Divine Decree Research Articles

Begetting extraordinary humans

We are very grateful to Verso Books for giving us the permission to publish this version of Chapter eight (Fifth component 2), The metamorphosis of kinship, Verso (2012).

Jonathan Edwards and the lapsarian debate

AbstractContrary to what might be expected from such a thinker, Jonathan Edwards was restrained in conversation with the Reformed debate about the order of the divine decrees, known as the infralapsarian/supralapsarian debate. I will address Edwards's caution regarding this particular debate: first, by tracing the contours of the broader Reformed debate on the divine decrees and its evolution from engagement of Arminian theology to that of theodicy; second, by noting where Edwards does not speak to this debate and exegeting the few passages where he does take it up; third, by analysing the particular questions that Edwards addresses when he does engage the debate; fourth, by pointing to constructive lessons gained by understanding why a careful thinker might be atypically silent. I will demonstrate that Edwards engaged the lapsarian debate insofar as was necessary to rebuke the Arminian denial of unconditional election, yet he refused to engage the debate as a means of articulating a theodicy. In both his engagement and disengagement, Edwards refused to answer the debate on its standard terms and offers an example of carefully crafting doctrine according to theological and contextual concerns.

Radical mathematical Thomism: beings of reason and divine decrees in Torricelli’s philosophy of mathematics

Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647) is perhaps best known for being the most gifted of Galileo’s pupils, and for his works based on indivisibles, especially his stunning cubature of an infinite hyperboloid. Scattered among Torricelli’s writings, we find numerous traces of the philosophy of mathematics underlying his mathematical practice. Though virtually neglected by historians and philosophers alike, these traces reveal that Torricelli’s mathematical practice was informed by an original philosophy of mathematics. The latter was dashed with strains of Thomistic metaphysics and theology. Torricelli’s philosophy of mathematics emphasized mathematical constructs as human-made beings of reason, yet mathematical truths as divine decrees, which upon being discovered by the mathematician ‘appropriate eternity’. In this paper, I reconstruct Torricelli’s philosophy of mathematics—which I label radical mathematical Thomism—placing it in the context of Thomistic patterns of thought.

The Enforceability of Arbitration Decisions Made by Muslim Religious Tribunals: examining The Beth Din Precedent

The figures of both Moses and Muhammad stand in the United States Supreme Court, included among the great lawgivers of history depicted in two friezes along the North and South walls of the Courtroom. Moses, who is seen carrying the Ten Commandments, is honored as the “prophet, lawgiver, and judge of the Israelites,” with the Supreme Court's tourist information sheet explaining that “Mosaic Law” is “based on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.” Muhammad is described as the “Prophet of Islam” and carries both a sword and the Qur'an, the “primary source of Islamic law.”Yet the parallel depictions of these two prophets in the U.S. Supreme Court belie the very different respect that the laws they are associated with have received in the U.S. judicial system. Jewish law or legal principles are generally cited by courts with approval, often to add perceived moral and ethical authority to a court's decision. For example, in the U.S. Supreme Court's well-known Miranda v. Arizona decision, the Court declared that the privilege against self-incrimination was an ancient right, with analogues that could be found in the Bible, quoting the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides for support: “To sum up the matter, the principle that no man is to be declared guilty on his own admission is a divine decree.”

English Molinism in the Late 1590S: Richard Hooker on Free Will, Predestination, and Divine Foreknowledge

Set in the context of the Cambridge debates on grace and predestination in the 1590s, and of the wider controversy in the Reformed and Roman Catholic churches from 1580 to 1620, this article examines how Richard Hooker endeavoured to show the compatibility of his radical views on the freedom of the will and the resistibility of grace with his Augustinian doctrine of predestination. Particular attention is paid to Hooker's late manuscript defence, written shortly before his death in 1600, in which he responded to the charge that his views were heterodox and reminiscent of the dangerous opinions recently spread abroad in England by men like Samuel Harsnet and Peter Baro. The precise extent to which Hooker's views on predestination fell within or outside the Reformed tradition is carefully evaluated, especially as regards the order of the divine decrees and the crucial distinction he makes between God's antecedent and consequent will. Key to understanding this question is Hooker's doctrine of divine foreknowledge, a subject which has received no significant scholarly treatment to date; it is argued that (at about the same time as Jacob Arminius) he incorporated the highly controversial Molinist concept of divine 'middle' knowledge (scientia media) into his work.

The Value of Flextime

Islamic flextime is derived from a divine decree that convenience is the organizing principle of cosmic construction. Rigid temporal frameworks restrict freedom and may even impede human happiness, social harmony, and economic efficiency. This essay explains the foundation of Islamic temporality. Islam teaches that human beings can use temporality but they have no control over time, just as they can benefit from sunlight but cannot conquer the sun. A flexible notion of temporality facilitates the performance of obligations, without repudiating the core concepts of punctuality and time commitments. Islamic flextime is an accommodation principle that respects individual needs and mitigates personal hardships. The essay associates Islamic flextime with creative dreaming and inter-generational exegesis of divine texts. Creative dreaming is possible because the human mind can freely mix and match times and places to construct novel combinations. Inter-generational exegesis repudiates originalism rooted in fixed temporality and empowers each new generation to receive and interpret divine texts.

