The unmerited favor and love of God which He cherishes toward all sinners in Christ Jesus is called also God’s good and gracious will. 1 Tim. 2, 4: ὅϑεὸς ϑέλει. On the basis of clear Scripture-passages depicting God’s disposition toward mankind we speak of the divine will as being ordinate, conditional, antecedent and consequent, revealed and hidden, etc. Care must be taken that these terms are rightly understood and properly used.
a. The divine will by which God earnestly desires the salvation of all men (voluntas gratiae) is not absolute (voluntas abso- luta), but ordinate (voluntas ordinata), inasmuch as it is based upon Christ’s vicarious obedience (satisfactio vicaria) and on God’s part embraces the conferring means (the Word and the Sacraments, media δοτικα) and on the part of man the receiving means (faith, medium ληπτικόν). In other words, God earnestly desires to save all men, but only for Christ’s sake and by faith, which He Himself works in man through the means of grace, Mark 16, 15.16; Rom. 10, 17. The divine will of grace may be called absolute only in the sense of its being entirely independent of human merit or worthiness; it is not absolute in the sense of being independent of the merit of Christ.
b. The expression conditional will (voluntas conditionuta) is ambiguous and may be used both correctly and wrongly. It is used correctly when it is employed in the sense of ordinate will (voluntas ordinata), that is to say, when it expresses the paramount truth that God desires to save sinners only through Christ, through the means of grace and faith kindled by these. It is used wrongly when it is employed in the synergistic sense, that man’s salvation depends, in part at least, on his cooperation in conversion or that man’s salvation is conditioned by his good conduct.
If the objection is raised that Scripture itself conditions man’s salvation upon his obedience, we distinguish between God’s will as revealed in the Law and His will as revealed in the Gospel (Gesetzeswille, Evangeliumswille). The divine Law indeed demands perfect obedience of all men. Matt. 22, 37—40, and to this demand is attached the promise: “This do, and thou shalt live,” Luke 10, 28. Such legal promises always presuppose a real condition; for if a person keeps the Law perfectly, he merits eternal life.
However, because sinful man, corrupted by the Fall, cannot keep the divine Law perfectly, God in His infinite grace has given lost mankind the wonderful Gospel promise that every sinner should be saved by grace, through faith, without the deeds of the Law, Rom. 3, 28; Gal. 2,16. This is the gracious will of God revealed in the Gospel, which offers and conveys salvation to all men as a free gift, Eph. 2, 8. 9. Hence in all Scripture-passages which say that, if sinners believe, they shall live, John 6, 47; 20, 29; Acts 13, 39; 16, 31, the protasis must not be regarded as a real condition, but merely as showing the way or manner in which a sinner is saved. The statement of Christ “He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life,” John 6,47, does not mean: “Provided you fulfil the condition of believing, you have eternal life,” but: “You have eternal life by faith,” faith being the receiving means of salvation, not its meritorious cause, Rom. 3,28. Heerbrand: Fides non est conditio, neque ut conditio requiritur, . . . sed est modus quidam, oblatum beneficium et donatum per et propter Christum accipiens. Manus non conditio dicitur, sed medium et instrumentum, quo eleemosyna acdpitur.
c. The distinction between voluntas antecedent (prima) and voluntas consequent (secunda) is Scriptural if it is understood in the sense of John 3,16—18. It is indeed the gracious will of God that all men should believe in Christ and be saved by faith in Him (voluntas antecedens). However, if sinners reject the grace of God and maliciously refuse to believe in Christ, then it is God’s will that they should be damned, Mark 16, 15. 16. Thus the voluntas antecedens applies to all men, while the voluntas consequens applies to all who perish through their unbelief.
Nevertheless, as Gerhard rightly remarks, this division distinguishes not the will by itself, which in God is one and undivided, just as also His essence is one, but its twofold relation. According to the first, God, as Gerhard comments, acts as a most gracious father (benignissimus pater); according to the second, as a most just judge (iustissimus iudex). The expressions antecedent will and consequent will have not always been used in the same sense, so that much confusion has resulted from their use. Hollaz thus uses the term voluntas consequent in an unscriptural sense when he says: “The consequent will is that by which God . . . elects those to eternal life who, He foresees, will use the ordinary means and will persevere in faith to the end of life.” (Doctr. Theol., p. 282.)
The will of God is said to be antecedent and consequent a) neither with regard to time, as though the antecedent will preceded the consequent in time, since God is free from any limitations of time; b) nor with regard to the divine will itself, as though there were two actually distinct wills in God; but c) according to our mode of conception, so that we may clearly know that God desires to save all believers and to damn all unbelievers. Hence the antecedent will of God is rightly defined as His will of mercy (voluntas misericordiae) and His consequent will as His will of justice (voluntas iustitiae). Luther: “God does not deal with us according to His majesty, but puts on a human form and speaks to us throughout Scripture as man to man.” St. L., I, 1442.
d. The distinction between the revealed will (voluntas revelata, voluntas signi) and the hidden will (voluntas abscondita, voluntas beneplaciti) of God is used correctly if the former is referred to the divine will revealed in Scripture, 1 Cor. 2, 10. 16, and the second to the divine will which man neither knows nor can know, Rom. 11, 34. The revealed will of God includes both the Law, by which He demands of all men perfect obedience and threatens to damn all who transgress His commandments, and the Gospel, according to which God is willing to save all sinners by grace, through faith in Christ, without the deeds of the Law. This revealed will is fittingly called the “will of the sign” (voluntas signi) because God has manifested it to us by the sign of His Word. The hidden will (voluntas abscondita, voluntas beneplaciti) embraces the “unsearchable judgments” of God and “His ways which are past finding out,” Rom. 11, 33—35, as these are shown in the lives of both nations and individuals (Esau and Jacob, Jews and Gentiles, Rom. 9—11).
These unsearchable judgments the Christian theologian must not try to explore; much less should he endeavor to explain them (Cur non omnes?) by denying either the gratia universalis (Calvinism: “God does not desire to save all men”) or the sola gratia (synergism, Arminianism, Semi-Pelaganiasm: “Man is not saved by grace alone”). The folly of both Calvinism and synergism consists in the futile endeavor to change the hidden will of God into a revealed will or to ascertain that which God has not revealed in His Word, an attempt which needs must be futile since the “revelations” thus supplied do not come from God, but from the ignorant, blinded human mind.