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_{I. Terminology}

In this Section, it must be clearly apprehended that our concepts concern persons, their wills, feelings, consciences, reactions, responses, criticisms, judgments; the integration and partial disintegration of personality; they concern confrontation by what is infinite, actual and inescapable, and compromise which appears escape but which merely enacts judgment indirectly. To describe the actions and qualitative procedure, to exhibit the composure of situations' or assist an apprehension of the field in prose convenient for inanimate particles, would be as great a stylistic aberration as would the use of this, our terminology, with its special idiosyncrasies, in a reciprocal description of the detailed behaviour of particles. Thus just as some scientist, though perhaps enjoying occasion to romance in personalising particles, would not appreciate the joy if it became a duty ­ so our task demands too much acuity, accuracy and appositeness to allow the serious use of such jejune stylistic tricks as would appear if we pretended in our terms and phrases to depersonalise our province.

Accordingly we make no apology for our choice of style and vocabulary in that which follows, which is frankly adapted to its content.

Precision, the exclusion of implications not intended, the coverage of all that is intended, and this in forms comprehensively constructed so that ambiguity might be excluded: these are things always necessary in thought. Their absence may sagely be detected in any stylistic mode. It must however never be confused with a willing and judicially selected stylistic conformity to the character of a special subject. Applauded as such confusion might be, by contemporary literary zeitgeist, it is nonetheless indefensible.

_{II. The Ultimate Recourse}

In examining our revealed 'heartland' for the purpose of perceiving the conceptual consistency of the revealed doctrine of Christian­Theism in the matter of predestination and the question of freedom of will, we must now concentrate on understanding, knowing that if we gain in this, the conceptual blurs merged by intellectual mist into problems, may then become clear as consistent, co­ordinated and ­ as it were ­ defined conceptual landscape.

Several chief areas will be studied, but the first and quintessential element is Predestination itself.

_{III. The Propositions}

First, we must note the refined propositions, foreshadowed in the Preface, and to which we referred at the conclusion of Section I. We present ten.

1. In any predestinative action the determinant is God.

II Timothy, for example, in 1:9 has:

"He called us not according to works but according to His own purpose and grace."

So Romans 9:16 presents:

"It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs"; and Romans 9:18: "He has mercy on whom He will have mercy." This of course could be literally translated ­ "He will have mercy on whom He wills to have mercy."

2.There are no reaches of glory behind the Cross of the lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 6:14 has written:

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world." When we realise that in Jeremiah 9: 24 and I Corinthians 1:31, we are told that he who glories should glory in the Lord. we realise that in the Cross of Christ is the glory of the Lord eminently shown.

Hebrews 6 speaks indeed of going beyond the preliminary things, but when it does so, it points to a 'beyond' which we find in the ensuing chapters to be a greater exposition of the Cross, the sacrifice of Christ, in its meaning and its implications, as well as its application. Though it is true that one day we shall understand with a greater degree of comprehension than we have now, what is clear in terms of both adequacy and ultimacy. is that there is nothing beyond the Cross of Christ to which we may Scripturally appeal in terms of mystery, sovereignty or any other category^1* .

3. Condemnation is with God always a last resort.

It must move past the face of ultimate statements of highest concern:
Lamentations 3:33, II Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 33:11, Matthew 23:37, John 3:17 provide examples of which we shall quote the first only, in full:

"for He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men."

The literal rendering of "willingly", as pointed out in the footnote to the Standard American Edition of the Revised Version of the Bible, 1901,

is: "from the heart".

4. God has in fact worked everything after the counsel of His own will.

To this convenient examples of Scriptural statements attest: Ephesians 1:11, Amos 3:6, Psalm 115:3, Isaiah 43:13, Revelation 4:11, and again we shall limit the quotation to the first, with contextual reference. Of Him who predestinated according to His good plan and purpose, verse 5, and made known the mystery of His will to bring ultimate disposition of all in Christ's terms, according to the good counsel which He purposed in Himself, verses 9­10, it says:

"He works all things after the counsel of His own will."

There is therefore no situation where He need offend His own principles. He does not face abstract possibilities, but situations according to the patterns of His own planning.

5. Natural man has no spiritual merits or vitality: that is, unconverted man.

Attestation is given by Ephesians 2:2­8, II Timothy1:9, Romans 8:5­9 ­ and I Corinthians 2:14, for example, of which we quote from the first : "Ye walked according to the course of this world according to the prince ... the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all conducted ourselves in times past ... by nature the children of wrath like all others ... dead in sins." In the last phrase, the contrast is complete, in context, between this dead condition in sins and God's restoration of life:

"When we were dead, He has brought us to life with Christ (by grace ye are saved)." It does indeed stress this further by prefacing the clause "when we were dead" with the emphatic word ­ "even"; and lest, as it were, the impression should fade by the time a man should read the main clause, a confirmatory clause is placed at the end of the words above quoted "by grace you are saved".

6. God demands repentance, which is a gift.

The first point is clearly stated in Acts 17:30 -

"God ... now commands all men everywhere to repent"; it is uttered in Luke 13:5 -

'Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

The second is indicated by Acts 11:l8 -

"They held their peace and glorified God, saying: Then God has

also to the Gentiles granted the repentance which leads to life."

It is also implied by Ephesians 2:8 :

"By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:".

The Greek kai touto, in the phrase "and that not of yourselves" must agree grammatically not with "faith" but with the whole action, here salvation; this would be falsified if any essential component were "of yourselves"; and negatively, if any were not "the gift of God", both of which latter phrases appear in the text, qualifying kai touto.

7.God demands faith, which is a gift.

Relevant are : Hebrews 11:6, John 3:18, Ephesians 2:8, Galatians 5:22, Matthew 16:17, I Corinthians 4:7, Romans 9:18, John 6:65, Matthew 11:27 with John 14: 7,9.

To the first point, we quote from Hebrews 11:6 and John 3:18 :

"Without faith it is impossible to please Him: for He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him," and -

"He who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."

For the second, we shall note chiefly John 6:65, but make other allusion: Following:

"There are some of you who do not believe ­ verse 64, we have in verse 65: "Therefore said I unto you that no man can come unto me, except it were given to him of my Father." It is indicated that they have no faith; it is repeatedly indicated that it is by faith we come; and these people are clearly said not to come because they have not received the necessary gift from the Father: logically and contextually the missing element is faith, which therefore is not given: the sovereign donation of the Father has not been made in these cases. Faith is a gift of God.

This same point follows in Ephesians 2:8, and for the reason cited in No.6 supra (p. 118 ) ­ although it here applies pre-eminently as "faith" is expressly cited.

Faith, the Galatians passage informs us also, is a fruit of the Spirit; and as I Corinthians pointedly asks:

"What have you that you did not receive? now if you did receive it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?"

8. The range of mortality to which the death of Christ is adapted, is the world.

To this effect, we read such statements as those in I Timothy 2: 5­6, John 3:17 and II Peter 3:9, and we shall quote the first two as needed:

"There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time;" and

"If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

We have already dwelt on this topic at some length: this status of Christ, John indicates, appertains to Him in relation to the whole world.

For all the world, indeed, He is not said to have propitiated; it does not state such a thing: but for all the world He is the propitiation. There is no other for any man in it and He stands in the status relevant to action, and ready: for all.

9. The cited criterion for the condemnation of men is informed preference against Christ.

We may note Matthew 23:37, John 3:19 and Proverbs 1, for example, in this connection. The second had it written:

"This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light."

In a context of God's sending His Son into the world because of His love (verse 16) for it, and of His purpose in so doing not being that Be might condemn (verse 17), but on the contrary that the world through Him might be saved, we are told then that the man who believes in this Son has his condemnation removed; while the man who does not believe, is already condemned (verse 18). The reason is even expressly cited, in adversity to this sending, this sensitivity and this Son: because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

It is then that we are informed that there is a judicial point around which such condemnation (verse 19) occurs: the preference for darkness. (Cf. John 3:32, 36).

In Matthew, we find from the Son on whom judgment devolves, and into whose hands the Father put all judgment (while He in turn did only those things which pleased His Father whom He obeyed), these words:

"How often would I have gathered you ... and you would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."

10. The sole avenue to God is Jesus Christ.

For this, see John 14:6, Acts 4:12 and John 3:19 (the last especially in context, and with John 1:1, 1:9, 1:14 and 3:36). The first we may quote:

"Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life: no man comes to the Father but by me"; and to it, add the second:

"Neither is there salvation given in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." The name, mentioned in the preceding verse, is that of Jesus Christ.

Concerning these facts underlined, there can, so long as Scripture is in no sense 'accommodated' to the captious mutations of human reason; and so long as human reason, in its integrity, uses Scripture as the data of full validity: concerning these facts there can be no argument.

Having recapitulated these several basic points with due care, we stand ready for the major work.

We proceed to Predestination itself, then.
 
 

1. Father and Son

i) In Se.

The Word, John 1 tells us, existed as God in the beginning, and the word' he tells us, became flesh and was Jesus Christ. This cord existed in the beginning and from the first. Be does not say that what is now called the Word existed, but that Word so existed and became flesh. A word of course, is an expression of the person speaking.

