Primary and Secondary Causes

He gives the unspeakable privilege of using me, but He does not need me. He can bring His will to pass without me and without you. How do things, in the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, come to pass? Does God use means?

And if He does, does He need to? That's what R.C. Sproul will address today on Renewing Your Mind as we continue our study of God's providence as summarised in the Westminster Confession.

As R.C. Sproul just mentioned, God does not need us to bring about His will, and remembering this helps keep us humble and should fill us with gratitude for how He so often does use us in incredible ways, whether bringing a brother or sister comfort or sharing the good news of the Gospel with an unbeliever. Well, here's Dr. Sproul to continue this week's study on providence. We're going to continue now with our study of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and we've already begun our study of chapter 5 on the providence of God, and in our last session we looked at section 1 by way of introduction to this concept, and so now we're going to proceed by looking first at section 2. Section 2 reads as follows, 1. Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet by the same providence He ordered them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. Now if you recall in the opening chapters of the Confession, when we looked at the attributes of God, we already encountered this distinction between God as the first cause and the idea of secondary causes, particularly in chapter 3, which treated the eternal decrees of God. We remember that somewhat troublesome introduction that God doth from all eternity freely and immutably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, and then there was a fixed semicolon, and then after we gasped in relief, it went on to say, but not in such a way as to do violence to the will of the creature or to eliminate secondary causes.

And if you recall when we were looking at chapter 3, I talked about that distinction between primary and secondary causality. I'll revisit it in this session to refresh your memories, but before I do it, let me just say that in the seventeenth century in which this confession of faith was drawn up, the century itself has been called the age of reason. And part of the crisis of the seventeenth century followed on revolutions that were taking place not only in the realm of religion, but also in the realm of science.

And there was a crisis abroad of authority. The sixteenth century saw the greatest schism in the history of Christendom with the Protestant Reformation, which involved the revolt from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, where people in the church prior to the Protestant Reformation in a sense were at ease in Zion because they had what Augustine called a fides implicitum, an implicit faith or trust in whatever the church taught them. And again, part of the crisis in the sixteenth century arose from two directions on the one hand with the Protestant Reformation that said no to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

And at the same time with the Lutheran Reformation, you had the Copernican revolution in the world of science where Copernicus was challenging theories that the physicists and astronomers had held dear for centuries and also had been embraced by the Roman Catholic Church. And so when the seventeenth century dawned, the question was this, who do we trust? Where does our authority come from? How can we know the truth? And so the central concern of seventeenth-century philosophy was in the field of epistemology, which is that subset of philosophy that deals with questions of knowledge. How do I know what I know? And, of course, the seventeenth century was dominated by the school of rationalism, first by Rene Descartes and his disciples, Malebranche and Golinks and so on, followed by people like Leibniz and Spinoza who spelled out their doctrines of rational thought.

But one of the concerns was, is there any room still for God in the world? Or does the world operate, as I mentioned in our last session, strictly on the basis of fixed mechanical laws that are inherent within nature? And the philosophers of the seventeenth century, particularly Descartes, made this important distinction between primary and secondary causality. Again, the scientific question was, what is it that makes things happen? What causes the stars to behave the way they do?

What causes the planets to move in the orbits in which they move? What causes physical disease to emerge that threaten our lives? They were interested in isolating those factors that bring about an effect, either a desired effect or an undesired effect in our experience. And so there was a search for the power of causality. And this is where we find this distinction between primary and secondary causality. And as I illustrated it before, I said if I pick up this pencil and I make a decision in my mind and I have a thought, and of course Descartes wrestled with this, how can a thought which is not physical, it's immaterial, produce a physical reaction?

How can I just think in my mind that I want to drop this pen and then translate that into action? And it happens. So from the nonphysical comes the physical. From mind comes matter. And how do mind and matter interact was the question that Descartes was asking. And again, the question was where is God in all of this? And so many of the thinkers of that time were churchmen, and they were aware of classical Christian theism. And while they were studying the phenomena of daily occurrences in the realm of observation, they also had a concept of God that was deeply embedded in their consciousness. And I referred at the time when we looked at this earlier back to Paul's discussion at Athens in Acts 17 when he debated the philosophers at the Areopagus there in Mars Hill and made the statement, in God, in Him, we live and move and have our being. And I mentioned that the three great problems that ancient philosophy sought to explain were the mysteries of life, motion, and being.

Those were the three big questions. How do we account for life? Are we cosmic accidents that emerge spontaneously from the slime?

