Doctrine of the Divine Decree

This thread is an outline form of the divine decree, from the position of assumption of biblical veracity. As a reader, you are free to debate, call into question or refute any point. However, if your post lacks common courtesy, begs the question, or in any other fashion diverts from the salient issues herein posted, do not expect a response, as one will not be offered.

This thread is specifically offered as an insight to the biblical view of systematic theology. Quarrelsome posts will be ignored. Those who wish to thoughfully discuss the biblical support, logical construction or necessary results of these assertions are warmly invited to offer the relevant issues which may be raised in their minds.

The general outline of the presentation is as follows:
I Definition and Description
II Mechanical Function of the Computer
III Characteristics of the Divine Decree
IV Will of God and the Divine Decree
V Blessing of Man and the Divine Decree
VI Glory of God and the Divine Decree
VII Human Freedom and the Divine Decree
VIII Practical Application of the Divine Decree
IX Different Theological Views of the Divine Decree Pertaining to Election

I Definition and Description
A. The decree of God is His eternal, holy, wise, and sovereign purpose, comprehending simultaneously all things that ever were or will be in their causes, courses, conditions, and successions, and relations and determining their certain futurition.
Each phrase of this concise, technical definition carries a wealth of information. Various attributes of God’s essence are related to His “purpose” for angelic and human history. The source of the divine decree is identified as the omniscience of God “comprehending” all things in eternity past. Divine volition is depicted as “determining” or choosing, before anything existed, which things would actually become historical events. The doctrine of the divine decree develops the various aspects of this definition.
B. The several contents of this one eternal purpose are, because of the limitations of our mentality and faculties, necessarily perceived by us in partial aspects in both logical and revealed relations from Scripture. For this reason we often use the plural “decrees” to express the many facets of God’s all-inclusive plan. In reality, it is all one decree, given in eternity past in less than a second and covering everything in all of what to us is past, present, and future history. At the time of the decree, all angelic and human history was yet future.
C. The decree of God is His external and immutable will regarding the future existence of events which will happen in time and regarding the precise order and manner of their occurrence.
Here, and throughout the doctrine of the divine decree, the “will of God” is used in a technical sense. In common usage, the will of God refers to what God desires of an individual or group in a particular situation, but that is not the will in view here. The will of God here means the decision He made in eternity past, from His attribute of sovereignty, which established that certain things would actually come into being while other things would not. This is His sovereign choice as to what will take place in time. We are so dependent on God that nothing can exist apart from God’s decision to make it exist!
Many things that occur are results of angelic or human free will acting contrary to God’s desires. He nevertheless decided or willed that these things would take place. Thus, He makes our volition truly free. How He could do this without compromising His perfect essence is the story of the righteousness and justice of God.
An example of something that God willed to exist is you. You are a responsible, rational, freewill individual who lives in the present. You and your freedom, etc., were decreed billions of years ago. You exist today because you are part of a very old, divine plan.

