Featured Supralapsarianism or Infralapsarianism?

I hate the grammar in the WCF, so lets start by trying to place the sentence in a more modern order:

• according to His wise and holy counsel,
• God was pleased
• to permit their sin
• having purposed
  
• to order it
• to His own glory.

So let's take it a piece at a time:

"according to His wise and holy counsel"

• This just basically says that God does as He pleases.
• Is there any question that God listens to instructions from no one else (according to His council)?
• Is there any question that God is "wise and holy"?

"God was pleased"

• stupid old English definitions: "pleased" does not mean "giddy with excitement", it means "done willingly and without reluctance".
• This means "God willingly allowed"

"to permit their sin"

• Means just what it says: God willingly allowed Adam and Eve to sin.
• Is there any argument against the fact that God could have stopped Adam, Eve and the Devil, but God did not?
• Does anyone think that God could not have stopped it?
• Does anyone think that God did stop it?

"having purposed"

• Means because God "purposed" (another old English word) = Because God decided

"to order it"

• "order" does not mean command; it is another old English word meaning "to arrange". We still speak of "ordering the books on the shelf" as an archaic phrase meaning to arrange them the way that you want them.

"to His own glory"

• means just what it says ... to God's own glory.
• so the WCF is claiming that God decided to arrange it (Adam, Eve, Tree, Snake, Garden, Fall) to God's own glory.
• There are many scriptures that talk about the Glory of God and many of them refer directly to what God did, is doing or will do as part of the redemptive plan as being "to/for the glory of God".

So, all together now:
According to His wise and holy counsel, God willingly allowed Adam and Eve to sin, because God decided to arrange it to God's own glory.

Just in case anyone wondered what the WCF was trying to say.

 

You accused me of agreeing with that "blasphemy" ... and I do agree with the highlighted statement in the WCF that makes the same basic claim that I do ... the Fall was not an accident, but part of God's better plan from the beginning. Thus your charge was directed at the WCF, my argument and everyone that believes the same way.

I am not even trying to tell you that you are wrong. I am just asking you to back up your statement and charge with some evidence that it really is "blasphemy".

 

The WCF dates back to the same general time period as the KJV.
Are you using a dictionary from 1646 or 2021?

 

Ummm ... I HAVE read the WCF and the Heidelberg Catechism and the Baptist Confession. I know what they say.
That passage does not prove the other passage is "blasphemy".

So let me ask you:

• Do you have a bible verse in mind where God wrings his hands becaise he tried to make something happen but God's plan failed? Where God "ORDAINED" something, but it DID NOT "come to pass"?

• How about a bible verse that refutes "from all eternity" by having God announce that He had just changed his mond and decides to scrap the old plan and do something completely different that he just thought of?

I am open to correction based on scripture.

 

Here you go, Chapter 6 of the WCF in its entirety in Modern English:

Chapter 6
The Fall of Man, Sin, and the Punishment for Sin
1. Our first parents were led astray by the cunning temptation of Satan and sinned in eating the
forbidden fruit.1 It pleased God to allow them to sin, because in his wisdom and holiness he
planned to order their sin to his own glory.2
1. Gn 3.13, 2 Cor 11.3, Gn 3.1-14.
2. Rom 11.32, 5.19-21.

2. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and fellowship with God,3 and so became
dead in sin4 and completely polluted in all their faculties and parts of body and soul.5
3. Gn 3.6-8, Eccl 7.29, Rom 3.23, Gn 2.17.
4. Gn 2.17, Eph 2.1-3, Rom 5.12,
5. Ti 1.15, Gn 6.5, Jer 17.9, Rom 3.10-19, 8.6-8, Ps 58.1-5.

3. Since Adam and Eve are the root of all mankind, the guilt for this sin has been imputed to all
human beings,6 who are their natural descendants and have inherited the same death in sin and
the same corrupt nature.7
6. Gn 1.27-28, 2.16-17, Rom 5.12,15-19, Acts 17.26, 1 Cor 15.21-22,45,49.
7. Ps 51.5, Gn 5.3, Jb 14.4, 15.14, Jn 3 and 6, Rom 3.10-18.

4. This original corruption completely disinclines, incapacitates, and turns us away from every
good, while it completely inclines us to every evil.8 From it proceed all actualized sins.9
8. Rom 5.6, 7.18, 8.7, Col 1.21, Jn 3.6, Gn 6.5, 8.21, Rom 3.10-19.
9. Jas 1.14-15, Eph 2.2-3, Mt 15.19.

5. During life on earth this corrupt nature remains in those who are regenerated,10 and, although it
is pardoned and deadened in Christ, yet it and all its impulses are truly and properly sinful.11
10. 1 Jn 1.8,10, Rom 7.14, 17-18, 21-23, Jas 3.2, Prv 20.9, Eccl 7.20.
11. Rom 7.5, 7-8, 25, Gal 5.17.

6. Every sin, both original and actual, transgresses the righteous law of God and brings guilt on
the sinner.12 Every sinner is consequently subjected to the wrath of God,13 the curse of the
law,14 and death,15 with all the resultant miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal.16
12. 1 Jn 3.4, Rom 2.15, 3.9,19.
13. Eph 2.3, Rom 5.12.
14. Gal 3.10.
15. Rom 6.23, Gn 2.17.
16. Eph 4.18, Rom 8.20, Lam 3.39, Mt 25.41, 2 Thes 1.9, Rom 1.21-28, Lv 26.14ff, Dt 28.15ff.​

People REALLY need to hate things for what they actually teach.

 

The WCF that you quoted from already did, but ...

It pleased God to allow them to sin, because in his wisdom and holiness he
planned to order their sin to his own glory.

• [Rom 11:32 NASB] 32 For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.
• [Rom 5:19-21 NASB] 19 For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. 20 The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.