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known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose
which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Eph. 3:10,11. The wisdom of the decree also
follows from the wisdom displayed in the realization of the eternal purpose of God. The poet
sings in Ps. 104:24, “O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them
all.” The same idea is expressed in Prov. 3:19, “Jehovah by wisdom founded the earth; by
understanding He established the heavens.” Cf. also Jer. 10:12; 51:15. The wisdom of the
counsel of the Lord can also be inferred from the fact that it stands fast forever, Ps. 33:11; Prov.
19:21. There may be a great deal in the decree that passes human understanding and is
inexplicable to the finite mind, but it contains nothing that is irrational or arbitrary. God formed
his determination with wise insight and knowledge.
2. IT IS ETERNAL.
The divine decree is eternal in the sense that it lies entirely in eternity. In a
certain sense it can be said that all the acts of God are eternal, since there is no succession of
moments in the Divine Being. But some of them terminate in time, as, for instance, creation
and justification. Hence we do not call them eternal but temporal acts of God. The decree,
however, while it relates to things outside of God, remains in itself an act within the Divine
Being, and is therefore eternal in the strictest sense of the word. Therefore it also partakes of
the simultaneousness and the successionlessness of the eternal, Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:4; II Tim.
1:9. The eternity of the decree also implies that the order in which the different elements in it
stand to each other may not be regarded as temporal, but only as logical. There is a real
chronological order in the events as effectuated, but not in the decree respecting them.
3. IT IS EFFICACIOUS.
This does not mean that God has determined to bring to pass Himself by a
direct application of His power all things which are included in His decree, but only that what
He has decreed will certainly come to pass; that nothing can thwart His purpose. Says Dr. A. A.
Hodge: “The decree itself provides in every case that the event shall be effected by causes
acting in a manner perfectly consistent with the nature of the event in question. Thus in the
case of every free act of a moral agent the decree provides at the same time — (a) That the
agent shall be a free agent. (b) That his antecedents and all the antecedents of the act in
question shall be what they are. (c) That all the present conditions of the act shall be what they
are. (d) That the act shall be perfectly spontaneous and free on the part of the agent. (e) That it
shall be certainly future. Ps. 33:11; Prov. 19:21; Isa. 46:10.”[Outlines of Theology, p. 203.]
4. IT IS IMMUTABLE.
Man may and often does alter his plans for various reasons. It may be that
in making his plan he lacked seriousness of purpose, that he did not fully realize what the plan
involved, or that he is wanting the power to carry it out. But in God nothing of the kind is
conceivable. He is not deficient in knowledge, veracity, or power. Therefore He need not
change His decree because of a mistake of ignorance, nor because of inability to carry it out.