I Definition and Description, con’t
D. The divine decree is the eternal plan by which God has rendered certain all of the events of the universe, including both angelic and human history--- past, present, and future. God’s decree rendered all things as certain to occur; He decided that they would exist. In doing so, He did not interfere with angelic or human free will. In fact, He decreed that we would have free will. In giving us volition, He also decreed that our decisions, whatever they might be, would certainly take place--- even those that are contrary to His desires. Being omniscient, He knew ahead of time precisely what we would decide. He not only decreed that those decisions would exist but He also decreed the exact manner, consistent with His character, in which He would handle our decisions.
E. The decree of God is the chosen and adopted plan of all God’s works.
F. The decree of God is His eternal purpose, according to the counsels of His own will, whereby for His own glory He has foreordained whatever comes to pass.
G. The decree of God is the sovereign choice of the divine will (His attribute of sovereignty) and mentality (His omniscience) by which all things are brought into being and controlled, made subject to His pleasure, and producing His glorification. God has not origin. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit preexisted everything. No one was above Them; no one originated Them. Anything the members of the Trinity decide to originate is decided with two concepts in mind.
1. What the Trinity decides is for their pleasure. We do a variety of things for our pleasure or entertainment, but God’s pleasure is infinitely broader in scope. His perfect happiness is part of His infinite character, so His pleasure is not impulsive, emotional, or frivolous. Nevertheless, He spoke and billions upon billions of light-years of space instantly came into being. Then He created creatures with free will--- beautiful, powerful creatures called angels. Their history is largely undisclosed to us, but eventually, from their own free decisions, some of these creatures rebelled--- the fall of Satan and the revolt that began the angelic conflict.
God always knew that some of the angels would revolt. Therefore, in the same instant that He decreed to create the universe and the angels, He also decreed that at a certain point in time He would create another type of creature. Like the angels, this new person would have free will and would be designed to share God’s happiness. But he, and his progeny, would also become the demonstration of the fullness of God’s essence to those angels who had impugned God’s character. So, for God’s pleasure, He created Adam. Now, long after the fall of Adam, God’s pleasure is our adjustment to the justice of God. Salvation, spirituality, and spiritual maturity provide the capacity for the blessings of God.
2. What the Trinity decides is also for their glory. God has always existed in perfect glory; anything He does reflects His glory and results in His glorification. God does not depend on us for His pleasure or His glory; He enjoyed pleasure and glory in eternity past when no one else existed. God expresses His glory and pleasure in us and toward us. We are here as part of God’s pleasure and glory.
3. It is the pleasure of God to permit creatures to exercise free volition. We should have no illusions about ourselves. We are here, not to glorify ourselves, not to impress God, but to line up with His pleasure and glory.

H. Picture the decree of God as a giant computer. In eternity past God fed facts from His omniscience into the computer. These facts are differentiated from mere potentialities, the alternatives, which He also knows in His omniscience but did not decree. The facts include every thought you would ever have, every decision you would ever make, every action you would ever take. When He decreed (or fed into the computer) the fact that you would exist as a free agent, He also decreed--- simultaneously--- that your every thought, decision, and action would take place. He fed into the computer the decisions He knew you would make about sin, about rebound/recovery, about human good and evil, about believing in Christ, about walking down the street, about the laws of divine establishment, about doctrine, about spiritual production, about everything. He also fed other facts into the computer. Based on knowing how you would use your free will, He fed in logistical grace and, for those who advance to maturity, special blessings in time. He knew every situation you would face--- every heartache, every personal or historical disaster, every failure or success--- and He provided the solution to each problem. Moreover, He supplied everything you would need to face all problems in complete security with perfect orientation and inner happiness. Capacity for happiness comes from understanding these things, from having doctrine in your soul. There is never an excuse for complaining.
I. The computer of the divine decree prints out facts about believers under the categories of election, foreknowledge, and predestination. It also prints out facts about unbelievers under the categories of condemnation, reprobation, and retribution. No unbeliever is ever predestined to go to hell.
J. The decree of God is the sum total of God’s plan, designed in eternity past, relating to all events of all classifications, collected into one single all-comprehensive whole through God’s omniscience.
K. The omniscience of God is the key to understanding the decree. God has three kinds of knowledge:
1. Self-knowledge: God knows himself; His self-knowledge has always been total, perfect, complete. He is aware of His own essence and the unlimited capabilities of each member of the Trinity. Infinite and subjective in self-knowledge, the members of the Trinity know each other.
2. Omniscience: God knows simultaneously all things outside of Himself. God knows all things about believers and unbelievers, both the actual--- which He Himself foreordained, decreed, programmed into the computer--- and the possible--- which could have happened but did not happen. God knew in eternity past that you would not make that decision and He did not decree it, did not enter it into the computer.
3. Foreknowledge: This subcategory of God’s cognizance acknowledges only what is decreed, but foreknowledge does not make the decree certain. It is a printout of the actual facts, not mere possibilities, regarding the volition of the believer. The term “foreknown” is used in Scripture only of believers of Jesus Christ. God’s foreknowledge is related only to the actual.
NEXT:
II Mechancial Function of the Computer

Shut up.

Originally posted by darvlay
Shut up.

How about part II " Mechancial Function of the Computer" ?

