[taken from Rutherford's Scholastic Disputation on Providence]
These things about God's foreknowledge, or the first act of providence, are sufficient. The second act is that of divine counsel and will, of which something has also been said, and this should be added about permissive will. There is one kind of will that is efficient, and another that is permissive. In order to understand this, we must discuss divine permission here. Permission properly pertains to sin. There are various considerations regarding divine permission. The first consideration is with respect to the morality of permission. Hence, permission of sin is either just or unjust. Permission is just at times because an effect accidentally follows from an action or omission, and it is not imputed to the one permitting unless there is an obligation on them to prevent one thing from following another. Therefore, because God is not obligated to prevent the existence of sin, permission is not culpably imputable to Him. Permission is unjust when someone is under a moral obligation to prevent it. Thus, Eli culpably allows his sons to transgress, as he did not restrain them as he should have. 1 Samuel 3:13. One can contribute to sin through physical influence, even through a moral obligation, and not be morally guilty. Eli, by providing his sons with life and sustenance (as is morally proper), is not guilty of their wrongdoing. Therefore, the physical influence of God by which He gives the potential to sin or the material act does not make God subject to imputability. 2. Nevertheless, sometimes a person, by not physically preventing someone, even by force, from ending their own life by hanging, is guilty of sin due to moral obligation; however, God is innocent here, as He does not promote that crime physically. Hence, these conclusions: 1. Neither physical influence as such implicates the one permitting in the partnership of the crime nor does the denial of influence, where there is a moral obligation to prevent, explain or extract one from the crime. 2. Only the obligation to prevent is the formal reason for imputability. 3. However, since only the law induces obligation, no blame can fall on one who is not subject to the law.
"2. Permission is considered in a second way, as it relates to God. However, permission is not opposed to God's will or watchful care, as if He were permitting sin reluctantly or in an Epicurean manner. 2. Nor is permission contrary to omnipotence, as if God were unable to prevent it. 3. Nor is it contrary to knowledge. 4. Nor, finally, is permissive permission adverse to God's positive plan or intention. Indeed, God, willing, caring, acting omnipotently, knowing, and from a deliberate intention, allows things to happen.
The third consideration. 3. Permission is referred to the thing permitted, and here it regards four things. 1. Permission regards the material act of evil and is a negation of efficiency, which would be necessary for the act, but God properly brings about the act, He does not permit it. But when an act is said to be permitted, the maliciousness by reason of which the act is said to be permitted is connoted. 2. It is referred to the malice of the act and seems to be a negation of grace and righteousness, which, if present, would qualify the act gracefully and is permitted malice unto itself. 3. It is referred to the aggregate of the act and malice. In this relation, permission of sin is properly also a permission. 4. It is referred to the freedom of the act, and it is the relaxation or toleration of God by which He allows the will to act in its own natural manner. This is improperly called permission, or rather, it is not a second cause's non-violation. For God's ordinary effective concurrence is with all causes.
Permission in the fourth way refers to the action of the one permitting, either moral or physical. Hence, there is legal permission and another physical. Legal permission occurs when someone is not restrained by law from acting badly, unless he incurs guilt and punishment. This permission does not so much refer primarily to the act but to the legal morality of the act. It is also called moral, and this permission, conditional on the eternal law of good and moral evil, is not free but necessary. For it is contrary to God's most holy nature to command evil or prohibit good. Physical permission occurs when someone, without hindrance, prevents another from acting or does not impel a free agent to act. However, an obstacle can be presented. Acts 14:16: 'God permits nations to walk in their own ways.' This means that, by denying them the light of the Gospel, He commands them to repent everywhere. Therefore, GOD sometimes permits certain individuals to sin through moral permission, namely, by withholding the written law or the Gospel. I respond: Moral permission is twofold. One is when, by revealed will, it signifies that rational creatures are allowed to be freed from the law, which could allow them to sin licitly, and this is impossible. The other is moral, which also includes physical permission, when God's arguments for preventing sin have some force, like the Gospel sometimes or due to sins, He withholds the saving knowledge and thus, in this latter manner, GOD freely permits nations to walk in evil ways and permits them morally and physically by denying the Gospel and the gracious operation of the Spirit that accompanies the Gospel.