One word gives a partial expression; one sentence a greater expression, a paragraph a greater expression yet; and wine" you sum up the entirety of the person as a Word, then there is an entirety of expression such that, confirming this, Christ says, "He who has seen me has seen the Father."^2*

Of course, an expression is something procedurally derivative. This is perfectly in keeping with its being essentially ultimate or co-ultimate with that which expresses it, if the case warrants that. So we have the Father and the Son, or the Author and the Word, co­ultimate, co­equal, for it says the Word was God; and yet they are involved in a relationship of procedural kind, of a specialised kind as to each Person of this Being, God. For that God may be mathematically one as to being, and three as­to personalities is a matter which it is not possible a priori to determine. It is consistent with itself. He exists asone; but the mode of His consisting is an entirely separate matter; and it is affirmed that the one Being exists in three distinct personalities.

To put it again, God exists in three persons and consists in these mutually; or further ­ this one God is describable as consisting in a collaborative confabulation comprising the divine enterprises and exhibiting this Being' God. In nature the same, each Being has a certain relationship to the other; to that extent, the Father may be said to be greater than the Son procedurally though not essentially: for it is in this sense greater to be the eternal originator than the eternal originated. Such however is the character of God, who affirms that essentially Be is love as well as truth, that that which is procedurally inferior does not rank as inferior, but in a Being essentially what God is, in His love, as equal.

God then has three eternal, distinct manners of being which He eternally is. It would be triplicate except that the identity which the nature of each has with the other is individualised by a differentiation such as that which we have just noted: a disjunction within the conjunction of which the marital state forms an image. The differences are dynamic while the nature of each is static; they function in difference as one Being because of the essential identity. The fulness of the Godhead pervades each of the members who work in eternal complementarily as equals, essentially; for with God, communion is constitutive. This fulness however evades anyone who will attempt to disjoin them.

God is not, let it be clear, a system, a resultant, a confederacy or a union: He is, as we say, a communion, an unfused fusion ­ if we must use such a term, as it sometimes seems expedient to use terms of those things which come and pass. When we do use them of Him however, the illustrative piquancy may provide unasked an appearance of complexity. If therefore, we wish, instead of using the phrase 'unfused fusion', we can say that it has as it were the integrity which we associate with fusion, the differential which we see in fusion, but that both are eternal^3* . Thus in God threeness composes His stature, while His oneness comprises His status. He is one Being in three simultaneous modes.

Now we may ask, Why have we made this exposition? Because, the answer is, the nature of predestination is obviously going to be related to the nature of Him who predestines; and so long as the Trinity is as it ever will be, quintessentially God, then to ignore it would be essentially an impossible method of proceeding.

One point we wish to abstract at this time: the Son then reaches the vastest regions of His Father^4* and the Father communicates from His illimitable being to the Son. There is a penetration by the Son; there is a communication by the Father. There is a reaching, there is a communion, there is a mutual searching. There is, in short, a program of penetration.

ii) The Measure of Man.

Now we move from a contemplation of what has been revealed of the Godhead to us by Him, to that creature man, who has been made in His image^5* and therefore (understanding this of course⁵ of his spiritual reality, most closely and intimately, though in creaturely style), correlative to this type of movement. That is to say, we may expect on the part of God through His Spirit, a movement into, a research throughout, a penetration within the spirit of man, in view of these His divulgements regarding Himself and man. We are familiar with the words:

"I the Lord search the heart" ­

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart."^6*

His eyes search, He tries the depths of man.

"I will melt them, and try them"^{7 *}... "The Lord tries the righteous,"^8* "His eyes behold, His eyelids try the children of men."^9* On the part of man, we read:

"Seek the Lord and ye shall live".^10* "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found."^11* 1 Peter tells us that the prophets who prophesied of the grace which was to come^12* , and this by the power of God, as 11 Peter stresses, were searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify^13* .

In prayer the saints are yearning to move into the depths of God's heart, within the confines of creatureliness, derivation and of redemption; and the Spirit of God assists them in this, and bracing and embracing their searching brings its essence in righteousness into the very heart of God. He who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, and He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God ­ the Spirit "laying hold" of God for us or, "along with" our infirmities^{14 *} .

iii) An Ontological Point.

These things being so, we proceed with more specifically predestinative matters affecting man. We perceive Christ communing in constructing the plan of salvation with His Father. The elect are chosen in Christ^15* ; and therefore this communing must concern the elect. In Him is the fulness of the Godhead bodily^16* . He is God's word. He is the very movement of the divine in all its
expressions^17* .

Now an ontological point arises. Can God in Himself, and hence between Himself and His Son, commence a meditation? That is, is such a concept inconsistent with what is revealed? Will God learn; that is, so that at the end of it, He will know more than at the beginning? Clearly, He would be a subject of growth and hence constituted in an environmental system if He did present to Himself any concept utterly new. After all, He works all things after the counsel of His will, and He is always the same. His guaranteed^6* sameness is the guarantee of the completion of all His meditations.

Indeed, if there were anything incomplete, it would mean that God would be shown as enquiring into a given datum, internal or external.

But there is no given datum for God, for God is eternal by nature. There is neither noumenon nor reality nor essence which He must investigate, as someone outside it existing in a system of which it is a part. There is nothing for Him so to investigate. He eternally is the Author and the Director for whom even His own character is not a datum to be experienced.

Indeed, if there were any regions of His character or mind which had not yet bean illuminated by the eternal quintessence of knowledge of the Spirit ­ of the Spirit as ruminating as it were, within Him^18* , of the Father as knowing these ruminations, it would then be true that there was one part of Him which was less eternal than the other. There therefore can be no commencement of such a meditation: and shall we be embarrassed in considering the Inter­Trinitarian Communions because of this? Not at all. This merely alters the manner of our conceiving Christ communing and constructing the plan of salvation with His Father.

The communion would, then, be conceivable, in perhaps several ways.

One such way would be this: it could be conceived of as a vital element in an eternal consciousness, a reciprocal and undated resurgence of divine energy between companion beings' companion members of the Divine Being. We have already referred to the Spirit searching even the deep things of God, and noted His conveying^19* them to men; and to the Son being in the bosom of the
Father ^{20 * .} We may equally refer to His leading Him forth ^21* . There is then, nothing new essentially in this; we do but seek to give it terms. Moreover' this resurgence of communion, meditation, is not to be conceived of as that which at one (given) moment of time has yet another aspect to be completed, another phase; for there are no phases in that which is continually complete.

How then may we speak of a resurgence except as a continually complete, vitally self­aware embracal of a perfect and deep knowledge of a matter which continually keeps the freshness and the reality of it in view; just as it would if in us it were serially executed (as to form). We call this, then, a realised resurgence for convenience.

A second way of conceiving, and to put it differently, another element of the nature of this communion, could be summed up by the term, analytical comprehension. In both cases, we conceive of the communion as proceeding from the Father as to initiation and from the Son as to meditation. It might be conceived differently perhaps, more fully certainly. But the point is, that it has been shown to provide no essential difficulty. The Son then, may be conceived in this as perceiving, as conceiving concurrently the
deepest reaches^22* of His Father with understanding which embraces and knows that which is.

This catches the sense of the still clarity^23* and completed knowledge which is within God; for in God there can be no learning, there can be no areas of freedom^24* , of mystery in which things must still be found out, or the extent of which has not yet been found. God is noggin a system the nature of which'He must yet find out; neither is there cowered in His Being, system which He must yet understand: for if there were within Him or without Him that which He did not fully comprehend, then His 'being' would antedate His willing and He would not be, as we saw, altogether eternal^{25 *} - so that this analytical comprehension is indeed a term which could accurately depict one aspect of the divine mutuality. Just as the Son is in the bosom of the Father and leads His Father out, so in the Son is all the fulness of the Godhead. There is a still and eternal embracal of all in His understanding which arises and proceeds with His very Being.

We must beware of a misinterpretation. When we use the termanalytical comprehension. we will tend to think of this being derived from our knowledge of that which is beyond the matter in question; that we are seeing a system which is outside the subject and that we are applying our knowledge of this system and the principles of it to the point in question; so that it is analytically comprehended in terms of that which is outside itself. There is however no need for us to have these presuppositions in here speaking of the term analytical comprehension; they do of course tend to be applicable in our system ­ but we are not sneaking now in terms of this system, but in terms of God Himself.

The analytical comprehension between the members of the Deity is not to be conceived, then, as that which looks from without to apply that which is known Beyond to that which is within some allotted scope; but the comprehension will be with respect, will be with reference to Himself. There is then a whole realised totality of inter­relationship, purpose, plan, aim, character, all aligned and in perfect accord intrinsically, but all conceived and worked with, in terms of person; all desired and performed in terms of will; and the plannings and details within these vaster things are also comprehended but not. when they concern creatures, so directly by Self­reference.

Inter­Personally we considered what we might in part describe as intrinsic simultaneous awareness and being^26* , a comprehensive and conclusive awareness permeating its ontological realities with infinite affinity. But when creatures are embraced in God's knowledge, it is not to consubstantial knowledge and being ­ so to speak, alone, to which we would seek descriptively to refer: but to consequential knowledge in terms of quintessential knowledge and being.