II Mechanical Function of the Computer
A. Stage One, the Omniscience of God
1. In His omniscience, God knows perfectly, eternally, and simultaneously all that is knowable, both the actual and the possible.
2. Such perception and sagacity are totally compatible with His essence. God would not be God unless He always knew all about everything.
3. God is eternal; His knowledge is eternal. He is sovereign; His knowledge is in control and superior. The link between His superior knowledge and our inferior knowledge is Bible doctrine.
4. The Creator’s knowledge is infinitely superior to the creature’s knowledge or intellect.
5. Every minute detail of both angelic and human creation is completely and perfectly in His mind at all times.
6. The omniscience of God perceives the free as free, the necessary as necessary, together with all their causes, conditions, and relations, as one indivisible system of things, every link of which is essential to the integrity of the whole. Every cause and effect is related to another. In this one, all-comprehensive, interdependent system of cause and effect, man’s volition is the uncaused cause of human function so that the course of history is just as man thinks it, wills it, does it. When you understand this, you realize that you have no reason for complaining, for falling apart in a crisis, or for feeling left out and sorry for yourself. God never tampers with your volition; predestination does not mean that He forces you into a course of action, but the He knew in eternity past what you would do and so decreed it.
7. Time does not limit God’s knowledge. To Him, the future is as perspicuous as the past.
8. The omniscience of God knows the alternatives to history--- the possible as well as the actual.
9. God knows what would have been involved in every case in which a man’s decision might have been different from what it was. You may be confronted with twenty possible courses of action and must choose one. Even though God knew which way you would choose to go and decreed only that one to become reality, He knows all the repercussions of each alternative.
10. Omniscience is one of the three categories of divine knowledge.
11. Omniscience knows every thought, decision, and action in human history, how they all relate to each other, and how they relate to all the possible alternatives.
12. The foreknowledge of God makes nothing certain but merely acknowledge what is certain. His foreknowledge knows what is already in the decree regarding believers only.
13. For believers, there are at least three categories of printouts from the computer: foreknowledge, election, and predestination (sometimes called foreordination).
14. Foreknowledge means that nothing can be certain until it is first decreed; only then can what will happen be foreknown. God knows all actual events as certainly future because He has decreed them to be certainly future.
15. God’s decree relates equally to all future events of every kind--- to the free actions of moral agents as well as to the actions of necessary agents; to the sinful, human-good, and evil as well as to the morally correct, divine-good, and honorable.
16. The decree alone establishes certainty. For the believer, foreordination and predestination are synonymous with the decree.
17. Foreordination is an act of the infinitely intelligent and wise God in determining the certain futurition of events in the life of the believer.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
II Mechanical Function of the Computer
A. Stage One, the Omniscience of God
1. In His omniscience, God knows perfectly, eternally, and simultaneously all that is knowable, both the actual and the possible.
2. Such perception and sagacity are totally compatible with His essence. God would not be God unless He always knew all about everything.
3. G ...[text shortened]... ligent and wise God in determining the certain futurition of events in the life of the believer.

I have a question. What is the purpose of this?

I doubt many people will read it; it's pretty badly formatted and people hate to read big blocks of text, unless it's something interesting.

