filled with his own devices’— which is the same thing as ‘foreordaining him to everlasting death.’

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ch. 5, p. 59

“The bestowment of common grace upon the non-elect shows that non-election does not exclude from the kingdom of heaven by Divine efficiency, because common grace is not only an invitation to believe and repent, but an actual help towards it; and a help that is nullified solely by the resistance of the non-elect, and not by anything in the nature of common grace, or by any preventive action of God.

The fault of the failure of common grace to save the sinner, is chargeable to the sinner alone; and he has no right to plead a fault of his own as the reason why he is entitled to special grace.  It is absurd for him to contend that God has no right to refuse him regenerating grace, because he has defeated the Divine mercy in common grace.  The true way out of the difficulty for the sinner is, not to demand regenerating grace as a debt by denying that God has the right to withhold it, but to confess the sinful abuse and frustration of common grace, and to cry with the leper: ‘Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.'”

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ch. 9, pp. 100-103

“The Calvinist, on the contrary [to Arminianism], holds that the unregenerate man never ceases to resist and never yields to God of his own motion, but only as he is acted upon by the Holy Spirit and is thereby ‘persuaded and enabled’ to cease resisting and to yield obedience.  Ceasing to resist God, he [the Calvinist] contends, is holy action, and so is yielding or submitting to God.  To refer this kind of action to the sinful and unregenerate will as its author [as the Arminian does], the Calvinist asserts [this] is contrary to the Scripture declaration, that ‘the carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,’  Rom. 8:7.  A will at enmity with God never of itself ceases resisting Him, and never of itself yields to Him.  It must be changed from enmity into love by ‘the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost’ in order to sweet and gentle submission.

The sinner, as such, cannot, therefore, assist and co-operate with the Holy Spirit in this work of originating faith and repentance, but the whole of it must be done by that Almighty Agent who can turn the human heart as the rivers of water.  Christ, through the Spirit, is the sole ‘author of faith’ (Heb. 12:2).  When the Holy Spirit puts forth a higher degree of his energy than He exerts in his ordinary operation, He overcomes and stops the sinner’s resistance instead of the sinner’s overcoming and stopping it of himself, and [the Holy Spirit] inclines the sinner to yield to the Divine monitions [admonitions] and impulse instead of the sinner’s yielding of his own accord [as the Arminian says].  If the sinner’s resistance is ‘overcome’, it is overcome by God’s action [according to the Calvinist]; but if it ‘ceases’, it ceases by the sinner’s action [by his own power, according to the Arminian]. 

To say that common grace [in the sincere strivings of the Spirit] would [hypothetically] succeed [in salvation] if it were not resisted by man, is not the same as saying that common grace would succeed if it were yielded to by man[‘s independent power, as in Arminianism].  [Hypothetical] Non-resistance is different from ceasing resistance [of the Arminian].  In the former [hypothetical] instance there is no opposition by the man [and thus the common, gracious striving of the Spirit in the gospel call would result in saving grace]; in the latter there is opposition, which is put a stop to by the man[‘s independent power, on the Arminian view].
…

According to the monergistic [God alone working] or Calvinistic view of grace, on the contrary [to Arminianism], no man receives a grace that is ‘sufficient for generating faith’ who does not receive such a measure of Divine influence as overcomes his hostile will; so that he does not stop his own resistance but it stopped by the mercy and power of God; so that his faith and repentance are not the result in part of his own efficiency, but solely of the Holy Spirit’s irresistible and sovereign energy in regeneration.  In a word, the dependence upon Divine grace in the Calvinistic system [in being saved] is total; in the Arminian is partial.  In the former, common grace cannot be made saving grace by the sinner’s co-action; in the latter it can be.”

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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.”

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God can Effect whatever a Creature can do

Order of

Intro
Quotes  2

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Intro

Some doubt whether an omnipotent God can put forth resistible grace at all.

Yet if a creaturely person can exercise a finite, limited, gracious, power with design and intention towards another person towards a given goal, which is yet overcome and defeated by that other person’s greater finite power, then God can effect the same in the created realm, whether immediately or mediately.

