When God desires or intends that a certain
man shall perform a certain work, or illustrate to the world some doctrine or
phase of religious or political or scientific truth, he can easily subject him
to any discipline, or by force of circumstances call him to the performance of
any duties, which he may deem best calculated to accomplish to his divine
purpose. All he would need to do, even in an extreme case, would be to bring
controlling influences to bear upon his sensibilities, to put his will under
the law of cause and effect, to make his choices certain, in order to foreknow
with entire accuracy the whole process and final result. This view seems completely
and satisfactorily to explain all the predictions of prophecy, all the
teachings of Sacred Scripture, relative to or involving foreknowledge, and also
those other future events which God has determined shall certainly be
accomplished upon our globe.
How beautifully and strongly is this theory
illustrated in the case of Cyrus. God says: “Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer,
I am the Lord that maketh all things . . . that frustrateth the tokens of the
liars, that maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh
their knowledge foolish; that confirmeth the word of his servant, and
performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, ‘Thou shalt
be inhabited and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up
the decayed places thereof; that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up
thy rivers; that saith of Cyrus,’ He is my shepherd and shall perform all my
pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, ‘Thou shalt be built, and to the temple,
Thy foundation shalt be laid.’ Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the
loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not
be shut; I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight: I will
break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I
will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places,
that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God
of Israel. For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even
called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.” “I
have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways. He shall build
my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the
Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah xliv, 24-28; lxv, 1-4, 13.) Historians state that when
the Jews showed to Cyrus the above prophecy he came deeply interested in the welfare
of the Jewish nation. The prophecy in which he was personally named was the
preponderating influence upon his mind to accomplish the designs of God in rebuilding
the city, refounding the temple, and liberating the captives without price or reward.
This theory of prophecy is fully
sustained by other passages of Holy Writ: “I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that
are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel a
ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far
country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed
it, I will also do it.” (Isaiah xlvi, 9-11.) It is said the Lord stirred up the
spirit of Cyrus, so that he made a proclamation that he had been charged by the
Lord God of heaven to “build the house of the Lord God of Israel, which is in
Jerusalem.” (Ezra I, 1.) “Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, which hath
put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the Lord
which is in Jerusalem.” (Ezra vii, 27.) Cyrus proclaimed, “The Lord God of
heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to
build him a house at Jerusalem. Go ye up and build in Jerusalem the house of
Jehovah, God of Israel. He is God.” “The king’s heart,” says Solomon, “is in
the hands of the Lord, as the rivers of water; he turneth it whithersoever he
will.” (Proverbs xxi, i.). “He made the people to be pitied of all those who
carried them away captive.” (Psalm cvi, 40.) “God hath not forsaken us in our
bondage, but hath extended unto us mercy in the sight of the kings of Persia.”
(Ezra ix. 9.) “When seventy years are accomplished, I will punish the king of
Babylon and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of
the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.” (Jer. xxv, 12.) “I will
visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to
this place.” (Jer. xxix. 10. “O house of Israel, . . . at what instant I shall
speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull
down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn
from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”
(Jer. xviii, 6-8.) “Stand in the court of the Lord’s house, and speak unto all
the cities of Judah; . . . if so be they will hearken, and turn every man from
his evil way, that I may repent me of the of the evil, which I purpose to do
unto them because of the evil of their doings.” (Jer. xxvi, 2,3.) “It may be
that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them,
that they may return every man from his evil way.” (Jer. xxxvi, 3.) “make
bright the arrows father the shields; the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the
kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon to destroy it.” “For the
Lord hath both devised and done that which he spake against the inhabitants of Babylon.”
“Every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon.” “Every purpose
of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon.” (Jer. li, II, 12, 29.) How clearly
do these passages show that Cyrus was a consenting instrument in the hands of God,
and that his will was brought under the law of cause and effect! The reader
will also remember that the angel said to Daniel: “The prince of the kingdom of
Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but lo, Michael, one of the chief
princes, came to help me.” “And now will I return to fight with the prince of
Persia.” (Dan. x, 13, 20.)