B. Stage Two, the Decree Itself
1. The omniscience of God fed into the computer only the facts.
2. This was accomplished in eternity past simultaneously, not in stages.
3. The decree has become the complete and consummated right of the sovereignty of God determining the certain futurition of all things in human history.
a. No decree can become complete without the sovereignty of God. Because He knows the end from the beginning, God wills certain things to happen.
b. Since, in eternity past, God exercised His prerogative to make things certain, “certain futurition” of events, means events which are future from eternity past. Thus, all events throughout time. Many areas of the decree have been fulfilled historically, up to and including this present moment; but all were future when decreed, including those still future today.
c. Because of how infinitely complex this decree is, we must conclude with an eternal truth: God is smarter than we are!
4. No event is directly effected or caused by the decree. The fact that a thought or action on your part is in the decree does not mean that the decree caused you to think or do it. The cause is your own free will. Your thoughts are in the decree because, in eternity past, God had the wisdom to know what you would think and to not omit from His planning the fact that you would think it!
5. But the decree itself provides in every case that the events shall be effected by causes acting in a manner consistent with the nature of the event in question. As an example of this principle, the cause of some events is the free will of man.
6. In the case of every freewill act of a moral agent, the decree itself provides at the same time the following:
a. The agent shall be a free agent. Far from coercing anyone’s volition, the decree establishes volition thereby making everyone accountable for his own decisions.
b. The antecedents and all antecedents of the act in question shall be what they are. Whenever a decision is made, it shall be the result of decisions previously made. Once something happens, that’s it. It is part of the system of cause and effect; it becomes part of the basis for other things happening down the line. Wishful thinking cannot change what has already occurred.
c. All present conditions of the act shall be what they are. God is not going to make reality suddenly vanish or become different or reverse itself. God enables us to orient to reality and to face the facts. If our arrogance or simple ignorance leads us to make decisions which overlook certain facts, those facts nevertheless are what they are. For example, if we do not adjust to the justice of God, the justice of God is still a reality, and His justice will adjust to us through discipline.
d. The act shall be perfectly spontaneous and free on the part of the agent.
e. The act shall be certainly future. That is, it will definitely take place, at a certain time, after the decree is given.
These five points completely negate the theology of hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism. Hyper-Calvinism distorts the sovereignty of God to the point of excluding the free will of man. It is fatalism, in contrast to the specific teachings of the Word of God regarding divine sovereignty and human free will. Arminius and his followers distort the sovereignty of God in the opposite direction. They claim that man’s volition is beyond God’s control, that man can cause things that are not in the divine decree. This is totally false; nothing can be certain until God decrees it to be certain.
7. The decree vested solely with the will of God what His creation should be. For example, God alone decided in eternity past what human beings would be like: We would be rational creatures with free will. Our souls would have self-consciousness, mentality, volition, and conscience; Adam would be body, soul and spirit as he came from the Creator’s hand. By way of a ludicrous illustration, God did not decide to give us two heads, five legs, a thirty-foot tail, and the brains of a horse. Nor did He design us with a sin nature; that came from Adam’s negative volition.
8. Because God cannot contradict His own nature, the essence and attributes of God necessitated His willing the highest and best for mankind. When God created man, He created the highest and best compatible with His plan. Adam was not greater than the angels, but his body, soul, and spirit and his environment were all absolutely perfect. Of course, some of the highest and best that man received at creation has been lost through the Fall. The same perfect God who created mankind now condemns us. Yet He still wills the highest and best in that He now offers perfect salvation and magnificent blessings in time and eternity. Because we have free will, we may miss all of this, but it is still available.

C. Stage Three, the Printouts

1. The printout from the computer of the divine decree, which relates to believers, includes election, foreknowledge, predestination.

2. Predestination, foreordination, and predetermination are synonyms and refer to the decree. These terms describe the act of the infinite, eternal omniscience of God which determined the certain futurition of events related to the believer.

3. Foreknowledge is not the same as omniscience but is more limited in scope. Omniscience knows both the actual and the possible; foreknowledge includes the actual only and is related to believers only.

4. Being omniscient, God knows all that would have been involved had He adopted any one of an infinite number of plans of action. He also knows all the consequences had man chosen a different course of action within the realm of his own volition.

5. Foreknowledge refers only to those things which God did decree or adopt as the plan of God--- those things related to the believer only.

6. Only the decree establishes certainty or reality; only reality can be foreknown; nothing can be foreknown until first decreed. One can see where Arminianism departs from biblical theology: It holds falsely that events occur without being decreed by God to occur.

7. God’s decree never originates from His foreknowledge. Although all three exist simultaneously in the mind of God, omniscience, the decree, and foreknowledge must be separated into logical sequence for us to understand them. First comes omniscience, then the decree, then foreknowledge. The decree is based on the decree.

8. Election is the plan of God for believers only. All the elect are believers. Election means “chosen, selected, set apart for privilege.” Technically, election is God’s complete agreement with His own foreknowledge--- He simply agrees with Himself (foreknowledge) and puts a stamp of approval (election) upon what He decreed. God elected or chose believers in the sense, first, that He knew ahead of time that, if given free will, they would freely choose to believe in Christ; second, that He decreed that such an act of faith would actually occur; third, that He agreed not only that their positive volition to the Gospel would occur at a certain point in time but also that the blessings of salvation plus certain unique blessings would be their eternal possessions. There are three elections to privilege:
a. The unique election of Christ. The election of Christ is the basis for the other two elections.

b. The election of Israel.
1) God’s gracious and unconditional covenants to Israel can be fulfilled only to the elect--- to those physical Jews who are also spiritual Jews through faith in Christ, the Messiah. The true Jew is not merely the physical seed of Abraham but the spiritual seed as well. Unless the racial Jew follows the pattern of Abraham in salvation, he is not elected. A corrected translation of Romans 9:6 explains how God can have an elect nation: “All [racial] Israel is not [spiritual] Israel.”