Physical permission is either opposed to the efficiency of the act of evil or to the impediment. This must be carefully observed in this intricate matter. In permission opposed to efficiency, God not sometimes but always, not freely but necessarily, permits sin, because He never commits or performs sin. This type of permission is suitable to God necessarily. However, in permission opposed to impediment, God permits sin only at times and freely whenever it seems appropriate. For He either freely prevents or does not prevent angels or humans from sinning, and He permits Adam to sin. He could have not permitted, that is, not hindered, or He could have hindered. He permits this one to resist the call, and He does not permit that one to resist, but effectively draws him to CHRIST.
By removing impediments, as He so wills. Permission is opposed to contradiction in its effect, and in its generality it is more than not hindering or effecting; for it applies not only in the category of action but also in the categories of substance, quality, relation, and others. Just as He permits Pharaoh to live and be a father and king, that is, He does not remove Pharaoh from existence, nor deprive him of his kingdom and sons; similarly, He permits concupiscence to reside in the reborn, that is, He does not remove it; He permits Job to be afflicted, that is, the evils befalling him neither precede nor are taken away. Permission is opposed to privative impediment, as it is a kind of removal of impediment. And the One permitting does not place an obstacle before the agent who is thus inclined or disposed to act. In either consideration, God is properly not a permissive cause in good actions, for He is an efficient cause and not merely a non-obstructive one. However, God is never a suasive cause in evils, that is, He never exerts the authority of an enjoining command so as to solicit anyone to sin. But when the Devil and humans urge evil, God can be a physical agent not hindering, to the extent that the promptings of the Devil and humans are directed toward inducing humans to sin.
6. If permission is referred to permitted individuals, then something is permitted either to the intellect or to the will. Concerning the intellect, there are two ways. 1. When God withholds the light by which something is understood, permission is like a penalty in evils. For just as God permits no one to sin against the natural law, which He has impressed on the heart of all, in the same way, He permits no one to sin. 2. When God denies not so much habitual light as the use of light, and does not grant the necessary concurrence for the actual pondering and consideration of the good to be done here and now, and leaves man in a state of forgetfulness and ignorance, therefore God permits Adam to sin, and He does not permit. He permits the will to go astray, without effectively moving it to abstain from coveting the forbidden fruit. He does not permit the intellect to err, and yet He permits it. He does not permit it because, through persuasive action, as in the case of a law's prohibition, He forbade the first sin and did not withdraw the habitual light by which Adam could have been kept from sinning. He permits it because He left Adam to interpretive ignorance; for God did not contribute actual concurrence by which Adam might have acted and repented for the evil deed and its punishment.
7. In that which is properly permitted to sin, a predisposition to act is presupposed; therefore, stones and animals are not permitted to sin. Because there is no inclination towards sin in them. If permission is taken, as Arminians and others falsely interpret it, as opposing efficiency, then the concurrence is not about the essence of permission, because the concurrence is an active agent, while the one permitting is not. From permission in this sense, they perhaps deny inferentially that sin follows, as affirmation does not follow from negation. However, good logic might dictate that inferentially privation follows in the capable subject at the appropriate time from the negation, as in this inference: "God does not produce obedience in a person here and now as commanded, Therefore, necessarily, this person sins here and now." It follows very well. I admit that it does not follow from any non-efficiency. If permission is taken as opposed to prevention, then the withdrawal of concurrence is not about the essence of prevention, because preventing means placing an obstacle to both the action and the inclination to act. On the other hand, withdrawing concurrence is indeed placing an obstacle to the action, but not to the inclination to act.
Objection 1. To withdraw concurrence from the Babylonian fire is to hinder God from the fire consuming the three young men. Therefore, to withdraw concurrence from God is to hinder His will from desiring.
Response. 1. The Antecedent is denied. To withdraw concurrence from God is improperly to hinder an action, as God did not inhibit the burning power in the fire. It interrupted the action of the fire but did not properly hinder it.