Bible verses which teach that God has resistible and ineffectual graces include:

Acts 7:51  “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.”

2 Cor. 6:1  “We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.”

Mt. 23:37  ““O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”

Rom. 2:4  “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

Lk. 7:30  “But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.”

Lk. 14:16-19  “A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready…  And another said, ‘…I pray thee have me excused.'”

Acts 13:46  “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life…”

2 Chron. 24:19  “Yet he sent prophets to them, to bring them again unto the LORD; and they testified against them: but they would not give ear.”

Judg. 2:17  “Yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods…”

1 Sam. 8:19  “Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel…”

Jer. 36:3  “It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil way…”

Lk. 8:12  “Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.”

Gal. 2:21  “I do not frustrate the grace of God;”

Gal. 5:4  “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.”

More verses include: Gen. 6:3; 1 Thess. 5:19; Eph. 4:30; Gen. 32:24-29; Rom. 6:13; 2 Chron. 30:8; Isa. 63:10; 1 Pet. 3:19-20; Hos. 9:15; 2 Sam. 7:15; Heb. 6:4-6; Heb. 10:29; Jonah 2:8; Acts 3:26; John 5:34, 40, Ps. 81:13-16; Deut. 5:29; Deut. 32:29; Isa. 48:18; Isa. 5:4.

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Quotes

1200’s

Thomas Aquinas

Summa, pt. 1, quest. 105

art. 1, reply to obj. 3

“The fact that secondary causes are ordered to determinate effects is due to God; wherefore since God ordains other causes to certain effects He can also produce certain effects by Himself without any other cause.”

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art. 2, I answer that

“It is erroneous to say that God cannot Himself produce all the determinate effects which are produced by any created cause.”

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In Thomism

Historical

Quotes

eds. Ballor, Gaetano & Sytsma, Beyond Dordt & De Auxiliis: the Dynamics of Protestant & Catholic Soteriology in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries  (Brill, 2019)

Eric DeMeuse, “‘The World Is Content with Words’: Jansenism between Thomism & Calvinism”

p. 257

“And in chapter 4 of book 8 [of Augustinus], [Cornelius] Jansen [d. 1638] addresses the Thomistic attempt to preserve human freedom and the resistibility of grace— in accord with the teaching of [the Council of] Trent43— by distinguishing that the will is able to resist efficacious grace in sensu diviso [in a divided sense] but not in sensu composito [in a composite sense].44  Jansen thinks this teaching approaches very closely that of Augustine and can be defended as such merely by changing certain terms (mutatis tantum vocabulis).

43 Jansen points to two canons from session 6 “On Justification”: “If anyone says that the free will of man, moved and awakened by God, in no way cooperates by an assent to God’s awakening call, through which he disposes and prepares himself to obtain the grace of justification; and that man cannot refuse his assent if he wishes, but that like a lifeless object he does nothing at all and is merely passive, let him be anathema” (canon 4); “If anyone says that after Adam’s sin the free will of man is lost and extinct or that it is an empty concept, a term without real foundation, indeed, a fiction introduced by Satan into the Church, let him be anathema” (canon 5). Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünerman (eds), Enchiridion symbolorum, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: 2010), nos 1554– 55.

44 For a good explanation of this Thomistic division, see Steven A. Long, “St. Thomas Aquinas, Divine Causality, and the Mystery of Predestination,” in Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations, eds Steven A. Long, Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White, OP (Ave Maria: 2016), 51– 76, here 59.”

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p. 264

“[Jean- Baptiste] Gonet [a Thomist, d. 1681] emphasizes…  efficacious grace is never de facto resisted…”

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p. 266

“By the eighteenth Provincial discussing grace and freedom, however, Pascal would provide the necessary clarifications, writing that the opinion of the Jansenists is “perfectly at one with the modern Thomists” (parfaitément d’accord avec les nouveaux Thomistes mêmes).  Neither party destroys free will, Pascal asserts, and both maintain the resistibility of grace and yet the infallibility of grace’s effect.”