We have noted that through realised resurgence we gather the sense of freshness, vitality, reality, before Him; and with analytical comprehension we gain the sense of stillness, completion before Him; and we have sought to define each within the context of the other, each as facetal of the totality. .

2. Sovereignty without Tyranny

Now we return to consider the creature man more particularly. In so far as he is made in God's image, that is to say, in terms of his spirit, so that there can be communion between them, we may expect that be may have some relationship with this celestial realised resurgence and analytical comprehension. To this topic we have been seeking to bend our attention.

First, however, we must make a clarificatory distinction, to avoid a grave misconception. Certainly, God is the author; man is the creature. God is the director, man is the derivative. God is self­existent, man is dependent. God's desires though sometimes rendered operative serially, are already before Him, and in His quintessential comprehension completed; whereas man is merely aspirant intrinsically. Certainly there are these infinitely important distinctions. Certainly any sort of conjunction between God and man would be one of operation rather than essence.

In the latter there must be disjunction (not excluding a derivative confirming of character); and in terms of the rebel, also a divergence ­ though for the saint this does not follow. For the saint there would rather be conversion, re­formation. cooperation, conformation and transformation. Though there is indeed even accreditation (and eternal continuation thereafter), there cannot be such as deity, as increase in essence. In that, we say, there is a disjunction: truth demands that.

Now these things having been said ­ to avoid misunderstanding ­ we now realise that we can indeed have a sovereign divine realised resurgence throughout man's spirit; just as we can have, when the conditions are suitable, an aspirant human resurgence ­ God conducting this ­ through the portals of God.

It is well at this point to remember that our realised resurgence and analytical comprehension had to do with the mutual penetration of divine persons; that the realised resurgence indicated the vitality of the awareness, whereas the analytical comprehension its completed still. He may therefore consider that for a being made in God's image, there may well be, we would expect that there would be, in terms of the revelation God has made of Himself, or at least we might consistently anticipate that there might be a penetration from God's Spirit to man's spirit. Let us not fail to envisage, then, from theresurgence, a vital penetration; and, adding from the comprehension, a vital and completed penetration. We conceive therefore from the resurgence, a celestial penetration which may well, in terms of creation, have a natural serial enaction; whilst, nothing prejudiced, it may in terms of the communion within Himself have this realised element^27* at the same time, so that its completion in mortality is merely energically dynamic.

It is necessary at all times to remember that God is the constitutive creator of man and has a constitutive comprehension of man. Thus as man can to some extent perceive matter and detect its composition until he finds the 'fingers' ^28* that made it and at that point must cease his essential comprehension of it; so, cannot God have componential analysis of man's spirit? and this so that there can at no point be for Him any mystery of comprehension, for, so to speak, He at last meets Himself; nor can there be any hindrance to His knowing arising from the fact that it is a spirit which He comprehends.

As we know matter. so does He spirit; only without limit: for God is above us, the only member of His category (indeed that notion implies susceptibility to standardisation at least in theory ­ something which is not even hypostatically possible in this case); and we are thoroughly constituted by Him. We who do not set up and constitute matter, may with our derivative equipment understand it: God who did constitute spirit may a fortiori comprehend our spirits and all that is in them, and be able to predict what we shall do without the slightest contingency on the one hand, violation on the other.

We have already noticed in discussing Boethius moreover, that God may not be merely conceived of as looking on futurities which ultimately eventuate. He says, we recall, that He works^29* all things after the counsel of His will; He informs us^30* that He it is who made military matters occur initially with seeming felicity for Sennacherib so that he might be the chosen instrument at God's hand^31* to punish His people^32* who put providential pre­direction on the untrod path of the general Cyrus^33* , that he might in fact be a liberator for the now punished people who would allot Egypt in pre-engagement procurement for Nebuchadnezzar to 'repay' him for a moral-historic military judgment on Tyre^34* we are advised by Him that evil Pharoah had his heart spiritually hardened^35* in order that He might accomplish a part of His cosmic plan^36* (the capital makes all the difference here).

He instructs us that evil cannot so much as occur without its having been at His direction ­ that is, infliction, affliction and dismay^37* . We do not wish to revert from this, in saying that God has analytical comprehension of man's spirit; but to advert immediately) to one aspect of it; and to assert that if there were no more, this much would remain true.

There is, as we see, much more to be considered. In this vital penetration by God's Spirit into man, He may consistently not merely have this componential realisation of man so that He might predict (or so that He does in fact readily predict); but He can have this quintessential resurgence through man so that He may create consequences in participation Himself, in the realities concerned a participation which does not simply invade the essence of man, but which has involved itself in the procedure and operation of man.

Now He can direct an evil thought into a man's heart, as He did with Ahab before Jehoshaphat ­ without in the least moulding that man's character in a degrading fashion, as through some sort of vindictiveness. Rather we might express this aspect of such activity as a matter of interpreting that character, of involving it in that which it shall in fact be deemed meet to express. That is to say that He disposes that which He is to dispose, as He wills to dispose it; but He is not to be held as the author of sin because in some fashion He canalises it. Admittedly, He is the author of that which is the author of sin; and in terms of this we must look eventually at the ultimate justification of His plan ­ but we do not wish to hold to a monovolitionalism^38* , but merely to an involvement of God ­ even at the most original level ­ in the volition of man so that this volition is not something which is merely perceived by God: rather is it operated through, by God, without any violation of its integrity.

This, we might phrase it, is more an intra­volitionalism: the Almighty invests the willing without invading it, in the simplest^39* case. This 'operation through' then, is not a dictation to its will, but rather a determination of the expression of the will, an elucidation and declaration of its intent, which can never be sovereign. God the Sovereign who is the determinant, can well render it determinate; in doing so He need neither exterminate its being nor attenuate its relevance; nor would one expect Him to extenuate the result any more than He limited His requirement of Himself when He procured souls^40* .

We do not have divine freedom, then; there can be only one divine: but that divine will interpret even our own determinations without removing our powers to determine in the mode of derivative dependence. He shall draft our thought without having forced our thoughts to move where essentially (as distinct from constitutionally and thus corruptly^41* ) they would not go. He can as it were expound character in history without being, in certain respects at least, the former of that character as to this essential^42* volition.

But we must take it back further. Even in the acts of volition of man, God is present, not merely as observer, but as One who is around and surrounding^43* and penetrating into these things without Disruption, but without indifference;. Thus all acts are embraced in Him without losing their integrity and without losing His control. In this sovereign explication God is not of course and thereby involved in any sinful implication, to whatever level, then, one may wish to go in terms of ultimacy.

More specifically however, we are concerned with this process of election as such. It is a small thing before God that a soul may not yet be created, and we do not intend to labour the possibility that it was created or that it was not^44* , before the time came for its earthly sojourn in so far as this is not necessary for the consistency considerations with which we are concerned. But before Him, it is a small matter (as to power) whether it in fact was created, we suggest; it is as real to His resurgence, as completely realised with His comprehension as if it had been created; and again, as we have above pointed out, it is in the nature of the case that this can be so.

Moreover, He is able^45* to operate in it, with it, through it and about it in the way we have just explained, before⁴⁵ He has ever created it. Furthermore, He would not be baulked if He should wish to do this pre­temporally with a created soul without in any way burring its edges, marring its nature or searing its reality ­ but since the soul as chosen^46* is not yet created, this has an a fortiori application.

This is more than an ad hoc conceptual procedure^47* : in so far as God is vital, and this is a vital thing; but He who it the Creator of life is able to deal in a vital manner with life which is not in its actual substance before Him. Just as in our thought level we can conceptualise formally and fully without unleashing our activities into the substantive actualities to which our thought may refer; so in the in~reate, anon creative and everlasting dynamism of His life and Being^48* , God can vitalise or vitally penetrate into the lives which shall be without to any extent involving them in the bald existential hazards of determinate constituted existence.

He can vitalise without unleashing His activities on the actual entities to which He vitally refers. We might add that while all things dextrous and delicate indeed are possible with the Almighty, He may not deem all things expedients while nothing is too hard for Him, being "wonderful in counsel", no intricacy is too refined for Him s and we have here a refinement that one can relish, in the quiet divine completion of prescient, predestinative mortal hypostasis.

In this way, then, we might say that God vitalises these lives, these souls^49* , in His envisagement because He is the Author of vitality: if you wish to put it so ­ He could hypostasise them in their vitality without touching, them; yet the consequences of such hypostasis would be 'determinative ­ not in a mechanical sense, but in the working out through this involvement­method, of what shall in fact be.

Through man in this way can go such a spiritual resurgence ­ through hypostatic man ­ and this analytical comprehension; through men can career this mutuality and this discernment, such that the ultimate destiny can be divinely determined in advance without any peremptory sovereignty on the one hand, any whimsicality or capriciousness ­ or, on the other, any lèse­majesté to sovereignty, any split personality being implied on the part of God who is amazingly imagined by some to allow all things to go on and interact without their comporting with His actual person. In such a view it is as if principles might proceed within the area of human personality without a personal ⁵⁰ involvement, without a personal approval on the part of Him who is personal, and has made us in His image. But proceeding through the matter as is suggested in this Thesis, we avoid both these pitfalls ­ the extremities in the Arminian and from the Calvinistic streams.