Historians tell us that when Alexander
was approaching Jerusalem, to besiege it, Jaddua, the high priest, who had
warned in a dream how to avert the king’s anger, clothed in his priestly garments
of hyacinth and gold, accompanied by the people arrayed in white robes, went
forth to meet him. Alexander, seeing the impressive display, fell prostrate
before Jaddua, sand said, “While I was in Macedonia, at Dium, a man appeared
unto me in the same dress, who invited me to come into Asia, and promised to deliver
the Persian Empire into my hands.” After this Alexander went to the temple, and
offered sacrifices under the direction of the high priest. They then pointed
out to him the prophecy of Daniel, in which it is said that a Grecian should
come and destroy the Persians. This prophecy established him in the conviction that
he himself was the individual by the prophet. He therefore bestowed upon the
Jews whatever favors they desired. He guaranteed to them in Babylon, as well as
in Judea, the free observance of their laws, and every Sabbatian year exempted
them from tribute.
As Cyrus had been the providential representative
of the East, so Alexander felt himself to be the providential representative of
the West. He sincerely believed that he was chosen by destiny for the great
work of establishing not simply the supremacy of a single people, but of
combining and equalizing, in a just union, the East with the West. His policy
was, therefore, to weaken nationalities, as the great means of breaking down
old religions. As Cyrus had developed the idea of order, he aimed to develop
the idea of independence. So deep was the impression of his policy that it was
stamped upon his successors for a hundred and fifty years. In founding the city
of Alexandria he brought about a direct interchange of thought and feeling
between Greece, Egypt, and Judea. The rapidity of his victories, the large
incorporation of foreign elements into his armies, the terrible wars and varied
fortunes of his successors, opened the way for larger conceptions of life and of
faith that had ever been possible before. Paganism in none of its forms could
survive transplanting. God thus overruled these instruments, inaugurating
through one the consolidation of the Church, and through the other the distinctions
of the sects.
The wonderful influence of these
mighty men upon the history of the world proves them to have been special
instruments in the hands of divine providence.
The view that the human will may be
made to act consentingly under the law of cause and effect is sustained by Dr.
Hamilton in his profound work on Autology. He asks the question. (page 99).
“Can God inevitably convert a soul?”
his answer is, “Yes; if he sees fit so to do.” “This is not,” he continues, “a question
of liberty, but one of power. It refers to the affections, the reason, and the
conscience, which are not the efficient but the occasional power of choice. God
can inevitably carry his cause against the mere human power of soul, by
persuading it to yield to his wishes. This is not a question of liberty, but of
persuasiveness, where the soul has just the same liberty that God has, and
exercises it to the last. God is too intellectual, persuasive, and talented,
and hence can undoubtedly gain his cause over the soul.”
Had that writer clearly perceived,
what is evidently involved in this statement, that the laws of freedom may be
violated, that the human will may act under two distinct laws—the law of
liberty and the law of cause and effect—the certainly would not have made a statement
that must strike every thinker as erroneous or incomprehensible one, indeed,
that must awaken the resentment of every adherent of Arminius. For all
theologians of the Arminian school would ask, If God can inevitably convert one
sold “if he sees fit to do so,” why does he not convert all souls? And how can
a volitional act have moral character and, at the same time, be a coerced act?
No act of the soul can be godly or wicked, that is not through the exercise of
a free volition. Under the influence of extraneous power the human will may and
does act; but the act, not being that of a free agent, can not be held culpable,
since, as have before remarked, it is only when the will acts under the laws of
liberty, possessing its power of contrary choice, that its acts can have moral
character, or that its possessor can act as an accountable being. Every rational
mind perceive that the opposite proposition, namely, that a coerced act of the
will has moral quality and merits reward or punishments, involves contradiction
and absurdity, and that to govern an accountable being, in acts involving
morality, by constraint, or by the application of force, is as unreasonable as
it would be to hold inert matter morally responsible for obeying the law of
gravitation. (Lorenzo McCabe, The Foreknowledge of God AND Cognate Themes IN
Theology and Philosophy, repr. Two Books on Open Theism: Divine
Nescience and Future Contingencies a Necessity AND The Foreknowledge of God AND
Cognate Themes IN Theology and Philosophy, ed. Christopher Fisher [2024], 276-82)