Perhaps God miraculously imparted a leaning force to the fire; however, it does not follow from a miraculous event to ordinary hindrance. I simply deny the consequence because God is not immediately an impeder of the act of will that He can bring about but does not bring about. For He can bring about good acts in angels and humans whom He never created, yet He is not to be called an impeder of such acts.
Objection 2. When the will of the reborn is inclined toward adultery due to an apparent good, then God can hinder the will from desiring the act of chastity and can hinder the will from desiring adultery out of fear of punishment. Therefore, the act of will can be hindered without any obstacle being placed against the inclination of the will.
Response. I admit that I have twisted this argument, but I say that the term "hindrance" is used here more broadly to mean in any way to bring about the non-existence of both good and evil acts. In this manner, God can hinder the acts of the will both physically and morally. However, if "hindrance" is taken formally to mean taking away the act or obstructing it, with an obstacle placed against the physical inclination of the will, then the willing will is hindered. It's the will acting against its own physical inclination, that is, the willing will that is unwilling and reluctant, which is a complex notion. Additionally, every action of the free will, to the extent that it is free, is truly ethical and moral, whether arising from an apparent good or evil, or the real one. However, the one whose will is hindered in a good act is not to be praised, and in an evil act, not to be blamed (as is evident in demons who believe due to a pure intellectual and physical motion, without any inclination of the will towards the good, yet they shudder, as in James 2:19). This is clear to anyone. But if someone were to hinder the act of chastity with their inclination hindered, yet their will, guided by ethical and moral movement, were to will the act while being reluctant, their willing of this good act wouldn't be praiseworthy. This is a serious point. An accomplished deed achieved unwillingly is not deserving of praise.
8. Theological permission is not just the mere negation of God's efficiency, but the negation of habitual and actual grace by which a creature is aided to align its will with the will of God. Therefore, God permits an action because He withdraws both general and specific influence. The permitting will, as correctly stated by the distinguished and learned An. Rivetus, arises from the (Divine) will to make use of creaturely fragility for His own glory. It does not indicate that God does not want the action to occur, but rather that God approves of it or does not desire the action's moral deficiency out of moral complacency.
Thus, in God, there is a physical complacency in an action, insofar as it is in line with the primary law of His instituted order, so that the first cause concurs with the action, even though, regarding the action's moral quality, God may dislike its sinfulness due to moral complacency. Just as an earthly father rejoices in the physical complacency at the birth of his child, but mourns the moral displeasure at a wrong action.
Evil, as such, is permitted in two ways: 1. Inasmuch as habitual cooperation is not taken care of, no abandonment of the will to perform the same act as its own is present here, unless perhaps through the acquisition of a habit of wrongdoing, but only this is given, that God, by not taking away malice through the infusion of grace, permits malice. However, 2. Actual permission is a negation of both habitual and actual grace, which signifies a denial of efficacious grace. In this case, God concurs with a person who prays earnestly, but with grace denied, the fervor of prayer diminishes. Similar to how rain extinguishes a burning fire, heavenly grace extinguishes fervor. Hence, in the same act, such an impediment is present: 1. Impediment through the negation of grace as given alone, as in 3. & 4., and through the contrary action of rain extinguishing the ardor of fire. 2. Frequently in cooperation with God, 3. through the movement of grace, 4. and through God's concurring action.
Amandus Polanus
"1. The will of God is either his will of effecting, or of permitting only. His will of effecting, is that according to which God effects all good things, whether it be by himself or by others. The will of permitting is that, according to which God suffers sin to be committed: for God certainly does willingly permit sin, and not unwillingly, that is to say, against his will and enforced (for who can constrain God?). And this he does for a double end: first that he might manifest the infirmity and weakness of the creature, because it cannot stand, unless it it be every moment upheld in uprightness by God. Secondly, that by this occasion, God might declare, either his mercy and power, in delivering the elect from sin, or else his justice and power in punishing the reprobate for their sin." (Amandus Polanus, The Substance of Christian Religion [London, 1600], pg. 11)
