John Howe (1630–1705) on God’s Revealed Will (Voluntas Beneplaciti, et Signi)

What’s significant about the following quote is that John Howe is saying that some theologians, who distinguish between the will of God’s good pleasure (voluntas beneplaciti) and will of sign (voluntas signi), do not think of the will of sign (or God’s revealed will) as a "will" (voluntas) at all. In effect, they think the only real will is God’s secret will (voluntas beneplaciti). They basically make a distinction without a difference in their system. Some think of God’s command as not indicating a desire or will in God for compliance, but that God only willed the command (or sign) itself. As one modern hyper-Calvinist put it, “It would be conducive to clarity if the term will were not applied to the precepts. Call the requirements of morality commands, precepts, or laws; and reserve the term will for the divine decree. These are two different things, and what looks like an opposition between them is not a self-contradiction” (Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation [Hobbs, NM: The Trinity Foundation, 1995], 222–223). Clark is doing what Vos describes (and tries to correct): "Some have denied that the existing [or the preceptive] will has the character of a will, and they wish to degrade it to merely a prescription. One must observe, however, that in God’s prescriptions His holy nature speaks and that in fact they are founded upon a strong desire in God" (Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics: Theology Proper, ed. R. B. Gaffin [Grand Rapids: Lexham Press, 2012–2014], 1:23). Howe also tried to correct this problem long again, and said that such conceptions of God’s will are not adequate to address the “ignominious slander which” men of “profane and atheistical dispositions would fasten upon God.”

I must here profess my dislike of the terms of that common distinction, the voluntas beneplaciti, et signi, in this present case. Under which, such as coined, and those that have much used it, have only rather, I doubt not, concealed a good meaning, than expressed by it an ill one. It seems, I confess, by its more obvious aspect, too much to countenance the ignominious slander which profane and atheistical dispositions would fasten upon God, and the course of his procedure towards men; and which it is the design of these papers to evince of as much absurdity and folly, as it is guilty of impiety and wickedness: as though he only intended to seem willing of what he really was not; that there was an appearance to which nothing did subesse. And then why is the latter called voluntas? Unless the meaning be, he did only will the sign; which is false and impious:—and if it were true, did he not will it with the will of good pleasure? And then the members of the distinction are confounded. Or, as if the evil actions of men were, more truly, the objects of his good pleasure, than their forbearance of them. And of these faults the application of the distinction of God’s secret will, and revealed, unto this case, though it be useful in many, is as guilty.

John Howe, “The Reconcilableness of God’s Prescience of the Sins of Men, with the Wisdom and Sincerity of His Counsels, Exhortations, and Whatsoever Means He Uses to Prevent Them,” in The Works of John Howe, 3 vols. (1848; repr. Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990), 2:502.

He also wrote:

Sect. XXII. And whereas it may be thought to follow hence, that hereby we ascribe to God a liableness to frustration, and disappointment, that is without pretence; the resolve of the divine will, in this matter, being not concerning the event, what man shall do, but concerning his duty, what he should; and concerning the connection between his duty, and his happiness: which, we say, he doth not only seem to will, but wills it really and truly. Nor would his prescience of the event, which we all this while assert, let frustration be so much as possible to him; especially, it being at once foreseen that his will, being crossed in this, would be fulfilled in so important a thing as the preserving the decorum of his own government;—which had been most apparently blemished, beyond what could consist with the perfections of the Deity, if either his will concerning man’s duty, or the declarations of that will, had not been substantially the same that they are. We are, therefore, in assigning the object of this or that act of the divine will, to do it entirely, and to take the whole object together, without dividing it, as if the will of God did wholly terminate upon what indeed is but a part (and especially if that be but a less considerable part) of the thing willed. In the present case, we are not to conceive that God only wills either man’s duty or felicity, or that herein his will doth solely and ultimately terminate; but, in the whole, the determination of God’s will is, that man shall be duly governed, that is, congruously both to himself, and him:—that such and such things, most congruous to both, shall be man’s duty; by his doing whereof the dignity and honour of God’s own government might be preserved, which was the thing principally to be designed, and in the first place; and, as what was secondarily thereto, that hereby man’s felicity should be provided for. Therefore, it being foreseen a violation would be done to the sacred rights of the divine government, by man’s disobedience, it is resolved they shall be repaired and maintained by other means. So that the divine will hath its effect, as to what was its more noble and principal design; the other part failing, only by his default whose is the loss.

And if yet it should be insisted, that in asserting God to will what by his laws he hath made become man’s duty, even where it is not done, we shall herein ascribe to him, at least, an ineffectual and an imperfect will, as which doth not bring to pass the thing willed;—it is answered, that imperfection were with no pretence imputable to the divine will, merely for its not effecting every thing, whereto it may have a real propension. But it would be more liable to that imputation, if it should effect any thing which it were less fit for him to effect, than not to effect it. The absolute perfection of his will stands in the proportion which every act of it bears to the importance of the thing about which it is conversant. Even as, with men, the perfection of any act of will is to be estimated, not by the mere peremptory sturdiness of it, but by its proportion to the goodness of the thing willed. Upon which account, a mere velleity, (as many love to speak,) when the degree of goodness in the object claims no more, hath unconceivably greater perfection in it, than the most obstinate volition. And since the event forbids us to admit that God did ever will the obedience and felicity of all, with such a will as should be effective thereof; if yet his plain word shall be acknowledged the measure of our belief in this matter, which so plainly asserts him some way to will the salvation of all men, it is strange if, hereupon, we shall not admit rather of a will not effective of the thing willed, than none at all.

The will of God is sufficiently to be vindicated from all imperfection, if he have sufficient reason for all the propensions and determinations of it, whether from the value of the things willed, or from his own sovereignty who wills them. In the present case, we need not doubt to affirm, that the obedience and felicity of all men is of that value, as whereunto a propension of will, by only simple complacency, is proportionable. Yet, that his not procuring as to all (by such courses as he more extraordinarily takes with some) that they shall, in event, obey and be happy, is upon so much more valuable reasons, (as there will be further occasion to show ere long) as that not to do it was more eligible, with the higher complacency of a determinative will. And since the public declarations of his good-will towards all men import no more than the former, and do plainly import so much; their correspondency to the matter declared is sufficiently apparent. And so is the congruity of both with his prescience of the event. For though, when God urges and incites men, by exhortations, promises, and threats, to the doing of their own part, (which it is most agreeable to his holy, gracious nature to do) he foresees many will not be moved thereby, but persist in wilful neglect and rebellions till they perish:—he, at the same time, sees that they might do otherwise, and that, if they would comply with his methods, things would otherwise issue with them; his prescience no way imposing upon them a necessity to transgress. For they do it, not because he foreknew it, but he only foreknew it, because they would do so. And hence he had, as it was necessary he should have, not only this for the object of his foreknowledge, that they would do amiss and perish: but the whole case in its circumstances, that they would do so, not through his omission, but their own. And there had been no place left for this state of the case, if his public edicts and manifestos had not gone forth, in this tenor as they have. So that the consideration of his prescience being taken in, gives us only, in the whole, this state of the case, that he foresaw men would not take that course which he truly declared himself willing they should, (and was graciously ready to assist them in it) in order to their own well-being. Whence all complaint of insincere dealing is left without pretence.

Ibid., 2:503–505.

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