Efficacious Permission

[Jaxb]

In John Frame's book, The Doctrine of God, he discusses the various terms that describe the relationship between God's sovereignty and sin. He says that God permits sin, but God's permission is an efficacious permission.

I have a question about the idea of an efficacious permission. Would efficacious permission be God's plan that nothing would stop a person from doing X?

Suppose a person has the desire to do X and X is a sin. If all of the following conditions were met, would that guarantee that a person would do X? Condition# 1. Person A has the desire to do X. Condition# 2. Person A does not change his mind about doing X. Condition# 3. God ensures that nothing would stop person A from doing X.

[The Remonstrant]

In John Frame's book, The Doctrine of God, he discusses the various terms that describe the relationship between God's sovereignty and sin. He says that God permits sin, but God's permission is an efficacious permission.

I have a question about the idea of an efficacious permission. Would efficacious permission be God's plan that nothing would stop a person from doing X?

Suppose a person has the desire to do X and X is a sin. If all of the following conditions were met, would that guarantee that a person would do X? Condition# 1. Person A has the desire to do X. Condition# 2. Person A does not change his mind about doing X. Condition# 3. God ensures that nothing would stop person A from doing X.

‘Efficacious permission’ is a high Calvinistic theological contrivance and oxymoron. Any idea of divine permission or allowance goes out the window once one accepts the notion that God has exhaustively foreordained all things. In Calvinistic theology, persons may (and often do) ‘disobey’ the ‘preceptive will’ of God (sometimes referred to as God’s revealed will), but that is only because God, according to an all-encompassing eternal decree, determined via his hidden, secret ‘decretive will’ that such ‘disobedience’ would occur. God has foreordained all things; all things that he has foreordained will come to pass. The only sense in which Calvinism may speak coherently of ‘permission’ is perhaps in saying that God permits himself to do something (i.e. God permits himself to choose one course over another).

In my judgement, the language of divine permission or allowance belongs strictly within the realm of free-will theism and not deterministic theologies like Calvinism.

[Jedidiah]

"Predestination and free will are not mutually exclusive."

[The Remonstrant]

"Predestination and free will are not mutually exclusive."

Firstly, one must distinguish between types of predestination or election in Scripture. For example, when one speaks of predestination or election, is vocational or salvific election in view? The two ought not be conflated. Secondly, when discussing election to salvation (specifically individual election), theological determinists and free-will theists alike affirm the doctrine (with the exception of open theists). The difference lies in whether salvific election is to be understood as conditional or unconditional in nature. Thirdly, when speaking of ‘free will’, what is intended by the use of this term? One may speak of a ‘deterministic freedom’ or human freedom that is compatible (i.e. not at odds) with determinism, but this view (compatibilism) is not at all how ‘free will’ is typically understood in common discourse. Rather, what is meant by ‘free will’ is usually libertarian (contra-causal) freedom: free will so defined as to deny that freedom and determinism are compatible (i.e. incompatibilism).

Conditional election/predestination to salvation and libertarian human freedom may be held in tandem, but libertarian freedom and unconditional election/predestination to salvation are wholly incompatible.