Toward A Christian Worldview - Faith Presbyterian Church Reformed

Chapter 3: A Biblical Theodicy
lego). God is accountable to no one. He is ex lex (“above the law”).
The Ten Commandments are binding on man, not God. Additionally,
the only precondition for moral responsibility is a lawgiver – in this
case God. Thus man is necessarily responsible for his sin, and God is
completely absolved of being the author of sin.
The determinism taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith is
not the same thing as fatalism. In fatalism, god, or the gods, or the
Fates, determine all things, while man remains completely passive or
even opposed to his fate. In such a system, man could not logically be
held responsible for his sinful actions. In Biblical determinism, on the
other hand, God sovereignly determines all things, but He also holds
man responsible, because man and his “freely chosen” sinful actions
are the second causes through which things are determined to occur.
But someone may ask: “Is not murder sin and contrary to the will
of God? How can it be that God wills it? The answer is found in Deuteronomy
29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but
those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever,
that we may do all the words of this law.” In this verse, Moses
distinguishes between the decretive will of God (“secret things”) and
the preceptive will of God (“those things which are revealed”). God’s
preceptive will is found in Scripture. Therein we learn what God
requires of man. God’s decretive will, on the other hand, is the cause
of every event. Man is responsible to obey the preceptive will, not the
decretive will. In the example used above, God from all eternity
decreed Christ’s crucifixion (Revelation 13:8), yet when it was carried
out by the hands of sinful men (Acts 2:22-23; 4:27-28), it was contrary
to the moral law of God, i.e., God’s preceptive will. Thus we can
argue from the greater to the lesser (a majore ad minore) that if the
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