Online Question: Are you saying that God allowing man to sin is the same thing as decreeing their sin?
Response Posted by Ron Henzel:
Reformed theologian W.G.T. Shedd (1820-1894):
‘The [Westminster] Confession (vi. 1; L[arger] C[atechism] 19) declares that God “permits” sin, but that it is not a “bare permission.” Con. v. 4. The permission that is adopted by the Assembly is one that occurs by a voluntary decision of God which he need not have made, had he so pleased. He might have decided not to permit sin; in which case it would not have entered his universe. The “bare permission” which is rejected by the Assembly means that God makes no voluntary decision at all in the case; that he could not have prevented the fall of angels and men, but stands “like an idle spectator,” having no control over the event which he witnesses.
Augustine makes the following statement in his Enchiridion, Ch. 100: “In a way unspeakably strange and wonderful, even what is done in opposition to God’s will [of desire] does not defeat his will [of decree]. For it would not be done did he not permit it, and of course his permission is not unwilling, -p95- but willing; nor would a Good Being permit evil to be done except that in his omnipotence he can turn evil into good.” Calvin, adopting Augustine’s phraseology, concisely marks the difference between the two permissions in the remark, that “God’s permission of sin is not involuntary, but voluntary.” Inst. I. xviii. 3.
Both Augustine and Calvin had particular reference, in this connection, to the first origin of sin in angels and men. But their statement holds true of the continuance of sin in angels and men. When God passes by all the fallen and sinful angels, and does not regenerate and save any of them, it is by a positive voluntary decision that might have been different had he so pleased. He could have saved them. And when God passes by some fallen and sinful men and does not regenerate and save them, this also is a positive voluntary decision that might have been different had he so pleased. He could have saved them. To deny this option of God in either instance is to deny, 1st, the divine sovereignty in the exercise of mercy; and, 2d, the divine omnipotence in the control of creatures.’
‘¹ The permissive decree as related to the origin of sin presents a difficulty that does not exist in reference to the continuance of sin. The certainty of the continuance of sin in fallen man is easily explained, by merely leaving the fallen will to its self-determination. But merely leaving the unfallen will to its self determination would not make its apostasy certain; because it was endowed by creation with a power to remain holy as created, and there was no punitive withdrawal of any grace given in creation until after apostasy. How, under these circumstances, a permissive decree which does not operate by direct efficiency can make the fall of a holy being certain, is an inscrutable mystery.
Respecting it, Turretin (VI. vii. 1) makes the following remark: “Two extremes are to be avoided. First, that of defect, when an otiose permission of sin is ascribed to God. Second, that of excess, when the causality of sin is ascribed to him. Between these extremes, the orthodox hold the mean, who contend that the providence of God extends to sin in such way that he does not involuntarily permit it, as the Pelagians say, nor actively cause it, as the Libertines assert, but voluntarily ordains and controls it.”’
— William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed: A Defence of the Westminster Standards, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 94–95. The italics style is in the original.
Earlier in the same book, Shedd dealt with the topic of the phrase “bare permission” in response to those who misinterpreted its significance in the WCF:
‘It is sometimes argued that the Confession excludes the tenet of the permissive decree, by its declaration that the “providence of God extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men, and that not by a bare permission” (Conf. v. 4). The “bare permission” which the Assembly rejects here is that of the Tridentine theologians, who asserted that sin arises from the “mere permission” of God. The Reformed theologians understood this to mean, that in respect to the fall of angels and men God is an idle and helpless spectator (deo otioso spectante), and that sin came into the universe without any positive decision and purpose on his part. This kind of “permission” implies that God could not have prevented sin had he so decided, and is really no permission at all; because no one can properly be said to permit what he cannot prevent.
In order to exclude this view of “permission,” the Assembly assert “such [a permission] as hath joined with it a most holy, wise, and powerful bounding and otherwise ordering and governing of [the sins of angels and men], in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, not from God, who neither is nor can be the author of sin.” This last clause declares that God’s relation to the sin which he decrees, is not that of efficiency, but permission. For if God worked directly and efficiently in angel or man “to will,” when he wills wickedly, the “sinfulness of sin” would “proceed from God,” and God would be “the author of sin.”
The permissive decree is taught also in Larger Catechism, 19. -p34- “God by his providence permitted some of the angels, wilfully and irrecoverably, to fall into sin and damnation, limiting and ordering that, and all their sins, to his own glory.”
‘The permissive decree is supported by Scripture, in the statement that God “in times past suffered (εἴασε) all nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16); that “the times of this ignorance God overlooked” (ὑπεριδών) (Acts 17:30); that God “gave rebellious Israel their own desire (Psalm 78:29); that “he gave them their request” (Psalm 106:15). This phraseology is never employed when holiness is spoken of. The Bible never says that God permits man to be holy, or to act righteously. He efficiently influences and actuates him to this.
Accordingly the other Reformed creeds, like the Westminster, mark the difference between God’s relation to holiness and sin. The Second Helvetic, Ch. viii., says: “Quotiescunque Deus aliquid mali in Scriptura facere dicitur atque videtur, non ideo dicitur, quod homo malum non faciat, sed quod Deus fieri sinat et non prohibeat, justo suo judicio, qui prohibere potuisset, si voluisset [as often as God in the Scripture is said and seems to do some evil, it is not thereby meant that man does not commit evil, but that God does suffer it to be done, and does not hinder it; and that by his just judgment, who could hinder it if he would].”
The Belgic Confession, Art. 13, asserts that God’s “power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible, that he orders and executes his work in the most excellent and just manner even when the devil and wicked men act unjustly. We are persuaded that he so restrains the devil and all our enemies that without his will and permission they cannot hurt us.”
The Dort Canons, i. 15, teach that “God, out of his sovereign, most just, and unchangeable good pleasure hath decreed to leave some men in the common misery into which they have wilfully plunged themselves, and not to bestow upon them saving faith and the grace of conversion, but permitting them in his just judgment to follow their own way, at last, for the declaration -p35- of his justice, to condemn and punish them forever, not only on account of their unbelief, but also for all their other sins.”’
— Shedd, ibid., 33–35.