3. Sovereignty without Frustration.

Let us now examine the thought, often used as a barrier to any concept of pre­destination short of the hyper­Calvinistic, that God can be frustrated. We ask: In what is He frustrated? He has determined the matter, whatever it may be, according to His understanding and has He not willed to show forth His blessing and to win those who are His that they might co­operate with and know Him? He has been willing for this end, and He has left nothing undone that He might obtain it. But it is He who moving through these things has determined what they shall be; He is, as we have said, more than an observer, He is a sovereign ­ just as, at the same time, He is more than partial, He is complete in love.

We have spoken of a realised resurgence and an analytical comprehension; and it is now time to add in terms of a spirit which is not constitutive of God ­ namely that of one of His creatures, man ­ a further element. He must consider the activity of God conceptualised after the manner of a resurgence, but as accommodated (not as to truth, but in event) to a creature: the activity of God proceeding through man's being. We conceive of the love moving upon this and eliciting a response and being involved with this spirit. We imagine it doing these things either with historical correlates in view, or instead with quintessential understanding in view, the historical correlates being manifested in terms of this. It is not important for our present purpose which way it be conceived.

We do however wish to consider the love proceeding through man, and doing so after the manner of a divine, embracive, actualised activity (a phrase not so redundant in these spheres!). That is to say: the love pours, it proceeds, it beckons, it yearns, it moves, it consults, it proceeds to the quintessential elements, it resurges, it completes the matter, it completes the quintessential presentation to itself, inculcation, obtains the quintessential resultant. The matter is then ideally^51* completed. It is such that there has been performed that which was sought. There has been presented something entire, pristine and primary, sufficient and in no wise deficient, completed and in no way incomplete or diminished to 'fit in with' other things: God has presented this force of love and it has achieved its object in having moved in His own way in quintessential splendour and reality through this spirit, and in having achieved whatever result it may have achieved. This has been sovereignly achieved; it has been sovereignly desired in this way; there has been obtained what has been desired. Even when it does not secure the object it sought, it does secure the objective.

There is a completion of this creaturely accommodation of the divine resurgence; it has moved through that which has an independent freedom. Having presented the entirety of what God is and does, in our case having presented the treasures of His heart and the depths of His being, as a 'realised' activity seen upon the Cross, He can well do no more without violating that which was sought according to the very conditions of its constitution. These things having been presented and these desiderata having been obtained with a certainty anda privilege of sovereign dexterity, He may well be conceived as being satisfied^52* believed in His saying ­ It is finished; understood in the finality of the eternal resultant.

Now there is nothing deficient in this love; on the contrary, because it was love, it was not the sort of thing which would destroy the integrity of response of that which was wooed. Not having won what it wooed, it has nevertheless actualised the perfection and infinitude of its love in such a way as accords with a creature whose preference for the exclusion of God (John 3: 17­18) has as its obverse the exclusion of the creature from God. The resultant, we say, is naturally eternal. hypostatically pre­temporal and descriptively predestinative. It becomes then, in perfect consistency true that that which is not secured is not wanted^53* . It is outside the confines of an ultimate, a sovereign, an undiminished, a plenary love.

We may only ask that in the process no pain might have been spared the loving seeker and we need only observe that in the performance none was spared ­ in contemplation, incarnation, humiliation, expatiation, the preparedness for defamation the words of reformation, or the deeds, in prediction, in fulfilment, in preparation, in stimulation, manifestation, in being powerful, in being weak, in being vital, in being beset with the vice of others, in penal hardship on their behalf, in crucifixion, in confirmation, in resurrection. in longsuffering, in patience, in temperateness, in authority. Thus we may note that grief for the lost (Matthew 23:37, Jeremiah 4:19­22) is perfectly compatible with a sovereign determination to exclude (John 17:95:19, 11:42, 8:29, 10:30), and only misconstruable as frustration or prevarication.

To revert to what we called this vindicated plenary love, we may with profit consider a creative analogy. Purely for illustrative and integrative purposes, we shall look at a comparison; and in envisaging these matters, let us weigh a work of creation as in a poet.

4. A Creative Analogy.

Now a craftsman poet might seek, strain as it were, envisage. yearn and produce. Yet deficient in critical skill at the height of his creation, perhaps, he might later need to re­assess what he has produced. Intellectually, fragments might be misplaced, obscure or 'plain wrong'. Again, he labours, this time with conscious technical and analytical skill; a more polished, precise and effective work has resulted ­ but little of vision has been added. Without the vision of the earlier activity, this day's work would have been mere hackwork.

Nonetheless, touched with the temper of the original creation, he might apply his criticisms and minor reconstructions with a blend of skill and intense sympathy with the meaning, purpose and reality of the whole.

Multiple processes could be conceptualised: imaginative interaction of purified concepts, for the sake of consistency throughout the work, the clarification of the lyrical passages, the vivification of the prosaic, the emplacement of the tangential passages in separate chapters, or their removal where otiose. A literary treatise might dwell on these things; but for us they are merely examples.

This author­adjusted creation, as it were enriched and irradiated with a more constant light, is now complete. The poet has performed his task in all its facets and aspects.

To use this analogy for processive as distinct from essential insight into election, we could say that God as it were spawned the souls and challenged them, worked them up and placed them, strove through them and polished them, analysed and reconstituted them even' in terms of spiritua1 not of literary principles ­ and so forth: until all things were enacted with respect to their mutual positioning, their mutual dependencies, total impacts of the individuals on the system, the system on the individual and the total relevance of the whole thing to the purpose in view.

This testing, touching, remodelling, rejection, purifying, honouring, expanding, restricting, replacing ­ is of course no mere observation on the wart of God: contemplation is not the whole case. Activity end passivity. choice and response, fashioning and fostering. judging and adjusting, and all this work with perfect mutual propriety proceeds throughout all, and the finger of the Lord points the way^54* . That is, He is not intimidated by system, He is not affronted by procedure, but procedure indicates His Person and system intimates His desire: for Him there is no system, nothing more ultimate than Himself, we repeat.

Thus, any creation of spirits is not a dependent of some aspiration within some soul stuff with which He has to deal: the whole situation, and the nature of the soul, and the nature of the consummation origination and procedure is before Him all mutually worked out and thoroughly according with His desires before anything is at all instituted.

Now as to mode: clearly God has no need to practise and rehearse, to await the completion of one investigation before He can commence the next^55* . It is not as if the Almighty, unlimited and unconstrained, must wait, or could perhaps find conditions to assist Him in His comprehension. He is absolute Creator. Compose these components we have mentioned; have the processes eternally complete and yet dynamically accessible to experience; have the results real and yet not dispossessed from the method of production; have the thing reviewed or have it static, but have it all there and all living: then, you have something near to form, which could be a sketchy process­wise suggestion of divine creation. In this, of course, we have been concerned to express an adaptation of what we first considered in its direct inter­Trinitarian light more essentially.

Here then one has the processive aspect of election which we hypothesise within the confines noted as conformable to the revealed nature of God, sealing a choice eternal, rigidifying but not irrationalising a world, a history and a division^56* amongst men, neither carelessly, nor casually sovereign. nor cringingly conditioned by the patronising goodwill of man.
 
 

1. Introductory Considerations.

Now as we have seen, God knows what He does. There is no region of action, or will where His knowledge does not penetrate. It is quite systematically impossible, therefore, to discuss predestination without incorporating something of foreknowledge; and this we have accordingly done. God knows what He does; does what He decrees; and both does. and knows what He wills. There is no region^57* of His Being where His knowledge does not reach, inhere His will does not apply and where His action is forestalled. Nor in His creation in the way, in the manner, by the methods with respect to the procedure, which we have hypothesised, is the matter effectually different. Where things, of course, are serialised, where there is a mere created analogue of His own resurgence, we might expect that there will be certain phases, executive or expressive.

Indeed, to pursue that point: we might as well seek to interpret a comma without the surrounding verbiage, as try to imagine meaning in these serialised events ­ except we gain at least some glimpse of the provident perspective of God. These events accord with plan (Part 1 supra) in terms of the revelatory data, we are justified in seeking some insight into the nature of that relevant, illuminative divine foreknowledge. Therein are kept present those "paragraphs" of correlation^58* , humanly so rarely descried even a little, and never accurately^59* read from the infinite understanding of the Almighty, except when taken according to that designated key to the divinely infolded cryptogram of history, which is provided by His word.

2. In Se.

Now in speaking of such foreknowledge in terms of Boethius' view, we had noticed an advance on the mere awareness or apprehension of what is to happen, favoured sometimes and too superficially: we had seen that there was moreover a comprehension of what should happen; we moved to observe a certain order of laws generated with God's power and having impact on procedures and historic events, and looked at Boethius' endeavour to see justice in terms of the mere, as it were mechanical machinations of the set­up principles which confront man in a systematic and organised universe. His view too of divine foreknowledge as having this type of dual relationship to the events of creation: that of apprehension and that of principle­application, was represented as conceptually deficient on account of the implicit construction of a freedom for creatures which is manifestly outside sovereign control except in the very long run and in part. We noticed in 'The Consolation of Philosophy' a failure to make allowance (if we may revert to a litotes), for God as a Person, a failure for this fact, as that of man as a person to be involved in the conceptualisation of the foreknowledge of Him who made these persons and who is not deficient in personality.

