Thomas E. Peck, Francis Turretin, and concursus

[Reformed Covenanter]

I came across this rather strange observation in Thomas E. Peck’s discussion of theistic evolution. Can anyone shed some light on the matter?

[Francis] Turretin's doctrine of "concursus" seemed to my immediate predecessor in this chair in Union Seminary (and I agree with him) to be fatal to the holiness of God and to the free agency of man or of any intelligent creature. Yet Turretin was used as a text-book, and many Reformed theologians who held the same doctrine were recommended to the students as safe guides.

Thomas E. Peck, ‘Science and Revelation’ (c. 1887) in Miscellanies of Rev. Thomas E. Peck, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theology in the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, ed. T. C. Johnson (3 vols, Richmond VA: The Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1896), 2: 34-35.

 

[Jeri Tanner]

Does this article shed any light? (I didn’t read the whole thing.) https://www.monergism.com/providence-0

 

[Jeri Tanner]

This was an external link attached to a Wikipedia article on “Concursus Dei”: https://calvinandcalvinism.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/francis-turretin-on-divine-concurrance/

 

[Dachaser]

I came across this rather strange observation in Thomas E. Peck’s discussion of theistic evolution. Can anyone shed some light on the matter?

[Francis] Turretin's doctrine of "concursus" seemed to my immediate predecessor in this chair in Union Seminary (and I agree with him) to be fatal to the holiness of God and to the free agency of man or of any intelligent creature. Yet Turretin was used as a text-book, and many Reformed theologians who held the same doctrine were recommended to the students as safe guides.

Thomas E. Peck, ‘Science and Revelation’ (c. 1887) in Miscellanies of Rev. Thomas E. Peck, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theology in the Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, ed. T. C. Johnson (3 vols, Richmond VA: The Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1896), 2: 34-35.

I tried to read the provided links, was he allowing for God using evolution then after creation?

 

[Phil D.]

my immediate predecessor in this chair in Union Seminary (and I agree with him)

This statement apparently refers to R. L. Dabney, whose writings may then shed more light on the matter.

Update: This occurs beginning p.223 in the linked document.

To God Nothing Is Contingent.
But in a metaphysical point of view, I cannot but think that Turrettin has made unnecessary and erroneous concessions. The future acts of free agents fall under the class of contingent effects, i. e., as Turrettin concedes the definition, of effects such that the cause being in existence, the effect may, or may not follow. (He adopts this, to sustain his scholastic doctrine of immediate physical concursus, of which more, when we treat the doctrine of Providence.) But let me ask: Has this distinction of contingent effects any place at all, in God’s mind? Is it not a distinction relevant only to our ignorance? An effect is, in some cases, to us contingent; because our partial blindness prevents our foreseeing precisely what are the present concurring causes, promoting, or preventing, or whether the things supposed to be, are real causes, under the given circumstances. I assert that wherever the causative tie exists at all, its connections with its effect is certain (metaphysically necessary). If not, it is no true cause at all. There is, therefore, to God, no such thing, in strictness of speech, as a contingent effect. The contingency (in popular phrase, uncertainty), pertains not to the question whether the adequate cause will act certainly, if present; but whether it is certainly present. To God, therefore, whose knowledge is perfect, there is literally no such thing as a contingent effect. And this is true concerning the acts of free agents, emphatically; they are effects. Their second cause is the agent’s own desires as acting upon the objective inducements presented by Providence; the causative connection is certain, in many cases, to our view, in all cases to God’s. Is not this the very doctrine of Turrettin himself, concerning the will? The acts of free agents, then, arise through second causes.​