John Calvin's thoughts on divine providence are not to be overlooked, regardless of one's evaluation of them. I continue to seek to gauge how the concept of divine permission fits into his scheme (as well as my own). Calvin judges that God decrees all things and within his decree allows certain things to happen but always with a view to working through them for his own good purposes. Yet often he gives the appearance of arguing that God always prods all agents to act in all the ways in which they act.
Here are two quotes from Calvin's section entitled "No Mere 'Permission!'" (Institutes, I, xviii, 1):
"[T]hat men can accomplish nothing except by God's secret command, that they cannot by deliberating accomplish anything except what he has already decreed with himself and determines by his secret direction, is proved by innumerable and clear testimonies (of Scripture)."
"[F]rom these (teachings of Scripture) it is more than evident that they babble and talk absurdly who, in place of God's providence, substitute bare permission - as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events, and his judgments thus depended on human will."
It's quite a task to weigh these statements' implications for our view of God and the spiritual life, but let us mark well that Calvin himself parses them in his Institutes, commenting that without such a view of providence life would be simply unbearable. In short, he was a man whose theology was intensely practical and pastoral.
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