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William Perkins on Necessity

For the last month or so I have been studying predestination, reading various works on the subject.[1] Perkins’ work on predestination has been quite instructive, particularly as it pertains to his understanding of necessity and contingency in God’s decree. What follows is simply my thoughts on how I understand Perkins’ view of necessity, which he offers in contrast to a stoic view of necessity.[2] It is a pedagogical effort on my part for personal edification. I won’t be engaging in the debate between the two, nor will I be devoting time to explaining what a stoic concept of necessity might be. With that said, what I will say is that it operates within a fatalist conceptual framework, which is antithetical to the biblical notion of God’s governance of the world. My labors might result in saying too much, not saying enough, or clouding the issue. So, any critique of my view is welcomed. And if I get Perkins wrong, please make me aware.

As primary cause,[3] God’s freedom entails all things are contingent and mutable. According to nature such things (which I understand to be secondary causes and their effects) are necessary and immutable. They are necessary and immutable because God as primary cause determines by decree that they be so. In respect to God’s decree, secondary causes and their effects are necessary; however, in themselves, they appear (to us) uncertain and contingent. But by God’s decree, they are necessary, not by necessity of compulsion (i.e., not being forced contrary to one’s natural inclination), but because God has ordained that such things that should come to pass (i.e., secondary causes and their effects) should be so. However, while the secondary causes and their effects do not necessarily happen, when they do come to pass, they happen in the manner according to nature (i.e., secondary cause and their effects qua secondary cause and their effects) necessarily, according to God’s decree, in that his decree and power establishes and confirms that when they do happen, they happen as is proper to secondary causes and their effects.

The things that are mutable according to the power given by God does not take away the necessity which they have as secondary causes. And this is according to the immutable decree of God, thus establishing, immutably, the order of secondary causes and their effects. So, to us, secondary causes and their effects are immutable, but to God they are mutable because it is by his freedom that he has made them so. God has immutably made things mutable. And within God’s immutable decreeing that the things he has created are mutable, as entailed in secondary causes and their effects, man’s liberty is established immutably, in that what he wills to do, he does not by compulsion but according to his own liberty as established and affirmed by God’s decree. And from this, we can say that man wills freely by necessity. But what he wills was not necessary. However, when what man wills does come to pass, it comes to pass necessarily (I think this is right).

Within predestination, how we understand human freewill within the decree of God, particularly in the fall of Adam and human nature post fall, can get tricky. I will cite Perkins and offer some exposition. As to the fall of Adam, Perkins writes, this “event is necessary by the necessity of infallibility by reason of the foreknowledge and decree of God, yet so as that God is not guilty of any fault, because the decree of God however it was necessary in itself, yet it planted nothing in Adam whereby he should fall into sin but left him to his own liberty, not hindering his fall when it might.”[4] What is he saying here? Well, what we concluded with in the previous paragraph puts us on the right track. But now we must account for God’s involvement in Adam’s fall. It seems to me that Perkins is saying that God’s role in the decree of Adam’s fall was necessary because the event was to come to pass according to the foreknowledge and decree of God. Yet, in respect to Adam, his falling into sin was contingent and free. How so? Nothing was planted in his mind so that he would fall into sin; rather, there was nothing hindering him from falling. On the side of the Creator, the fall was necessary; on the side of the creature, his fall was contingent.

Now, Perkins addresses a common objection: “But you will say that Adam could not withstand God’s will—that is, His decree.” Perkins responds: “Wherefore, I answer that even as he could not, so also he would not.” Here we see that distinction between necessity and contingency. According to God, man’s fall was necessary; according to man, his fall was contingent. Adam’s fall was decreed, not because he had to sin; rather, because he would not refrain from sinning (i.e., as established by secondary causes and their effects). The objection is repeated again: but “he could not will otherwise.” In which Perkins responds, this “I confess to be true as touching the act and event, but not as touching the very power of his will, which was not compelled but of the own free motion consented to the suggestion of the devil.”[5]

To better help the reader understand, Perkins makes a distinction between the time before the fall, the present time of the fall, and the time after his fall. So, first: before the fall, according to the decree of God, what he foreknows must necessarily come to pass. Second: “by reason of the permissive decree of God,” the event of the fall was “necessary immutably.”[6] As to the second time, Perkins notes that evil can only come to pass by God’s permission, in that “to permit evil is not to stir up the will and not to bestow on him that is tempted the act of resisting, but to leave him as it were to himself; and he whose will is not stirred up by God to whom the act of resisting is not conferred, ” while that man “may have power to withstand evil, he cannot actually withstand it nor persist forever in that uprightness where he was created, God denying him strength.”[7] Interestingly, Perkins confesses that this “kind of necessity as touching the liberty of man’s will was altogether evitable and to be avoided, and yet according to the event of the action it was inevitable.” But this event was only in the line of the decree of God having been granted and admitted to come to pass. Man, therefore, was “destitute of God’s help” and thus when tempted, “cast himself into this same ensuing necessity of sinning.” Following the fall, this second time of sin, his sin was of necessity when he did sin. And in the third time, “man drew to himself by his fault, his nature being now corrupted, another necessity of sinning, insomuch that he made himself the servant of sin.”[8] And again, this is so, because God has given man liberty to choose, which, according to his decree he established by secondary causes and their effects, which include Adam’s choice to sin as contingent on Adam’s part but necessary by God’s decree.

I am sure there are those who are better acquainted with Perkins than I who can provide some insight as to the accuracy of my reading of him (I have yet to read Muller’s take on Perkins). But it was a helpful afternoon spent on studying two pages of text.

~ Romans 11:36 ~


___________________ 

[1] Works read so far: John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, 1st edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997); David H. Kranendonk, Teaching Predestination: Elnathan Parr and Pastoral Ministry in Early Stuart England (Reformation Heritage Books, 2011); Saint Augustine, Four Anti-Pelagian Writings (The Fathers of the Church, Volume 86) (CUA Press, 2010). Works to be read: Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1991); Pietro Martire Vermigli and Frank A. James, Predestination and Justification: Two Theological Loci (Moscow, ID: The Davenant Press, 2003); Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Baker Books, 2008); John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23, 2nd ed. (Baker Academic, 1993).
[2] I will be interacting with William Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 333–5.
[3] These next two paragraphs are a mix of Perkins’ thoughts from page 333 and me rephrasing them for my own understanding, as well as elucidating further on the material, Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6.
[4] Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6, 334.
[5] Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6, 334–5.
[6] Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6, 335.
[7] Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6, 335.
[8] Perkins, The Works of William Perkins, Volume 6, 335.


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