We observed that there is in this world with all its laws, a very great harassment for any evident operation of such allegedly manifest principles of justice and right; for we noticed that there was a very evident clash between justice, right, truth and honour in this world and that which is said of God in His revelation. We reflected that the mere operation of the sort of principles involved would be out of keeping with the sort of Person that God is. They would be inadequate with respect to creaturely mutuality, reciprocity and influence. They would be inadequate in that they would indicate a place where (self-existent) Person, that mark of Deity, was not applied to (dependent) person, that mark of a creature in God's image, in man; so that there would have been an essential failure in application to the correlative and derivative realm of person ­ in the governance of creaturely derivatives of God the Person Himself.

Moreover, there would be no possible way in which to harmonise, to unify the principles such as justice and mercy, there would be no way in which God in short, could actually govern His universes or have it in correlation with Himself: He would have it in correlation only with abstract principles as such neither integrated nor integrable in terms of principles. God is a Person and as such must manifest⁶⁰ His governance, and where persons are concerned, nothing short of this is possible.

It is in fact the very assumption often made, that God fails to do more than what Boethius says He does, and in failing to deploy His Person with respect to men as persons, allows the so­called 'shocking disasters' which sometimes 'rock' men's faith in Him: it is this very claim which, though it is an improper deduction from the empirical data from which it derives, would be a proper deduction from the type of foreknowledge systematically presented by Boethius. It is always of course, true that Boethius actually seeks to present more than this in the foreknowledge, but systematically he allows for no more than the apprehension and the operation of principles.

We have had to add therefore an awareness of this sovereign involvement without the annulment of a derivative freedom, to any conception of divine foreknowledge as systematically presented in Boethius' 'Consolation ofPhilosophy'. But there is more than this which must be added. Boethius sees Foreknowledge that sits over the human subject and knows its way ­ this for awareness; but with so deep a knowledge ­ can God not also discern the relation of all these things to Himself, and involve His knowing with their going in the way that we have suggested? For knowing Himself at the same time as He knows these things, He is aware of His responseand of their response and of His containment of it all, as we have presented it, and of these three together. Indeed, adding predestination to these, we can perceive an outline at least of an election not at all negligent but nicety itself.

These conceptual ingredients, then, of Sovereign Knowledge, and Self­Aware Knowledge, we add to those of Prescient Knowledge, Analytical Knowledge, and the Knowledge of Principles and their Application. In this, of course, we noted that such knowledge as that last mentioned, is by itself a practical nullity in this case: even in its own phase, we must interpret it with respect to the Person Himself.

The considerations with which we have been involved have made it clear that the foreknowledge of God embraces not merely His knowledge of His creatures and His knowledge of Himself' but His knowledge of that which He will do in the situation concerned; and as we shall now seek to show, this will involve a knowledge of the Revelation and its impact, which in these situations certainly it is consistent with His Being that He will make. Before we proceed, let us sum up one of the numerous considerations leading to this last point, in so summary a form as is consistent with so slim an essay.
 

3. The Necessity and Prescient Relevance of Revelation.

i) Necessity.

If the world is in major categories contrary to God, He in effect contradicts. Since it is dependent on His power, which is precise in operation and configured with the precision indicated by the word 'speech', this would point to the destruction of the world, or that of those involved in contradiction with Himself, qualitatively at least. in their relevant capacities. But if it does not lead to a removal. it must lead to remedy ­­ if, that is, God is to be more than equatable with operational nullity; more than a percipient without powers of performance: yet if the eternal God lacked such powers, we would not be here to know it.

We must remember that any system which God creates can have no regrettable, has no necessary and difficult conditions in the.sense that they are just given things which He must tolerate. This is unique, natural and necessary ontologically^62* . On the contrary, the entire thing has been created with His meditation and mediation, and is infull and total accord with the Almighty's uncompelled choice. He does not therefore 'cut up with', or tiredly accustom Himself to tolerate this, in order that He may get that; He does not have any such shortage of intelligence or knowledge as to be so involved, as to start such a matter: for everything is in accord with Fis desire as we have explained at length. A will therefore which contradicts Him, He will contradict^*63, and His contradiction, should He speak it and operate, involves the opposite of theaffirmation, which wascreation ­ namely destruction.

He does not however remove or destroy as yet; for the process remains, for the present. The injustice which afflicts one creature at the bid of another, persists; the lie which deflects other creatures from the truth, to the propagandist, proceeds; equity is often ignored; vice strikes the uninitiated, persecution lashes goodwill. Now in this domains this situation of which we speak and which we seek to conceptualise, we must realise that the question, the offence, the provocation, the divergence, the defalcation lies outside mere relative proportion: any such presence is sufficient to be excessive when conceived in the terms already expounded. Moreover, it is not only a matter of punishment; it is also a question of defilement, corruption and the irruption of iniquity. The situation is wrong and God, who is sovereign, and absolute in power, without compulsion or confinement, God is right. There is this opposition.

If^64* therefore, as stated initially, this situation does not lead to a removal in destruction, it must lead to the release of a divine remedy.

Now God is a Person unanalysable in His essence. Therefore the remedy must involve information ­ and as indicated, we cannot hope to psycho­analyse God and His responses at a distance (however much some neologians may appear to try), and set Him upon a couch before our puny minds. His Spirit will need to convey our spirits into any relevant knowledge of and remedial directives from Him, if we are to know it. Even we ourselves, indeed, are somewhat opaque to the operations of fellow mortal spirits, the more particularly when we see no need to make any divulgement of our persons. Now God is infinite^65* : there must therefore be, if not a removal of sinful man, then a revelation from God. It is manifest, since we remain to speak of it, that there has not been the removal; therefore there must be a divine revelation: essential, practical and meaningful, one satisfactory before all else, to God.

In this, the provisions and precepts of God made available for men caught in the provocative^66* maelstrom; here will be the intimacy of which we have spoken in its written correlate, or the key for it: Here will be imparted what will enable co­ordination between God and man in remedial terms.

It is important that we do not confuse the fact with the disseminative mode. While this Revelation is necessary and its necessity is as old as the fact of sin, as a ninimum, yet it is not necessarily exhaustive at any one time in its application to men throughout the world: in so far as He who cannot be psycho­analysed^67* may be disposed to depose and present Revelation through a certain method. In our Part IV, System and the World as It is(infra)* , we shall see some 6 indications of possible reason why this method in a serial world, might be in fact a serial method of proceeding from stage to stage, from place to place and yet manifestly unique as His.
 
 

ii) Relevance.

What have we shown? That revelation is necessary, that remedy is necessary (under the circumstances of 'this present world'^69* ), and that the application of the remedy must necessarily be in process. We have hinted that the manner in which the remedy is administered may be suitable to the manner in which the error was perpetrated ­ although we have reserved more particular regard for the question for a later part: in so fully ingested a system as a world under God's sovereign foreknowledge, this manner may be part of the remedy itself, indeed. Force apart, remedy is relatable to realisation of the need for it; and God's disseminative method may therefore well be a part of the designed, apt and appropriate impact on a world which contradicts Him in the style noted.

Thus in God's foreknowledge, there will be this foreknowledge of this remedy, of His revelation, of its impacts upon men' and of men's (analytically predictable^70* ) endeavours to make impacts upon it. Therefore, these things will also be ingredients in thispredestining action of His, of which foreknowledge is a correlate. Where this remedial Revelation has not reached within the world of men, still His vital penetration will operate, but on a basis to this degree different; certain potential considerations, as we shall later suggest, would then appropriate ly be able to present themselves as involved; and here our treatment of the will­in­sin^71* will have a very direct application.

Again, this same element in foreknowledge will be especially vital when we are considering Cross­election, and pre­temporal correlates of the conversion process. That will be a region of this presentation of predestination and foreknowledge, both cardinal and specific; and it will be stated in terms of and assuming, the considerations which we have here initially outlined.
 

4. The Sincerity and Selectivity of Sovereign Foreknowledge
 

Of divine foreknowledge then: God is indeed no mere observer. Foreknowledge conceived within the limits of creaturely humanism is not possible ontologically; and therefore not what we conceive of this; but a foreknowledge, the correlate, and co­operative contemporary ­ to risk superficial paradox, outside time ­ of ordaining. works in a field snot merely pre­contemplated, but pre­invested: a field which in turn is not scrabbled as to its form by a riotous predestination, nor exalted in status by a merely watchful foreknowledge, with all but metaphysical madness investing the property of genuine foreknowledge. On the contrary, in terms of the considerations already adduced, this foreknowledge simultaneously investigates its subjects with sincerity and consults them with constraint; and it is eternally wrought by and in God.

Thus we see this knowledge as proceeding from God to man; we see that in consistency God in this foreknowledge, is sovereign; but that He is such a sovereign; that is a sovereign who proceeds in this way. Man is a creature; but he is regarded with this judicious care by God. A sovereign could have been irresponsible; this is at least possible in terms of the concept of sovereignty as such, though not so for such a Being as He whom we have described; and man could have been accepted for his snivelling, a 'toady', or accumulating concessions as a 'tough' not even or wisely consulted; and again' this is possible but not for such a God as this whom Christian­Theism approaches.