Political Equality, Then and Now

For this audience l hardly need to quote Tocqueville often-cited opening remarks in the first volume of his Democracy in America on “the general equality of conditions” that, he believed, prevailed among Americans in 1830. You are all familiar, too, with his observation that equality of condition had gradually spread in France since the eleventh century, and his conclusion that the gradual development of the equality of conditios is... a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a Divine decree: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events ass well as all men contribute to its progress.

Observações críticas acerca da noção Leibniziana de decretos divinos possíveis

Este artigo apresenta, em primeiro lugar, uma reconstrução conceitual das razões que levam Leibniz, em sua correspondência com Arnauld, a introduzir o conceito de decretos divinos possíveis. Em um segundo momento, o artigo desenvolve alguns argumentos para demonstrar que a introdução desse conceito torna inconsistente a arquitetônica global da metafísica leibniziana.

The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards: A Study in Divine Semiotics.

PREFACE INTRODUCTION I. The Prospect of Semiotics The Invitation of Typology The Semiotic Context The Renaissance Episteme II. The Discourse of Typology The Vocabulary of Nature Two Texts: Nature and Scripture The Nature of Typological Relations III. The Logics of Creation The Stoicism of Ramist Logic The Ontology of Supposition Corporeality and Mentality as Rhetorical Placement IV. The Trinity and Creation The Logic of the Trinity Why God Creates V. The Ontology of Original Sin The Fall The Imputation of Subjectivity VI. Freedom and Moral Agency Intentionality of Will as Philosophical Necessity Divine Decrees and Foreknowledge Virtue as Consent VII. The Knowledge of Beauty Consent Knowledge and Grace Concluding Remarks: The Porpriety of Christ BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

The Will to Knowledge and the Process of Narrative in Paradise Lost

THE WILL TO KNOWLEDGE AND THE PROCESS OF N ARRATIVE IN PARADISE LOST O N N O O E R L E M A N S Yale University Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that came not thither so. . . . Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence of God, who, though he command us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before us, even to a profuseness, all desirable things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety. (Areopagitica, 733)1 O n e of Milton’s great achievements as a poet is his representation of the psychology of choice, his depiction of the complexity of consciousness as it struggles to know itself and its limitations. Notwithstanding the condem­ nation by the narrator of Paradise Lost of the fallen angels who on a Hill retir’d, In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate, Fixt Fate, Free will, Foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost, (II, 557-61) Milton is himself centrally concerned with recovering an understanding of what is a central paradox of Christianity and western metaphysics: namely, how man can be obedient to the laws of God (and causality) and accepting of the idea of His omniscience, while at the same time he maintains a notion of the essential freedom of his own acts. That is, if God is the first cause, and “fate can be nothing but a divine decree” ( Christian Doctrine, 905), how is it that man can maintain a sense of his own originality, of his responsibility for his own being? Calvin ultimately banished the idea of responsibility and freedom altogether, but Milton becomes almost obsessively concerned with demonstrating the fundamental freedom of man’s will. J.B. Savage has suc­ cinctly outlined the centrality of the concern for freedom in both the prose and poetry of Milton, arguing that Milton could not accept the incoherence of a system of morality that allowed for either “a fugitive and cloistered E n g l i s h S t u d i e s i n C a n a d a , x v i , i , M a r c h 1 9 9 0 virtue, unexercised and unbreathed” (Areopagitica, 728), or predetermined reprobation. Milton rejects both notions because they deny responsibility or self-agency to the individual consciousness. Milton thus distinguishes himself from Calvin by granting only a corre­ spondence or co-existence between God’s foreknowledge and fate, and not a necessary and determining connection: But if God foresaw that man would fall of his own free will, there was no occasion for any decree relative to the fall itself, but only relative to the provision to be made for man, whose future fall was foreseen. Since then the apostacy of the first man was not decreed, but only foreknown by the infinite wisdom of God, it follows that predestination was not an absolute decree before the fall of man. ( Christian Doctrine, 918) It is the nature of this correspondence that I wish to examine, for it im­ plies an extraordinary paradox in which the external laws of God become fundamentally internal — an integral part of a free consciousness. The will of God becomes transposed into the will of man. The nature of this trans­ lation, however, is an extremely problematic one, involving an oscillation between the will to a kind of pure, self-fathering freedom emblematized by Satan, and the absolute obedience of Christ. This dialectic, I shall argue, is fundamentally in the process of narrative itself. In telling the story of the origin of man, Milton struggles between an obedience to received material that has its origin ultimately in God Himself, and the desire to create some form original in itself, and for himself. Furthermore, the process of narra­ tive becomes, through this dialectic...

