Warfield on Philippians 2:58

1
Warfield on Philippians 25-8

• We have a God who is capable of self-sacrifice
  for us... Now herein is a wonderful thing. Men
  tell us that God is, by very necessity of His
  nature, incapable of passion, incapable of being
  moved by inducement from without that he dwells
  in holy calm and unchangeable blessedness,
  untouched by human sufferings or human sorrows
  for ever... Let us bless our God that it is not
  true. God can feel God does love. We have
  Scriptural warrant for believing, as it has been
  perhaps somewhat inadequately but not
  misleadingly phrased, that moral heroism has a
  place within the sphere of the divine nature we
  have Scriptural warrant for believing that, like
  the hero of Zurich, God has reached out loving
  arms and gathered to his own bosom that forest of
  spears which otherwise had pierced ours. But is
  not this gross anthropomorphism? We are careless
  of names it is the truth of God. And we decline
  to yield up the God of the Bible and the God of
  our hearts to any philosophical abstraction. We
  have and we must have an ethical God a God whom
  we can love, in whom we can trust.

2
Scripture passages that seem to be contradictory

• Exodus 3214 And the LORD relented from the
  disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his
  people.
• 2 Samuel 2416 And when the angel stretched out
  his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD
  relented from the calamity and said to the angel
  who was working destruction among the people, "It
  is enough now stay your hand" (Cf. 1 Chron
  2115).
• Psalm 10645 For their sake he remembered his
  covenant, and relented according to the abundance
  of his steadfast love.
• Jonah 37-10 And he issued a proclamation and
  published through Nineveh, "By the decree of the
  king and his nobles Let neither man nor beast,
  herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed
  or drink water, 8 but let man and beast be
  covered with sackcloth, and let them call out
  mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil
  way and from the violence that is in his hands.
  9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn
  from his fierce anger, so that we may not
  perish." 10 When God saw what they did, how they
  turned from their evil way, God relented of the
  disaster that he had said he would do to them,
  and he did not do it. (See also Amos 73-6)

3
Calvin

• It is, equally senseless to despise the
  communication of properties, a term long ago
  invented to some purpose by the holy fathers.
  Surely, when the Lord of glory is said to be
  crucified 1 Corinthians 28, Paul does not mean
  that he suffered anything in his divinity, but he
  says this because the same Christ, who was cast
  down and despised, and suffered in the flesh, was
  God and Lord of glory. In this way he was also
  Son of man in heaven John 313, for the very
  same Christ, who, according to the flesh, dwelt
  as Son of man on earth, was God in heaven.

4
If God is eternal...

• Then these statements are false
• God existed before Moses.
• Gods power will soon triumph over evil.
• Last week God wrought a miracle.
• God will always be wiser than human beings.

5
Immutable?

• So the truth about atonement, about
  reconciliation to God, has to be represented to
  us as if it implied a change in God, and so an
  inconsistency, an apparent contradiction, in his
  actions towards us. But in fact there is no
  change in God he loves us from eternity. There
  is however, a change in us a change that occurs
  as by faith Christ's work is appropriated. The
  change is not from wrath to grace, but from our
  belief that we are under wrath to our belief that
  we are under grace.

6
Thomas

• Since therefore God is outside the whole order of
  creation, and all creatures are ordered to Him,
  and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures
  are really related to God Himself whereas in God
  there is no real relation to creatures, but a
  relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are
  referred to Him. Thus there is nothing to prevent
  these names which import relation to the creature
  from being predicated of God temporally, not by
  reason of any change in Him, but by reason of the
  change of the creature as a column is on the
  right of an animal, without change in itself, but
  by change in the animal. (ST IQ13,a7)

7
What God Does

• A. The Decrees in Context
• 1. Gods Knowledge
• 2. Gods Will
• B. The Decrees
• 1. Eternal and Universal
• a. Sin
• b. Determinism
• c. Responsible choice
• 2. Predestination and Reprobation
• 1. The glory of God
• 2. Election and Foreordination
• 3. Supra or Infra
• C. Providence
• 1. Preservation
• 2. Government
• 3. Views of causality
• 4. Miracle
• D. Creation
• 1. Angels

8
Calvin

• Let us, I say, permit the Christian man to open
  his mind and ears to every utterance of God
  directed to him, provided it be with such
  restraint that when the Lord closes his holy
  lips, he also shall at once close the way to
  inquiry. (III.21.3)
• And let us not be ashamed to submit our
  understanding to Gods boundless wisdom so far as
  to yield before its many secrets. For, of those
  things which it is neither given nor lawful to
  know, ignorance is learned the craving to know,
  a kind of madness. (III.23.8)

9
WCF

• WCF 31-2 God, from all eternity, did, by the
  most wise and holy counsel of His own will
  freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes
  to pass yet so, as thereby neither is God the
  author of sin, nor is violence offered to the
  will of the creatures nor is the liberty or
  contingency of second causes taken away, but
  rather established.
• WCF 3.2 Although God knows whatsoever may or can
  come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet
  hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw
  it as future, or as that which would come to pass
  upon such conditions.

10
Calvin

• III.23.12 But Scripture, while it requires us
  to consider this great mystery with so much more
  reverence and piety, both instructs the godly to
  a far different attitude and effectively refutes
  the criminal madness of these men. For Scripture
  does not speak of predestination with intent to
  rouse us to boldness that we may try with impious
  rashness to search out Gods unattainable
  secrets. Rather, its intent is that, humbled and
  cast down, we may learn to tremble at his
  judgment and esteem his mercy. It is at this mark
  that believers aim.
• III.24.17 Now when many notions are adduced on
  both sides, let this be our conclusion to
  tremble with Paul at so deep a mystery but, if
  forward tongues clamor, not to be ashamed of this
  exclamation of his Who are you, O man, to argue
  with God? For as Augustine truly contends, they
  who measure divine justice by the standard of
  human justice are acting perversely.

11
Middle Knowledge

• Pedro Da Fonseca (1528-1599) - scientia media

12
Middle Knowledge question

• What is the medium of knowledge in which God
  foresees the free operations of his rational
  creatures?

13
WCF 3.2

• Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to
  pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath He
  not decreed anything because He foresaw it as
  future, or as that which would come to pass upon
  such conditions.