Are we grown-up germs, and is that all we are? Or is there some purpose in the beginnings and origin of human existence? Are we the result of a purposive act of creation by a supernatural, transcendent being?

I mean, that's a huge question, isn't it? And the answer to that question determines how you live your life. And then, of course, what about motion? If the law of inertia is true that bodies that are at rest tend to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, or bodies in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, how do you explain the beginning of anything? If we talk today in terms of Big Bang cosmology and you say eighteen million years ago or a billion years ago that all of reality, all matter and energy was composed in this tiny point of singularity, in a point of total organization, and it was in this state of inertia eternally until one Friday afternoon at three o'clock it blew up. Well, the question that nobody wants to ask or at least nobody wants to answer is, why did it move?

What caused that change of all change from organization to disorganization? And unless we have a supernatural, transcendent power to make that outside force change, then we're left in total mystery there, not only in theology but in science as well. And so the ancient thinkers, they were missing, well, we've got to account for motion. Aristotle understood that there has to be a prime mover to get things started in the first place. And what about being, which was the supreme question of the metaphysics of the ancient thinkers?

And so in the book of Acts, Paul talks about this. Look, the answer to all these questions in terms of origin is that the origin of life, the ground of life, the power of life is found in the one who is self-existently alive for eternity, that apart from God there can be no life, and apart from God who has motion in and of Himself there can be no motion, and apart from God who alone has the power of being within Himself nothing could possibly be. Again, the oldest question there is, is why is there something rather than nothing? And as I say ad nauseam is if there ever was a time when there is nothing, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing.

The only thing that could possibly be right now would be nothing, because the one thing you can take to the bank is that you can't get something out of nothing. So something somewhere somehow must have the power of being within itself where nothing could be. It's that simple, and it really is simple. It's not rocket science.

It's very simple. But they're now stressing with what is the relationship between supreme being and lesser being, between the ultimate source of motion and the motions that we go through. I mean the framers of the Westminster Confession along with the rationalists of the seventeenth century were not saying that the activities that we carry on are mere illusions. They say creatures have real power. I can decide to move my hand and move it. I can set things in motion. I can swing a golf club, and if I'm good enough I can actually hit the ball and make it go someplace.

It's not always where I want it to go, but I can make it move. And so we understand that creatures have been endowed with certain powers, the power to make decisions, the power to make choices, the power to be involved in various activities. Yet at the same time, as the Apostle teaches us, the power that I have, which is real power, is a derived power. It's a dependent power. It's not inherent.

It's not eternal. Whatever power resides in me, whatever power resides in atoms is always dependent upon the prior power that is found in God. I move, but my motion is in Him. And without the primary causality operating, without God's power, all creatures would be powerless, so that whatever power we have must always be understood as being, as real as it is, still must always be understood as being secondary rather than primary. And this is where we run into this in the doctrine of providence.

God is the ultimate cause of everything that comes to pass. But we don't just sit around and watch what God is going to do next. We are actors in this drama. We are involved.

We're making decisions. We're running. We're striving.

We're hoping. We have aspirations. We plan. We work.

We labor and do everything that we can do. And what we can do is real stuff, but it's always dependent upon the power of God. Remember, James tells us if you say that you're going to do something next week, don't forget to say, Deo volente, God willing. It could be that next Thursday there'll be no church here. It could be next Thursday all of us will have vanished from the earth.

We don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And so all my plans are always subordinate to the sovereign providence of God. They are under His power because if I choose to pick this up and throw it, He can stop me. If God doesn't want me to throw this, He can vaporize me right now, can't He?

Or He can choose to let me do it. But my power, though it is real, is always secondary and dependent. And we need to understand that. Now again, I want to emphasize both sides of that coin, that the power is secondary, not primary, but it is real power. And that's why the framers of the Confession talk about how God orders these things to fall out according to the nature of secondary causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently. That is, God brings His will to pass, sometimes through necessity, sometimes through letting the creature exercise His will, and as the creature exercises will, the creature in exercising his will and doing what the creature wants to do, as it were, plays right into God's hands. We see this, and we've looked at it in the doctrine of concurrence, whereby God works through human decisions.

We see that most plainly in the cross where God from all eternity by His determinate counsel had His Son delivered into the hands of the Gentiles to be killed. And yet God also chose to work through human agency in bringing His will to pass, and it was through the machinations of people like Judas that that took place. Now it wasn't like Judas was grabbed by the scruff of the neck, and God forced Judas against His will to do what Judas didn't want to do. No, Judas did exactly what Judas wanted to do, and God made use of his decision just as we see it in Job, where in Job the Chaldeans come and they steal Job's cattle, not because God forced them to do it, but they were cattle rustlers from the beginning.

