Gary North wants to make a decisive distinction between God’s “favor” and “favors”-only allowing the latter to the reprobate. Hoeksema maintains the same sort of division. In his self-interrogating catechism he writes:
9. Is it then, not also true, that in these things of this present life both the godly and ungodly receive tokens of God’s favor toward them?
By no means; for, as it must be evident both from Scripture and experience that the evil things of this present life, such as sickness, pain, sorrow, adversity, poverty, yea, even death, are not sent to the godly in God’s wrath and to curse them; so it must be evident that the good things of this present life; are not sent to the wicked in God’s favor and to bless them. We must not confuse grace and things.
10. In what light, then, must we consider the things which in this life the godly and ungodly have in common, in order correctly to evaluate them and understand their significance?
In the light of eternity. All the things of the present life are but means to an eternal end. As they are received by us and employed by us as rational-moral creatures they all bear fruit, either to eternal life and glory, or to eternal death and desolation. If they tend to life they are bestowed on us in the grace of God and are a blessing, no matter whether they are in health or sickness, prosperity or adversity, life or death, for all things work together for good to them that love God; if they tend to death and damnation they are bestowed on us in God’s wrath and are a curse, even though our eyes stand out with fatness and we bathe in luxury. [Protestant Reformed Churches in America, pp. 313-314.]
Murray simply does not accept this sort of reasoning. He makes a distinction, using traditional dogmatic terminology between different sorts of ways in which God wills:
It is not to be forgotten that when it is said that God absolutely and universally takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, we are not here speaking of God’s decretive will. In terms of his decretive will it must be said that God absolutely decrees the eternal death of some wicked and, in that sense, is absolutely pleased so to decree. But in the text it is the will of God’s benevolence (voluntas eurastias) that is stated, not the will of God’s decree (voluntas eudokias). It is, in our judgment, quite unjustifiable to think that in this passage there is any reflection upon the decretive will of God . . . [Collected Writings, p. 125-126.]
Thus, it is simply wrong to insist that the end to which a thing (sunshine, rain, a presentation of the Gospel, etc.) will lead according to God’s immutable and infallible plan is the only consideration one should weigh in deciding whether it is a “favor” or represent’s God’s attitude of “favor.”
(Gary North’s distinction between a God giving reprobates “favors” instead of having an attitude of “favor” toward them seems unjustifiable. An argument that God has no attitude of “favor” toward the reprobate would also seem to prove that He gives them no favors but only snares to trap them in their ingratitude. The term “favor” as applied to things is just as much dependent on the attitude of the one giving them as it is when used to describe the attitude itself.)
To use different terminology, Murray is rejecting an exclusively teleological approach to understanding God’s actions. Is this rejection warranted?
Yes, because an exclusively teleological approach would lead one to accuse God of hating His creatures without cause. This is the case because reprobation has occurred apart from depravity on the part of those who were reprobate. For instance, when the Devil and his angels first fell, they fell from grace. Their punishment was and will be determined in part by how much they had received from God, for which they were not properly grateful. Furthermore, God gave many favors to Adam and Eve–for all of which they were held accountable. Every good and perfect gift which God gave to Adam and Eve only added to the perversity of their sin. Unless one denies that, “from everyone who has been given much shall much be required,” is a universal principle, one simply cannot deny that all the favors shown to Satan, Adam, and Eve simply magnified the seriousness of their sin and the severity of their condemnation.
But does this fact mean that God did not love Adam and Eve? Were Adam and Eve, knowing that it was possible that they might Fall, supposed to infer that God might not love them? Were they supposed to wonder about all the good things they had been given by God–to worry that maybe God was “setting them up”? To ask such questions is to answer them. God unambiguously revealed His love for Adam and Eve in all the blessings which He lavished upon them. To claim otherwise is to take sides with the Serpent who ascribed horrible and underhanded motives to God.
Of course, it is hard to understand how God could love a creature and predestine his sin. But this is simply a problem that theists are going to have to live with. For an attempt to get a handle on the postlapsarian aspect to this problem, see Piper’s discussion of “The Infinitely Complex Emotional Life of God” (The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God [Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1991],p. 66). He asks if it is any more problematic to speak of God both loving and hating the wicked than it is to consider God simultaneously grieving and rejoicing and empathizing in other ways with millions of Christians around the world.
Keep in mind that this is not an exclusively “calvinist” problem but one that besets any form of Christian classical theism. Anyone who admits that God knows the future, even if he rejects foreordination, is going to have problems understanding how God maintains a genuinely loving relationship with his ethical creatures. If God knows that John Smith will reject the Gospel, and yet brings it about that John Smith is offered the Gospel, isn’t God merely guilty of entrapment? Likewise, if God knows that every privilege and blessing He gives to Satan, Adam, and Eve will be eventually rejected and exacerbate their sin, then isn’t God enticing them into a greater rebellion? How can He possibly view His gifts to such creatures to be “good” for them when He knows evil will result?
It is hard to quite get one’s mind around this problem, but the answer has to be that God’s blessings are blessings apart from the ends to which they lead. Grace is grace, even if it leads to reprobation. God’s offer is sincere, and His mercy–even His non-saving mercy–is genuine. The Bible speaks both of sincere offers and certain reprobation. The Bible, it seems, does not deny the reality of teleology in God’s plan, but it does not allow teleology to exhaustively explain God’s feelings toward people, or our interpretation of his gracious acts of providence.