Walking Through Westminster, WCF 3.2

Westminster Confession of Faith 3.2

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

Summary

      God knows all of reality and, because He is all-knowing, He also knows all potential realities. He knows everything that is and everything that could be. Yet His foreordination of all things is not based on His foreknowledge of all things. In other words, God does not look down the corridors of time, see what is going to happen, and then decree that it will happen. Rather, God foreordains all things that will come to pass because of His own good pleasure. This is another way of saying that God is in no way bound in His decrees. Particularly in the question of election to salvation, this is an important point. Arminians, Pelagians, and others who deny the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation imagine that, when the Bible speaks of God’s foreordaining people to salvation (Eph 1:11), what it really means is that God looked down the corridors of time, saw the faith that certain people would have in Christ, and on the basis of that foreseen faith, chose them to salvation. On the contrary, God’s election to salvation is based entirely on His own free love and grace, and not on His foreknowledge of faith.

 

Walking Through Westminster, WCF 3.1

Westminster Confession of Faith 3.1

"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."

Summary

     God, from before the foundations of the earth, even from eternity past, foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. All things that have happened and will happen occur because of His free and unchangeable ordination. He is in control of all things, and nothing happens apart from His foreknowledge and will. For God to freely ordain all things means that He was not bound by anything other than His own will and good pleasure. He did not ordain all things because of anything else. He has also unchangeably ordained all things, meaning that nothing can ever change His plan, since nothing can ever change His will. Whatever happens does so by divine decree and foreordination. Yet, God’s control over all things and ordaining of all that comes to pass does not make Him the author of sin, nor does it do away with the will of His creatures, nor does it remove the existence and reality of secondary causes, but rather establishes them. Sin was not created by God, because He Himself is pure and sinless. He cannot, by definition, be the author of evil. But, as Dr. Douglas Kelly said (quoting another source), “God uses sin sinlessly”. While God ordained the entrance of sin into the world, He did not author sin itself. God uses the sinful actions of His creatures, even Satan, in such a way that He is not tainted by sin, but establishes His plans through His creatures’ sins. The most evil, wicked thing that was ever done was the crucifixion of Christ, the only guiltless man to ever live. Yet, Peter says in Acts 2:23, “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;”. Jesus was crucified according to the will and foreknowledge of God; and He was crucified because of the sinful actions of men. God uses the sinful actions of men to purchase redemption from sin for men. This also means that God does not violate the will of His creatures. The Jews did not betray Jesus because God forced them to do so against their will. Rather, He used their willful sinning to procure pardon for sins and reconciliation. God's sinless use of sin to ultimately bring about the destruction of sin is one of the greatest examples in Scripture of God's wisdom and perfection. God uses the disobedience and rebellion of men to bring about their ultimate reconciliation with Him, through Jesus.

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Walking Through Westminster, WCF 2.3

Westminster Confession of Faith 2.3

"In the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son."

Summary

      While there is only one God, there are three Divine Persons who are each rightly called God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are distinct in their Personhood, but united in their substance, power, and eternity, or their Godhood. The Father is neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Son being eternally begotten and the Spirit proceeding in no way means that they are creatures or had a beginning, since they are eternally God. This is the fundamental doctrine of the orthodox catholic faith. Anyone who denies the belief in the Trinity, as presented above, is in no way a part of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Anyone who denies this teaching and teaches something contrary is a false teacher and worthy of eternal damnation. This includes Arians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, Mohammedans, so-called “Jews”, Modalists, and all heathen religions, which are obviously false. While the Trinitarian reality is a great mystery, this doesn’t make it illogical or impossible to believe. Further, anyone who would claim that they will only believe in a god they can fully understand is asking for an idol, and truly worships themselves. 

Since humanity is made in God’s image, I believe we can sufficiently grasp this doctrine by considering humanity itself. There is only one human nature, what we might call “humanness”. Each human person has this human nature 100%. In other words, it is not the case that human nature is subdivided based on how many human persons there are. For example two human persons don’t split human nature, each taking 50%, but rather they each are 100% human, yet maintain their distinct personhood. In a greater way, each of the Three Divine Persons is 100% God, the divinity being neither shared nor subdivided, yet in such a way that each Divine Person maintains their distinct personhood; the Father is neither the Son nor the Spirit, the Son neither the Spirit nor the Father, the Spirit neither the Father nor the Son, and yet each of the Three is truly God and there is only one God.

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Walking Through Westminster, WCF 2.2

Westminster Confession of Faith 2.2

"God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of Himself; and is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and has most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever Himself pleases. In His sight all things are open and manifest, His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain. He is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To Him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them."

Summary

      God is totally self-sufficient in every way. He has no need to get life, glory, goodness, or blessedness from anything else. Everything that is meant by those words and realities God has in and of Himself. God does not derive glory from any of His creatures; the word “derive” there meaning take from something as a source. God does receive glory from His creatures, but He is the source of all the glory which they then give back to Him. He is the sole source and foundation of all being, the Supreme Being not in the sense that He has more of a grasp on being than anything else, but because He is being Himself. In short, God depends on nothing else for His own existence, life, fellowship, glory, blessedness, etc. Every creature derives all of these things from Him in such a way that He loses nothing.

Because of His nature, He is sovereign over all things. He does everything that He pleases to do with His creation and He is right and good in everything that He does. He is all-knowing, nothing being hidden from Him, but all things being open and manifest. He knows all things, He knows them all perfectly, and He is dependent on nothing else for this knowledge. He is all-knowing, not merely in the sense that all knowledge is available to Him at His own leisure, but in the sense that all things are immediately known to Him always. He is not a librarian in a library filled with all knowledge, all things being merely available to Him for knowing, but rather He knows all things at all times. Nothing for Him is uncertain or contingent.

The overarching characteristic of God, as discussed in a prior section, is His holiness. He is holy, holy, holy in everything He does, everything He ordains, and everything He commands. Because of who He is, what He does, and how He does it, He is supremely worthy of worship, service, and obedience, in whatever way He chooses. Because of His supreme holiness, all the worship, service, and obedience that He requires is, by definition, holy. 

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