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Matthew Gaetano, “Calvin Against the Calvinists in Early Modern Thomism”

p. 301

“[Tomas de] Lemos [a Dominican, d. 1629] believed [John] Calvin to have held that, when free choice is moved “physically, actively, and efficaciously,” it does not have the power to dissent.  By contrast, the Thomists thought that free choice “moved and excited” by grace can dissent but that it does not dissent because the efficacy of grace makes it so that the will freely consents.†

† Tomás de Lemos, Acta omnia congregationum ac disputationum quae coram SS. Clemente VIII et Paulo V summis pontificibus sunt celebratae in causa et controversia illa magna de auxiliis divinae gratiae (Louvain: Aegidius Denique, 1702), col. 698…”

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pp. 302-3

“For him [Lemos], the substantive problem with Calvin’s view was seeing the efficacy of the divine will as hurting or taking away the liberty of man rather than causing and perfecting it.  Lemos then made the arresting remark that, if Calvin held the view that God’s efficacious grace perfected liberty, then “he would hold to Catholic truth on this point (in hac parte), just as Augustine himself.” (Acta, cols 1223– 24)

On the irresistibility of efficacious grace, Lemos insisted that Calvin held the “absurd” opinion that human beings do not have liberty in consenting nor could dissent if they willed to do so.  By contrast, the Thomists held that man is able to dissent if he wills and always freely consents; the efficacy of prevenient grace causes and perfects the actual liberty of man because it “makes it so that man consents and freely consents.” (Acta, col. 1225)  For Lemos, the “adequate cause”— indeed, the “total cause”—of man’s conversion is “grace alone” (sola gratia), even though the “total proximate cause in its own order and genus” is the human will, “freely willing itself to convert to God.””

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p. 304

“Calvin was known to have rejected the idea that God moves the will as something inanimate and as entirely passive; they acknowledged that Calvin saw the human will under divine influence as active and as concurring with its own operations with a spontaneous motion.

Nonetheless, they argued that this active and spontaneous action is still not free because genuine human freedom requires the indifference of the will or, in Álvarez’s words, “the faculty and power by which one can, if one wills, not follow the divine motion,” even if this faculty would not in fact be exercised because of the infallibility of God’s will in the exercise of his efficacious auxilium.†

† Álvarez, De auxiliis, 166– 67; Gonet, Clypeus, 1:556, 575; Poinsot, Cursus, 2:92– 93; Piccinardi, De approbatione, 226– 27.  See also Álvarez, De auxiliis, 651…  His [Calvin’s] error was rejecting any free cooperation and limiting things to mere spontaneous motion and non- coercion.  For Álvarez’s account of indifference, see especially Álvarez, De auxiliis, 767– 70…”

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p. 305

“And, like Lemos, these Dominicans linked Calvin to Pelagius on this point, arguing that the Protestants agreed with Pelagius that there is a choice between efficacious grace and free choice.ª  The Protestants chose efficacious grace, and Pelagius chose free choice.

ª Álvarez, De auxiliis, 16, 166, 619; Poinsot, Cursus, 1:693–94; idem, Cursus, 2:92; Jean-Baptiste Gonet, Manuale Thomistarum seu totius theologi brevis cursus, 4th ed., part 2 (Lyon: Anisson and Joannes Posuel, 1681), 229–30.  See also Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus, 10:152–53.”

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p. 313

“[Antoine] Goudin [d. 1695] entertained the possibility that the “Calvinists” might have affirmed the truth on these points:

“If these heretics sincerely judge with us that free choice is granted, that it cooperates with grace, and that it can dissent if it wills, while adding that the predefinition and motion of God are efficacious and infallible, they would not in this be heretics.””

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“And the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh…'”

Gen. 6:3

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

Phil. 2:13

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Related Pages

The Common Operations of the Spirit

Irresistible Grace

The Difference Between Reformed Common Grace and Arminian Common Grace

On a Divine Disposition, Inclination & Willingness