God does predestine, but with this regard; man is consigned, but in a process which involves the eternal correlate of consultation. God determines in regeneration; but man is not thereby bypassed as to prior relevance: he israther, in perhaps a better sense than that cited by Augustine, supported in free­will through the reliable sovereignty of One who must embrace that free­will beyond its scattered horizons, that it may well be free though fallen. What is this to say but that God must be trusted and that free­will has to be surpassed that it might be established when it is sick, because in the end, it is the will of oneessentially straying from the onlyperspective where he can be responsibly responsive to the issues concerned. {In this way, Biblical Christian-theism of necessity covers the sensitivies and realities of freedom as nothing else does or in priniciple indeed, can.}

Thus for man to leave^72* the intrinsic epistemology of a simple Creator­creature correlativity required no support, except that for his existence; but to regain God, re­assume co­ordination, man needs God not merely to call, check, challenge, illuminate, discriminate, in some such way as that already discussed ­ but to range within his will, lest dazzled and corrupted, inadequate and fitful, derivative and deluded, it stray involuntarily. This support and decision of God through the human will is neither a jettisoning nor an exaltation of the same, but a practical procedure dependent on grace, or invested with it, and universal willingness to save.

Even this status of his will, then, of which we have spoken, the sinner may not exult in; and similarly it is true that the devil may not exult in the relatively great hindrances to the access of Grace to that will, which are imposed by the very eccentricity of the diseased will. To put the latter point differently: the devil (Scripturally the 'accuser' ­ he has widespread representation) may not plausibly agitate for more 'autonomy' for the human will in conversion, by questioning the "experimental correction" required in "making" the will "operate". In the conferential conclave figure with which in pert, we have propounded a divine elective probe, there is no autonomy for man; there is only freedom. Indeed, even unfallen Adam had merely^73* auto­votive will.

Is there then no mystery in the foreknowledge part of predestination, in election? Yes, there is mystery ­ but it is not systematic mystery. There is mystery ­ though it has no bearing on consistency considerations: one of discretion.

Why God should care, for example, enough to go remorselessly^74* through the Cross to redeem in particular Mr.X^75* ... or indeed any part of our race, this is a mystery. It is one attested responsively by an awe at sublimity; but by no merely logical perplexity at the amplitude of His love to His creature, man^76* . How God planned to subdue and secure the selection of Mr.X out of his perhaps embittered despair and vainglory, or whatever it may have been ­ the way God planned the various interactions between various events and persons, one being hardened by a rebuff while another is so moved that he is softened by castigation^77* or vice versa, such that through it and beyond it God moves to make effective His choice^78* :

the way in which He does these things is indeed shrouded in a holy and beneficial but brilliant mist, correlative to the majesty of God;
for if we could see this, we could see
the whole manifold^79* wisdom of God in simultaneous operation, and would already see Him face to face ( I Cor. 13:12).

We do however repeat, that we do not need to see the technical drafting of these minutiae in their detail, in order to display the magnificent harmony IN THE PRINCIPLES; but merely have sought consistency in the revelational data which, as true, indicate relevant criteria positively and negatively. If we should proceed further, we should undoubtably and systematically presume^80* in grasping for that which, not being revealed and subsisting in the core^81* of the Divine Being, it is not our prerogative to find, acquire or possess.

So long as it is clear that 'discretion' does not disrupt, defy, or operate discordantly with the revealed^82* principles which are concerned, but rather perfects and completes them, and is the operation of intelligence and wisdom, we have seen enough to demonstrate the consistency of revelation in this sphere: more than consistency indeed, even its aesthetic harmony and logical accord, and the experiential precision which we find for it when we apply it to the evangelical facts. It fully accords with the awareness of a spiritual sovereignty and the perception of a response which is yet commandeered from the soul rather than commanded by it. We perceive its accuracy with respect to God's having chosen us, and its "not (being) of him who wills" ^83* ; and at the same time, with respect to the reality, themeaningfulness of our being responsible if we reject Him.

Implicit and operative in this last­mentioned consideration, is a principle enunciated by Cornelius
Van Til ^84* : he would ask if two persons as persons may not be fully personal with regard to the same point at the same time. This point which we have here simply abstracted is interesting in that it would be found valid in our work. Cannot God be moving, along with man also moving and perhaps hypostatised in this case: the One manifesting selection, the other responding, but each truly creative and unmechanical? The One, as behoves His eternity. control and foreknowledge, is acting according to plan which is eternal, detailed and distinct; while the other, as suits his finitude and sin, is responding in a way which, when it comes to history, is temporal, immediate and unrehearsed.

It is, then, indeed true that there are mysteries in the profundities of these matters, but these do not systematically baffle; they merely attract: there are no immiscibles in this Revelation, or divinely given uncovering ­ rather through a cloud which screens God from analytical comprehension by His creatures, while it does not hide the light of His rays of revelation, truth is given. So we have a systematic unity, as to form, in the principles of revelation; in terms of test, we see its unitary consistent character without sacrilegiously supplying or needing to supply ­ or, indeed, rather and better, conceiving that we supply ­ some key by which we might be made to open some schema, enabling Him theoretically to be conceived as being made to operate. {The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, pp. 22-36, and 100 may also be of interest here.}

A system is never a satisfactory ultimate; we seek a systematiser; a plan is not sufficient, it must be implemented; a plan and a procedure is not sufficient, it must be made to work; nor is power enough to add: it must move appropriately; and so on ... What Franklin^85* calls a super­fact is superfluous if it is not adequate for its position. But God is before all positions; and the Creator who reveals is not unclad with His own spiritual infinity before presuming eyes ­ Isaiah 40:13, 14, 25, 48; 1 Timothy 6:16 Psalm 147:5; Jeremiah 23:18 and 22.

We have reverted to this point ­ to which we approached also in earlier Sections^86* , especially in speaking in terms of freedom ­ because we must discern clearly and from various viewpoints the fact that there are ontological barriers to certain procedural knowledge which have no bearing on the accuracy, truth and verifiable consistency of what is revealed. We might more accurately indeed put it that there are ontologicallv definable aspects of knowledge which appertain to the stature of God as knowing agent, the sharing of which would require that we should be lifted from our constitutive limits. The awareness of these in revelation, tends to verify and not at all to vitiate the declaration as of truth from the divine to the human and mortal levels.

In terms of an image: even a mortal father can well tell his son, without seeking for the present at least that his son should understand epistemology; he can readily give the knowledge and the understanding on thepoint which may te in question, without having to make his son participate in his way of securing this knowledge, or his mode of possessing it. Now God is infinite, and in our case the relevant knowledge appears as predestination.
 
 

1. General.

As we neared the end of our section on predestination, and that on foreknowledge in particular, we were unable to avoid reference to the will, inso far as this is involved in the foreknowledge of Him whose will embraces with knowledge, dispensing mercy and justice to the wills which He has made. But now we must pursue this topic.

This will, we saw in discussing Luther, is in a state of virtueless impotence; we noted nonetheless, that its structure and calibre remain, and rejected as to method of procedure in its salvation, for example, a mechanical­seeming monovoIitionalism. We envisaged, in terms of will, some sort of consultative or analytical research by Him, whose researches are known before^87* creation and for whom truth is a native land. We accepted the fact of doctrine that flesh is unable to please God, no less willingly; nor do we need go far to see that the acceptance of Christ by any man is pre­eminently pleasing to God. The will cannot work this operation even when invaded to a great but lesser extent than would destroy its integrity. After all, of what is it the will? and where is the integrity of that, in terms of Scriptural data examined? (e.g. Jeremiah 17:9^88* ). At the same time, in considering Augustine, and later Calvin, we were forced ­ rather veering from a part of their view, to see that the human will must be involved in some way.

The appeal made by Christ, we have shown already, is as deep as God, as wide as man and as sincere as Truth. When we take these things together, we see that our data are compressing us; and it is good that they should: otherwise, where is revelation?^89* . But it is competent.

Let us therefore gladly be compressed still further.

There is not only the question of the will, but that of Him who has willed that there should be a will: these two in Correlation ­ and the one as within the system of the other. We look at Hosea 5:l5, and Amos 7:12­13, II Chronicles36:15­16, Isaiah 66:4, 65:2 and 11, Romans 5:18, II Thessalonians 2:10-11 with 1 Timothy 2:4, Titus 2:11, II Peter 3:9, 1 John 2:2, Matthew 23:37, Mark 16:14, Matthew 28:l9, Ezekiel 33:11 etc.; and as we have shown^90* , Scripture would be to mislead rather than to lead if these were taken to exclude the relevance of human assent or some sort of existential involvement in the divine counsels of election, even though it may be by some form of hypostasis.

But though we should follow some such formulation, we must not thereby fail to adhere strictly to those passages which we see have excluded both meritand the operability of the will in the divine direction in any mutative capacity on the part of man; nor to insist on the doctrine of our data touching corruption. He must face the pressures from different directions; and not seek to contrive to reduce their actual and proper force.