2) The unconditional covenant to Israel are promises for the elect Jews only, that is, for those who have believed in Christ and thus possess God’s imputed righteousness and eternal life. The covenants to Israel are eternal; their recipients and beneficiaries must have eternal life. To be a physical Jew but not a spiritual Jew is a great tragedy.

c. The election of the Church
1) The election of the Church includes both equal privilege and equal opportunity for every believer.
a) Under election, equal privilege is the royal priesthood.

b) Under election, equal opportunity is logistical grace support and blessing for both winners and losers.

2) Election is declared through God’s foreknowledge; election is a function of predestination. Predestination permanently relates the Church Age believer to the plan of grace. Furthermore, predestination means that, in union with Christ through retroactive and current positional truth, the Church Age believer shares the destiny of Christ. We also share the election of Christ that occurred in eternity past.

III. The Characteristics of the Divine Decree

A. The decree includes all the facts of history. These are the facts of history. These are the facts which were fed into the computer by the omniscience of God.

B. There is one all-inclusive will and purpose of God concerning all that ever was or will be. Think of it as a computer tape. Your entire life is on tape. Your tape begins with your first breath, and everything in your life from then on is recorded onto that tape. You do not know what the future holds for you, but God does. He recorded it in eternity past.

C. This divine will and purpose originated entirely within Himself before any creatures existed. The tape is in the mind of God; He alone designed it entirely for His pleasure, compatible with His essence, and related to His eternal glory. It pleases God to run your tape to the end. He knows what is on it, and He is running it for you.

D. Space and time are the battlefield, the overall setting in which we live. These broad concepts are in the decree, but so are the details which reach down to the minutia of life. God knows even the minor detail of the fall of a sparrow; every hair that drops from your head is included in the decree.

E. The doctrine of procession describes how the members of the Trinity function under the decree: The Father sends the Son; the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit. Among themselves, the members of the Godhead function in a way which is immanent (complete and changeless), intrinsic (within the Godhead), and subjective (subjectivity is perfect when God is dealing with Himself).

F. How the Godhead maintains and supports the believer is transient (the tape keeps playing), extrinsic (these actions occur outside of the Godhead), and objective (our point of contact is the perfectly fair justice of God).

G. The decree is efficacious. “Efficacious” refers to the direct work of God: His work always succeeds in having its intended effect; the decree actually determines all that ever was or will be.

H. The decree guarantees certainty. The foreknowledge of God makes nothing certain; it merely perceives what is certain.

I. The omniscience of God feeds the facts into the computer while the foreknowledge reads what the computer prints out.

J. The decree of God is all-comprehensive. Not the slightest confusion could exist as to one of even the smallest events without confusion to all events. All events are interwoven and interdependent. You might assume that the decree eliminates the need for prayer, but this is not true. God looked down the corridors of time to see what believers would ask in prayer. Effective prayer makes requests which God answers; these answers--- the things we ask in time--- are incorporated into the decree in eternity past. Prayer is a powerful weapon in the angelic conflict when wielded by the mature believer who knows what he is doing.

K. The decree is also eternal, which means that God never gains in knowledge.

L. What God has known at any time He has always known.

M. This means that all of the decree was decreed simultaneously in eternity past. God is never surprised by anything we do or fail to do. He knew everything simultaneously, built divine provisions around the free choices we would make, and included the entire plan in the decree billions of years ago. The decree existed before man, before angels, before the existence of the universe; the decree pre-existed every creature and every thing.

N. The decree of God is perfect. God is perfect; God's plan is perfect. The only thing imperfect in God's plan is man.

O. God's perfect plan includes all imperfect persons, but He maintains His perfection and integrity through His policy of grace. God never loses His perfection, and His plan never fails even though man is imperfect and often fails. Because we are imperfect creatures in a perfect plan, the plan must be based on God's integrity. This is why we must believe in Christ, why we must rebound, why we must advance to maturity. We must adjust to His perfect justice.