They had their eyes on that cattle, but God's hand had restrained them. And now He says, go for it. And so He brings to pass what He will, but He will use secondary causes. He will use you, and He will use me to bring things to pass. Now, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

Let me just go to section 3 quickly because this ties so closely with section 2. God in His ordinary providence, later on we'll learn about His extraordinary providence, but for now, in His ordinary providence makes use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them at His own pleasure. Now that first one is, I mean I get questions all the time from people. If God is sovereign, really sovereign, and ordains all things, why should I care about preaching? Why should I care about evangelism? Why should I pray?

Well, what's the answer to that? Well, obviously, first of all, because God commands us to preach, and God commands us to evangelize, and God commands us to pray. But more importantly, it's not that we're just being obedient robots, robots in all of this, but God has been pleased in determining the ends that He wants to bring to pass, has chosen certain means to bring about those ends. And the New Testament tells us He has chosen the foolishness of preaching as the means by which to bring people to Himself. And He gives us the unspeakable privilege of being involved in His redemptive purposes.

Now people aren't redeemed because I pray for them, but God in His providence calls us to pray, and He will use the prayers of His people as the means or the instruments to bring about His purposes. So again, He has an end in view. He wants something to happen, but He doesn't just think through, okay, let's have it happen.

He said, let's see how it's going to happen. I'm going to choose the intermediate steps He does. I'm going to choose how I'm brought to pass, and I'm going to include my creatures in this drama of redemption. I'm going to use them as my instruments, as the means by which I bring my will to pass. But now again, the Confession is quick to add that God ordinarily and usually makes use of means, but He doesn't have to.

Let's remember that. He gives me the unspeakable privilege of using me, but He does not need me. He can bring His will to pass, thank you very much, very easily and very well without me and without you.

And there are times that He works directly and immediately without any means, without any human agency. You remember at the Red Sea, at the Exodus, and the great work there, that when Israel was cornered and Moses and his people stood between Migdal and the sea, trapped, nowhere to go, the sea in front of them, the chariots of Pharaoh behind him. And Moses raised his hand, and what happened? God opened the Red Sea, but He didn't just say, let it be opened. Rather, He created this strong wind, and the wind became His instrument to part the seas.

But He could have done it without the wind. We see Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. He doesn't use any means.

He simply calls Lazarus forth from the dead, and Lazarus comes to life. So sometimes God uses means. Sometimes He works immediately. That means without means, not just quickly or right now, but without means, without an intermediary helps. He operates immediately, sovereignly without those means. But ordinarily He uses the means, but they remind us that He's not dependent upon those means. He can work without them. He can work above them.

He can work above them, and He can work against them. He can work against our desires. He's not dependent upon what we want to bring about what He wants. It's a wonderful thing when what He wants and what we want are the same. But if God is determined to bring something to pass, He's going to bring it to pass even if we oppose it with our will.

That's what it means that He is sovereign, and we are not. And so we see that in this section 2 and section 3 that we are to be reminded that God operates His providence according to His sovereignty, according to His good pleasure. The New Testament speaks about the good pleasure of His will. In a sense, that sentence is redundant because God doesn't have any pleasure except that which is good. There's no dark side to God's pleasure. God is never pleased with doing something evil. And so if we say that God works according to the pleasure of His will, we shouldn't have to add that it's according to the good pleasure of His will. But because we rebel against Him and question His judgment and are hostile towards His action and sometimes think that what He does is bad, we are reminded that what pleases God is always the good. That's integral to our understanding of His providence.

You're listening to the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and that was R.C. Sproul teaching on the providence of God from the Westminster confession of faith. As I've read, studied, and taught from this confession over the years, I've always appreciated how thoughtful, deliberate, and systematic those who wrote it were as they carefully walk through key areas of Christian doctrine.

So I would encourage you to request a copy of Truths We Confess so you can not only have this historic confession but also have Dr. Sproul's insights and explanation to help you in your study or simply for devotional reflection. It can be yours when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you call Ligonier Ministries with your donation at 800 435 4343. Renewing Your Mind has been listener supported for 30 years, so thank you for continuing to fuel this daily outreach. Make your donation using the link in the podcast show notes or at renewingyourmind.org today. We've been talking about providence and God's sovereignty this week, so what about evil? How did that come into the world? Be sure to join us tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. you