To this limitless divine willingness, this utter relevant impotence of the human will' this involvement of man in some such way perhaps as that suggested, to all these diverse considerations we must adverts but there is more still. God is a sovereign. His word affirms this as much as anything. In secret, supernal counsel, we have seen (without necessarily following certain current dogmatic definitions of that term, but rather defining it ourselves with more attention to the constraints of the text than to other considerations), the Father elected. Co­opting history to His purposes, He ensured by such wise dispositions as met the case, that the elect ­ when confronted with the Gospel in their historic context ­ were converted. Would the Armenian have us reject, or even question this ultimate, determining, paternal authority? Would the hyper­Calvinist envisage this authority as proceeding in such a way as not to be true to the nature of Christ and the principles which He enunciated?

To neither of such ultra­Scriptural extremes can we bow; for with either we should be impacted on the principles, even of the more moderate kind, of the other.

We may add that there is one sense in which, if the attitude of God in election is a secret, it is a very open one. The elect are of course chosen in the normal heartland of discretion, but the discretion is not unprincipled; and certain basic principles are revealed, and consistently able to be envisaged as uncompromised in any single respect, in such a way as outlined in Part I of this Section. He observe too that the person and will of man cannot, in the quintessential and ultimate ontology' be bypassed in a way which would render God's reference to man's resistance as the cited ground of exclusion in the very face of emphasised divine willingness, a meresophisticated and side­stepping subtlety.

Uniformly the Scripture asserts that this is their condemnation, that light came and they preferred darkness. With a cited purpose not to condemn but to save, God acted in sending a Son to the loved world: condemnation beyond mercy proceeds, we are told, because they do not believe in the name of this sent One but rather prefer not to understand, in the darkness. God would have healed Babylon (the most carnal and corrupt mess noted in any aspect of history and made a type of apostasy in Revelation): even this He would have healed (Jeremiah 51:9) ­ but "she is not healed. The advice in consequence: "Forsake her..."

Stephen dwelt on the history of gratuitous and pertinacious resistance to the very Spirit of God which marred the house of Israel, tersely charging the party of his judges: "Ye do always resist the Holy Spirit" ; and attested the judgment upon the nation now in danger of becoming a pampered pest in its insidious twist to the purpose of God's employment of it. Zechariah touches the same point: "They made their hearts as hard as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the Law ... therefore came a great wrath" (7:12). Jesus indicates (Matthew 13:15) that the people had Closed their eyes lest He should heal them; they refused to run to His persistently and naturally willing call (Matthew 23:37); and ran from grace to desolation as a consequence.

This open secret, however, while it guarantees the attitude of God, does not give man manipulative powers over the will of God. That is the other side to it. Thus in Mark 4:12 we have an amplification of the judgment which He accomplishes. In parables He spoke "that seeing they may see, and not perceive.". Pearls are not for swine; God is love is real but not open for riotous insincerity. In Isaiah 1, He labours His pity and pleas speaking as would a Father; in Isaiah 6, He directs the prophet that He now seals their eyes. Sincerity has its sequences; agitation can end in incrimination.

We have many references to this divine supervening judgment on rebellious resistance to the light when it comes; it is not lightly done' we saw Christ with a remarkable mixture of poignancy and austerity, remark: "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin." But there is an end: "for the Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh" (Genesis 6:3). Discreetly does God judge that point at which the morally testifying spirit^91* of man is seared as with a hot iron (1 Timothy 4:2), and He is inaccessible to that permanently spoiled spirit: but there is a discretion involved, and there is a reality involved in the motions and commotions of man's spirit; and a point comes when God may judge as defiled the human susceptibilities to be invoked' and limit His divine pleadings.

Further, He may consign the wrongly consecrated soul at last to proceed efficiently in its chosen career: "Because they received not the love of the Truth that they might be saved for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who do not believe the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness" (II Thessalonians 2:10, cf. I Kings 22:23).

These considerations, and particularly the last, emphasise the bleak ultimacy of divine sovereignty and human freedom; they testify to an elective activity wherein virtue is exclusively divine, while there is a relevance which is indisputably human. Here is in view a human will not working its way to heaven but scrutinised and wooed the spirit is sought and searched whilst the creative work of God issues in a definite determination, which though humanly individual in location, inculpation and exposition, is yet the work of God in that individual.,

The refractory spirit accordingly is not rejected and formed out of hand^92* with whimsical, arbitrary or peremptory pleasure as God proceeds with that striving which has a limit lest the flesh should fail before Him. Let us further illustrate with two figures. To picture it, we may say that after a time, when a spirit breaks back the insurgences of truth, like waves beating on a rocky headland, that spirit is changed in form, and its essence is vitally perturbed. To put it differently: it mast reach a point of inoperability. By the same token, a vital decision may be wrought in deft and timely wisdom in the divine interpretive and sovereign fiat (II Corinthians 4:6).

Christians are often amazed empirically, one finds, by that very enaction of God within them at a point of intrinsic and final ontological danger: "For thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not contend for ever neither will I be always wrath: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made."^93* To 'uncircumcised' spirits in a ritualistic tending nation, he could speak thus and these he healed.

Perhaps nowhere is the technical aspect of this procedure more stressed than in Hebrews 6:28­9 and 10:26­29. There is a point of no restoration^94* ; a place of ineradicable pollution to the spirit of man; and it is not reached by merely moral crime: it is the consequence of pertinacious, conscientious, informed departure from the whole gamut of proffered graces hatred, contempt, emboldened blatancy in derogation of the very vehicle of grace, the Spirit, and mocking profanation of the very work and way of the Saviour: these things from a heart worked upon deeply, taught, illuminated, fortified and embroiled in the midst of a work of mercy. He are even informed why there can come a point of no restoration. God knows the point; the conditions are numerous, and the matters are personal in kind ­ but the finality is quite logical: men are then lost to Him since or "seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh."

Created and finite, the human spirit can lose, after a time, God­relatability in any positive sense. There is then a mode of freedom (which we must shortly further investigate) in an embracing sovereign control: the latter does in no way break the former, though it has always limited it to a point; nor does the former corrode the unity, certainty and effectuality of the latter.

In this way, we can see the appositeness, acuity and point in this situation, of the deep cries of God (in His love) after man: He is not, as an extreme Calvinist view might suggest, smirkingly setting the reprobate aside. He is seeking, genuinely seeking; but not seeking in an unknown kingdom of God's, in an existential arena of startling greatness, unknown Autonomies^95* : He is seeking in the kingdom that is God's own.
 

2. Cross­Election.
 
 

Having taken our data and sought to consider them, we must now proceed to ponder how it may consistently be said that there are together such a will­in­sin and such a Sovereign: a Sovereign with such attitudes, and a being in confrontation with such a Being without limits. We must not rush to the nearest conclusion as to the nearest chair on which to throw our clothes. In a well ordered house, there is a place provided, and we must find it.

Were the apposite place not found, that should be admitted. It might then occur that it was a different sort of place than that which we had imagined. There might be less of it apparent than we should have liked; but that might be the reprimand to sloth: for in disquisitions on points of wisdom within the abundantly evident and ample framework of simplicity so that "he may run who reads it" ^96* , and of right relation with God, so that "the wayfaring men though fools may not err" ^97* , there is abundant opportunity for the deferential treatment of "meaty" matters. Here we can savour Solomon's advice: "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of Kings is to search out a matter ..." ^98* .

Can we then by some necessary logical entailment from these highlighted considerations, and our other general, uncontested and therefore unrepeated premises; can we from these force the conclusion that God cannot consistently brace, embrace, embark into and cleave the will to the point that its present essence splits, at least as before Him, from its present character? In view even of our former exposition of these very elements, the answer is that we may clearly not exclude such a thing.Moreover, this is more than fanciful.

In Christ is all election, and only in His Cross may we glory^99* . Election is necessarily carried out with respect to the Cross of Christ. This, we saw, is offered or provided as a ransom for all: not paid to all, but payable to all. We conclude that in some way, the Cross^100* with its power, annulling of penalty, is present in eternal election. If God there wishes through the juridical and dynamic proprieties of the Cross, in preliminary investigation to stay the power and arrest the penalty of sin, with its condign consequences in nature and inability: is this to be denied Him? Though we need not affirm this proposition, we may suggest it, and it is consistent with what we must affirm.

Cannot God uncover the charnel house and brood over the carnal mess; and will not He be able to lift the existential mist, peer ­ as it were, under the essential woe, and see the quintessential conclusion: What is the issue for the Cross here? Where would we lead without violation, this which is (initially and intrinsically) violated? Though per se, he is compelled as corrupt, may I extradite what is indicted with a perfection of conformity to my own desired conditions ­ simultaneously exculpating what I extradite through the Cross? Discerning, He decides^101* .

Involved in this divine operation is a freedom relevant to man as creature but unattainable by man (having actualised himself as apartheid) as unconverted. It may be asked: How could God use a freedom which was not there? The question is hyperbolic. To man this freedom is unobtainable; but when was man God? Let us not presume. God once became a man, but man never became God. Men may be adopted to share; they are not able to compare. Can God then not reach a freedom beyond both the reach and control of man at the level of determination of destiny as distinct from exhibition of determinate destiny; and with a divine discretion that embraces love and in love embraces, embrace the solution in the spiritual physician's spiritual laboratory^{102 * -} of electing grace?

