Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877) on the Term “Decree”

§ 2. Of the Terms used to denote the Doctrine.

The term purpose is equivalent to the term decrees. The word decree is in some respects unfortunate, because misunderstood so frequently. Decree is used ordinarily, and in Scripture, in the sense of edict or law, that which God commands. But the theological usage takes the word not in the sense of command or approbation on God’s part, but of what He permits or determines to be done as a whole plan. It does not imply moral approval on the side of God, or fate or necessity on the side of the act, but it does imply certainty. Of the general decree of God, predestination is a part. The decree of God embraces all that occurs; predestination is technically a part of the divine decree, and is used of that which relates to moral beings, and especially to their final condition (although predestination really applies to every event of their history as well as to their final destiny). As thus used it implies that man’s final state is involved in God’s plan, yet never without respect to what has gone before, rather as being the sum of what has gone before. Predestination contains the end only as containing the sum total of what has gone before.

Henry Boynton Smith, System of Christian Theology (New York A.C. Armstrong, 1884), 117.

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