Theological Term of the Week

 

decretive will
“[T]hat will of God by which He purposes or decrees whatever shall come to pass, whether He wills to accomplish it effectively (causatively), or to permit it to occur through the unrestrained agency of His rational creatures1; the plan of God which contains everything he has determined to bring to pass. Also called sovereign will, secret will, or will of God’s good pleasure.

• From scripture:

  Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15 ESV)

  [F]or truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27-28 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession, 1689:

  1._____ God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein; nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established; in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing his decree.
  

  2._____ Although God knoweth 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.

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem:

  God’s secret will includes his hidden decrees by which he governs the universe and determines everything that will happen. He does not ordinarily reveal these decrees to us (except in prophecies of the future), so these decrees really are God’s “secret” will. We find out what God has decreed when events actually happen. Because this secret will of God has to do with his decreeing of events in the world, this aspect of God’s will is sometimes also called God’s will of decree.
  
  …[M]any passages speak of God’s secret will. When James tells us to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that” (James 4:15), he cannot be talking about God’s revealed will or will of precept, for with regard to many of our actions we know that it is according to God’s command that we do one or another activity that we we have planned. Rather, to trust in the secret will of God overcomes pride and expresses humble dependence on God’s sovereign control over the events of our lives.

Learn more:

1. R. C. Sproul: Comprehending the Decretive Will of God
   
2. Sam Storms: Are There Two Wills in God?
3. James Petigru Boyce: The Will of God
4. Tim Keller: God’s Secret and Revealed Will (mp3)
5. S. Lewis Johnson: The Will of God (audio and transcript)

Related terms: 

• decree(s) of God
• preceptive will 

1From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof.  

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Round the Sphere Again: Critters Are Creatures

The Eyes Have It 
Ten creatures with magnificent eyes. (Environmental Graffiti) Find out, for instance, the advantage square pupils give a goat.

Move Over, Great Wall of China
Here are “the only known photographs of the world’s biggest beaver dam, which is so big it can be seen from space.” (Times Colonist)

The Whole Tail Tale

Two weeks ago, youngest son and the dogs almost ran into a moose in the bush right above the house, and a couple of days ago a young coyote tried to play with the pup. It’s the time of the year, I guess, for running into wildlife.

All the wildlife talk has made youngest daughter afraid that she’ll have a bear encounter on her daily runs. It didn’t help things that oldest son saw two grizzlies while driving on Saturday. Today, then, she took the pup running with her. It’s for protection, she thinks, but I’m pretty sure he’d be no good in a bear attack. He may be big, but he’s a big chicken. I didn’t tell her that because he loves going with her and anything to use up some of his energy is a good thing.

So I’ve been thinking, you see, of this post from almost exactly five years ago. I’ve edited it, updated links when I could (some are gone forever), and posted it again because I can and I want to.

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I take questions about my posts seriously and try to answer them whenever I can, even if it means I have to tackle controversial subjects. So when Kim asked a question about the length of bears’ tails (“….don’t bears have little stubby tails?”) on this post, I felt obligated to look into it for her. I had no idea that this would be the most controversial subject I’ve ever researched, one with more disagreement among the experts than even the Calvinism/Arminianism debate.

The experts do all agree on one thing: the official description of a bear’s tail is stumpy, not stubby. But they can’t agree on how long the bear’s stumpy tail actually is. The bear’s tail is “a small, furry flap of skin measuring only about 4.8 inches in length,” says the American Bear Association, while other sites give measurements from two inches to eight. I suppose it depends on the type and size of the individual bear.

I should to be able to answer this question from personal experience, but I can’t. I accidentally saw the back end of a bear up close once, and it wasn’t the tail I noticed, but the overpowering smell. Take my compost pile on a hot July day and turn up the smell control five whole turns and you might have something close to the smell of that bear. Bears, it seems, are not big on personal hygiene. This works well for them, at least if they’re looking to keep the precise length of their tails hidden from the casual observer.

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