Would not such a solution answer Lewis's utter freedom and utter irrelevance of freedom^103* which appeared to him true conjointly? Would it not explain Erasmus' feel after congruent grace ­ even if its formulation was incongruous with all grace; and teach us a meaning in the actions of the Christ who, being God, sought for the chickens which were not to come, and wept in pity and grief, answer Augstine's feel ­ despite himself ­ after a cry that calls from a heart yet unliberated^104* but seeking the Liberator? For it is true that in these alchemies there is a contingent freedom and a sovereign grace. Even Kierkegaard's rigorous^105* pressure of commitment and Spurgeon's resolute grace­always-true, justice­always­true, oil and water problem is resolved: for the Grace yields only reluctantly (or after its full manifestation after its manner) to justice.

Let us express it by reverting to our realm of Theory: the love and grace have had a realised completion of their thrust without in the slightest degree having any deficiency in quality; and justice then quite consistently supervenes in the dispositions of the one God who is both merciful and just and both utterly and all the time.

Before we refine the point regarding time, let us amplify for our imaginations by reverting to a perhaps helpful analogy. We may see Grace leaving the laboratory in which the soul, rejecting and rejected though it does not know it, is before the divine Spirit, before the divine word and Father. Grace, as it were, if we may so reverently speak, with perspiration on its more than Hippocratic brow, leaves sad from the toil of operation eternity; and thus eternal death ensues^106* before time knew death or death knew time ... and this, is Predestination. We have sought here compendiously to advert to it at the relevant point, first hypostatically and then analogically.

Admittedly, in this latter figure, we in jangling human form have stretched out an operation not reducible to the micro­second (e.g. in terms of our own intra­systematic electronic brain machine sort of crudely contemporary^107* image); or for that matter even to the typical way in which we less mechanically conceive time and sequence. But we are in no need of being naïve before analogies; and in fact we have already conceived with some care how a number of things serially indicated by us, may be simultaneously seen by God as well as directed by Him. This we have seen from our general theory.

While however, we are engaged in this task of serially representing that which is not serial, in order that its total being may be spread before our serially inclined eyes, let us represent again that which before the embracive comprehension of unlearning intelligence has a vital find immediate unity. Let us then serialise what could be conceived of as a resurgence allowed ­ merely didactically ­ to move rather than have (as better befits its actuality) a vital impact of continuous freshness.

Let us represent it in this way. It is as if God were saying to the soul: I am willing to save you, but by my method, nay by myself, my Son and my Cross for Him. But now I find that you would not have my method, nay myself, this Cross or that Son, if you were to will. Thence and therefore I did never want you.

You may say ­ "Do not want you" would be more appropriate; but when we duly go back to the eternal resurgence, to the actual comprehension, we can see that this rather startling "did never want you", is of course necessarily true to theunmoving comprehension of God. It has been to bring out this point that we have here been at labour and employed this device for emphatic purposes.

Now the Arminian perhaps experiences inwardly with especial sensitivity the pull of the ineffable, where there are not other elements occasioning his conception; and perhaps his theology tends to have a stress on his own conception that he is sovereignly indwelling his response: in this way he rnay assign it an atomised significance, out of perspective. The Calvinist on the other hand may tend experientially to find himself thrust home and not to see the real significance of response in the homecoming. Each can err.

To imagine that we perform the act is as erroneous as to think that God's performance of love was only an act. If however, we do not crimp the divine love, but see it as having fulfilled and completed itself in historical counterpart to the hypostatised confrontation; and if similarly we do not crimp His power ­ His ability to secure what He wants in the way He wants it: if we are prepared to allow the Scriptural accuracy of the representation both of His attitude and His actions, then we are constrained to look in this connection at that which, standing in simple sublimity holds the Scripture featured, focussed answer to every Christian mystery: the Cross of Christ^108* .

It is true, then, that the will is virtueless in impotence, in disposability toward God; and that God is not impotent in His power (through degrees, or in absoluteness, through impulses or in Pauline lightning, to peoples known, to peoples unknown) to alter the case of the will in terms of Himself: indeed, He can do this as and when and if and to the extent that He wants.

But we must dwell now on the extent of involvement on the part of man, in the pre­conversion phases, which can attest ­ to phrase it in historical mode ­ the extent of the research; or hypostatically - the deliberate and discriminating vitality of the resurgence, and the acuity of the analytic comprehension ­ which God executes 'before' (chronologically and logically respectively) passing over in holy integrity His affirmed principles and persuasions of willingness.

Thus we revert to the two passages in Hebrews ­ 10:27­28 and 6:10­14 cited in terms of possible eventual inoperability spiritually^109* . Bearing in mind the distinction between sin and the sinner, both sinful but each of different standing ontologically, and also the distinction between the creature and his Creator, so that he is not at the end of all recourse merely because he is at the end of his resources: we observe in these passages a cleavage of the will in its essence, from its corrupt character. And this? It is through ­ as it were ­ a spiritual penetration and a division between soul (as alienable self­conscious spiritual entity) and spirit^110* (as the same being in its discursive aspect).

God can evoke and partially actualise relationship with the sinner on the basis of processive therapy not yet accomplished. This relates also to what we presented on the dynamic but not certified removal of the juridical impact of sin in its binding through the availability of the Cross, during an elective probe. These things of course may be conceived hypostatically and eternally; but in history one cannot deny the possibility of an enaction and in these passages we have such described.

We would suggest then in terms of this Scripture in particular, being predisposed by the constraints of other Scriptures as noted, that this cleavage can and may occur when a negative election is in process. He see here that the Holy Spirit can accompany a man superficially penitent, and unmoved as much and as little as the hard soil; a man sanctimoniously set apart or sanctified to God and who gains glimpses of spiritual things; a man for whom the purchasing blood of Christ is so present that when he spurns it, it is here said to be trampled under his feet and spoiled as a sacrifice for him for evermore. His conscience is 'seared' to use Pauline language; it is 'impossible to renew him to repentance', to use that of Hebrews.

It is not for us to say at what point this God­man stringency of relationship shall have arisen in any historical enactment: God uses His discretion. It may happen swiftly with some. It may happen over decades with others.

The point however which we are developing is that this type of foreknown research (in the sense described) can occur not only where those are predestined to salvation who are its object. This vital penetration can occur also in those who are elected to be lost. Here is the sacrificial and individual concomitant of the open­love passages which we have studied. We conclude from this, as from those passages, that the Physician does not readily leave the operating theatre; that there is nothing merely formal or misleading; that the matter is consistent and self­supplementing and this present feature conforms to the principle that the love is actualised and completed in a dimension of existence to which it has been applied, as also to the meaningfulness of a choice operationally available because of the Cross, but ultimately one which is God's, because of human sin.

Moreover this point attests further the principle that there are not several different critiera: there is one criterion ­ that Cross, that blood, that sacrifice^111* . This is the demonstration of Christ, and Christ is thedemonstration of God, and God in Christ elects^*ll2* : as indeed the Scripture independently indicates and as the Scripture's doctrine of the Trinity must show us.

That in turn explains how Paul could determine to preach only Christ and Him crucified^113* - even though his dealings involved the very categories of the elect and non­elect exhibited or at least indicated in historic, eternally significant action as the Cross criterion was 'placarded'^114* . This same centrality is shown in immediate salvation in the words of Jesus: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you"^115* ; and in a vast perspective leading to it cited in Colossians: "For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself; by Him, I say, whether theybe things in earth, or things in heaven ... in the body of His flesh, through death to present you holy and unblamable" ^116* . This one temporal act therefore is an exhibition of a divine, and an eternal attitude which, in His sovereignty, is involved in election.

We may say, then, and re­affirm that this one Cross­election on the part of the God who is just and not a respecter of persons, proceeds in the sanctity of predestinative, pre­temporal comprehension. It is not that God is unmerciful or unjust to those whose poverty would seem to rob them of all hope.

On the contrary, a deficiency of gifts is not a bar where there is such a sovereign modelling of election; for whatever one's gifts, the nature of the corrupt character of the sinner marks out the human will­in­sin as inadequate for so great a matter involving eternity ­ a stark fact which perhaps the Calvinist, at an extreme, may suffer or allow to thrust him beyond its actual implications.

Thus we have now presented the human will, in terms of discreet divine justice, as having a consultative standing but not a determinative status with respect to its final election or non­election in God. We have asserted that there is then no peremptory whimsy in the sovereignty of God; but that there is a scope for a mercy which is wise and at the end, after all God's: for He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. These things then, comport with exquisite deliberate justice, complete control and a child­like simplicity in their outlines: the statements, commands, invitations and claims of Scripture in their whole evangelical and predestinative nexus, en fin de compte, are as consistent as they are correct.

It may be advisable to note that we do not need to seek to penetrate (as a consistency exercise in terms of revelation might need) in this way amidst the evidence, in order to understand the clear teachings of Scripture regarding salvation; but in answer to objections, misconceived but real, to the consistency of Scripture in this connection may move in the scope defined by that objection or that query, in the presentation appositely of a reason for the Christian hope.

Nevertheless, we are forced to re­iterate, when we do so proceed, giving full scope to all the divine data with which we are concerned, seeing love fulfil itself, power exert itself