Change and Continuity in the Minangkabau Matrilineal System

It is said that in Minangkabau society in ancient times, property was given to one's children instead of to one's kemanakan (one's sororal nieces and nephews).1 One day, Datuk Katumanggungan and Datuk Perpatih nan Sebatang, the two founders of the Minangkabau adat, wished to go to Aceh. After they sailed out from the port of Tiku/Pariaman on the west coast, the sea suddenly ebbed, for that was the divine decree of God. As a consequence, their ship ran aground on the The two datuk gathered all their children and kemanakan together and said, Hai, children and kemanakan, let us tow this ship, because it has run aground on the sand. Their children answered, We are afraid that we will be run over by the Their kemanakan replied, If that is the wish of our elders, let us tow the ship. It does not matter even if we are run over by the ship and killed in the process, for it is the ship of our elders that has run aground. All the kemanakan then got off onto the sand and pulled the ship. With the assistance of the spirits, the ship floated again of itself and moved to the middle of the sea. Later, following the advice of Cati Bilang Pandai, their able servant, the two datuk decreed that from that time on all the property was to be given, not to the children, but to the kemanakan as a reward of their services. In this way, according to the tambo (traditional historiography), did the matrilineal system in Minangkabau society originate.

"Account Mee Man": The Incarnation in "Paradise Lost"

MILTON'S TREATMENT of the soteriological aspects of the doctrine of the Redemption is remarkably subtle; it attests to the depth of thought in his theological system, and it gives further evidence of his nearly total conformity to the orthodox Christian tradition that gives dramatic enrichment to his epic of lost paradise. The Incarnation was the means whereby the Redemption was to be fulfilled. But the actual motive for the Incarnation, which has a direct bearing on the doctrine of the Redemption, presents a controversy that has intrigued thinkers down through the ages, Milton not excluded. The Incarnation was dictated by two principal motives: the glorification of Christ and compassion for the misery of mankind. But the problem is which one of these two motives outweighed the other. One school of thought places the Incarnation prior to all else and independent of the fall of man; another places it wholly contingent upon man's transgression. Those who posit the Incarnation as first conceive of the absolute predestination of Christ and his divine kingdom as primary to everything and all other divine decrees, with the permission of the sin of Adam and the mission of Christ as passible Redeemer of mankind as secondary.' Those who relegate the Incarnation to a secondary position hold that God created the universe without regard to Christ, decreed subsequently to permit sin, and lastly determined on the Incarnation of the Logos for the purpose of redeeming the human race.2

Jewish Law and Modern Medicine

Before discussing some problems of the Halachah and modern medicine, I must spend a little time on the halachic view of the nature of the physician's responsibility and the authority he possesses in applying his knowledge and training.The school of Rabbi Ishmael, to whom an important and entire system of exegetical rules for expounding the Torah is attributed, regarded the passage in Exodus xxi, 19, “and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed”, as the source of the physician's authority to practice his healing craft. These words were construed literally, in denial of the fatalism found in various religions and philosophies of those and later times, and which asked: “how can man presume to try to heal and, so to speak, to interfere with divine decree when the hand of Providence strikes?” Rabbi Ishmael's comment is especially significant since he was not merely an outstanding halachic sage but also a physician engaged in the practice of medicine.

Matthew Simpson and the Mission of America

In the American self-consciousness from its beginning to the present there has existed a firm conviction that this nation is destined, either by divine decree or circumstances, for a unique place among the peoples of the earth. One form of this is the assumption that the United States will provide the great example which others will want to follow. The classic expression of this was given by John Winthrop aboard the Arbella, but equally valid ones can be found in the words of modern Americans. Winthrop said:We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations ‘The Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.

God's Eternal Decrees

In the first two numbers of the Scottish Journal of Theology the Rev. J. K. S. Reid contributed an interesting and enlightening treatment of The Office of Christ in Predestination. Taking as his main theme the classic doctrine of Predestination, he showed the “deplorable consequences”, particularly in the Calvinist tradition, that have followed a failure to realise the part played by Christ in Predestination. The limitation of Christ's function to the carrying out of “something already fixed and definitive”, or the idea of His giving effect to “a decree in whose formation He has apparently had no hand”, are shown to do dangerous injustice to His true office, in the suggestion that the divine decrees are somehow prior to the divine grace.

The New England Theologians

The New England theology was chiefly concerned with three great issues-all fundamentally metaphysical and to some extent ethical-arising out of the effort to square the Calvinistic system with the demands of rational and moral thinking. The first of these was the issue between sovereignty and benevolence; the second, that between determinism and freedom; the third, that between total depravity and true virtue. These issues appeared and reappeared in their sermons and writings with what seems to us wearisome persistence-a form, doubtless, of the perseverance of the saints. All of these problems, although not raised de novo by Jonathan Edwards, profoundest of American thinkers, were thrust upon the American people by his eager and speculative mind., Edwards left a yawning chasm between his extreme Calvinistic interpretation of the doctrine of sovereignty (including divine decrees) and his representation of God as benevolence-a gulf of which he himself seemed strangely oblivious. It was the task of his pupils and friends, Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins and their successors, to relate and if possible reconcile these contradictory doctrines which Edwards himself treated as if they were