“Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory” (VI.1).
God did not permit the fall; He ordained and actively caused the fall for His own glory. “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things: to whom be glory forever” (Romans 11:36). God caused the fall so that all those whom He has covenanted with to take away their sins may have the ungodliness of their unbelief turned away from them:
“And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins” (Romans 11:26-27).
The WCF men come to Romans 11:32–their alleged proof text–with the carnal a priori baggage that tells them that God cannot cause all whom Christ represented at the cross to remain in unbelief until His appointed time of mercy in which He sends the Spirit of His Son into their hearts (Galatians 4:6).
It was God’s will to actively cause the fall so that the elect and reprobate would be equally ruined and undone, equally guilty and defiled, and equally in need of a righteousness that neither could produce or be enabled to produce. God, in a righteous display of His holy wrath and power (Romans 9:22) actively causes the reprobate to hate His glory, persecute His people, and oppose His gospel, that He may justly punish them (Exodus 7:3; 9:12; Joshua 11:20; 1 Samuel 2:25; Psalm 105:25; Romans 9:18; Revelation 17:17).
Thus, while the elect are the children of wrath just as the reprobate are (Ephesians 2:3), God, who is rich in mercy chose to glorify Himself by saving those for whom Jesus Christ died, and those only, from the guilt and defilement of sin, by His atoning blood and imputed righteousness (Psalm 89:19-37; Isaiah 49:5-6; 53:11-12; Luke 22:29; John 6:37-40; 10:11, 15-16, 26-29; 17:2, 9; Galatians 3:16-18; 2 Timothy 1:9).
“For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all” (Romans 11:32).
The WCF apparently finds the extreme simplicity of Paul’s razor-sharp Creator/creature distinction quite perplexing (Romans 9:19-21). So perplexing is this distinction that they are compelled to dream up concepts that can only be applied to idols and not to the True and Living God. And thus the WCF men and those who believe like them are afraid of, and in rebellion against, God’s sovereign causing of evil. So they make up things that are absolutely unbiblical and anti-God in order to make God more palatable to their own and others’ depraved minds. To “permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory,” means that, at times, the creature is “permitted” to do things apart from God’s controlling sovereignty. This is blasphemy.
But what about passages in the Bible that say “God permits” or when the author of the letter to the Hebrews says “if God permits”? Since they were Christians and they know the simple, fundamental, and elementary truth that God is God, and are not wonderfully confused about the fact that they are not God then obviously phrases like “God allowed them to go their own way” etc., are figurative expressions.
Agrammatos 