P. The decree of God is unchangeable and certain. Nothing will ever arise to necessitate a change in the decree. Everything was known and decreed (made certain) in eternity past. God's decree is unchangeable because it deals only with reality. It is certain because omniscience always knew that these things would occur under the circumstances of their particular moment in history. The changlessness of the decree is one of the great blessings of logistical grace. There are no erasures, corrections, or deletions; no last-minute changes; no chance of becoming lost in the shuffle. All the provisions for all our needs are absolutely secure.
If you do not accept that statement, your rejection of it was known to God and was decreed to actually exist at this time as your own expression of your free choice. But God also knew that the statement was nonetheless true.

Q. The decree is the free choice of divine sovereignty. God is not bound to follow a necessary pattern or course, but once having decreed it in eternity past, once having said, "This is it," God is bound by His infinite faithfulness, truth, and incorruptibility to complete what He has begun. God will play out your tape to the end. Once He decreed you to exist, that became the plan; the future events in your life will occur--- tomorrow, the next day, and the next. You will never suddenly cease to exist. God is bound by His eternal, infinite, perfect essence to play your tape.

R. God has decreed ends as well as means, causes as well as effects, conditions and instrumentalities as well as the events which depend upon them.
Consider an example from ancient history. The rise and falls of empires and the movements of entire populations are sweeping in scope and impressive from our human viewpoint. But they are just as much in the decree as are the daily occurences in our individual lives.

Long before He created the universe, God's omniscience knew all about the historical role to be played by the Assyrians. Not only did He decree that they would be a great power, but--- in the same instant--- He also decreed that all the historical trends which led to their ascendancy would also occur. This included a complex chain of events. The western Aryans (Indo-Aryans) would come out of the mountains of Asia to dominate the Hurrians who lived in Mesopotamia, while the eastern Aryans moved south into India to conquer the Dravidians. In Mesopotamia, these Indo-Aryans and Hurrians (together forming the vast kingdom of Mitanni) would become degenerate. From farther to the west (now Turkey) would descend the attacking Hittites who, after conquering Mitanni, would mysteriously turn around for home, leaving a power vacuum. Into this vacuum would rise the Kassites from southern Mesopotamia, and these people would be absorbed by the Assyrians.

There are no accidents in history. God knew all of these developments in the ancient world billions of year before they occurred. He knew the causes, conditions, and successions of history. He knew how all these events were interrelated and what their eventual effects would be upon the Jews (who were by this time settling into the Land after the Exodus) and upon the rest of mankind throughout human history. Even though some of these events precede others chronologically, even though the rise of Assyria depended upon the fall of Mitanni, all were decreed by God in the same instant.

As an application from this glimpse of historical ebb and flow, we can have confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of history, who is so magnificent in His power as to make anything man does pale in comparison. If we are adjusted to the justice of God, who can be against us?

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
H. Picture the decree of God as a giant computer. In eternity past God fed facts from His omniscience into the computer. These facts are differentiated from mere potentialities, the alternatives, which He also knows in His omniscience but did not decree. The facts include every thought you would ever have, every decision you would ever make, every acti ...[text shortened]... d’s foreknowledge is related only to the actual.
NEXT:
II Mechancial Function of the Computer

I am not omniscient. Nonetheless, being self-conscious, I am aware of it feels like not to be omniscient. By definition, however, God is omniscient. How, then, could She know what it felt like not to be omniscient? This means that there is one thing that God does not know that I do.

Originally posted by Pawnokeyhole

This means that there is one thing that God does not know that I do.
The greater always encompasses (and surpasses) the lesser. While the lesser may be able to approximate by imagination the qualities of the greater, the greater has no such limitation.
Hunger may imagine and desire satiation, but can only experience its lack. Satiation knows both.

When the Lord Jesus Christ was on earth, He physically experienced in His body the full range of limitations imposed by the physical realm. That is not to say He did not already know what the physical realm entailed: He created it in the first place, and therefore knew before physically experiencing the same.